7 ms·

LibreOffice 7.1

99 points by based2 6y ago

themodelplumber 6y ago
Physics-based animations, not bad! I wonder how they look with shapes built using the 3D modeling tools.
Shared404 6y ago
Cool. This is one of the pieces of Libre software that can work really well for showing "Free/Libre software _can_ be a viable tool".
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
  I tried to make a presentation using LibreOffice (Impress). I just couldn't. The UI is heavily cluttered yet key features like adjusting the font size of a bullet point weren't easily reachable, and attempting to fix that left the toolbars in a messed up state, with no clear way to "factory reset" only the Impress toolbars. Overall, the UX feels like being stuck in a poorly thrown together version of Office 1995, where everything is technically there, but just somehow a little bit worse. GIMP is another example of this pattern. Examples of actually decent FOSS are Firefox, Thunderbird, Inkscape and Filezilla, although e.g. Thunderbird suffers from a lack of improvements, so it's still stuck in the 2000's when the rest of the world improved.
  - Shared404 6y ago
    I'll have to disagree. I just threw this together in about a minute or two [0]. That being said, I am using it on Linux, so it follows my GTK theme. It also is a fairly up to date version, so it's possible the UX changed. [0] http://a-shared-404.com/other-stuff/temp/Test.odp http://a-shared-404.com/other-stuff/temp/Test.odp (Link is going to go dead at some point in the future, but I'll make sure it's up for a week or so at least.)
    - tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
      Of course it's possible to use it. It's not effective though. By "couldn't", I didn't mean "its not possible". I was saying "I couldn't bring myself to use this tool because the experience was so bad". It's the difference between focusing on what to put in my presentation, and having to focus on fighting my tools. For example, it's possible to change the brush size and hardness in GIMP, and you can even configure shortcuts to do it faster... but Photoshop's "Alt+RightMouse" quick-change mode is just an order of magnitude faster and nicer (https://youtu.be/vG5QOzODCBs?t=45 https://youtu.be/vG5QOzODCBs?t=45). It feels like everything in most open source tools takes just a few extra clicks, just a little bit extra attention, just adds a little bit extra pain, that makes the overall experience incredibly frustrating. And when you point this out, you're usually told that you should instead stop doing your work and fix the broken tools yourself.
      - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
        Simple solution: pay for MS office instead. > And when you point this out, you're usually told that you should instead stop doing your work and fix the broken tools yourself. show us an example of you being told to do this.
        tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
        Unfortunately, I'm running Linux for a long list of reasons, which limits my options (yes, Wine is an option, but I've tried that with Notepad++ and the result is a UX that's almost as bad as using LibreOffice/GIMP straight away. Otherwise I'd have certainly gotten both MS Office and some older version of Photoshop.
        throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
        Use virtualbox.
        ikerdanzel 6y ago
        Yeah. I paid subscription for that even though using linux...vm Windows. The fixed yourself is a common reply when complaining about the free tools.....though to be precise, usually it is polite and phrased as "...contribute to the project...". This is so common, it is very well understood among general public that is tech savvy but not at programmers level, no example need to be shown. A mere quick mention/reference is more than enough.
  - throwawaybutwhy 6y ago
    LibreOffice's UI is almost deliberately made incompatible with MS Office. The conspiracy theorist in me wants to audit the Foundation's financial statements [0] for payments from Microsoft akin to what Google is doing to Mozilla. [0] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Ledgers https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Ledgers
    - The_Colonel 6y ago
      "MS Office implements the obvious, natural UI so anything deviating from that must be intentionally trying to be different at all costs"
      - throwawaybutwhy 6y ago
        Aye, that's the spirit (at least, pre-ribbon). It's much more important though that compatibility with the leader's de facto standard is crucial for the underdog. Even in text ediors - compare [0] with [1]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24593616 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24593616 (Emacs) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24558788 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24558788 (VS Code)
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        But their whole proposition is 'it's MS Office but free.' It's even in the name. I bet most people they try to sell to it's replacing MS Office. Having their own, slightly worse, version of the MS Office UI is bad for what they want to achieve. And do they have the time, money, and research chops to be doing their own UI research, even if it was a good idea to be doing it?
crazygringo 6y ago
I'm curious if anyone's used, or has a good handle on what the future is, of LibreOffice Online? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#LibreOffice_Online https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#LibreOffice_Online In 2020, it feels positively archaic for me to edit office documents except in my browser and saved in the cloud, accessible anywhere. Of course there's a bit of an inherent tension since there's really no such thing as a standardized open-source cloud to save to... which is why LibreOffice Online is "provide-your-own-filesystem". But putting all the craziest ideas together in one jumble... has anyone ever seriously proposed something like distributed hash table cloud storage, extremely redundant, that was perhaps financed by a blockchain cryptocurrency operating on some kind of auction or supply-and-demand system, that could be used by open-source software? So your storage would be virtually guaranteed always-available in a fully decentralized cloud, but with a financial incentive for people to contribute their own storage and CPU? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#LibreOffice_Online https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#LibreOffice_Online
- tmoravec 6y ago
  > But putting all the craziest ideas together in one jumble... has anyone ever seriously proposed something like distributed hash table cloud storage, extremely redundant, that was perhaps financed by a blockchain cryptocurrency operating on some kind of auction or supply-and-demand system, that could be used by open-source software? Sounds similar to IPFS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System
  - crazygringo 6y ago
    Yes, that's the closest I'm aware of. But IPFS seems more designed for public sharing as opposed to private storage, and most notably only for popular content. Much like torrents, content disappears in IPFS if nobody's using it. This is why I think the concept of paying others for guaranteed storage is the necessary second half. Not paying people individually, but that I'd simply be receiving some payment ~monthly for making available say 100 GB of space on my SSD, and the protocol would immediately redundantly copy content from other nodes to yet one more node the moment I go offline.
mixmastamyk 6y ago
Do they have outline mode yet? Been asking 15-20 years now. :D
newscracker 6y ago
Does anyone know if the issue with copy paste is finally resolved? I’ve never been able to paste things reliably from other applications in LibreOffice (Calc is what I’ve used most). For several years, LibreOffice has not recognized the OS clipboard (on Windows and Mac), and has had copy paste broken. I recall this was a long standing open bug, but I can’t find the reference or link for it.
- solstice 6y ago
  I've not has this kind of problem, I think. What are you trying to paste?
29athrowaway 6y ago
I have used Sun StarOffice, OpenOffice and LibreOffice. What they have in common is a bad, unappealing UI that looks like developer art. The features you need are there, but you have to fight the UI to get to them. Poor choice of fonts, small margins + large text that make things look crowded, poor choice of color pallette, low contrast between text and background making it hard to read, ugly icons... and I could just go on and on. What the Document Foundation needs to emphasize right now is finding UI/UX designers and graphical designers that establish guidelines for the UI on their projects. I wanted to like LibreOffice, but after years of trying, I honestly can't use it anymore. I use SoftMaker FreeOffice now. I understand it's not open source, but it's quality software I can use on Linux.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
ncmncm 6y ago
There is only one feature I would like to see in LibreOffice. LO has a nice ability to save documents in an all-ASCII, line-oriented encoding. These would almost be perfect to commit to a Git repository, as small changes to the document result in small changes to the output. With one exception: Each line of the output starts with what amounts to a random number, unrelated to the number on the corresponding line of input. That makes the ASCII output mode practically useless for change tracking. Various clunky and impractical workarounds are published. The bug report requesting stable ASCII output is over a decade old and mentions SVN instead of Git.

