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Blogger Dedoimedo is known for his fascination with bling and his attention to compatibility with MICROS~1's pseudo-standards. So, how did the most recent version of the popular FOSS office suite fare in his test?
LibreOffice 4.4 review - Finally, it rocks
[...]As a free, open-source and cross-platform solution, LibreOffice allows people to enjoy the world of writing, spreadsheets, presentations, and [the like] without having to spend hefty sums of money. The only problem till now was that it didn't quite work as advertised. Microsoft Office support was, for the lack of a better word, lacking.
[...] The most important part, [it now has] Microsoft Office support
[...]my 182-page [DOCX] document, full of images, references, footnotes, preformatted code, and other cool elements, all of which were initially conceived in LaTeX then transformed to PDF and finally to DOCX looked pretty much spotless. The image quality was a little low, but it has nothing to do with LibreOffice. I was amazed. I had not expected this, and it seems for the first time ever, LibreOffice is a most viable solution for home office use. Blimey.
LibreOffice 4.4 is everything you could have hoped for, and then some. It's beautiful. It's streamlined. It has an improved UI, which offers much more intuitive work flows, resulting in an immediate boost in productivity. It comes with enhanced menus, a more intelligent way of working with styles, easier graphics, copy & paste options, a simpler method of polishing up presentations. Most importantly, it offers a genuinely good support for the proprietary Microsoft file formats, allowing you, for the very first time, to consider LibreOffice as the one and only office suite you'll ever need.
I have never quite expected this. In fact, LibreOffice 4.4 should have been called 5.0, because it is that much better. Perhaps grander changes are needed to justify a full new release. Just think of the possibilities, if we got all this in a single dot revision. Imagine what will happen when LibreOffice finally matures toward the next large release.
One wonders how long it will be till MSFT alters their "standard" so that compatibility is broken again.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by captain normal on Tuesday February 24 2015, @06:49PM
Does it still take .5 to one minute to load the program?
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 4, Insightful) by warcques on Tuesday February 24 2015, @07:17PM
Get a dang SSD and half decent processor and you're working in 3 seconds...
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24 2015, @07:23PM
Yes it sure does if you use a Pentium I with the division bug to do it...
(also, which program, it's a fucking suite)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Tuesday February 24 2015, @07:30PM
Depends on what you're using for a computer I suppose.
If you use it a lot, there is a quick start option that lets it run a small quick-starter in memory. If you don't use it a lot it hardly matters if it takes a minute.
On my quad core it took a 6-count to load from a new install.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24 2015, @10:12PM
Those folks who have a need to emulate the startup tricks that MICROS~1 uses have had this since forever:
The preload app [google.com]
...or, as mechanicjay says below, start the app once and you're golden after that.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday February 25 2015, @01:43AM
..or, as mechanicjay says below, start the app once and you're golden after that.
No, you're not.
Cache works on a least-recently-used purging scheme, so unless you are loading and exiting the
application frequently, cache will be purged.
Unless you have some significant portion pre-running you have to wait for disk-load time, and its a
pretty big bundle of DLLs.
Also, bear in mind that microsoft didn't invent the technique of keeping apps running to save load time.
Every web server and mail server has hot running processes waiting in memory. The slowest thing
in the computer is disk access, and if you have to write dirty cache pages back before you can load a big program hot running processes are the way to go.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Informative) by mechanicjay on Tuesday February 24 2015, @07:37PM
I just updated my core2 duo laptop with a cheezy-ass hard drive. It took 7 seconds to be at a usable writer screen. I closed writer, the files now being in the fs-cache, I was able to open writer in 2 sec and calc in 3. This feels markedly faster than 4.3 loaded on my yesterday. Admittedly, I forgot to take timings before the upgrade.
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mmcmonster on Tuesday February 24 2015, @08:36PM
I'm running it on a 2 year old computer with an SSD drive. The application loads so fast that I don't even have time to move to a different part of the screen before my document is loaded. Call it 1 second until the application as document are loaded. Maybe two seconds if it's a complex spreadsheet.
SSDs are ridiculously fast.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 25 2015, @12:20AM
shill much?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hash14 on Wednesday February 25 2015, @12:26AM
I opened writer in 5 seconds on this:
(Score: 2) by hash14 on Wednesday February 25 2015, @12:27AM
Also note that I used a regular mechanical HDD, no SSD
(Score: 4, Informative) by gman003 on Wednesday February 25 2015, @12:30AM
Well, let's settle this like scientists. Experiment: open each program in LibreOffice, to the most recently-opened file on my laptop. Still on an ancient 3.5 version, as it happens. Program is stored on an SSD (a rather old one, a 120GB Crucial M3), data files are stored on a hard drive (750GB 7200RPM laptop drive, a Seagate if I recall correctly). Confirmed before, between runs, and after, that there was no background process hiding. It was a cold start each time.
Writer - 0.6 seconds to start, 0.1 second to open the file. 22KiB, no images or other stuff, just text.
Calc - 0.9 seconds to a CSV import dialog, then 1.3 seconds to display it. Granted, it's only a 1KiB CSV.
