
LibreOffice hits 4.0 - endijs
http://www.libreoffice.org/download/4-0-new-features-and-fixes/
======
stroboskop
You have to keep things in perspective.

LibreOffice does not look nice but it is functional. What is its main
function? _For many people, it has completely replaced Microsoft Office._

Of course MS Office has an even larger feature set, but few people max it out.
Likewise, there are people who will prefer LaTeX but that's a small group. The
advocates of web based office systems tend to ignore that desktop systems
provide much more privacy. LibreOffice sits right in between those groups and
is useful to many.

~~~
glazskunrukitis
I think that there is a huge market for simplified office tools. Why don't we
have standalone Google Docs for desktop? And I am not talking about a web app
but a fully functional desktop one.

~~~
runn1ng
I would much prefer 100% free (as-in-speech) Google Docs alternative.

I want to be able to install Google Docs-like application on my own server.

~~~
pekk
Why not just run an office suite locally if that is your requirement?

~~~
Piskvorrr
Not _locally_ : I've seen many organizations admire the synchronization and
collaboration features of GDocs, with a major caveat: the data is centralized
in the cloud provider's hands, not the organization's. "Oh look, you don't own
your data anymore" is a very theoretical scenario, but "oh look, you suddenly
can't access your data anymore, we're not bringing them back, and you have no
recourse" has happened with many cloud storage services, for various reasons.

Hosting _your own_ network-based office web-app solution would be convenient
for many...especially for the security.

~~~
gcr
If organizations rely on google docs so much, why don't they back up their
google docs archive every {day,hour,minute} ? I'm sure there's an rsync for
google docs or something.

Having to revert back to emailing saved word documents for a week or two is
far better than losing everything for a week or two.

------
cs702
LibreOffice has now left OpenOffice in the dust, and is a viable replacement
of Microsoft Office for all but a tiny minority of users. LibreOffice Calc may
not yet be as shiny as Microsoft Excel, but it works well and reliably -- I
use it regularly with fairly large spreadsheets chock-full of array functions
that manipulate vectors and matrices.[1]

\--

[1] Yes, LibreOffice forumals can manipulate and return vectors and matrices,
not just single values -- see
[https://help.libreoffice.org/Calc/Array_Functions#What_is_an...](https://help.libreoffice.org/Calc/Array_Functions#What_is_an_Array.3F)

~~~
r00fus
My major frustration with Office products (Excel specifically) was the cell
limits (size, #cols, #rows) that prevented me from managing large quantities
of data (e.g.: Excel 2003 could only manage 65k rows - IIRC, in 2007 that
increased to 2M, but even that's too little for some heavy applications).

Does LibreOffice have similar limts?

~~~
forgottenpaswrd
If you use so much data, forget about spreadsheets, learn numeric python and
or R.

If not you will be losing time every minute you spend in the spreadsheet.

~~~
ars
Sometimes you just want to quickly edit (not analyze) a large file.

------
jre
I try to stay away from *Office suites as much as possible. It seems that
whenever I use them to do anything more complicated than typing a short
letter, everything starts to fall apart and I wish I had used Latex/R/python
instead.

On the other hand, LibreOffice is a very helpful piece of software to edit the
occasional .doc attachment.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Writer is Good Enough to open a Word document I've gotten from someone else,
and for what I mainly do with such documents, I actually prefer Writer to
Word.

For my own purposes, the only office application I really find myself reaching
for is the spreadsheet. I'm a big supporter of free/open source software and I
run Linux on all my personal computers, so it pains me to write this - but
LibreOffice Calc just doesn't come anywhere close to comparing with the
functionality, stability and polish of Excel.

Using it is a steady aggravation, and I'm persuaded that the problem is not
due to it being _different_ from Excel - after all, other open source
applications are different from their proprietary counterparts and I find them
as good or better.