99 points by based2 6y ago

Physics-based animations, not bad! I wonder how they look with shapes built using the 3D modeling tools.

Cool. This is one of the pieces of Libre software that can work really well for showing "Free/Libre software _can_ be a viable tool".

tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
I tried to make a presentation using LibreOffice (Impress). I just couldn't. The UI is heavily cluttered yet key features like adjusting the font size of a bullet point weren't easily reachable, and attempting to fix that left the toolbars in a messed up state, with no clear way to "factory reset" only the Impress toolbars. Overall, the UX feels like being stuck in a poorly thrown together version of Office 1995, where everything is technically there, but just somehow a little bit worse. GIMP is another example of this pattern. Examples of actually decent FOSS are Firefox, Thunderbird, Inkscape and Filezilla, although e.g. Thunderbird suffers from a lack of improvements, so it's still stuck in the 2000's when the rest of the world improved.
- Shared404 6y ago
  I'll have to disagree. I just threw this together in about a minute or two [0]. That being said, I am using it on Linux, so it follows my GTK theme. It also is a fairly up to date version, so it's possible the UX changed. [0] http://a-shared-404.com/other-stuff/temp/Test.odp http://a-shared-404.com/other-stuff/temp/Test.odp (Link is going to go dead at some point in the future, but I'll make sure it's up for a week or so at least.)
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
    Of course it's possible to use it. It's not effective though. By "couldn't", I didn't mean "its not possible". I was saying "I couldn't bring myself to use this tool because the experience was so bad". It's the difference between focusing on what to put in my presentation, and having to focus on fighting my tools. For example, it's possible to change the brush size and hardness in GIMP, and you can even configure shortcuts to do it faster... but Photoshop's "Alt+RightMouse" quick-change mode is just an order of magnitude faster and nicer (https://youtu.be/vG5QOzODCBs?t=45 https://youtu.be/vG5QOzODCBs?t=45). It feels like everything in most open source tools takes just a few extra clicks, just a little bit extra attention, just adds a little bit extra pain, that makes the overall experience incredibly frustrating. And when you point this out, you're usually told that you should instead stop doing your work and fix the broken tools yourself.
    - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
      Simple solution: pay for MS office instead. > And when you point this out, you're usually told that you should instead stop doing your work and fix the broken tools yourself. show us an example of you being told to do this.
      - tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
        Unfortunately, I'm running Linux for a long list of reasons, which limits my options (yes, Wine is an option, but I've tried that with Notepad++ and the result is a UX that's almost as bad as using LibreOffice/GIMP straight away. Otherwise I'd have certainly gotten both MS Office and some older version of Photoshop.
        throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
        Use virtualbox.
      - ikerdanzel 6y ago
        Yeah. I paid subscription for that even though using linux...vm Windows. The fixed yourself is a common reply when complaining about the free tools.....though to be precise, usually it is polite and phrased as "...contribute to the project...". This is so common, it is very well understood among general public that is tech savvy but not at programmers level, no example need to be shown. A mere quick mention/reference is more than enough.
- throwawaybutwhy 6y ago
  LibreOffice's UI is almost deliberately made incompatible with MS Office. The conspiracy theorist in me wants to audit the Foundation's financial statements [0] for payments from Microsoft akin to what Google is doing to Mozilla. [0] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Ledgers https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Ledgers
  - The_Colonel 6y ago
    "MS Office implements the obvious, natural UI so anything deviating from that must be intentionally trying to be different at all costs"
    - throwawaybutwhy 6y ago
      Aye, that's the spirit (at least, pre-ribbon). It's much more important though that compatibility with the leader's de facto standard is crucial for the underdog. Even in text ediors - compare [0] with [1]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24593616 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24593616 (Emacs) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24558788 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24558788 (VS Code)
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      But their whole proposition is 'it's MS Office but free.' It's even in the name. I bet most people they try to sell to it's replacing MS Office. Having their own, slightly worse, version of the MS Office UI is bad for what they want to achieve. And do they have the time, money, and research chops to be doing their own UI research, even if it was a good idea to be doing it?