Draw - 1 second to start, 2 seconds more to open the file, and another 3.5 seconds before it displayed the embedded images. 125MiB file, though, so it's understandable for it to take nearly seven seconds to open and render the file.
Impress - 0.7 seconds to start, file not found error on the last .ppt I'd opened.
Math and Base I've never used, and startup time seems to be fairly consistent so no point opening them.
Conclusion: I don't know what machine you're running it on, but LibreOffice has been fast for quite a while. I do remember waiting forever for OpenOffice to start, even with the preloader, but that no longer seems to be an issue.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 25 2015, @06:30PM
Took me only 16 seconds to load on this severely taxed machine I'm on now. That's pretty darn fast for this bad boy.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Common Joe on Wednesday February 25 2015, @06:26AM
[Shaking head.] captain normal got dinged as a troll for asking a reasonable question? I just used the portable version of LibreOffice Writer to open a 3 page text-only document. It took 20 seconds before the splash screen even opened. It then took another 10+ seconds for the document to finish opening. That's a total of over 30 seconds. captain normal's question was right on target -- and to answer his question, it's still a problem, in my opinion. (It doesn't even bother me that it takes 30 seconds to open. These are large programs. It bothers me that the splash screen doesn't appear for such a long time.)
I also find it disappointing that nearly everyone responded back with "Get an SSD card!" (gman003 -- you wanted a timing test. Consider this mine, but without the SSD card.) Not everyone considers forking over money for new hardware a viable or even desired thing.
And before anyone calls me a MS shill, I use LibreOffice almost extensively. So extensively, in fact, that I just gave a small presentation to a bunch of C# programmers using Impress.
With all that said, I find the 4.4 GUI update pretty nice. The LibreOffice guys did a great job. Most of the changes I see are very minor, but added together it made a huge impact on the look and feel of the program and the impact was in a very positive way.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Wednesday February 25 2015, @01:42PM
It took 20 seconds before the splash screen even opened. It then took another 10+ seconds for the document to finish opening. That's a total of over 30 seconds.
Out of curiosity, what OS and LO version? I just tested with LO 4.3, 32bit Debian, on a system with a dual-core CPU that's something like 8 years old now, using a 7200rpm disk, and it took half the time you stated (15.3s). After flushing memory caches to be sure it was reading from disk, I used time -p lowriter, and closed the the application as soon as I got to an editable document. That means the time I got is actually slightly higher than real startup, since it also included a brief human interaction and program shutdown.
So, seriously, what are people using that's causing it to take 2-3x the startup time of an ancient Athlon X2 processor and spinning rust disk? Is this a Windows problem? Are you using PCs old enough to vote? Or are you guys just getting your numbers via rectal information extraction?
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Wednesday February 25 2015, @02:15PM
Windows 8.1 (64 bit), LibreOffice 4.4 Portable Version [portableapps.com], Intel i3-3110M 2.4 GHz, 8 GB RAM, 5200 rpm disk (laptop); The machine is approximately 2 years old. Except for the RAM, it's a standard Asus R503V with a 500MB hard drive. I'm not a hardware guy, so I guess you can look up the rest of the specs yourself if you want.
Numbers were not via rectal extraction, but by watching a clock with a seconds hand across the room. I was too lazy to get up and get my digital watch. (I suppose the way I keep time is little old school, huh?)
I know the low spin rate on a laptop hard drive, portable version, and on Windows all probably contribute to poor numbers... but if we're going to try to convert people over to LibreOffice, your everyday "Common Joe" people are going to have specs similar to mine and will probably have similar results. (Yeah, ok, most people won't do the portable version, but you get the idea.)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 25 2015, @03:07PM
Ok, well I wont blast you on the hardware if you aren't a hardware guy. Although that hard drive is anemic. You would seriously benefit with a ssd.
I will blast you on the software side though. Have you thought perhaps that it is because you are running the portable app version. It has to almost do a temporary light install every time you run it. Your test is more analogous to the time it takes to install and open.
So get off the grass old timer.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Wednesday February 25 2015, @03:48PM
[Smirking.] I know software. No, there is no "temporary light install" when you run a program. The same exes and dlls are loaded and executed between both installed and portable versions. (If you download the portable app, it unzips once, then you can use the executables repeatedly after that.)
There may be tricks that programmers use to fool you, though. I know older versions of Microsoft Office and the WordPerfect Suites used to "preload" a lot of files on bootup so it looked like the word processor or spreadsheet quickly popped up once the machine was done booting. In reality, you paid for it when you booted up (even if you never used that program when the machine was on) and you lost RAM to the preloaded files. I suspect Microsoft Office does the same today, although I haven't checked lately. I have no idea what LibreOffice does.
I do mention that I use the portable version because, yes, it could be a factor in some way and throw off the anecdotal timing tests we're doing here. If I get up off my lazy butt and run some trials between the portable version and the installed version, I'll post somewhere on this thread. If anyone does know off hand, I'd appreciate knowing more about it.
