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LibreOffice 24.2 Will Succeed LibreOffice 7.6
- eviks 3y agoSince recency and scale of difference are the two most important factors, why not use a combination of date and marketing" major/minor version instead of opting into either one of the other?
- isaacremuant 3y agoClickbait title but makes sense. Yearly versioning. Edit: -4. Touchy HN lately. You can diss Unix with toxicity but suggesting a clearly clickbait (hide the actual summarizing headline in favor of "you will be surprised by this big change") is a big no-no.
- calvinmorrison 3y agoWhich tells you less than a actual semver. Where did it all go wrong?
- quonn 3y agoIt‘s not less but different. For example you immediately know how old the version is.
- theossuary 3y agoCalendar versioning makes way more sense for end user applications, especially those with GUIs. There isn't much concept of a non-backwards breaking change in something like libreoffice, so semver ends up trying to expose information that isn't there.
- msla 3y agoSemantic versions only make sense if you anticipate discontinuous breaking changes in the future, with periods of stability between. If no new version will be a breaking change, or if every new version will be breaking, it loses meaning and you might as well go date-based. (Or, if you're Linus Torvalds, completely arbitrary.)
- JohnFen 3y ago> If no new version will be a breaking change, or if every new version will be breaking But the vast majority of the time, applications fall into neither of those categories.
- msla 3y agoPart of my point is, if the software doesn't have a concept of "breaking change" semantic versioning makes no sense, so you might as well just use numbers that change with every release so you can easily refer to when bugs got fixed or, maybe, features got added.
- JohnFen 3y agoApplications do have the equivalent of breaking change, though. Sometimes literally in the sense that file formats change, but more usually in the sense of having to relearn how to do things, or the removal of features.
- skissane 3y agoI don't think semver is very useful for applications as opposed to libraries. Remove some obscure feature which almost nobody ever used? Backward incompatible change, must increment major version. Add some major new feature which is a massive quantity of code, visible and likely important to all users–but 100% backward compatible? Increment minor version instead. Makes sense to (some) developers, but to an end-user semver is rather nonsensical. Everyone can understand calendar-based versioning.
- hulitu 3y ago> Everyone can understand calendar-based versioning. Yes because it does not any meaning. Earlier major versions were reserved for adding new features, but since CADT took over the world, they just mean another version which has nothing to do with the old one.
- skissane 3y agoCalendar-based versioning does have meaning. If the year is 2023 and I am running WhateverApp 2010, I instantly know I am running a 13 year old version, and it is probably a good idea to see if there is a newer one-even if I’m completely happy with the 2010 version. Decent chance of new features, some of which I might find valuable; also, with every passing year, the risk of interoperability/compatibility problems (with file formats, new OS versions or versions of other applications)-even if I haven’t hit any of those problems yet Whereas, if the year is 2023 and I’m running WhateverApp 2021, that’s only a two year-old version, so absent any specific problem or missing desired feature, looking for a newer version is going to be a lower priority
- JohnFen 3y agoBut semver actually tells you useful information. calendar-based versioning tells you nearly nothing. To end users who only care that they have the latest version, both schemes serve the purpose equally well, so why not go with semver? But I'll take even calendar-based over code names. Code names tell you literally nothing.
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- ahofmann 3y agoSemver is perfect for developers and libraries and helps a lot. In software for end users semver tells nothing most of the time.
- deaddodo 3y agoSemVer is more useful in Apps if you use feeling vs strict rules. A massive UI overhaul (but without breaking features) is almost definitely a major version bump but SemVer says it's a significant minor jump (5.0->5.5), at best. The problem is that SemVer was released for libraries, where it's rationale and rules make sense. But the abstract spirit of major.minor.patch makes more sense at an application level.
- accoil 3y agoIf apps followed SemVer properly they should be bumping the major version for most UI changes (let alone overhauls), as they all break user workflows. If a button moves, you need to learn the new location. Shortcut changes? Tough luck, your muscle memory just deleted the last hour's progress. I don't think that's useful for users though. It's best to assume that any upgrade will break something for you, so maybe optimize for new features and bug fixes (if you even need any). Which is where other version schemes can be more helpful as they can give a greater scope of the number of changes (e.g CalVer tells you how out to date you are).
- deaddodo 3y ago> If apps followed SemVer properly they should be bumping the major version for most UI changes (let alone overhauls), as they all break user workflows. This is just reiterating my entire point. People follow the rule/strict interpretation of the law and SemVer breaks, you should be following the spirit of the law.