The problem with Calc is that it just doesn't work very well. Everything seems
to take one or two more steps than the equivalent action on Excel, the
defaults aren't as helpful, and the application is far more prone to
freeze/crash.

~~~
brudgers
Office is Excel. It trumps consideration of any other suite for many
businesses because it facilitates their running. It matters on the sixth floor
where the executive offices are.

Data manipulation is a domain in which lean never works and Excel is the
opposite of lean. Decades of development in a corporate culture that
encourages adding features has made Excel excel.

Trimming math functions doesn't make sense because 10,000 more functions never
clutter up the user experience. Excel is a programming environment - an IDE
which includes drag and drop, a REPL, and macros (with respect to the data
layer). It's syntax is simple [yes, I know it wasn't invented by Microsoft]
and it's power significant.

It's really the crown jewel in Microsoft's portfolio. It just works.

~~~
kriro
I agree with this 100% however Excel is also grossly overused in my oppinion.
I have seen many cases where companies would (theoretically) have been better
off migrating a bunch of the stuff they do in Excel to their ERP system.

My conclusion in most of these cases was that said ERP systems must suck (and
that it's really hard to get someone, especially execs so switch IT habits) :D

~~~
tg3
Not just ERP, but in my experience people use Excel for everything - project
management, data cleansing/manipulation/conversion, test scripts, status
reports, etc.

All things that can be done better with other tools, but for many people, it's
easier to just work with a tool that they know rather than trying to learn a
new tool (witness the groans every time a new $PROCESS Management Tool is
introduced).

Not saying it's a good or bad thing, just what I've observed.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Excel is basically an extremely user-friendly IDE for a Turing-complete
programming language.

------
kriro
Not much to say other than "I love LibreOffice" I'm by no means a power user
but it gets the job done. For everything I do it is a 100% viable MS-Office
replacement. Converting people to Linux would be a lot harder without it as
well :)

I use Writer for basic writing, nothing fancy. Same for Calc and I hold my
lecture using Impress. I use Draw every now and then for quick and dirty
stuff.

Never used Base or Math explicitly.

Keep up the good work it is appreciated.

Edit: I have Googled for this a couple of times but never find anything. Is
there an "Advanced LibreOffice" type book that anyone could recommend? I
always make resolutions to use my office suite more efficient but never get
around to it.

------
replax
I am really surprised that no one mentioned the lack of OneNote, yet. Although
it might not actually apply to libreoffice, if their ultimate goal is to
replace ms office though then some really really good OneNote alternative has
to be developed. OneNote and esp. Excel have to have an extremely good
alternative for MS Office to become somewhat less important.

------
peapicker
I can't believe they wasted time on "themes" for an office suite instead of
coming up with a standard, clean look.

~~~
nextw33k
One of the largest complains to LibreOffice has been its dated look. Given
that time will always make something look dated, the developers probably
thought that they should abstract the look to CSS or something and then make
their lives easier down the line. The added benefit is now they can tell
people that don't like the "dated" look to pick one of many.

Whilst you might want a single clean look, you definition and someone elses
might differ.

~~~
drchaos
Also, it's probably easier to get a designer to improve the default theme (or
make a new default theme), than to patch possible improvements into the core
(when there is no theme engine).

Separation of concerns is always a good thing.

edit: seems they have no real theme engine, just a method to replace
background image for header and footer. duh.

------
webwanderings
The website looks terrible for 2013.

~~~
vacipr
Come to hacker news,which is arguably the most ugly site I visit everyday.See
this.

~~~
jre
I love the design and usability of hacker news. It's minimal, efficient, non-
distracting, consistent and puts content first. I wish more news website would
be like that.

The libreoffice website, on the other hand, has a lot of visual elements
(icons, colors) that don't really fit well with each other.

Visual-heavy websites can be quite nice, but they need to be really thought
through.

