Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by cmn32480 on Thursday February 02 2017, @08:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the that-only-took-10-years dept.

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).


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Gaaark on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:17PM

    by Gaaark (41) on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:17PM (#462108) Journal

    MS ribbon sucks... why would we want this? (I know... for the MS Office users to be able to handicap their way into the FOSS world, but still.... stupid is....)

    When i HAVE to use the office ribbon, im just glad i know some shortcuts like CTRL+P etc, cause ..... yeah....

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Informative=3, Total=3
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Thursday February 02 2017, @10:32PM

    by jmorris (4844) on Thursday February 02 2017, @10:32PM (#462152)

    MS ribbon sucks... why would we want this?

    Because we seem to have an inferiority complex that forces us to chase Microsoft and Apple's taillights.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Thursday February 02 2017, @11:20PM

      by Nerdfest (80) on Thursday February 02 2017, @11:20PM (#462172)

      ... even when they're heading in completely the wrong direction (including bad UI choices. lack of options, removing features, and bad architecture .... I'm looking at your systemd).

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @07:11AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @07:11AM (#462259)

        You might also look at Chrome (Chromium’s existence notwithstanding).

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @09:19AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @09:19AM (#462289)

        What is amusing about this discussion is how there is this implication in all this that somehow OS software has the GUI sorted and these guys have diverted from awesome to a bad path.

        I am not going to explain why this is so amusing since if you lack the basic awareness of the state of software to know why there is no hope for you....

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by edIII on Thursday February 02 2017, @10:35PM

    by edIII (791) on Thursday February 02 2017, @10:35PM (#462154)

    What is the effin problem though? Other than it being Microsoft. I fully appreciate memorizing all the shortcut keys, and that can be useful, but it doesn't take away from dropdown menus or ribbons, but works together with them.

    I love the ribbon. It is a more pictorial (icons) representation of a dropdown menu. My preferred word editor for a long time was, and still is, MS Word 2007. LibreOffice does some weird shit when you're using table of contents, styles, etc. Still getting used to it since I don't have the option of continuing with Microsoft. I at least understand the eccentricities and learning curve of Word 2007 when writing technical documents.

    What's confusing to me is, what is the fucking difference? Side by side, I have a portable copy of Word 2007 and LibreOffice 5.1 running on two different monitors right now. Other than the fact that the ribbon will change based upon the top tab, it's not that functionally different from the dropdown menus and quick access of LibreOffice. In a way LibreOffice has it's own somewhat annoying ribbon vertically on the right (properties through navigator). I can create the same amount of screen real estate in either LibreOffice 5.1 or Word 2007, and I can get a little bit more in Word 2007 for the record. I can make Word 2007 look close to LibreOffice 5.1 with a little bit of work customizing the quick access bar.

    Both of them have abilities to be modified. You can hide stuff in LibreOffice to regain screen real estate, and in Word 2007 you can minimize the ribbon bar, and you have a rather fully customizable quick access bar you can add whatever buttons you want. Additionally, once minimized it does not mess with anything popped out like Styles. So I can be writing a document with the Styles popped out on another monitor.

    What I really love about the ribbon, is it gets close to what I found the ideal way of working. That was when I was doing digitization work on oil and gas data and had an expensive and very large tablet to work with. What was such a joy was that it was in effect the ribbon, but presented in a large ass rectangle (maybe 12-14" x 8"). You had to print out the buttons that you customized (it covered the whole tablet including the whitespace for the "mousepad"), but that included a color wheel. The printed menu was put behind plastic and you ran the mouse over the whole tablet. I could work with a couple points of seismic data and then quickly move the mouse over to a few buttons and the color wheel and I was done. Got an amazing amount of work done in a short time that way.

    My point being, is that ribbon can be fairly awesome. What would be even more awesome is we could have our tablets docked to the side of us and run the ribbon on them like that older digitization tablet on steroids. My only real complaint is the lack of screen real estate in both Word 2007 and LibreOffice 5.1. You move the whole UI off the primary screen and onto a secondary and smaller touch screen and you've arrived.

    I guess I just don't understand the detractions of that particular UI, or how it's really all that different from FOSS offerings.

    --
    Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
    • (Score: 2) by darnkitten on Friday February 03 2017, @02:38AM

      by darnkitten (1912) on Friday February 03 2017, @02:38AM (#462212)

      You move the whole UI off the primary screen and onto a secondary and smaller touch screen and you've arrived

      .

      That's how I use GIMP (at least the graphic menus), but the multi-window mode is also one of the main UI objections most people have...

      • (Score: 2) by jimshatt on Friday February 03 2017, @02:19PM

        by jimshatt (978) on Friday February 03 2017, @02:19PM (#462365) Journal
        Luckily GIMP gives you the choice between multi-window and single-window. And LibreOffice allows you to turn this on or off. I don't believe MS Word gives you an option. So that's the difference.
        • (Score: 2) by darnkitten on Tuesday February 07 2017, @06:14PM

          by darnkitten (1912) on Tuesday February 07 2017, @06:14PM (#464184)

          If I can recall correctly, it took years to get the GIMP devs to agree to make multi-window mode optional--I think it was 2.6 or 2.8 before that happened.