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- jacobsenscott 3y agolol. "Breaking change: all English text is rendered right to left now. In can be changed to bottom to top in the compile options. Left to right has been removed."
- throwbadubadu 3y agoJust read the intro of https://semver.org/ https://semver.org/ once more, maybe you notice something?
- michaellarabel 3y agoHow is the title 'clickbait'? Calling It "LibreOffice Changing To Year.Month Based Versioning Scheme" or similar just makes it longer and less immediately clear... Really I honestly fail to see how it could be considered 'clickbait' for phrasing it as simply as possible.
- xcdzvyn 3y agoThe title is definitely supposed to play on the shock factor of 24 clearly not being immediately greater than 8, and possibly the mixed reactions to some other software moving away from SemVer (Firefox switching to Chrome's scheme comes to mind) It wasn't immediately apparent to me that the new versioning scheme would be year.month/whatever, which is the real news, but it's less interesting.
- TaylorAlexander 3y agoThe title is a simple factual statement. I see no reason to presume the information is presented for “shock factor”.
- meragrin_ 3y ago> How is the title 'clickbait'? Calling It "LibreOffice Changing To Year.Month Based Versioning Scheme" or similar just makes it longer and less immediately clear... Really I honestly fail to see how it could be considered 'clickbait' for phrasing it as simply as possible. "LibreOffice Changing To Year.Month Based Versioning Scheme" is far more clear than "LibreOffice 24.2 Will Succeed LibreOffice 7.6". The only reason I clicked through to the comments is because it was not immediately clear to me why LibreOffice would choose to skip to 24.2.
- cheaprentalyeti 3y agoThey could do like Slackware and go to version 13.37...
- jokoon 3y agoI learned that I can just add a picture in a PDF with libreoffice draw, which is a thing that cannot be done with pdf.js yet.
- oniony 3y agoThere's an add image option in pdf.js when I use the (modern browser) demo. Edit: added an image, saved the PDF and it does indeed include the image I added.
- ryukoposting 3y agoDraw is a super underappreciated piece of software imo. It's not quite Publisher, not quite Inkskape, but something in between. I'm not sure what people use it for, but I used it in college to make diagrams for all sorts of projects. LibreOffice's equation input is great, too.
- FinnKuhn 3y agoMy preferred Open-Source-Software for diagrams is draw.io (https://app.diagrams.net/ https://app.diagrams.net/). Works great, locally and online and runs on pretty much any system while offering everything I need and allowing a crazy amount of customisation.
- HKH2 3y agoThat's good to know. I like Inkscape but its page handling still needs a bit more work.
- ryukoposting 3y agoI'd describe Draw's page handling as "intuitive," if not "sophisticated." You won't get Inkscape's most powerful features, but MS Office-like "stupid simplicity" is the result.
- douglasmoore 3y agoNo kidding. I wish I knew that a week ago.
- actionfromafar 3y agoWill someone turn off the lights at OpenOffice? It's so sad.
- graypegg 3y agoJust as a note since it’s not 100% clear which project you’re talking about, LibreOffice and OpenOffice are now two different projects. One is just a fork of the other. LibreOffice (the topic of this article and version change) isn’t very sad imo!
- taneq 3y agoI interpreted this as "LibreOffice supplanted OpenOffice so completely and so long ago that OpenOffice should just give up." (Not up to date with what or how the OpenOffice project is doing these days so I have no opinion on them personally, I always thought LibreOffice was essentially just a re-brand though?)
- actionfromafar 3y agoOpenOffice is limping along, about a gazillion commits and bugfixes behing LibreOffice. To match your Internet Explorer 6 experience, try OpenOffice today!
- ethbr1 3y agoAfaik, LibreOffice was a fork of OpenOffice because OpenOffice refused to implement quality of life features in a timely manner. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org#LibreOffice https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org#LibreOffice Apparently there was also some footdragging by Sun (because Sun) and later Oracle (because evil) about creating a neutral caretaker foundation to guide development. Circa 2010/11, the development community decided to do it themselves.
- input_sh 3y agoOpenOffice was owned by Sun Microsystems and transferred over to Oracle. Most of the devs working on it weren't satisified with how the two handled the project and left to form The Document Foundation, which forked it into LibreOffice. Shortly after, Oracle killed it completely and fired the remaining staff, however IBM convinced Apache to take it over and re-release it under a more permissive license. Now, OpenOffice is basically a zombie of a project that refuses to die and hasn't seen any new feature upgrades since 2014, while LibreOffice releases ~2 feature upgrades every year. But it's not completely dead. It does receive some bug fixes and security patches from time to time.