As for being an old timer: I have my reasons for running portable programs in Windows that are not important to this conversation. Hardware? I'll gladly accept any donations of time, hardware, and money that youngersters freely give to old people like me. I'd love to have a zippy laptop that I could use on a daily basis.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Marand on Thursday February 26 2015, @04:25AM
Based on that, I'm wondering if it's either the "portable version" or the "Windows 8" part of the system that's the problem. Sure, the hard disk is slower, but it shouldn't be more than doubling the startup time. I've noticed before that file copy operations are, for whatever reason, extremely slow* on NTFS compared to ext3/4 on the same system. Or maybe it's just an issue with the portable version, or with the Windows port itself. If you figure it out, I'm curious which.
If it turns out it's a problem with the Windows version, maybe it just needs to start using the preloader as a default. Though Windows is also supposed to have that "superfetch"** thing that "learns" what apps you use and caches them into RAM in advance to speed up load times. If an average user (who wouldn't know about it or turn it off) is using LO it should be starting up pretty quickly based on that.
* Unrelated example that I always found funny: back in the day I used to use WinRAR in wine because there wasn't good native support at the time. Linux+wine+winRAR could create archives in about half the time as doing the same thing in Windows XP natively. Had similar experiences extracting RARs, and also with audio encoding tools.
** There's something similar available in Linux, but I've never found it necessary.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by halcyon1234 on Tuesday February 24 2015, @06:59PM
I know this is the article submitter writing this, and not LibreOffice, but:
Go fuck off and fuck yourself. I thought we left that shit behind us by now. I see that, and instantly skip whatever comes next. Editors, can we please keep the bait off the site-- click bait, flame bait, anything. If you want this site to be journalistic and run by journalists, then do so. This isn't it.
Original Submission [thedailywtf.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by mechanicjay on Tuesday February 24 2015, @07:08PM
Oddly, I have no problem with MICROS~1, but maybe that's because I'm a retro computing guy. It's people who use M$, Micro$oft, or Micro$uck who annoy me.
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 4, Funny) by frojack on Tuesday February 24 2015, @07:55PM
Actually MICROS~1 didn't mean a thing to me, and I thought it was a typo.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Funny) by pe1rxq on Tuesday February 24 2015, @08:49PM
Get of my lawn!
(Score: 5, Funny) by nightsky30 on Tuesday February 24 2015, @10:35PM
Get of~1
(Score: 1) by waspleg on Tuesday February 24 2015, @09:57PM
Everyone knows what was meant so who cares? I have no problem with the M$ or whatever either.
(Score: 4, Informative) by engblom on Wednesday February 25 2015, @07:57AM
As information for those not having a DOS background:
The longest allowed DOS filename is 8 character (+ 3 character for extension). DOS tools do not handle the long filenames introduced in Windows. To keep compatibility and solve the problem MS decided to also provide shortened versions of long names. MICROSOFT (9 characters) would then become MICROS~1 (8 characters).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @02:50PM
IFF it was the first "Micros..." entry created in that directory. The second would be "Micros~2". Then the intuitive "Micros~3" and "Micros~4". After that things start to get hairy...
(Score: 1) by justthinkit on Saturday February 28 2015, @02:56PM
Same poster (didn't know I wasn't logged in). I was going to ask where one downloads the fine office suite. Then I thought I shouldn't be lazy so I googled and found this: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-fresh/ [libreoffice.org]. Just surprised neither the article, nor the high rated comments in this thread provided this info...I guess times have changed and its time to trim my gray beard.
(Score: 4, Informative) by TheRaven on Wednesday February 25 2015, @10:08AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 5, Informative) by mmcmonster on Tuesday February 24 2015, @07:02PM
Why is it MICROS~1? It's been close to 20 years (1996?) since FAT32 and long filenames were introduced. Surely we can let go of a grudge by now? And if not, at least get rid of all the FAT32 devices you have (ie: cameras) before you throw those stones.
The snarkiness takes away from the articles in general, and especially in a case like this, where LO has a dramatic improvement both in UI and backend.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24 2015, @07:24PM
We can't, because Microsoft has a [ridiculous] patent on FAT32 long file names. We'd have to pay royalties to use it, just like Android phone manufacturers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24 2015, @08:07PM
While we're on the topic of FAT patents, can we collectively resolve to refresh our "cache" and check the expiration date(s) on those patent(s) ?
For instance, this: http://www.pubpat.org/microsoftfat.htm [pubpat.org] says that at least one of MS's FAT patents was supposed to have expired in 2013. If you're going to claim "Microsoft has ridiculous patents on FAT32", could you please make sure they still do, or make everyone aware of the fact that they have, in fact, expired, and we should finally be able to move on with our lives...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24 2015, @10:19PM
Yes, FAT, FAT32, and VFAT have been out from under protection for a while.
M$ got their proprietary exFAT protocol baked into the Secure Digital (SD Card) spec.
THAT is what Android folks are paying M$ for.
-- gewg_
(Score: 4, Interesting) by linuxrocks123 on Tuesday February 24 2015, @11:11PM
Well, maybe. A lot of modern phones don't even support external SD cards, and afaict exFAT hasn't really taken off. I think it's more accurate to say they're just paying protection money because they don't want to get sued and have to defend themselves, even if the patents are probably bogus or not applicable.
And with Alice v. CLS Bank in the US, software patents have been dealt a fatal or near-fatal blow. It will be interesting to watch this.
