4 ms·

I wish the guy quoted in the article was more specific about features that LibreOffice lacks. Information that's actionable for developers is likely to result

by csense 13y ago

I wish the guy quoted in the article was more specific about features that LibreOffice lacks. Information that's actionable for developers is likely to result in improvements. Complaints like "We don't like it" just split proponents and opponents of the software into opposing factions and aren't productive.

RodericDay 13y ago
Where should we submit our complaints? I jumped on Ubuntu on my senior year and it's been awesome so far but LibreOffice is seriously deficient. I'd love to contribute!
dizzystar 13y ago
Try this: The front page should not have a page number. Please place a header on each page. On the even pages, the header should be on the left, on the odd pages, the header should be on the right. On the bottom-center of each page, place the page number, except for the front page, as specified above. The above is probably a bit much, but it is, as far as I know, absolutely impossible to do in Libre Office, or it is not, it is extremely difficult to do, but this sort of formatting is absolutely trivial in MS. If the above sounds to complex, then try creating a working TOC in Libre Office. The grammar and spell-checking capabilities are not very good in LO. I've also had many doc -> PDF conversion problems in LO. There are many other smallish issues. LO is about as much of a replacement for MS Suite as Gimp is a viable replacement for Photoshop for productivity and real-world work. I use the FOSS stuff at home, but my overall productivity is way lower at home as well. I've ran into many things I simply cannot do. It really is a cost-to-productivity ratio here. MS Suite really isn't that expensive if you compare the speed and accuracy you can accomplish common tasks.
- cperciva 13y ago
  The front page should not have a page number. Please place a header on each page. On the even pages, the header should be on the left, on the odd pages, the header should be on the right. On the bottom-center of each page, place the page number, except for the front page, as specified above. The above is probably a bit much, but it is, as far as I know, absolutely impossible to do in Libre Office, or it is not, it is extremely difficult to do, but this sort of formatting is absolutely trivial in MS. If the above sounds to complex, then try creating a working TOC in Libre Office. ... on the other hand, those are all trivial thing to do in LaTex. Maybe the problem is people using Libre Office for things which Libre Office is not designed to do?
  - flomo 13y ago
    You could do all of above in Word version 4.0. Why isn't Libre Office designed to create a report which can be printed and bound? Seems like a basic word processing task.
    - gaius 13y ago
      Because none of the developers does that themselves, I suspect, and because said developers probably personally believe that paper is "obsolete" anyway so resist adding features like that when asked.
      - flomo 13y ago
        When launching LO Writer, one is presented with a virtual blank sheet of paper. The entire metaphor of the program is built around printing. In any case, I have virtually no Libre Office experience, and I was able to generate dizzystar's test case in about 2 minutes. My apologies for leading us down this dead-end discussion. (The only confusing part was that you have to manually turn on headers & footers before you can click on them to edit.) When it comes down to it, LO is probably not missing many features, but they haven't received the UI research/testing effort to make them accessible. The general look & feel is also 'old fashioned'.
    - cperciva 13y ago
      When Word 4.0 was released, 99% of the documents it was used to produce were intended to be printed. These days, I doubt even 10% of Libre Office documents get printed. As people have gotten more comfortable with and more able to exchange documents electronically, the word processor using population has bifurcated -- 99% going into a group which produces documents for mainly-electronic circulation to a small set of people, and is not very concerned with presentation; and 1% going into a group which produces documents intended to be printed and circulated to wide audiences, and cares deeply about good presentation. The first group is the Libre Office -- and Office 2013 -- audience, and they generally don't need to do anything sophisticated with headers, footers, and page numbers. The second group uses LaTex or Adobe InDesign or similarly more "sophisticated" software, which of course provides all the requires functionality.
- curiousdannii 13y ago
  It's not impossible at all, you just need page styles. Could it come with more document templates? Probably. But it's not impossible in the slightest.
GhotiFish 13y ago
The problems with LibreOffice are the problems with Microsoft Office. It is a god damned miracle Microsoft Office even works at all. The design is a monolithic do everything fully integrated suite. The combinatorial explosion of interacting features that MSOffice has going on is enough to make a mathematician blush (and the testing staff cry). A super large scale SDLC type one size fits all solution, not based on a generic powerful concept, but a gigantic feature blob that deals with problems as they come. It's a god damned miracle, and LibreOffice is what happens when you don't get a miracle. It's a feature blob, it's buggy (last time on my system it used 100% CPU, and every time I adjusted a field in a dialog box it didn't redraw the background), it has surprising behavior (play with tables some time, now try sizing them). Hey, I'm no fan of Microsoft Office, either. I'd say I like LaTeX, but that's a generic powerful concept with absolutely no concessions made for John Q Hacker. Let alone John Q Pedestrian. Personally, I don't know where to turn. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBwS66EBUcY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBwS66EBUcY
Falkon1313 13y ago
He didn't say that it was lacking any features, or even that "We didn't like it". He said "the school's staff and teachers balked at using" it. That is, the teachers were afraid that they might have to learn something new. Chances are, they wouldn't even try it. And nobody had what it takes to tell 'em "Well, give it a try, it should suit your needs just fine. But feel free to set up your own tools if you don't like it."
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

by csense 13y ago

RodericDay 13y ago

Where should we submit our complaints? I jumped on Ubuntu on my senior year and it's been awesome so far but LibreOffice is seriously deficient. I'd love to contribute!