- _ea1k 3y agoIs LibreOffice still commonly used? It seems like much of the world has shifted to cloud offerings.
- walrus01 3y agoyes, absolutely, not everyone wants or needs a "runs as a web app in a browser" word/excel or google sheets/docs etc.
- badsectoracula 3y agoI use it all the time when i need a spreadsheet, rich text editor or... powerpoint viewer :-P. Now i don't really need these that often but it is still one of the programs i have installed on my PC since the OpenOffice days. Also FWIW i avoid anything web-based as much as i can. I prefer software that runs on my own PC, as a desktop app whenever possible.
- LoveMortuus 3y agoInteresting, I used to use word processor that aren't cloud based, but many years ago I've lost to many of my writings due to crashes or power loses, do that when I finally discovered cloud based word processors it was like magic to me, because it didn't crash and if I lost power I didn't lose any of my work!
- whartung 3y agoSave for rare cases, I'm really content with the Apple apps: Pages, Numbers, Keynote. And I love the Apple document management. Document always saved and versioned.
- hotnfresh 3y agoIf I had to go back to Linux, and if it were an option (which it’s not), I’d pay $300 without hesitation, to have all Apple’s office-like and other “bonus” apps on it. They’re my top choice in practically every category, when outside factors aren’t deciding for me (it’s usually MS or Google crap, when that happens—man, I hate Google Docs)
- kwijibob 3y agoThey are going to deeply regret going with two digits year codes. ;) So amazed at how Libreoffice just keeps on keeping on. Such a great free open source suite to keep on every machine. Even if it is just a fallback to Google Docs/Sheets.
- magpi3 3y agoI thought of this. When 2100 comes around, they can just add the third digit (100). They won't have any regrets until the year 3000.
- someplaceguy 3y agoI thought of this. When 3000 comes around, they can just add the fourth digit (1000). They won't have any regrets until the year 12000.
- jolmg 3y ago> When 3000 comes around, they can just add the fourth digit (1000). or use 3 rather than 1 as the fourth.
- pezezin 3y agoThat is something that pisses me off immensely. If you see version 2024.2 you can immediately recognize it is a date, but 24.2 might be a date, might be a numerical version number, who knows. Is it so costly to write the year in full?
- Dalewyn 3y agoWindows 11 22H2. Because writing Windows 11 2022 like any sane man would be far too unreasonable. No, the H2 doesn't mean anything anymore. Once upon a time it stood for "Half", with H1 standing for "First Half" and H2 for "Second Half" of whatever year in two digits. Of course, I still find this nonsense far more preferable to the bullshit that is the Chrome Version System where the entire number means jack shit.
- 2Gkashmiri 3y agoWhen the whole discussion of "libreoffice for personal use" came up, I found out that the foundation, libreoffice foundation DOES NOT HIRE DEVELOPERS. Due to some stupid German laws, that would equate to competing with for profit orgs. Any donation you do to foundation is for "conferences and stickers". There are only free volunteer developers and paid orgs like collabora.
- dale_glass 3y agoWhich laws are that? Do they also apply to a non-profit e.V.?
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>Due to some stupid German laws If I had a nickel for every time I heard that.
- jillesvangurp 3y agoWikimedia found a way. They have a lot of development activity here in Berlin. One of their largest offices outside of silicon valley. Here are some details about the legal entity they set up for that. They are set up as a eingetragener Verein (registered voluntary association). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_association_(Germany) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_association_(German...
- 2Gkashmiri 3y agoin india, a non profit can be for any purpose. say libreoffice foundation was set up in india. the foundation gets a x amount of donation. they can spend 100% of that for anything in their bylaws. paying for devs, conferences, paying freelancers to fix bugs. They wouldn't have to pay income tax if they spent 85% of the income during the year so the incentive would be to spend almost all of the funds received. why can't that be done for LO currently?
- buovjaga 3y agoThat is not the practice anymore. The assessment was found to be incorrect. There are now two people focusing mainly on C++ development: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2023/05/30/welcome-khaled-hosny-new-developer-at-tdf/ https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2023/05/30/welcome-... https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2023/07/04/welcome-michael-weghorn-new-developer-at-tdf/ https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2023/07/04/welcome-... However, out of 16 The Document Foundation employees/contractors, I count 9 (including myself, Ilmari Lauhakangas) who do at least some LibreOffice development or 11, if you count development outside of LibreOffice source itself. So donations have always paid for development as well.
