5 ms·

I find LO to be very buggy and unintuitive in its UI. Equations are a pain, it forgets styling options, etc.. But as a user who uses it completely independentl

I find LO to be very buggy and unintuitive in its UI. Equations are a pain, it forgets styling options, etc.. But as a user who uses it completely independently of MS Office, just for my documents, the peace of mind I have knowing I am using a powerful multiplatform open source software which won't betray me is priceless. I know my documents are safe and I can move between OSes at my will. This kind of freedom is essential for me and I am grateful for that

agumonkey 5y ago
I wanted to work on fixing Writer's custom fields UI, it's horrendous and it could be very useful.
- smallerfish 5y ago
  They have a design team who are collaborative. You could get in touch with Heiko and help out. https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org/ https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org/
  - agumonkey 5y ago
    as soon as I have a clear life schedule I'll ping them
soufron 5y ago
Well... MS Office is equally buggy...
- sdze 5y ago
  Wrong. LO 7.3 crashed with a new Writer Document after I tried to change the toolbar. Imagine such a bad test coverage. icons still blurry on macOS retina display. Chronic bug unsolved since aeons Also due to one-process for all architecture, if one document crashes, it crashes all other documents with it.
  - derbOac 5y ago
    fwiw, I use both daily on macos and they are equally buggy for me. I'm not sure why these sorts of things turn into flamewars so often.
  - sleepless 5y ago
    Blurry icons on macOS: https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=122113 https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=122113 Crash with Skia on macOS: https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=145843 https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=145843 Crash on intel macs on macOS Monterey: https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=146759 https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=146759 LO needs more general QA testing and more dev time invested towards macOS the neglected OS. All this needs to be financed and things are not so easy finding solutions for this decade old problem.
  - bitigchi 5y ago
    Pushing a new rendering engine without extensively testing it on a new OS release is simply nuts.
    - buovjaga 5y ago
      Skia will be deactivated by default on macOS in 7.3.1: https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/290957ad1383565c97201360defdeae9ae5ef502 https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/290957ad1383565c9720...
rbut 5y ago
There are multiple UI options to choose from. Have you tried them all?
- agilob 5y ago
  UI options or themes?
  - n8cpdx 5y ago
    Both, which I think is part of the problem. They’re splitting engineering effort between Office 2003 style, Office 2007 (ish) style, and Office Online style UIs. They probably have less engineering resources than Microsoft Office and it shows.
    - badsectoracula 5y ago
      I, on the other hand, really like that i can make LibreOffice Writer look like a slightly overgrown WordPad and i wouldn't like this customizability to be removed. I'm sure someone else likes to put their toolbars on the side or whatever. And TBH the different UIs aren't really that big of a deal, they're just different arrangements of action buttons and menus, that is only a tiny fraction of the engineering effort that you'd need even for the word processor part and it isn't like they change their UI all the time.
unixhero 5y ago
Strange, I never encounter any bugs. I am on Windows in corporate land and Linux at home, all good!
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  I don't even use LO that much, and I'm panic saving in cycle every time I do because it crashes of me so often. Hell, it crashed on me this week, on a 5 pages doc with images, text, one table and a few titles. Nothing fancy. I keep reading people saying it's stable for them, but I've was using it already when it was called OOo, before we had docx support, before docx even existed. And it always has been this buggy. I donate to the project, I report bugs, I keep advising people to use it. But still, either I'm incredibly unlucky, or people are just ignoring all the crashes and became blind to them. Which is a phenomenon I'm seeing a lot in the FOSS world: power users just don't see the bugs anymore because they work around them to easily and effortlessly, almost automatically. It doesn't help getting the software to a better state, nor does it inspire confidence to the new comers we oversell stability to. So really, really, like the last 10 times you used LO, are you sure there was no problem at all?
  - HideousKojima 5y ago
    I've had no crashes the last ~20 times I've used Writer and Calc. I have had the occasional crash or other issue in Draw when working with network and database diagrams that were originally made in Visio, but Draw is already the black sheep of the LibreOffice suite.
  - froh 5y ago
    Yes, no problem at all, you're extremely unlucky. It just works.
    - BiteCode_dev 5y ago
      It reminds me of my student. Their code doesn't run, and when I get to the machine, it suddenly fixes itself magically. They think they are extremly unlucky, but I tell them I have in fact, magic hands and heal computers by touch.
ogogmad 5y ago
Isn't the UI the same as MS Office circa 2003? Have you used 2003 era MS Office?
- sudobash1 5y ago
  Actually, the UI can be changed to one of several different variants by selecting View > User Interface... It has 7 options to choose from. If you like the newer "ribbon" style UI, then select the "Tabbed" UI variant. This is one thing I really like about LO. People familiar with older MS Office can be comfortable in it, but it can also be changed for people more familiar with or preferring the "ribbon" UI.
II2II 5y ago
Having used many different word processors across the decades, I wholeheartedly agree with the "won't betray me" comment. So many products have risen and fallen in the past forty years that an open and documented file format is essential for the products of our labour to have lasting value. The cross platform support is also liberating. As for the unintuitive UI, it is a complex product that is designed to meet a multitude of needs. In that respect, it is not all that different from Microsoft Office. (If anything, I find it to be slightly more intuitive than Microsoft Office since the means of achieving some things in Microsoft's product is downright quirky.)