(Score: 2) by kaganar on Tuesday February 24 2015, @07:29PM
(Score: 5, Interesting) by HyperQuantum on Tuesday February 24 2015, @07:48PM
While I agree that "MICROS~1" in the summary is quite bad taste, I feel I must emphasize that 8.3 names are still an issue today, unfortunately.
One example is the Directory.GetFiles [microsoft.com] method in the .NET framework:
Note:
Because this method checks against file names with both the 8.3 file name format and the long file name format, a search pattern similar to "*1*.txt" may return unexpected file names. For example, using a search pattern of "*1*.txt" returns "longfilename.txt" because the equivalent 8.3 file name format is "LONGFI~1.TXT".
IMHO such an old technicality should not be exposed in a supposedly modern API like .NET.
(Score: 2) by hash14 on Wednesday February 25 2015, @12:31AM
And here is a great example of how bad design decisions can still be a problem decades later. I'll have to keep this one in mind...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24 2015, @08:34PM
What we need is a "party pooper" or "spoilsport" mod option.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by crutchy on Tuesday February 24 2015, @09:13PM
it's still a funny gag imho and an easy way to poke fun at the company in a way that isn't related to money (unlike micro$soft). most of us probably have fond memories of trying to think of a filename with 8 characters or less. msdos was awesome.
retro geek is cool, particularly on a geek website
if you don't appreciate such a gag, there is a popular saying that has something to do with grass or lawnmowing or something :p
(Score: 4, Touché) by Marand on Wednesday February 25 2015, @01:45AM
it's still a funny gag imho and an easy way to poke fun at the company in a way that isn't related to money (unlike micro$soft). most of us probably have fond memories of trying to think of a filename with 8 characters or less. msdos was awesome.
retro geek is cool, particularly on a geek website
if you don't appreciate such a gag, there is a popular saying that has something to do with grass or lawnmowing or something :p
I like your interpretation, but it seems pretty unlikely considering gewg_ also frequently uses M$ as well [google.com], including elsewhere in this discussion [soylentnews.org]. It's a refusal to say the company's name, instead replacing it with a bland attempt at an insult, only a small step above complaining about "MicroSux Internet Exploder" being terrible. About the only good thing about it is that it's less malicious-seeming, but it's still in the same juvenile "he who must not be named" territory as calling Slashdot "that other site" or "the green site".
It's possible he's just trying to be like one of the writers for The Register, but when it's targeted at a specific company rather than spreading the euphemisms out and using them for everybody, it just looks like submissions from a teenager or some autistic neckbeard with an axe to grind.
Also, in case anybody is thinking of saying it, no, I'm not a Microsoft fanboy. I've been a Linux user since '97 or '98 and a Debian user since 2000, with Debian being my primary laptop OS since 2004 and my primary desktop OS since 2008. I just think the M$/MICROS~1/etc. is juvenile bullshit that makes the submissions look like amateur drivel.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Marand on Wednesday February 25 2015, @02:24AM
only a small step above complaining about "MicroSux Internet Exploder" being terrible.
Sorry to double post, but after saying that, I found this gewg_ gem [soylentnews.org] where he says "M$Orifice" instead of "MS Office", which is a perfect example of the sort of childishness I was lambasting. It has no place here, and I'd wager that he, and most of the other "M$" users here would have a fit if submissions started doing the same to open source, such as referring to LibreOffice as "a popular open sores alternative to MS Office", or calling linux "linsux" in submissions.
It has no place in submissions, which should at least attempt to look unbiased and professional. If someone wants to do it in comments, that's fine -- free speech includes supporting people saying things I disagree with -- but they should expect ridicule for their childish behaviour.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday February 26 2015, @01:04PM
May I ask what exactly makes you say that? I mean this site is supposed to be focused on the community, and I'm seeing quite a few people (myself included) who have no problem with it or even enjoy it. I *like* that you can tell who submitted a story just from the writing style. If I want the same damn writing as everyone else I'll go read CNN or something.
"Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism -- which is true, but they miss the point."
- HST
(Score: 2) by Marand on Thursday February 26 2015, @01:46PM
May I ask what exactly makes you say that? I mean this site is supposed to be focused on the community, and I'm seeing quite a few people (myself included) who have no problem with it or even enjoy it. I *like* that you can tell who submitted a story just from the writing style. If I want the same damn writing as everyone else I'll go read CNN or something.
"Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism -- which is true, but they miss the point."
- HST
Being able to tell the submitter by writing style is one thing; seeing submissions with childish replacements is something else entirely. You can instill your personal style in your writing without mockery, and without being one-sided about it. The Register, as I mentioned, treads closely to to that border, but tends to avoid outright mockery. It's the difference in them referring to Apple as the "fruity firm", rather than the "beachball of death peddler", for example.
I'm arguing that what was done has no place in submissions because it's not conveying useful information, just juvenile snark about someone's pet hate. That's the sort of thing that fits better in the comments, and would be better presented as an actual statement rather than a re-labeling that someone thinks is clever and edgy.
Also, you say you and others don't mind it now, but do you really think that would hold true once the insulting or mocking names started being used on the products and software people like? Shit slinging is all fun and games until the thing you like gets crap on it, and then it turns into outrage and declarations of war.
