
LibreOffice 5.2 “fresh” Released, for Windows, Mac OS and GNU/Linux - okket
https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2016/08/03/libreoffice-5-2-fresh-released-for-windows-mac-os-and-gnulinux/
======
danielhunt
[opinion-disclaimer]

I've often been drawn to testing out LibreOffice (and OpenOffice), but every
single time I open the apps, they _always_ look terrible.

This isn't 1990 anymore - if the kind of UI design that the devs have gone for
(have settled on?) alienates a tech-friendly user such as myself, there isn't
a hope in hell of people like my parents using it regularly.

Does anyone know why the style they use has persisted for so long? Is it just
a case that no one cares about this sort of thing on that project?

~~~
matt4077
Thanks for mentioning it... I always feel bad for thinking it.

Open/LibreOffice are basically the index case for what the Open Source
community is really bad at: design & UI. Three explanations I see:

\- The talent pool of designers working on OSS is too small.

\- Design is a problem that is less accessible to a distributed, bottom-up
workflow than code.

\- The UI is actually 80% of the workload of a software project and therefore
the area where OSS's lack of resources is most obvious.

~~~
arviewer
First explain what is wrong with the LO 5 design? I find the ribbon gui
horrible. The fact that the buttons and menu haven't changed that much since
ten years, so what? It does the job.

The only office gui better was the Lotus Suite one, where the layout options
were much better with palets like in Photoshop, onces that you could move
around.

~~~
Someone1234
> I find the ribbon gui horrible.

You're in the minority. Context aware UI is superior to most since you only
see elements when they're relevant rather than constantly. This creates a much
less cluttered interface, but without actually sacrificing any
power/functionality.

Plus LibreOffice 5 lacks legitimately useful things like real-time previews of
font/size changes (via hover), graph previews, text style template saving
(e.g. set up a custom title style, and you can quickly re-use that style later
in that same document inc. size/font/color/etc), et al.

Back with Microsoft Office 2003 I'd agree that the then OpenOffice was a
legitimate competitor. And Office 2007 had some legit problems that kept that
true, but by Office 2010 LibreOffice was bested and 2013/2016 only worsened
its position.

I cannot see why I'd use LibreOffice on Windows today. Cost perhaps?

~~~
kem
Part of what concerns me about the UI discussion with LO is that the choices
are held up as either Microsoft ribbon-style UI, or the current UI, as if
because Microsoft adopted it and there wasn't a complete mutiny, it was a good
idea.

Remember that Microsoft Word is entrenched in lots of places for various
reasons, and it would take a major screw up before people wouldn't continue
using it. I think what happened with the ribbon is that there were somethings
that were better, and other things that were not, so people shrugged and went
on with their lives.

This doesn't mean the ribbon was better.

Personally, for me, the ribbon is inconsistent. The context-aware part is
good, but it's implemented inconsistently. So for me, I prefer the current LO
UI even as I see room for improvement.

The upshot is that these discussions of LO "being so far behind the times"
strike me as odd, because they come across as assuming that change is
necessarily good for change's sake.

There are more serious problems with LO in my mind, such as the equation
editing markup system--it's something that used to be light-years ahead of
Word with, and now is lagging significantly.

~~~
chipotle_coyote
I suspect a lot of times what people are picking up on when they say that
LibreOffice looks antiquated is less the underlying UX choices than the actual
_aesthetics_ of the application. The last time I looked at LibreOffice (about
a year ago) it had the look and feel of an Office 2003 competitor. As silly as
it may sound, it can be hard to get past that perception. A (relatively)
simple design refresh might do wonders.

Having said that, I don't really like LO's actual UX choices. Every time I try
to use it, I get infuriated trying to do something relatively easy. (Take
setting up different headers/footers on the first page of the document. I
appreciate that making these "page styles" is theoretically more flexible, but
just about _every other word processor I use_ simply gives me a checkbox
labeled "Different First Page.")

------
okket
New features:

[https://www.libreoffice.org/discover/new-
features/](https://www.libreoffice.org/discover/new-features/)

Video demonstration:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EshNTl23liY&list=PL0pdzjvYW9...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EshNTl23liY&list=PL0pdzjvYW9RFM_RjJhUhOO0OH8uVoRn3J)

------
ashitlerferad
Under the hood:

[http://www.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2016-08-03-under-the-
hood...](http://www.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2016-08-03-under-the-
hood-5-2.html)

------
greyman
Troll question, but also really curious: Does the import from MS Office works
already? (At least as good as in OSX's Pages). That was the single reason why
I couldn't use LibreOffice so far... it just couldn't open files I've got from
the "external world", like Microsoft Word, as soon as the document was a
slightly more complex.