- _8j50 3y agoThey should really follow MS and go web on this. Have a local electron app for offline users but have the same code base for self-hosted cloud or their own paid/supported cloud office offering.
- mixmastamyk 3y agoThere are several well-heeled competitors in that space. Do we need another one? You really want to pay hosting for word processing? Or pay with your privacy instead? Electron—big no thank you there as well. That said, I think someone is looking into it. Choice is fine, as long as this local app continues.
- _8j50 3y agoSo long as the local app has the same features. It is like a decade behind constantly right now. I figured web based is easer to contribute to so we get open source and good features. Self hosting for wp on the same machine is not a big deal or for a family/smb
- mixmastamyk 3y agoFree with premium features doesn't really work economically. Or you could pay a L.O. dev to add them instead of sending money to the cloud? Personally, a decade behind is ok with me... I was happy with Office '97, and was actually fine with the earlier ones, but that is the first I remember that were 32-bit. The only thing I wanted for a friend was "outline mode" in the word processor, and I think it has finally been implemented.
- _8j50 3y agoThat's not what I said though, paid support and paying them to host and manage it for you is not paid features. The features remain the same. I tried to use it but the few times i personally needed it, it was to edit resumes and other formal stuff for people who need it in docx format and the result looked very unpleasing. Vice versa too, opening documents others send from the latest O365 is a pain.
- KronisLV 3y ago> LibreOffice developers are moving to a year.month based versioning system. The full year might be nicer, but personally I like this idea - it immediately let's you know how old of a version (or its initial feature set, in the case of LTS) you have installed. For example, in the case of Ubuntu or Unity (the engine) you can tell what you're looking at, at a glance.
- Already__Taken 3y agountil they give it a codename you have to go back to looking up anyway ;)
- kugelblitz 3y agoPorque no los dos? Ubuntu's 23.04 ia codenamed Lunar Lobster.
- CGamesPlay 3y agoAnd often referred to only by that label, removing the benefit of the yearly naming scheme. Debian is the worst, which doesn’t even have the courtesy to alphabetize their code names.
- KronisLV 3y ago> And often referred to only by that label, removing the benefit of the yearly naming scheme. I guess it's nice to have code names, but you still need some sort of a reference to remember what is what and it's the same kind of extra step that you'd have to do with version 1.2.3. Years somehow feel more memorable, at least to me? Though I've also run into issues with package management. For example, I want to setup a repository that has packages for Ubuntu 20.04 (focal), but I'm using say Linux Mint 20.3 (una) which is based on it locally, because that might be easier to use as a desktop OS (no snaps) or something like it. Some packages out there have instructions to setup their own repositories to get up to date versions, like Docker does: https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/ubuntu/ https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/ubuntu/ echo \ "deb [arch="$(dpkg --print-architecture)" signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \ "$(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME")" stable" | \ sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null Notice how the repository name is constructed dynamically? In that case, something like this might be returned instead locally: deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu una stable Whereas what we might have wanted would be more along the lines of: deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu focal stable In the example of Linux Mint, I guess them using different codenames sort of makes sense, because their release cadence is a bit different from that of Ubuntu, as are their version numbers: https://linuxmint.com/download_all.php https://linuxmint.com/download_all.php But at the same time, it's interesting just how much stuff the code names are used for and how things can break. I don't really have a solution, unless we want to have codenames be hierarchical, like bullseye_focal_una to indicate everything - the Debian, Ubuntu and Mint version in the example, and then have more intelligent tools pick the closest thing that exists.
- ChoHag 3y ago[dead]
- clever-leap 3y agoI moved to SoftMaker office years ago, much lighter, more polished.
- hn8305823 3y agoGreat, now change the name so it doesn't sound like something that came out of a Central American revolution. Great product, terrible name.
- anthk 3y agoYeah, because rationalistic, non-populistic Spaniards don't ever exis... Oh wait, their main novel which might be the most important novel ever, (at least for the spark of modern times) it's a fight between idealism and materialism making fun on the old farts!!! So, who knows, Libreoffice for everything else means an office without ties to Microsoft and any corporation making your yearly profits slave of what Microsoft thinks on their licenses for your desktops.
- hulitu 3y ago> LibreOffice developers are moving to a year.month based versioning system. Great. Now the next logical step is having the file format in sync with every release and to give up backward compatibility. And a ribbon is more modern, no scrollbars, flat everything and dark theme by default. And no bug fixes, only rewrites. /s