LO has its own platform abstraction layer (called SAL), which only supported pixel-precise layout of elements. That meant that the longest string in any of the

LO has its own platform abstraction layer (called SAL), which only supported pixel-precise layout of elements. That meant that the longest string in any of the supported languages dictated the element layout. Caolán McNamara (of RedHat) added support for automatic layouts a few years ago. Since then, LO has been cleaning up its dialogs and has innovated a lot (e.g. by introducing the notebook bar). This simply wouldn’t have been possible previously. Compare it with Apache OpenOffice and you’ll see why.