~~~
buovjaga
Please file bug reports for each file that has problems:
[http://bugs.documentfoundation.org/](http://bugs.documentfoundation.org/)

Do also try searching for existing reports before filing, so you will save me
and the rest of the QA gang some work.

~~~
RaleyField
Thanks for your contributions and awesome work. :)

~~~
buovjaga
I became a contributor by accident: I thought it would be interesting to see,
if bug reports other than mine also got "silently" fixed.

The bar for joining QA is really low. If a person can use their computer as a
working tool and control their emotions most of the time when typing comments
on the Internet, they can contribute. I am trying to boost the awareness of
FOSS QA in general.

------
the_duke
It's such a shame that OpenOffice and LibreOffice won't merge together again
after it's not under Oracles control anymore.

So many wasted manhours...

~~~
selivan
On the bright side, competition may be helpful for open source projects.
Example: postfix and exim. Other example - squid: no competitors, slow
development and ugly bugs.

~~~
leni536
I wouldn't say OO competes with LO, it's way behind.

~~~
cesarb
More than merely way behind, AOO is nearly stopped. The few commits it has
seem to be almost all trying to fix build issues.

~~~
sjwright
Which then begs the question, why does Apache even bother? Can't they just re-
gift the trademarks, etc over to TDF? Or at the very least be upfront and
honest that OpenOffice is now abandon-ware?

~~~
Brakenshire
OpenOffice is a better and more accessible name, although it does have some
trademark issues, I think.

------
IgorPartola
Honest question: is LibreOffice still relevant? In the days of Google Drive
and MS Office being available on pretty much any OS and device, do we still
need an old school desktop office suite?

~~~
tcfunk
Depends on how passionate people are about keeping their information out of
the hands of Google & Microsoft. I would say that, for anyone using linux as
their daily driver, LibreOffice is still very relevant.

~~~
jasonkostempski
I'm on a personal mission to get my stuff off Google which is why I use
LibreOffice on my home computer, but for work, there are some documents I
could get in trouble for uploading to the cloud. I've used nothing but
LibreOffice for over a year and haven't had to fall back on Office even once.
To be fair, I don't usually author spreadsheets or docs for other people to
see, so I can only attest to how well it opens files.

------
jasonkostempski
A little off topic but I've been in the market for a libre standalone desktop
calendar with an API similar to what Google Calendar has. I've been surprised
to see that no other Office-like suite of products (including MS Office) has
added calendars to their stack. Is there just no demand for such a thing?

~~~
phireal
Office has a calendar in Outlook.

~~~
jasonkostempski
I know, and it's not like it's just a simple date picker, so I'm sort of
surprised they don't break it out into a standalone app to compete with Google
Calendar. I wouldn't use MS's calendar either but if they made one I think LO
would follow suit and then I'd get my libre calendar :)

------
irq-1
TSCP is interesting. Document management through federated identity, that's
being used by NATO and the DOD.

[https://www.tscp.org/about-tscp/](https://www.tscp.org/about-tscp/)

~~~
msoucy
What I find interesting, is that I can't find any references to Microsoft
Office having that functionality...

~~~
nice__two
Because TDF highly targets one market, MSO isn't that interested about at
anymore: government agencies.

In the time a lot of European governments become more open (open data,
mandating the use of true open standards etc.), TDF has correctly recognised
this as their competitive edge. Also, because they very often are willing to
(at least partially) finance that work.

For the benefit of all LO users!

------
sigzero
For those on MacOS, what do you think about it vs Office?

------
jpalomaki
Libre Calc has better features for reading/writing csv files than Excel. With
large files it however seems to be much slower than Excel.

~~~
nice__two
Please file a bug report if you encounter this.

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fiatjaf
I would feel more comfortable about LibreOffice if it wasn't a "suite".

~~~
nice__two
You can select the modules you want when installing. Just deselect then in the
NSIS installer or don't run the package files (in Linux). It's that easy.

------
nailer
Is there a web version?

~~~
mksaunders
In the works:
[https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/LibreOffice_...](https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/LibreOffice_Online)

~~~
allendoerfer
They are using GTK+ Broadway, which renders GTK applications inside the
browser:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr8eo4RlPw4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr8eo4RlPw4)

Not sure this is the most performant way to do it, but the project itself sure
is impressive.

~~~
buovjaga
LibreOffice Online does not use Broadway. The server side uses LibreOfficeKit
and the client side tile rendering is based on
[http://leafletjs.com/](http://leafletjs.com/) (heavily modified).

~~~
allendoerfer
Mh, got it from the parents wiki link and thought it was interesting that they
chose something like this.

~~~
buovjaga
You are right, that wiki page is confusing. I'll ping devs about it later.

------
Pica_soO
You know how good a open source project is by the price it drives its
competitors towards. Word is not free yet.

~~~
Pica_soO
I still dont get how a solid fact of reality stated is down voted. This should
be a point of discussion.

Open Source mainly works by maintenance and "gardening" \- aka cutting away
unwanted growth. Instead of finding a UI-Approach that is compatible with this
development form, just ignore it and go on with business as usual?