~~~
vacipr
I'm not going to get into the whole hacker news is magnificent debate.We all
know most users are screaming for improvement. As for the libreofice site the
only color I see is green which is what they usually use and the libreoffice
icons. What am I missing ?

~~~
jlgreco
> We all know most users are screaming for improvement.

Do they? A few times a year we get a _"I made a better UI for HN"_ article and
almost without fail everyone seems to respond _"This is unneeded and worse.
This reduces usability"_.

------
nextparadigms
I still think this should've arrived with a more modern interface. At least I
hope they get to that by the time port it to Android devices.

------
bborud
For the past 23 years I have only very occasionally had the need to use
Office-type applications. Today the typical uses of Office applications
implies an outdated way of working.

For example, my company lives and breathes through its internal wiki -- which
is quite an accomplishment since we are owned by a company that still lives in
the dark ages: mailing Office attachments to each other.

Sure, the wiki software could have been a lot better. For one it needs an
order of magnitude better performance. And it would be nice if the install
wasn't such a messy affair. But it beats the alternative hands down. It beats
mailing documents. It beats juggling multiple versions of documents. It beats
overflowing mailserver quotas.

Most of all it beats not having to run Windows XP because the people who came
before you were stupid fuckups who decided to tie everything so closely to a
single platform that they can only afford to move the company to a new OS
version every 10 years. And then only after a herculean effort. Inbetween
everyone runs on outdated software. For a whole decade.

Real change doesn't come from offering marginal compatibility. Real change
comes from not having stupid problems.

LibreOffice is a solution to a problem you should not be having.

~~~
visarga
I agree. Office apps are modeled after paper workflow. We live in a day of
wikis, github, world-wide social networks and cloud storage with universal
accessibility over all devices.

Writing paper formatted documents is bad on many levels. It uses dead tree as
a medium. It does not have the web of links that exist in a wiki, nor the tags
and classifications that exist in a blog or on twitter. Documents can't be
live updated for everyone. There is no versioning and no easy way for a whole
group of people to edit on the same project.

Information needs to be connected, searchable, instantly accessible and
social.

------
sgt
While I think LibreOffice has its uses, I think the world is sort of moving
away from desktop-based office software. I can't even remember the last time I
used Microsoft Word or OpenOffice, it's probably more than 2-3 years ago.

Then again, if you're a hardcore Word user, then the professional office
suites still offer more functionality.

(Additionally, not everybody is lucky enough to "work in the cloud" due to
various constraints or restrictions).

~~~
skittles
Spreadsheets will be heavily used forever. Excel alone will keep Microsoft
relevant in the business world. JavaScript gives us 1 numeric datatype, and
there's no good way to load a gigabyte of numeric data into a web application.

~~~
Osmium
"Forever" is a long time. Personally, even though there isn't a viable
alternative right now, I'm optimistic there's one just around a corner.

e.g. see this Python spreadsheet (which I only just discovered myself) here
<http://manns.github.com/pyspread/>

Python expressions in your grid cells, integrated with numpy and matplotlib,
and (if you want) a 3D data grid! In any case, Excel is in many ways crufty
and busy when a much more minimalist data-grid-view with powerful scripting
(e.g. from Python) would probably be much better for power users.

~~~
koralatov
The key word there is `power'. Most people who use spreadsheets on a daily
basis -- myself included -- are not `power' users; they're just Joes with
varying degrees of competency. Using Python expressions in a spreadsheet might
bring insane power and flexibility to proceedings, but it's naturally going to
limit itself to the small number of people who both know Python _and_ use a
spreadsheet regularly. Teaching most people how to make simple formulae in
Excel is hard enough; teaching them VLOOKUPs is damn-near impossible; teaching
them to use Python is, effectively, impossible.

Any viable alternative to Excel has to overcome ingrained user familiarity,
inertia, _and_ be simple enough that your average Joe can use it. It would
also need to be demonstrably better than Excel, which might look like crap but
has quite a lot of power under the hood. It's the only Microsoft program I'd
actually consider `good'.

~~~
Osmium
> Any viable alternative to Excel has to overcome ingrained user familiarity,
> inertia, and be simple enough that your average Joe can use it.

I agree with what you're saying if you want one program to do all these
things, but I'm not sure that's the way to go. Can you imagine any other
industry where the same program serves both the "average Joe" and the power
user?

