LibreOffice 4.0 Beta 2 Is Looking Good

[Awesomeness]

(Improved) file format support for RTF, Visio & MS Publisher (maybe you don't use Publisher, but lots of people do/did use it) are always big improvements IMO.

I nowhere wrote that those changes are not welcome, even though I'd like to see some form of evidence that lots of people use Publisher.

And the "logo interpreter" is just a 1400 lines Python script, and seems useful for both schools & creative artists, so maybe you don't have a use for it, but they might do...

Luckily it's not huge code bloat but I doubt its usefulness. LibreOffice is not the right tool for creative artists (Logo scripting or not) and it's not the right tool to teach children programming – real Logo is better.

If you read the LibO 4.x release notes, you will see that they did work that makes it easier to prototype new user interfaces. Let's see what that makes possible in the long term.

I noticed the part about Glade file compatibility but I also noticed the complete lack of vision for an UI that works well with 16:10 displays. Are they going to introduce major UI changes within the 4.x line? Will they then jump to 5.0?
AOO has a UI vision. LO does not. Maybe Glade will lead to something good but maybe nothing major will change. Even worse could be that new UI conventions will just be thrown in without any coordination.

BTW: I hope AOO's "all new UI" doesn't mean they will get IBM's Java/Eclipse based interface?

No, although it would be an improvement over the crap VCL toolkit currently in use by both LO and OO.
Switching to Qt would be a good idea but Apache won't do it because Qt is under LGPL and TDF won't do it because most of their developers have clear GTK bias.

[newwen]

But aside a bucket full of smaller changes, Apache also has in store for OO 4.0, Apache also uses the chance to revamp the whole UI.

The UI in Libreoffice is not that bad, but they do need to change the ugly icons and ditch the vcl toolkit. I prefer gtk, but qt has better multiplatform support.

[garegin]

the default mirror is corrupted. i downloaded the torrent and it works fine. the regular download link has a corrupted binary for both windows and osx_x86.

[Awesomeness]

The UI in Libreoffice is not that bad, but they do need to change the ugly icons and ditch the vcl toolkit. I prefer gtk, but qt has better multiplatform support.

The LO UI is designed for 4:3 monitors. It's simply bad by today's standards. GTK became really useless for 3rd party applications since 3.0, removing all kinds of features Gnome does not need (see rants from Xfce people in recent months). GTK is also very bad under every environment that isn't Gnome. It can't load other environment's themes or use the appropriate open/save windows.

[GreatEmerald]

The LO UI is designed for 4:3 monitors.

Except it has nothing that depends on any particular aspect ratio. Well, there is Impress that has slides which have to be set to a certain aspect ratio, but it supports 16:9 slides just fine.

[Awesomeness]

Except it has nothing that depends on any particular aspect ratio. Well, there is Impress that has slides which have to be set to a certain aspect ratio, but it supports 16:9 slides just fine.

Learn the difference between a slide template and UI layout before even attempting to discuss here!

[GreatEmerald]

Learn the difference between a slide template and UI layout before even attempting to discuss here!

I'll repeat myself:

Except it has nothing that depends on any particular aspect ratio.

[Awesomeness]

And I won't repeat myself. If you are incapable of grasping the completely different UI metaphors of LO and widescreen-optimized suites like Calligra (and soon OO4), I can't help you.

[Aleve Sicofante]

And I won't repeat myself. If you are incapable of grasping the completely different UI metaphors of LO and widescreen-optimized suites like Calligra (and soon OO4), I can't help you.

Any links to pictures of that promised "widescreen optimized" OO4?

[alelinuxbsd]

I'm glad for the huge support for this office suite so every improvement is appreciated and welcome.

Since its architecture is more modular respect the old OpenOffice should be nice a strip down release more light for replace AbiWord & C ....
For example planning an Android release, since Android system have usually few resource, but with code that work even on Linux.

Even better I think could be nice that each user could download a core very light suite and add single module when he need it.

Note:
I'm sad that the same level of support from the community isn't present for other projects as for example Gimp ...