      • (Score: 2) by edIII on Friday February 03 2017, @08:33PM

        by edIII (791) on Friday February 03 2017, @08:33PM (#462580)

        Don't think of it like multi-window. Think of it like the dropdown menus, ribbon, or whatever sitting next to your keyboard on the left or the right, or even right above your keyboard. I've envisioned something that curves around your mouse and keyboard to provide a literal dashboard. It's not a huge distance to cover, and when you don't want to move that's what a keyboard shortcut is for.

        What I remember from the Autocad Tablet was that the mouse didn't have to move all that far to access functions, and especially the color wheel. It's also worth noting, and I didn't mention this last time, but the mouse was pretty darn special too. It had a transparent window and crosshairs so you could see *exactly* what point you were on, which is very different from standard mouses where you rely on the screen to indicate where you are. Without that I can see it being difficult to use a mouse like that, hence the touch screens on the tablet or dashboard replacing them.

        --
        Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
        • (Score: 2) by darnkitten on Tuesday February 07 2017, @05:57PM

          by darnkitten (1912) on Tuesday February 07 2017, @05:57PM (#464173)

          Back when I was using GIMP constantly (before touchscreens), I had a gaming keypad next to the keyboard, with my most-used functions mapped to the 'pad keys. I was able to shove the Tools menu window and the Layers/Channels/Paths window off onto another monitor, and, with my Wacom pen in hand rarely had to touch keyboard and mouse...

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @04:01AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @04:01AM (#462229)

      The issue is that ribbon is MS Office specific and requires you to spend time learning how to use it in order to get marginal benefit. If you applied the same amount of effort learning shortcut keys you'd get even better results. But, with ribbon, you're forced to jump through hoops if you want to do anything that isn't statistically determined to be the most common thing to be doing.

      What's more, because of the pictorial representation, it winds up taking up a ton of space and forces you to move the mouse all over the place in order to make your selection.

      Proper UI for desktop apps was largely perfected in the late '90s early '00s with a menu bar on the top of the application and each entry being roughly sorted into categories that were themselves stored in menus. For the most part, you'd know that if you were looking for one type of function or another you could reliably guess where it was without having to know. You could navigate it efficiently with just keys if you wanted to, but if you wanted to use the mouse, you didn't have to move it very far. Just compare the distance the mouse has to move with the ribbon compared with the distance you have to move it with traditional menus and you'll realize just how inefficient the ribbon is.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Friday February 03 2017, @07:22AM

      by mhajicek (51) on Friday February 03 2017, @07:22AM (#462263)

      The ribbon is a tablet interface. Some of us still use proper workstations with keyboards.

      --
      The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
      • (Score: 2) by edIII on Friday February 03 2017, @08:41PM

        by edIII (791) on Friday February 03 2017, @08:41PM (#462584)

        Proper? These things can work together and not be mutually exclusive. The vast majority of the time I'm working with SSH shells and headless servers, and I'm not doing much with the workstation itself. So by some of us, you mean both of us.

        Touch screens are somewhat superior to a mouse, and whether or not you have a proper workstation, you still have some sort of quick access bar (depending on OS/windowing system). So why does that quick access bar *have* to be on the workstation itself, and not split out to a separate touch screen? Tradition, or something?

        --
        Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
        • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday February 04 2017, @06:33AM

          by mhajicek (51) on Saturday February 04 2017, @06:33AM (#462775)

          I do CAD and CAM. My left hand is shared by the Space Pilot and the keyboard, my right hand stays on the trackball. I access most functions through access keys for the dropdown menus; I only have icons on the screen for functions which are inaccessible through the dropdowns. I haven't updated to the latest version of my software since they ditched dropdowns in favor of ribbons, and the access keys for the ribbons are nonsensical and often two keys per selection. for toolpaths for example, which used to be . Unless I'm hitting one of those few icons my pointer stays on the work in the graphics window.

          --
          The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @08:33AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @08:33AM (#462285)

      The two main problems with the ribbon are:

      - No logic in where everything is hidden.

      - Things move around based on some hidden rules such as what you use the most and what is currently selected. Extra ribbon panes appear and push themselves in front of what you have selected. Good luck printing THAT.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @10:43PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @10:43PM (#462635)

      > What is the effin problem though?

      -high real estate costs
      -poor discoverability
      -icons over text
      -low proximality
      -varying size of elements (depatterning makes it much harder to scan)
      -customizeable is horrid for users switching between systems
      --yes neophytes, who don't know they've changed something locally or that something might have been changed at the 'new' place
      --and experts, who grow used to their process optimizations and by muscle memory make mistakes on clean machines

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @10:44PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @10:44PM (#462636)

      Even though I'm past 100 comments.... The answer is pretty simple.

      THERE IS NO REASON TO CHANGE THE UI. NONE. EXCEPT TO GENERATE FORCED UPGRADING TO STAY CURRENT.

      So, if you perceive no fucking difference, then LEAVE IT THE FUCK ALONE, mmmkay?

      No love,

      Me