If that's what you want, then I look forward to seeing your submissions about "open sores software" including new "linsux" kernel releases, news that mentions"overpriced trash vendor Apple", "Data-stealing Scroogle", etc. I'm sure the reactions will be favourable. I realise these examples are nastier than "MICROS~1", but that's because I'm trying to make a point, and making snarky little names for everything would take too much time to be warranted for a response.
What I'm trying to say, I guess, is that it's troll behaviour, which should not be condoned in submissions. It's getting a pass now because SN (except for HairyFeet) isn't a heavily pro-MS crowd, but we shouldn't be hypocrites about it, nor should we open the floodgates by allowing every submission to go that route.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday February 26 2015, @03:26PM
Yeah, I kinda agree with THAT point, but I don't think MICROS~1 fits. There's a reason for that nickname. It describes a feature of their own software. In my opinion, this IS like referring to Apple as "the fruity firm". Besides, it's not like this is a news article; it's an opinion piece! It's *supposed* to have more color! :)
Of course, I also don't think I've *ever* described anything I've coded myself without slinging a number of insults at *my own code* -- my network is a clusterfuck, my server is literally a cardboard box -- and it runs like it -- and my mail setup is just...beyond absurd. Which is probably why I can't get the damn thing working. So maybe I'm a bit inoculated? ;)
Besdies, we say worse things about government agencies in the summaries here but I never see anyone defending *them*. And those are supposed to be *news articles*, where this is just some random guy's software review!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by CoolHand on Tuesday February 24 2015, @07:02PM
I read this article the other day, and I noticed that while he goes on about Word/Writer compatibility in this version, he doesn't even touch on compatibility between Excel/Calc.. IMHO, that has always been more of a problem and a show-stopper than Word/Writer. There are a lot more heavy spreadsheet users that have no tolerance for their data being mangled than there are word processing users.
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Nerdfest on Tuesday February 24 2015, @07:19PM
I, and a few other members of my team have been quietly using LibreOffiice for the last three years or so. I've encountered exactly *one* problem opening a document, a Word document with a lot of embedded objects. I've also encountered documents that *I* could pen and MS Office users could not, I assume due to compatibility issues. It's very compatible. If you like the "Ribbon" menu, you're out of luck, as Libreoffice has a menu that's always the same (for me that means things stay where I expect). I actually prefer using the open product. The only problem I've really had with it had to do with using it with dark themes, and that was several years ago.
As always, your experience may vary, but it's probably worth trying again (Linux too, KDE in particular).
(Score: 3, Informative) by CoolHand on Tuesday February 24 2015, @08:23PM
Well, one spreadsheet that Calc won't open that is very important to my team is this one:
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/home?lang=en#!/wiki/Power%20Systems/page/nmon_analyser [ibm.com]
I know that it's not libre's fault that this IBM developer chooses to use Excel, but the fact remains that we can't replace excel because of it.. That's just one example of the type of thing that I'm talking about. I use Libreoffice as much as I can, but I can't push it to the rest of my team until everyone can use it for everything.. otherwise we end up keeping copies of Office around anyway...
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 5, Informative) by pTamok on Tuesday February 24 2015, @09:07PM
Given that IBM strongly support the use of Open document formats, I hope you have fed back this issue to them. If nothing else, you could send a message to Rob Weir (http://www.robweir.com/blog/) so he can go and rattle somebody's cage.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24 2015, @10:21PM
That is similar to what I was thinking.
The angle of IBM's commitment to open standards and FOSS didn't immediately occur to me, so kudos for mentioning that.
I was thinking that--unless it is super-secret--folks should send their non-compatible documents to the LibreOffice devs so they can identify which M$-only features need a higher priority on those guys' list.
-- gewg_
(Score: 5, Funny) by WillR on Tuesday February 24 2015, @07:41PM
There are a lot more heavy spreadsheet users that have no tolerance for their data being mangled...
They should probably stop using Excel, then.
(And whoever is responsible for Excel "helpfully" converting long strings of digits into scientific notation should be fired. From a cannon. Into the sun.)
(Score: 5, Funny) by The Archon V2.0 on Tuesday February 24 2015, @11:14PM
> (And whoever is responsible for Excel "helpfully" converting long strings of digits into scientific notation should be fired. From a cannon. Into the sun.)
That's a horrible thing to say, I demand you call my friend at Microsoft and apologize. His phone number is 6.51E+09.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday February 26 2015, @08:20PM
What I always hated was the mysterious adding digit many decimal places down at the end of a number in a cell.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24 2015, @07:28PM
I have used Open Office, then Libre Office exclusively for the past 8 years. All my spreadsheets, documents, and presentations have been made with it. I've convinced most people that I work with to download it and final products are always PDFs so nobody else knows any better.
The problems I've had with Microsoft compatibility have been less than the train wreck of .doc -> .docx
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Wednesday February 25 2015, @01:19AM
+1 to this! I haven't actually had to open and or use a word doc for the past, I dunno, four years or so. This is probably why its so confusing whenever I see articles claiming that OpenOffice has "finally" caught up. It's been here, it's just that the reviewers have finally caught up.
