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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 proce

by 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.

by 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.