One program can't be all things to all people. In the same way we both have
iMovie and Final Cut, I think there's room for two types of spreadsheet
program. Excel trying to cater to both types of people seems like a folly;
it'll never make everyone happy. Why not replace Excel with a web-app on the
low end, and make something more powerful that puts scripting front-and-center
for people who need it?

~~~
FourthProtocol
I disagree.

As an example, even though I'm not a designer, I use Photoshop to create
assets for my software. That would the same tool that my father, an ex-
lithographer, uses for DTP and digital retouching.

A counter-example to my idiot-using-rocket-scientists'-tools is my girlfriend.
She's an economist at a rather large central bank, and uses Excel to model
what economists model when they're defining monetary policy. Those models are
huge, and many run overnight. She comes home and Excel is the thing she uses
for anything even vaguely resembling a list.

------
mixmastamyk
Nice work.

\- "Reduce Java code:" good, an unnecessary dependency, please continue.

\- "Themes" ? I don't understand why anyone would want their office suite to
look different than other desktop apps? I sort of understand with a music
player, but a word processor?

Every time I see the blue gradient toolbars on MS Office clashing with my
other apps I cringe. Reminds me of Myspace.

\- Where is outline mode? I have quite a few colleagues who won't use it until
it arrives.

~~~
dcminter
"Where is outline mode?"

The bug's still open: <https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38262>

Grandfathered in from: <https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=3959>

It seems crazy to me that such a common usage mode doesn't seem to be driving
any development work.

I'm one of a large number of people who won't be using LibreOffice until that
RFE's addressed properly (nope, Navigator view is not an equivalent thing).

~~~
mixmastamyk
Yep, I'm lucky in that I don't use large documents or office docs in general
so it doesn't affect me, but I can't see how it will ever gain traction in pro
circles without it.

------
chris_wot
I love LibreOffice.

That said, in my spare time, I've been looking through the code base, and my
impressions are that it's too large. For instance, looking at the vcl module,
which handles widgets, windows, etc. when I look at the number of classes my
mind begins to boggle.

I possibly (read: probably) speak from ignorance, but I use the function
SVMain() [1] as an example. Instead of defining a purely abstract class with
architecture specific classes derived from this, they have defined an extern
hook function, then they run it, test to see if it returns false, and if so
run the standard ImplSVMain function. This seems inelegant for two reasons:
the code is somewhat unclear, and there seems to be two functions with lightly
different names, one is an SVMain function that does something, the other is
an _implementation_ of a function... Yet both implement a functional part of
the code base. There is even a comment that reads "the real SVMain.".

Then there are the names... There is a "desktop" object that runs the main
loop, the desktop being the application. [2] But there is an Application class
[3], yet at the same time there's a DesktopEnvironmentContext class [4]. This
seems to be some sort of misguided attempt at reimplementing a "desktop"
metaphor, which is a legacy of early versions StarOffice. It was one of the
first things ripped out when work started on OpenOffice.org, yet the class
name still remains, making its purpose most unclear.

Furthermore, for some reason they force the Application class to be
subclassed. Which they do only once, via Application_Impl. But I have noticed
that the base class has lots of empty non-pure functions, and only forces
Main() to be a pure virtual function. What is the point of this?

Another thing that I find makes the code harder to read is it uses a lot of
Hungarian notation.

This is a legacy code base, and I wasn't being sarcastic when I said I love
LibreOffice. I think people like Michael Meeks and Kohei are amazing. But I
see the code base as having been slapped together somewhat pver many years.
And there are code smells and, frankly, code rot, throughout the source.

It needs to be rearchitected (not rewritten). There is code in the code base
that nobody dares touch (the legacy filters). The code is organised strangely,
for example there are multiple places to find filters. At the same time, they
have a system abstraction layer (sal), which has specific architectural and
generic classes, but then I see that <http://docs.libreoffice.org> has modules
like "android" and "iOS".

There are literally thousands of classes in there. Go-oo sometime ago
refactored away dozens of classes, I would think they could refactor away a
lot more.

I'm truly sorry if this seems harsh or ignorant by the way. It's not intended
to be that way. It's just this code base is massive, so massive that its hard
to understand how it all works. This in turn, IMO, may cause issues getting
more volunteers. Not to mention too much refactoring might break things.

1\.
[http://docs.libreoffice.org/vcl/html/svmain_8cxx_source.html...](http://docs.libreoffice.org/vcl/html/svmain_8cxx_source.html#l00211)

2\. <http://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Architecture/Process_Flow>

3\. <http://docs.libreoffice.org/vcl/html/classApplication.html>

4\.
[http://docs.libreoffice.org/vcl/html/classDesktopEnvironment...](http://docs.libreoffice.org/vcl/html/classDesktopEnvironmentContext.html)

~~~
bjustin
It would be great if it people made the kind of changes you mention, but would
it be worth the time and effort? It may be better for people to work on other
kinds of programs than to spend a lot of time improving the LibreOffice code
base.