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Wednesday February 25 2015, @07:32PM
In some areas. LO / OO still hasn't caught up, "finally" or otherwise, with Word features from around 20yrs ago, and until they start doing what every development team I've ever worked on does and actually a) listening to users or b) looking at what the competition does, they will remain behind.
Basic functionality like outline view and "normal" view (in Word terms) just isn't there, bugs about these date from _2002_ (https://bz.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=4914 https://bz.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=3959). [apache.org] The outline view is highest or second highest voted bug, and I believe has been for years - but there seems no point in voting as even though it's at the top it seems to be just ignored, for years. LibreOffice bug tracker has similar open bugs referring back to the OO ones, and there are multiple dupes since new users keep reporting them as well, the only difference in the LO case seems to be that they just haven't had as many years in existence to ignore it for as long. Every so often a developer seems to show up and close one or other of them on the basis that the product already does it (use Navigator etc.), completely ignoring page after page of previous discussion as to why the existing features are not a replacement (5 minutes of actually looking at the competition would show the same, but apparently they don't bother to do that either), users get upset, and the bug gets reopened, and ignored again.
Don't just take my word for it, various people have been blogging about it for years e.g.: http://serendipity.ruwenzori.net/index.php/2006/11/05/openoffice-outline-mode [ruwenzori.net] http://www.datamation.com/open-source/nine-improvements-that-are-overdue-in-libreoffice-writer-page-2.html [datamation.com] https://purplewelshy.wordpress.com/2012/12/28/outline-mode-in-libreoffice-writer/ [wordpress.com]
Been hoping that LibreOffice would bring good changes to this area, but sadly it doesn't look like it so far - this page says it's due to be updated with user requirements in Feb 2014: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Outline_view [documentfoundation.org] . LO folks do seem to be better at looking at the competition in other places though, e.g: this page https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Track_changes [documentfoundation.org] documents where the change tracking and comparison functionality still has a way to catch up with the competition, including some competitive analysis. It also notes that collaborative editing is not there at all yet.
I'll guess I'll keep hoping that it catches up, and you'll keep believing it has...
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday February 26 2015, @01:12PM
Yeahh...I've only ever found one document that I couldn't open in LO/OOo. It was a few years back in college, and it was some form from the university administration I had to fill out and return. The formatting was a little wonky on OOo, so I walked over to the computer lab to open it on the official copy of MS Office instead...at which point I discovered that it looked *exactly* the same in MS Office as it did in OOo. Probably an old form that nobody had bothered to update from an older Office version of something.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24 2015, @07:34PM
Please! Don't remind/teach the newer generation(s) about M$ and variations thereof, please we want a nice clean and happy M$.
(Score: 4, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday February 24 2015, @07:36PM
Blogger Dedoimedo is known
Is he?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 3, Funny) by morgauxo on Tuesday February 24 2015, @07:40PM
MICROS~1? Really? Everyone knows that the correct spelling is MickeySoft!
What are you people smoking!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by biddy on Tuesday February 24 2015, @07:48PM
One wonders how long it will be till MSFT alters their "standard" so that compatibility is broken again.
Here comes the OOXML Transitional bait-and-switch. Wait for it, wait for it...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend_and_extinguish [wikipedia.org]
Never forget.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by dx3bydt3 on Tuesday February 24 2015, @08:13PM
For years I've thought open office, and more recently libreoffice much nicer to use for word processing than Microsoft word, particularly since they've ruined the interface with the ribbon. Calc is great too, there used to be some key things that were lacking compared to excel, but I think now familiarity with the program is the only reason to stick to excel over calc. Impress is impressive too, I have had .pptx presentations that wouldn't work correctly in office 2007 but worked fine in Impress.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Doctor on Tuesday February 24 2015, @09:43PM
I still have Microsoft Office 2003. I refuse to upgrade to the ribbon interface and I hate everyone who uses the ribbon as nothing is where I expect it and it makes new options undiscoverable. I do have Libre Office loaded as well. I find certain things just do now work right in MS Office. I probably just should switch over to Libre Office completely as I will avoid the ribbon as long as possible. What a crap interface.
"Anybody remotely interesting is mad in some way." - The Doctor
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Wednesday February 25 2015, @04:42AM
The ribbon is pretty useful once you're used to it. If anything Microsoft made a mistake by not leaving the traditional menus as an option.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 25 2015, @05:45AM
The whole point of a GUI is to make things easy before you are used to them. CLI is easy when you are used to it...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jbWolf on Wednesday February 25 2015, @06:42AM
I never got used to the ribbon because my brain is wired to words, not pictographs. I can use the ribbon just fine, but I would not consider it useful. Hunting down a function is a real pain in the brain.