crazygringo 6y ago

I'm curious if anyone's used, or has a good handle on what the future is, of LibreOffice Online? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#LibreOffice_Online https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#LibreOffice_Online In 2020, it feels positively archaic for me to edit office documents except in my browser and saved in the cloud, accessible anywhere. Of course there's a bit of an inherent tension since there's really no such thing as a standardized open-source cloud to save to... which is why LibreOffice Online is "provide-your-own-filesystem". But putting all the craziest ideas together in one jumble... has anyone ever seriously proposed something like distributed hash table cloud storage, extremely redundant, that was perhaps financed by a blockchain cryptocurrency operating on some kind of auction or supply-and-demand system, that could be used by open-source software? So your storage would be virtually guaranteed always-available in a fully decentralized cloud, but with a financial incentive for people to contribute their own storage and CPU? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#LibreOffice_Online https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#LibreOffice_Online

tmoravec 6y ago
> But putting all the craziest ideas together in one jumble... has anyone ever seriously proposed something like distributed hash table cloud storage, extremely redundant, that was perhaps financed by a blockchain cryptocurrency operating on some kind of auction or supply-and-demand system, that could be used by open-source software? Sounds similar to IPFS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System
- crazygringo 6y ago
  Yes, that's the closest I'm aware of. But IPFS seems more designed for public sharing as opposed to private storage, and most notably only for popular content. Much like torrents, content disappears in IPFS if nobody's using it. This is why I think the concept of paying others for guaranteed storage is the necessary second half. Not paying people individually, but that I'd simply be receiving some payment ~monthly for making available say 100 GB of space on my SSD, and the protocol would immediately redundantly copy content from other nodes to yet one more node the moment I go offline.

mixmastamyk 6y ago

Do they have outline mode yet? Been asking 15-20 years now. :D

newscracker 6y ago

Does anyone know if the issue with copy paste is finally resolved? I’ve never been able to paste things reliably from other applications in LibreOffice (Calc is what I’ve used most). For several years, LibreOffice has not recognized the OS clipboard (on Windows and Mac), and has had copy paste broken. I recall this was a long standing open bug, but I can’t find the reference or link for it.

solstice 6y ago
I've not has this kind of problem, I think. What are you trying to paste?

29athrowaway 6y ago

I have used Sun StarOffice, OpenOffice and LibreOffice. What they have in common is a bad, unappealing UI that looks like developer art. The features you need are there, but you have to fight the UI to get to them. Poor choice of fonts, small margins + large text that make things look crowded, poor choice of color pallette, low contrast between text and background making it hard to read, ugly icons... and I could just go on and on. What the Document Foundation needs to emphasize right now is finding UI/UX designers and graphical designers that establish guidelines for the UI on their projects. I wanted to like LibreOffice, but after years of trying, I honestly can't use it anymore. I use SoftMaker FreeOffice now. I understand it's not open source, but it's quality software I can use on Linux.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

ncmncm 6y ago

There is only one feature I would like to see in LibreOffice. LO has a nice ability to save documents in an all-ASCII, line-oriented encoding. These would almost be perfect to commit to a Git repository, as small changes to the document result in small changes to the output. With one exception: Each line of the output starts with what amounts to a random number, unrelated to the number on the corresponding line of input. That makes the ASCII output mode practically useless for change tracking. Various clunky and impractical workarounds are published. The bug report requesting stable ASCII output is over a decade old and mentions SVN instead of Git.