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LibreOffice 7.5 update: A great time to jump on this FOSS productivity suite

43 points by elkos 4y ago

college_physics 4y ago
Calc is still indispensable for me. Despite all "tech" there is simply no better UI to help working with small amounts of data. But the libreoffice community has imho failed to spot an enormous opportunity: properly integrating python as a scripting engine and turning the libreoffice apps into extremely versatile low-code platforms for many people.
- grandinj 4y ago
  What would you need? Python is already supported as a plugin/extension language for several years now (admittedly there have been bugs)
  - college_physics 4y ago
    There is a plugin system indeed but its not really accessible for non-technical users and cumbersome for developers. What would be a "sweet" way of integrating python more deeply? Probably many ways and different visions are possible, but here are some ideas: * be able to discover and install libraries from the interface (think a bit like RStudio / CRAN) into some local dedicated virtualenv * be able to work with spreadsheets / documents interactively in notebook style, e.g. in a split window that sits side-by-side with the content. * be able to share spreadsheet and user generated scripts in a simple package
    - benj111 4y ago
      Is python the best choice for spreadsheets? The whitespace thing would seem to be a liability. I'm surprised there haven't been more experiments with specialised languages. I'm further surprised Unix culture hasn't produced any languages for the purpose. We've got awk and then nothing really until SQL. It's bizarre to me that we've got this entire programming paradigm and it's basically, well, Basic.
      - college_physics 4y ago
        I mentioned python mostly due to limited imagination and because its data science ecosystem is a natural fit for working with spreadsheets. But the comment is indeed more about to think how scripting could be integrated into libreoffice more effectively both for more technical users that would write and share specific libraries and non-technical users that can use these libraries easily in "visual" point-and-click mode. People routinely load and work with spreadsheets in IDE's, or the command line etc. For example Spyder/RStudio/PyCharm etc have some rudimentary means of displaying dataframes. What would be more empowering for many more users is for the spreadsheet application to offer a IDE/REPL type environment. Once the rails for this "extension" have been laid out all sorts of alternative semantics for working with data would be possible.
  - scotty79 4y ago
    I think Visual Studio Code is a model for valuable plugin ecosystem.
- fatneckbeard 4y ago
  its always going to be difficult to compete with Visual Basic since Microsoft has entire teams of people making sure Excel can run Macros built 20 years ago.
  - rad_gruchalski 4y ago
    Excel JavaScript API: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/reference/overview/excel-add-ins-reference-overview https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/referen....
nix23 4y ago
But not if your a AIX user...just saying.
- MonkeyClub 4y ago
  AIX as a daily driver... Now that’s a thought!
  - nix23 4y ago
    True and expensive... ;)
DoItToMe81 4y ago
Libreoffice works so much better now than it did when I last used it.
g8oz 4y ago
Excel now has a JavaScript API and the new LAMBDA function is amazing. I hope Calc can borrow these ideas.

43 points by elkos 4y ago

Calc is still indispensable for me. Despite all "tech" there is simply no better UI to help working with small amounts of data. But the libreoffice community has imho failed to spot an enormous opportunity: properly integrating python as a scripting engine and turning the libreoffice apps into extremely versatile low-code platforms for many people.

grandinj 4y ago
What would you need? Python is already supported as a plugin/extension language for several years now (admittedly there have been bugs)
- college_physics 4y ago
  There is a plugin system indeed but its not really accessible for non-technical users and cumbersome for developers. What would be a "sweet" way of integrating python more deeply? Probably many ways and different visions are possible, but here are some ideas: * be able to discover and install libraries from the interface (think a bit like RStudio / CRAN) into some local dedicated virtualenv * be able to work with spreadsheets / documents interactively in notebook style, e.g. in a split window that sits side-by-side with the content. * be able to share spreadsheet and user generated scripts in a simple package
  - benj111 4y ago
    Is python the best choice for spreadsheets? The whitespace thing would seem to be a liability. I'm surprised there haven't been more experiments with specialised languages. I'm further surprised Unix culture hasn't produced any languages for the purpose. We've got awk and then nothing really until SQL. It's bizarre to me that we've got this entire programming paradigm and it's basically, well, Basic.
    - college_physics 4y ago
      I mentioned python mostly due to limited imagination and because its data science ecosystem is a natural fit for working with spreadsheets. But the comment is indeed more about to think how scripting could be integrated into libreoffice more effectively both for more technical users that would write and share specific libraries and non-technical users that can use these libraries easily in "visual" point-and-click mode. People routinely load and work with spreadsheets in IDE's, or the command line etc. For example Spyder/RStudio/PyCharm etc have some rudimentary means of displaying dataframes. What would be more empowering for many more users is for the spreadsheet application to offer a IDE/REPL type environment. Once the rails for this "extension" have been laid out all sorts of alternative semantics for working with data would be possible.
- scotty79 4y ago
  I think Visual Studio Code is a model for valuable plugin ecosystem.
fatneckbeard 4y ago
its always going to be difficult to compete with Visual Basic since Microsoft has entire teams of people making sure Excel can run Macros built 20 years ago.
- rad_gruchalski 4y ago
  Excel JavaScript API: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/reference/overview/excel-add-ins-reference-overview https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/referen....

nix23 4y ago

But not if your a AIX user...just saying.

MonkeyClub 4y ago
AIX as a daily driver... Now that’s a thought!
- nix23 4y ago
  True and expensive... ;)

DoItToMe81 4y ago

Libreoffice works so much better now than it did when I last used it.

g8oz 4y ago

Excel now has a JavaScript API and the new LAMBDA function is amazing. I hope Calc can borrow these ideas.