Having said that, I am in 100% agreement with you about having both the ribbons and the menus. I don't see why they couldn't have both. If people really like the ribbon that much, then there is no reason why Microsoft couldn't have had both with an easy option to turn on one, the other, or both at the same time.
www.jb-wolf.com [jb-wolf.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 26 2015, @08:09AM
the problem with ribbons is that in a world of widescreen landscape aspect screens, ribbons take up a bucketload more vertical real estate than they should, which letterboxes my documents even moreso
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mendax on Tuesday February 24 2015, @09:55PM
I am very impressed with the quality of open-source office software such as LibreOffice and OpenOffice. I just finished ghostwriting a university-level text book using OpenOffice. It has little "quirks" and has some strange display artifacts which are fixed by causing the area to be repainted, but it worked very well for me. For my next assignment, I may try LibreOffice and see how it works, but not in SnowLeopard because the latest LibreOffice does not support it. I'll have to use Linux.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2) by linuxrocks123 on Tuesday February 24 2015, @11:16PM
If you're not aware of it, have a look at https://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/download.php [neooffice.org]
I've never used it and last heard of it years ago, but it may nevertheless suit your needs.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RedBear on Wednesday February 25 2015, @02:24AM
FYI, the free version of NeoOffice -- and I'm having trouble actually believing this is true, but it's right there on the features page of their site now -- the free version of NeoOffice "cannot save documents".
CANNOT SAVE DOCUMENTS.
I don't recall the free version having this limitation in the past. Seems insane to me, but apparently they felt it necessary to turn the free version into what is basically a demo that you can use to open, edit and print, and test to see if it works for you before you buy the $29.99 version from the Mac App Store. Or from the website for $10, but that appears to be an older version of NeoOffice. Confusing, NeoOffice guys.
I'm not objecting to NeoOffice's right to charge for their product or anything like that. After all, they need to support development somehow. I just wanted to warn anyone like me, who remembers successfully using the free version in years past to edit and _save_ documents, that things seem to have changed and the free version is just a rigged demo.
Personally I haven't seen any particular need for NeoOffice for several years, especially since the advent of LibreOffice and its relatively rapid UI improvements. I happened to download LibreOffice 4.4 just a few days ago and was impressed by the clarity and uniform style of the new monochrome icon set. It's really becoming an application that fits in well and performs well even on OS X. NeoOffice was started because OpenOffice years ago ran horribly slow and crashy and used non-native (Java) file dialogs and keyboard shortcuts, but both OpenOffice and now LibreOffice have improved by leaps and bounds since then, so much so that I haven't bothered to use or recommend NeoOffice to anyone in several years.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 2) by linuxrocks123 on Wednesday February 25 2015, @02:39AM
Wow, that seems parasitic. Didn't know about that. Guess that's what copyleft is good for. Or not, since maybe NeoOffice wouldn't even exist if they couldn't charge money.
I assume they must be basing their work on Apache OpenOffice, since LibreOffice uses the MPL which appears to be copyleft.
Thanks for the info. That's good to know.
(Score: 2) by goodie on Wednesday February 25 2015, @02:37AM
Well, as far as paint issues are concerned, MS Word in a relatively small document (~ 15000 words with a few tables/figures) and change tracking and EndNote (no other choice, this POS sucks don't even get me started...) for references, has many of them. I often think I am typing somewhere but upon scrolling I realize that I am on the next/previous page... Quite frustrating. I should give those a try again, last time they weren't up to par speed-wise (regardless of the MS' advantage due to having access to low level kernel functions I am sure).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24 2015, @10:51PM
- Improved Formula and Math, using a common syntax and supporting more symbols like XOR (the circled +).
- Better support for LaTeX and MathML, able to introduce code in that way without need of using (often outdated) extensions.
- Able to easily crop images like in Microsoft Office. I used CropOOo and worked nice, but no longer works in new versions.
- Tools for trigonometry and geometry.
- Integration with Electronic Design Automation tools such as KiCad, gEDA, LTSpice, SpiceNG, Quca, Xyne and others.
- Integration with CAD and 3D design software, able to embed designs.
- A Prezi-like way to do presentations. It's gaining too much momentum.
- Better suitable for eLearning. Integration with Moodle, other platforms and their standards.
- What about taking notes and organizing recorded lectures?
- I think LibreOffice needs desesperately a competitive alternative to Microsoft Project. The currently available ones are too limited it developed using bloated programming languages such as Java.
- LibreOffice Draw isn't still enough powerful than Visio.
- I think Inkscape should be part of LibreOffice family.
- What's Libreoffice Draw? A clone of Microsoft Publisher? A Corel Draw wannabe? Dumb cousin of Microsoft Visio?
- What about adopting SPSS too? This alternative to expensive IBM one needs a lot more love and better document and spreadsheet integration!
- What about Scribus? Maybe Draw should be splitted into Inkscape+Scribus and solve this personality disorder known as Libreoffice Draw.
- What about Real-Time Collaborative Edition (RTCE)? It would be great if supporting common servers and even a serverless way. Even Arthur C. Clarke did make use of collaborative editing to write 2010: Odyssey Two in 1982! What happened with [url=https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=office-collab] Advanced Document Collaboration SC[/url]?
[quote]
Arthur C. Clarke used a Kaypro II to write and collaboratively edit (via modem from Sri Lanka) his 1982 novel 2010: Odyssey Two and the later film adaptation. A book, The Odyssey File - The Making of 2010, was later released about the collaboration
[/quote]
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaypro
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 25 2015, @12:05AM
First and foremost, fix basic math in Calc.
-2^2 = -4
It is NOT +4.