Writer is good enough for education up through undergrad for many majors, and
good enough for some nonprofits. It is certainly good enough for my needs. I
don't use the other applications so I can't say about them.

~~~
chris_wot
I think it would. I speak from the peanut gallery, but the first thing I'd do
would be to encapsulate all of the standalone functions into a relevant class.
I think most of the Impl* classes are not needed.

Ideally, I'd turn vcl into a framework. Currently this module is tightly
coupled with the execution of the main application. Consider that if this was
its own framework, then wouldn't it be easier to port it to more
architectures? And consider how much easier it would be for app developers to
extend the core of LibreOffice.

I'd be abstracting all the OS specific constructs into the osl modules (which
is its intended purpose), and keep a strict coding guideline that anything OS
specific must be implemented there.

Id also abstract all the graphics primitives to its own module. I'm
specifically thinking of the Gtk+ idea here, you can see the fruits of this
design decision because gtk+ apps now literally will run on almost anything.

I've not looked at UNO much, but is it possible that there is duplication
between this module and other modules? As an example, but surely cppu is
duplicating work that the sal module should be taking care of?

Then there is the filter, hwpfilter, lotuswordpro, oox, writer filter and
writerperfect filters. Surely one filter interface would be better and make
document expor animport fidelity better? Perhaps I talk from ignorance, bu I'd
have thought that shortens development time and reduces bugs. This could be
abstracted out and othe projects could use it also, cross pollinating with
other OSS efforts. It would also make correcting or implementing filters for
more obscure formats easier.

~~~
grandinj
You could start by stepping in to help convert UI code to glade files. This is
a huge code base. It needs lots and lots of little steps to get it into shape
:)

~~~
chris_wot
If I knew enough about the codebase to know where to find the UI code, I'd do
this happily!

~~~
grandinj
(1) Start here to learn how to build LibreOffice
<https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Native_Build>

(2) Then read Caolan's presentation
[http://conference.libreoffice.org/talks/content/sessions/015...](http://conference.libreoffice.org/talks/content/sessions/015/files/)

(3) Then come join us on the libreoffice-dev mailing list and ask questions.
We're happy to help newcomers get acquainted.

:-)

------
rnadna
I downloaded the new version, and tried it on a docx file that a colleague had
sent me. In MSword, the file has 24 pages. In LibreOffice, it seems to have a
bit over 5 pages. No error message, no dialog box ... it just gets to a
certain string ($O_2$, expressed in latex format) and stops. If not for the
fact that I have MSword, I'd email back to my colleague and ask her what the
heck kind of a draft manuscript she was sending.

Although I use the Excel copy quite a lot (for grading), I have yet to see the
Word copy function properly in a professional document of any realistic
complexity.

I know, I should report the bug, but the material I'm looking at is under
submission to a scientific journal, and will therefore be private until it may
be published.

------
kristopolous
I remember staroffice 5 (its ancient predecessor) in the late 90s. The
interface was amazing to my eyes, for the time:
<http://linuxbook.orbdesigns.com/ch11/images/btlb1114.jpg> and
<http://www.os2ezine.com/v4n3/sointr-1.gif>

The star office applications all played well with each other in this shell of
an application that looked like windows 95.

This is back when KDE was a new thing and many people were using FVWM ... it
just looked so wonderfully sophisticated up against the desktop applications
available for linux at the time.

PS: <http://www.os2ezine.com/v4n3/soui-1.gif> and
<http://www.os2ezine.com/v4n3/soint-4.gif> and
<http://www.os2ezine.com/v4n3/soss-6.gif> and
<http://www.os2ezine.com/v4n3/soss-5.gif> ... I don't know how it's taken them
15 years to start to be awesome again.

