LibreOffice 4.0 Released With Immense Changes

[Awesomeness]

I just wish OpenOffice.org will die already, it's unnecessary to split the development like this.

OpenOffice.org is dead. It was succeeded by Apache OpenOffice. The Oracle devs who worked on it were either fired or reassigned. Almost no one is working on LibreOffice, though.

[droste]

Why do people not like it?

1. Everyone knew where everything was and most all programs have the same kind of layout. It would be like switching your keyboard from a qwerty to a dvorak for just one program. Not a change most people like.
2. It takes more clicks to get what you want done.
3. More screen real estate is taken up by that monstrosity.
4. No option to have the old style layout, it was just forced.

1. You knew where it was, because you used it for 15 years. That's not really a argument, because at some point in time you had the situation where you didn't kow where it was. And it's not that different to what was there before. It took me a few days and I was used to the new layout (well I'm still young and willing to learn, so it might be a different experience for others).
2. This is a bit to general and without references to make it a real argument
3. It doesn't take much more space than the classic menu bar a few rows of tool bars which you needed to have most of what you needed one click away.
4. Well yes. But I think it's better this way then having a huge code bloat because you have to maintain 2 UI.

The main advantage is that the information stored in the ribbon is much more versatile than simple buttons and a few combo boxes.

At my work once they upgraded office to the ribbon versions people started downloading LO like mad and using it.

This is exactly my point. Did they even try? Probably not. Someone said there's an alternative that looks like the old, so why should they even even try the new?
On the other side it's good, because if everyone thinks like this, LO may get enough attention to beat MS office. ;-)

[asdx]

OpenOffice.org is dead. It was succeeded by Apache OpenOffice. The Oracle devs who worked on it were either fired or reassigned. Almost no one is working on LibreOffice, though.

Well, in that case, why split the development between Apache OpenOffice and LibreOffice? Why not just work in LibreOffice?

Considering that many distros have adopted LibreOffice as the preferred office suite, it doesn't make much sense to me to split the development like this.

[Ericg]

Well, in that case, why split the development between Apache OpenOffice and LibreOffice? Why not just work in LibreOffice?

Considering that many distros have adopted LibreOffice as the preferred office suite, it doesn't make much sense to me to split the development like this.

Because of legal issues. Apache OpenOffice will only accept Apache (or similar BSD style license code). LibreOffice will accept any and all code since the "Viral nature" *GPL would trump any other license.

Libreoffice can pull in any change they want from the Apache guys, Apache cant pull in anything. THIS will be what I've been curious to about for a long time:

2 Open source projects, 1 backed mostly by the community, 1 backed mostly companies and code can't be shared mutually..... who wins? Who writes better code and better programs with better features and better stability?

[Awesomeness]

Well, in that case, why split the development between Apache OpenOffice and LibreOffice? Why not just work in LibreOffice?

Considering that many distros have adopted LibreOffice as the preferred office suite, it doesn't make much sense to me to split the development like this.

LO is not the preferred FOSS office suite for the majority of users in general – who happen to use Windows and LO has almost no brand recognition there. Additionally Michael Meeks said the LO team is not at all interested in any Lotus Symphony feature which includes the widescreen UI. Therefore even if there was no license dispute, a separate project would be necessary anyway to give the suite a more modern UI.

[JanC]

For what it's worth, in the past I would have had to have agreed with Michael, at least that Calc wasn't as good as Excel.

Anyway, from the sounds of it there might soon be three good native office suites for Linux, instead of just one! All good.

There have always been several office suites for linux (some of them closed source though).

[JanC]

They added useless shit like Firefox personas skin support, instead of porting it o GTK3, improving the file format support, or shipping some post-1995 templates for Impress.

The did improve support for some file formats.

[vsteel]

1. You knew where it was, because you used it for 15 years. That's not really a argument, because at some point in time you had the situation where you didn't kow where it was. And it's not that different to what was there before. It took me a few days and I was used to the new layout (well I'm still young and willing to learn, so it might be a different experience for others).
2. This is a bit to general and without references to make it a real argument
3. It doesn't take much more space than the classic menu bar a few rows of tool bars which you needed to have most of what you needed one click away.
4. Well yes. But I think it's better this way then having a huge code bloat because you have to maintain 2 UI.

The main advantage is that the information stored in the ribbon is much more versatile than simple buttons and a few combo boxes.

This is exactly my point. Did they even try? Probably not. Someone said there's an alternative that looks like the old, so why should they even even try the new?
On the other side it's good, because if everyone thinks like this, LO may get enough attention to beat MS office. ;-)

1. Yes everyone knew where it was and it made logical sense. I am young enough to learn and old enough to know that just because an idea is new it doesn't make it good.
2. Try writing a complex document in both programs and you will see the difference.
3. It takes a lot more space, most people don't pollute their screen with endless menu bars. Not to mention the icons are much smaller and many could be put on one in a single line on the screen.
4. MS never worries about code bloat and it is only a simple UI, there isn't going to be much change in the size of an office application. Not near enough to even matter.

Yes the people did try the ribbon and they found it much more inefficient and saw no gain by using it. This was in a high tech business environment and time is money, aesthetics don't mean much but efficiency is huge.

Remember, just because an idea is new doesn't make it better. It needs to have tangible benefits. Notice how other programs are not rushing to jump on the bandwagon, that alone should tell you something.

[Larian]

(LibreOffice is) used everywhere which means its feature complete.

Uhm... wait. I would have to disagree here. Being used "everywhere" only means that it's widely used; it says nothing about it's state of "completeness" or feature parity with MSO. I grant that it may do a lot of stuff for a lot of people, but the calc program wasn't usable in a lab environment last time I tried it - it couldn't do curve fitting. Unless this has changed, Excel is still the best spreadsheet program bar none. I understand that there is now a plugin which enables this functionality, but fitting data to a curve shouldn't be a "you've gotta go get it" plugin; it should be a feature that's baked into the program.

Not that I'm knocking the LibreOffice suite. I use it exclusively for my home desktop publication hobby and it works just great for my current needs. But for doing science, it's just not there yet.

(For those who are curious: how did I wind up doing curve fitting? By hand with GnuPlot. It's amazing, thorough, and as user-friendly as a rabid crocodile with AIDS and PMS.)

[Rexilion]

wake me up when they get rid of java completely.

They are working (link!) on it lol =)