agumonkey 5y ago

I wanted to work on fixing Writer's custom fields UI, it's horrendous and it could be very useful.

smallerfish 5y ago
They have a design team who are collaborative. You could get in touch with Heiko and help out. https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org/ https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org/
- agumonkey 5y ago
  as soon as I have a clear life schedule I'll ping them

soufron 5y ago

Well... MS Office is equally buggy...

sdze 5y ago
Wrong. LO 7.3 crashed with a new Writer Document after I tried to change the toolbar. Imagine such a bad test coverage. icons still blurry on macOS retina display. Chronic bug unsolved since aeons Also due to one-process for all architecture, if one document crashes, it crashes all other documents with it.
- derbOac 5y ago
  fwiw, I use both daily on macos and they are equally buggy for me. I'm not sure why these sorts of things turn into flamewars so often.
- sleepless 5y ago
  Blurry icons on macOS: https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=122113 https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=122113 Crash with Skia on macOS: https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=145843 https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=145843 Crash on intel macs on macOS Monterey: https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=146759 https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=146759 LO needs more general QA testing and more dev time invested towards macOS the neglected OS. All this needs to be financed and things are not so easy finding solutions for this decade old problem.
- bitigchi 5y ago
  Pushing a new rendering engine without extensively testing it on a new OS release is simply nuts.
  - buovjaga 5y ago
    Skia will be deactivated by default on macOS in 7.3.1: https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/290957ad1383565c97201360defdeae9ae5ef502 https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/290957ad1383565c9720...

rbut 5y ago

There are multiple UI options to choose from. Have you tried them all?

agilob 5y ago
UI options or themes?
- n8cpdx 5y ago
  Both, which I think is part of the problem. They’re splitting engineering effort between Office 2003 style, Office 2007 (ish) style, and Office Online style UIs. They probably have less engineering resources than Microsoft Office and it shows.
  - badsectoracula 5y ago
    I, on the other hand, really like that i can make LibreOffice Writer look like a slightly overgrown WordPad and i wouldn't like this customizability to be removed. I'm sure someone else likes to put their toolbars on the side or whatever. And TBH the different UIs aren't really that big of a deal, they're just different arrangements of action buttons and menus, that is only a tiny fraction of the engineering effort that you'd need even for the word processor part and it isn't like they change their UI all the time.

unixhero 5y ago

Strange, I never encounter any bugs. I am on Windows in corporate land and Linux at home, all good!

BiteCode_dev 5y ago
I don't even use LO that much, and I'm panic saving in cycle every time I do because it crashes of me so often. Hell, it crashed on me this week, on a 5 pages doc with images, text, one table and a few titles. Nothing fancy. I keep reading people saying it's stable for them, but I've was using it already when it was called OOo, before we had docx support, before docx even existed. And it always has been this buggy. I donate to the project, I report bugs, I keep advising people to use it. But still, either I'm incredibly unlucky, or people are just ignoring all the crashes and became blind to them. Which is a phenomenon I'm seeing a lot in the FOSS world: power users just don't see the bugs anymore because they work around them to easily and effortlessly, almost automatically. It doesn't help getting the software to a better state, nor does it inspire confidence to the new comers we oversell stability to. So really, really, like the last 10 times you used LO, are you sure there was no problem at all?
- HideousKojima 5y ago
  I've had no crashes the last ~20 times I've used Writer and Calc. I have had the occasional crash or other issue in Draw when working with network and database diagrams that were originally made in Visio, but Draw is already the black sheep of the LibreOffice suite.
- froh 5y ago
  Yes, no problem at all, you're extremely unlucky. It just works.
  - BiteCode_dev 5y ago
    It reminds me of my student. Their code doesn't run, and when I get to the machine, it suddenly fixes itself magically. They think they are extremly unlucky, but I tell them I have in fact, magic hands and heal computers by touch.

ogogmad 5y ago

Isn't the UI the same as MS Office circa 2003? Have you used 2003 era MS Office?

sudobash1 5y ago
Actually, the UI can be changed to one of several different variants by selecting View > User Interface... It has 7 options to choose from. If you like the newer "ribbon" style UI, then select the "Tabbed" UI variant. This is one thing I really like about LO. People familiar with older MS Office can be comfortable in it, but it can also be changed for people more familiar with or preferring the "ribbon" UI.

II2II 5y ago

Having used many different word processors across the decades, I wholeheartedly agree with the "won't betray me" comment. So many products have risen and fallen in the past forty years that an open and documented file format is essential for the products of our labour to have lasting value. The cross platform support is also liberating. As for the unintuitive UI, it is a complex product that is designed to meet a multitude of needs. In that respect, it is not all that different from Microsoft Office. (If anything, I find it to be slightly more intuitive than Microsoft Office since the means of achieving some things in Microsoft's product is downright quirky.)