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Martin Brinkmann at gHacks reports
LibreOffice 5.3 is the newest version of the popular open source Office suite, and one of the "most feature-rich releases in the history of the application".
The Office suite, available for Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems, is now also available as a private cloud version, called LibreOffice Online.
LibreOffice, at is[sic] core, is an open source alternative to Microsoft Office. It features Writer, a text editing program similar to Word, Calc, the Excel equivalent, Impress which is similar to PowerPoint, and Draw, which enables you to create graphic documents.
LibreOffice 5.3 ships with a truckload of new features. One of the new features is a new experimental user interface called Notebookbar. This new interface resembles Office's ribbon UI, but is completely optional [submitters emphasis] right now.
In fact, the new user interface is not enabled by default, and if you don't look for it or know where to look, you will probably notice no difference at all to previous versions.
To enable the new Ribbon UI, select View > Toolbar Layout > Notebookbar. The UI you see on the screenshot above is enabled by default, but you may switch it using View > Notebookbar to either Contextual Groups or Contextual Single.
[...] One interesting option that the developers built-in to LibreOffice 5.3 is the ability to sign PDF documents, and to verify PDF document signatures.
[...] The Writer application got some exciting new features. It supports Table styles now for instance, and there is a new Page deck in the sidebar to customize the page settings quickly and directly.
There is also an option to use the new "go to page" box, and arrows in the drawing tools which were not available previously in Writer.
Calc got a new set of default cell styles offering "greater variety and better names", a new median function for pivot tables, and a new filter option when you are inserting functions to narrow down the selection.
The article also has 4 demo videos embedded.
In the comments there, Donutz notes that the Ribbon UI requires the Java Runtime Environment.
Oggy notes that the suite is available from PortableApps. (Martin's site is largely Windows-centric).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Thursday February 02 2017, @08:48PM
The whole concept of an office suite is completely wrong to begin with. Word is neither fit as a text editor nor as a DTP program. Excel might work ok if you could find anyone that actually uses it as a spreadsheet (I don't know, never seen that happen) but it's normally used as a really shitty substitute for a database. Assume it's implemented flawlessly it's still junk. A perfect implementation of a brain damaged design is still junk.
But it's far from a perfect implementation and it must be absolutely soul-killing for the people that work on these things, to spend your time duplicating Microsofts shitty designs and even duplicating their bugs to maintain compatibility.
This is what chasing the mass market brings you. Because the mass market, and this is no less true in computers than in dozens of other fields, the mass market is a very ignorant thing. It's mostly interested in buying the same thing it bought last year. It worked (to some degree) last year it should work this year. It's really a poor tool for the job? You have a much better one cheaper? Don't care, it's the one we already use, we fear change more than anything. What if we can't figure it out!?!?!?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:13PM
Once the great unwashed hoardes began using computers, applications were bound to be used in unnatural ways that God never intended.
Example:
Back in the mid 1980's when Macintosh was new. A woman went on and on about how much better than Macintosh was for typing her text than using the typewriter. She could backspace and correct mistakes. She could erase entire paragraphs. Or re-arrange paragraphs. Etc.
What was her wonderful word processing software?
.
.
.
.
.
.
Mac Paint
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Murdoc on Saturday February 04 2017, @07:25PM
That is so true. It's bugged me for so long how people do things like using IRC and email for file transfers, or facebook/forum posts like they were IM. Sure they can do it, and it's ok in a pinch, but come on, for regular and large jobs? Use the right tool for the job!
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:42PM
But it's far from a perfect implementation and it must be absolutely soul-killing for the people that work on these things, to spend your time duplicating Microsofts shitty designs and even duplicating their bugs to maintain compatibility.
This is an interface thing; there's no need for them to worry about compatibility at all. It's not like the file format system.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday February 03 2017, @05:51AM
As others have mentioned, an obvious reason for adding a ribbon interface is so people migrating from Microsoft Office will have less to learn. For that purpose, the more similar it is in the way it looks and works, the better. Some tasks are done in a fundamentally different way so it won't be possible to make a complete clone.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday February 03 2017, @07:22AM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @07:31AM
But would you use instead of a word processor? LaTeX is a lovecraftian madness built upon a monkey patching foundation. Or that's the impression I've got from the 3 times I tried to learn it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @10:39PM
LaTeX is for monkeys with half a brain, designed and implemented by one of the greatest CS minds alive.
Our apologies that this excludes you.
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