dizzystar 13y ago

Try this: The front page should not have a page number. Please place a header on each page. On the even pages, the header should be on the left, on the odd pages, the header should be on the right. On the bottom-center of each page, place the page number, except for the front page, as specified above. The above is probably a bit much, but it is, as far as I know, absolutely impossible to do in Libre Office, or it is not, it is extremely difficult to do, but this sort of formatting is absolutely trivial in MS. If the above sounds to complex, then try creating a working TOC in Libre Office. The grammar and spell-checking capabilities are not very good in LO. I've also had many doc -> PDF conversion problems in LO. There are many other smallish issues. LO is about as much of a replacement for MS Suite as Gimp is a viable replacement for Photoshop for productivity and real-world work. I use the FOSS stuff at home, but my overall productivity is way lower at home as well. I've ran into many things I simply cannot do. It really is a cost-to-productivity ratio here. MS Suite really isn't that expensive if you compare the speed and accuracy you can accomplish common tasks.

cperciva 13y ago
The front page should not have a page number. Please place a header on each page. On the even pages, the header should be on the left, on the odd pages, the header should be on the right. On the bottom-center of each page, place the page number, except for the front page, as specified above. The above is probably a bit much, but it is, as far as I know, absolutely impossible to do in Libre Office, or it is not, it is extremely difficult to do, but this sort of formatting is absolutely trivial in MS. If the above sounds to complex, then try creating a working TOC in Libre Office. ... on the other hand, those are all trivial thing to do in LaTex. Maybe the problem is people using Libre Office for things which Libre Office is not designed to do?
- flomo 13y ago
  You could do all of above in Word version 4.0. Why isn't Libre Office designed to create a report which can be printed and bound? Seems like a basic word processing task.
  - gaius 13y ago
    Because none of the developers does that themselves, I suspect, and because said developers probably personally believe that paper is "obsolete" anyway so resist adding features like that when asked.
    - flomo 13y ago
      When launching LO Writer, one is presented with a virtual blank sheet of paper. The entire metaphor of the program is built around printing. In any case, I have virtually no Libre Office experience, and I was able to generate dizzystar's test case in about 2 minutes. My apologies for leading us down this dead-end discussion. (The only confusing part was that you have to manually turn on headers & footers before you can click on them to edit.) When it comes down to it, LO is probably not missing many features, but they haven't received the UI research/testing effort to make them accessible. The general look & feel is also 'old fashioned'.
  - cperciva 13y ago
    When Word 4.0 was released, 99% of the documents it was used to produce were intended to be printed. These days, I doubt even 10% of Libre Office documents get printed. As people have gotten more comfortable with and more able to exchange documents electronically, the word processor using population has bifurcated -- 99% going into a group which produces documents for mainly-electronic circulation to a small set of people, and is not very concerned with presentation; and 1% going into a group which produces documents intended to be printed and circulated to wide audiences, and cares deeply about good presentation. The first group is the Libre Office -- and Office 2013 -- audience, and they generally don't need to do anything sophisticated with headers, footers, and page numbers. The second group uses LaTex or Adobe InDesign or similarly more "sophisticated" software, which of course provides all the requires functionality.
curiousdannii 13y ago
It's not impossible at all, you just need page styles. Could it come with more document templates? Probably. But it's not impossible in the slightest.

GhotiFish 13y ago

The problems with LibreOffice are the problems with Microsoft Office. It is a god damned miracle Microsoft Office even works at all. The design is a monolithic do everything fully integrated suite. The combinatorial explosion of interacting features that MSOffice has going on is enough to make a mathematician blush (and the testing staff cry). A super large scale SDLC type one size fits all solution, not based on a generic powerful concept, but a gigantic feature blob that deals with problems as they come. It's a god damned miracle, and LibreOffice is what happens when you don't get a miracle. It's a feature blob, it's buggy (last time on my system it used 100% CPU, and every time I adjusted a field in a dialog box it didn't redraw the background), it has surprising behavior (play with tables some time, now try sizing them). Hey, I'm no fan of Microsoft Office, either. I'd say I like LaTeX, but that's a generic powerful concept with absolutely no concessions made for John Q Hacker. Let alone John Q Pedestrian. Personally, I don't know where to turn. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBwS66EBUcY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBwS66EBUcY

Falkon1313 13y ago

He didn't say that it was lacking any features, or even that "We didn't like it". He said "the school's staff and teachers balked at using" it. That is, the teachers were afraid that they might have to learn something new. Chances are, they wouldn't even try it. And nobody had what it takes to tell 'em "Well, give it a try, it should suit your needs just fine. But feel free to set up your own tools if you don't like it."

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]