------
xioxox
I'll try it again, but OO/LO Impress PowerPoint replacement is particularly
buggy. I often have to give scientific talks, and I'm always running into
bugs. For example, various elements become fixed and uneditable, and figures
often get mangled. The import filters occasionally mess up powerpoint
documents, too. I wish I could avoid PowerPoint - I hate the ribbon and it
can't cope with PDF figures.

------
lsiebert
I like LibreOffice Calc, though I have issues on occasion. It feels... bulky I
guess, but it certainly seems to be more complete then good docs spreadsheets.

As an aside, just found out that you can use the perl module DBI:CSV: to treat
a CSV as a DB and use SQL with it.

------
Surio
FWIW, another alternative to OpenOffice/LibreOffice

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsoft_Office>

Android:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cn.wps.moffice...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cn.wps.moffice_eng&hl=en)

Office 2012 Free Suite: [http://www.kingsoftstore.com/software/kingsoft-
office-freewa...](http://www.kingsoftstore.com/software/kingsoft-office-
freeware)

I've used it. Mostly opens Office documents without too much formatting
problems.

It uses the Qt framework, so the UI looks neat. Hope it helps.

------
pilooch
LO Impress has been a pain recently. Saving a presentation and re-opening it
would yield garbage.

I've been testing LO 4 for a few weeks now, and it seems that the problem has
gone. Apart from this, LO does the job, we use it for automatically generating
API doc in HTML from specs we write with it, and this is great. Not that there
is any other viable option on Linux (that I know of).

I wish I could have a Keynote-like on Linux. In the meantime, beamer does the
job for quick & safe slide decks.

------
etfb
Ted comes home early from work to discover his best friend in bed with his
wife. "Frank," he cries. "I married her, so I have to! But why did you?"

That rather old and tired joke (one of Isaac Asimov's, I believe) says how I
feel about Libre Office. I use Ubuntu, so it's the only game in town if I want
to edit documents and spreadsheets. But it may be unique in the world as the
only software that's actively _worse_ than Microsoft Office.

~~~
etfb
Found the actual joke in Asimov's _The Jokester_ at
<http://www.ippt.gov.pl/~vkoval/fantasy.html>:

"Johnson," he said, "came home unexpectedly from a business trip to find his
wife in the arms of his best friend. He staggered back and said, 'Max! I'm
married to the lady so I have to. But why you?'"

------
chmars
Are the LibreOffice developers aware that most Mac users will not be able to
start their application?

The reason is simply OS X' default configuration:

'LibreOffice.app can't be opened because it is from an unidentified developer.

Your security preferences allow installation of only apps from the Mac Ap
Store or identified developers.'

I know, using the Ctrl key lets me confirm that I really want to run
LibreOffice.app, however, how many Mac users know that?

------
milkbikis
I've been using SkyDrive for a while now, and it generally feels more usable
to me. Is there a reason people prefer LibreOffice over that? I haven't used
it as much, but it feels like I can't be sure what the document will look like
back in Microsoft Office once I'm done editing it.

~~~
elehack
Reason #1: it runs on my platform.

Reason #2: open source, so lock-in is (in theory) a non-problem so long as
there are people who find it useful.

------
Mahn
Not sure why everyone sees LibreOffice as a Word replacement. Personally I use
LibreOffice Calc all the time, I find it generally faster than excel. I also
dislike the ribbon interface but I guess that's just personal preference.

~~~
alttab
Anything outside home budgeting or double entry booking has infuriated me
outside excel.

------
SeanDav
How powerful/useful is the LibreOffice macro system, especially compared to
VBA?

~~~
fleetfox
You can use python.

------
vamur
Biggest issue with LibreOffice is how slow it is compared to Office. Even in
Linux, Office running under Wine is faster than LibreOffice.

~~~
grandinj
try the new release. It has been getting steadily faster.

------
elchief
I wish to god they would make Calc work with Mondrian OLAP server.

------
gavinlynch
minor observation regarding the website's example images and their lightbox:
really strange placement for the close "X" in the bottom right corner, right?

------
franze
question: is still has some java dependencies, right?

~~~
chris_wot
It's baked in, but not strictly required.

------
sparx
I am waiting for MS Office on Linux.

