LibreOffice 4.0 Alpha 1 Is Freed For Testing

[finalzone]

Sun Microsystems got bankrupted for a good reason. While it did good hardware, it sucked a lot at creating desktop software, it simply wrote incredibly bloated and silly code - that's what I came to realize the last few years while reading random posts, and especially those related to improving LibreOffice, like this one recently. No wonder MS Office won over OpenOffice a decade ago since the competition was so lazy and out of touch with reality.

It was about control. Sun Microsystem was reluctant to give autonomy to then OpenOffice team and often refused patches provided by community outside their zone.

[Morpheus]

Indeed, ribbon was just a plain bad idea from day one and has prevented many people from making the jump to newer versions of MS Office.

I think the interface in LibreOffice is sound as it already is, but it could use a bit of cleanup in the look and feel department.

I don't talk about a voluntary switch, in offices you just have to go with the wills of the IT Guys who go on buying expensives MSO licenses. So workers are forced to use it. Once they "get used" to it, they want the same at home (I was asked to at least 15 times when I repair computers. Silly...).

Personnaly ribbon is not a problem : I already use a lot of keyboard shortcuts so at least half of the functions I use day-to-day is already known, and also usable in LO. But not all people, and as soon as they get used to MS Ribbonffice, they get some trouble to find their way through "old-style" UI, and so in LO.

Talking about java dependencies, when can I find the state of the clean-up ? I really hope they can get this finished soon.

[Fenrin]

[...]No wonder MS Office won over OpenOffice a decade ago since the competition was so lazy and out of touch with reality.

why a decade ago? A decade ago MS had already a marketshare with office suite software surely greater than 80%.

MS has also the advantage of owning the mainstream OS. Years ago and maybe even today Microsoft gives benefits to big computer and notebook resellers if they include MS Office on their computers. Until a few years ago it was normal that most computers were sold with Microsoft Word or MS Works.

Government authorities and many corporations could save much money if they replaced MS products with Open Source software. Example: Linux brings over €10 million savings for Munich
LiMux on wikipedia
The authorities in Munich migrated to Linux and Open Office and saved in one year over €10 million. Window + MS Office would have cost over €34 million, their LiMux route costs €23 million in the same time.

Authorities in Russia and Iceland also migrating to Open Source:
Russia to switch to open source by 2015
Icelandic government prepares switch to open source

[Awesomeness]

Don't you need a plugin for that? At least with some older versions of Word?

MS Office can handle ODF files since MS Office 2007. The current MSO release has full ODF 1.2 compatibility.

[Sonadow]

Still no 1-click table management.

Still no 1-cllick image management

Still no vertical centralization of text

Still no auto-paragraphing

Auto-correct is still a joke.

PDF-editing is still a joke.


Microsoft. Office 2013, now. Shut up and take my money.

[Linuxhippy]

S and especially those related to improving LibreOffice, like this one recently. No wonder MS Office won over OpenOffice a decade ago since the competition was so lazy and out of touch with reality.

Probably the real reason is OpenOffice was done in a cross-platform way in the mid-1990, when there were no true cross-platform libraries available - so they did everything by their own - including writing their own user interface toolkit!. Until MS which has a huge budget on Office, however, nobody found the time and money to refactor it as time went by.

[Artemis3]

Always save your files using the open format, instead of exporting to Microsoft's. If someone complains, point them to libreoffice.org

Not everyone can justify spending 500$ in ms office (plus 120$ for OS), but everyone can have Libreoffice installed, even if you don't use it; just open the .odt in libreoffice then copy/paste the contents to your dreaded ribbon app. Make sure you reverse the process if you want others to view your documents.

You can't just demand everyone to purchase MS Office, but installing Libreoffice is a couple of clicks away...

When emailing, attach your files using the open format, with a link to libreoffice.org. Stop exporting to Microsoft's to make your voice heard, and help spread Libreoffice this way so next time your .odt file opens properly in their machine.

[asdx]

Always save your files using the open format, instead of exporting to Microsoft's. If someone complains, point them to libreoffice.org

Not everyone can justify spending 500$ in ms office (plus 120$ for OS), but everyone can have Libreoffice installed, even if you don't use it; just open the .odt in libreoffice then copy/paste the contents to your dreaded ribbon app. Make sure you reverse the process if you want others to view your documents.

You can't just demand everyone to purchase MS Office, but installing Libreoffice is a couple of clicks away...

When emailing, attach your files using the open format, with a link to libreoffice.org. Stop exporting to Microsoft's to make your voice heard, and help spread Libreoffice this way so next time your .odt file opens properly in their machine.

I couldn't agree more. I would add to that also that I refuse to work with proprietary file formats. I will just say no to proprietary file formats from now on, whatever the cost is.

[GreatEmerald]

Always save your files using the open format, instead of exporting to Microsoft's. If someone complains, point them to libreoffice.org

Not everyone can justify spending 500$ in ms office (plus 120$ for OS), but everyone can have Libreoffice installed, even if you don't use it; just open the .odt in libreoffice then copy/paste the contents to your dreaded ribbon app. Make sure you reverse the process if you want others to view your documents.

You can't just demand everyone to purchase MS Office, but installing Libreoffice is a couple of clicks away...

When emailing, attach your files using the open format, with a link to libreoffice.org. Stop exporting to Microsoft's to make your voice heard, and help spread Libreoffice this way so next time your .odt file opens properly in their machine.

Indeed. There is also the LibreOffice Portable project for Windows, so others do not even need to worry about keeping their PCs clean. In my case, it is also extremely useful when giving presentations, as it guarantees that the ODP files will be displayed correctly, while it can sit on a USB disk.

Oh, and that said, MS does provide viewers for Excel and Word files free of charge, but then they also require Windows to run, so... And yes, they do not work correctly on Wine, either.

[locovaca]

Not everyone can justify spending 500$ in ms office (plus 120$ for OS)

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Offi...dp/B00337D8U6/

http://www.amazon.com/Windows-System.../dp/B0094NY3R0

But please, don't let facts get in the way of your rants.