Gnumeric for compatibility reasons changes the formula to (-2)^2 so that it = 4 like in MSO, whether you're opening an xls or typing it yourself.
It's an almost OK workaround (certainly _much_ better than LO and OO).
I would prefer to have options, (in Preferences). Like change the default when I type it myself. And perhaps warn me when I open a file with the problem - but that probably has 'scalability' issues.
What I do know is i hate this LTS bug. Hard to take spreadsheets seriously sometimes.
(Score: 3, Touché) by hemocyanin on Wednesday February 25 2015, @12:39AM
I'm am by no means a math expert, but instinctively, I feel that -2^2 is the same as -2*-2, which does equal 4. I'm not the only one who thinks that either apparently: http://www.mathsisfun.com/algebra/exponents-squaring-negative.html [mathsisfun.com]
I'm still using open office 3.something, and when enter =-2^2 in a cell, I get "4". when I enter =-2^3 I get -8, which makes sense to me (-2*-2*-2).
Am I missing something or is AC just wrong? Like I said, I'm not a math expert.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 25 2015, @12:58AM
I'm not an expert either, but common.
-2^2 = -2*2 = -4
(-2)^2 = (-2)*(-2) = 4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_operations [wikipedia.org]
Where one can also read "Exceptions to the standard" which imo basically means 'How some people messed simple rules to ... make a mess'.
Any TI calculator, Octave, R, Python, Google, Wolfram etc.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=-2^2&dataset= [wolframalpha.com]
See also:
http://www.burns-stat.com/documents/tutorials/spreadsheet-addiction/ [burns-stat.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by hemocyanin on Wednesday February 25 2015, @01:41AM
Based on the last link, it looks like Excel does things contrary to your expectations too. Confirmed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plus_and_minus_signs#Minus_sign [wikipedia.org]
I'm guessing open office is doing it the same way to maintain compatibility. In my mind, I suppose I would think of the non-excel/calc method as something like: -1*(2^2)
I kind of like the excel method because it feels like for -2, negative is a property of the number itself that is being squared. But, I don't get to make the rules because my math is weak, and there may be perfectly good reasons my instinct sucks. Anyway, it is good to know that these things are treated differently and I suppose the best practice would be to liberally use () in any context to ensure no erroneous assumptions about order sneak in.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 25 2015, @02:04AM
You are correct regarding the ().
I don't know about folks around here, but i don't remember being taught the unary minus in school. There was a pencil, paper, calculator (no PC), and an aggressive teacher.
I only remember one minus, but i confess there's a lot i don't remember.
How does one keep consistency (and sanity) if:
-2^2 = 2^2
1-2^2 = 1+2^2
http://www.hpmuseum.org/forum/thread-1862-page-2.html [hpmuseum.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 25 2015, @12:11AM
If we took a poll, I'd bet the thing most users of M$Orifice would name as the missing part in the FOSS offerings is email and contact management.
Integration with Electronic Design Automation tools such as KiCad, gEDA, LTSpice, SpiceNG, Quca, Xyne
Nerd. 8-)
CERN is Getting Serious About Development of the KiCad App for Designing Printed Circuits - submitted by gewg_ [soylentnews.org]
A Prezi-like way to do presentations. It's gaining too much momentum
Too much? Sounds like it's time to send out a search & destroy mission on that sucker. 8-)
...and S/N doesn't use BBCode.
Otherwise, a lot of interesting ideas.
You're very generous with the time of the FOSS devs.
...then again, maybe there's a bunch of nerds working on those exact items and they simply aren't ready for the light of day.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 25 2015, @02:05AM
I'm a nerd learner. Programmers careros nerd and nthey should take care more about the.needs of nders We.muat help.other nerds.to.make neird.nerd powers better and make the nerd way.to conquer the world. Nerds move the worl;'d. Nerds are legión!
I didn't care.ofbthe.code. it was a fastbpost. It's an ass to neednto change codes all time.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by snick on Tuesday February 24 2015, @11:27PM
What use is bragging on how well it renders documents created as no one ever creates them? What I want to know is how well it renders a document that was authored in Word 4, upgraded several times over the years as it was imported and edited in newer and newer versions of word, and is now so full of cruft the the MS Office rendering engine itself weeps bitter tears as it works out how to present the document.
Y'know, pretty much like every word document you've ever seen.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday February 25 2015, @02:17AM
I find this discussion interesting because it feels very retro. Arguing about the merits of word processors, of all things. Who still prints things out? Heck, how many people still use anything but phones anymore? Or arguing about the propriety of calling Microsoft names--did we unwittingly pass through a time warp back to Slashdot circa 1999? Good lord, people, these are topics that were. beaten. to. death. a generation ago. What's next, the second coming of the vi vs. emacs jihad?
If you really, truly, honestly want to compose something that will be printed on paper, why not use something that will look beautiful like LaTeX or one of its variants? As far as I know (admittedly, I haven't printed out a document in 8 years), it renders the whole Microsoft or not argument moot because Microsoft doesn't have an equivalent. I say that not as a LaTeX fanboy because, as I said, never have a need to print anything anymore, but because if you're a stickler about print quality it's about the best I've ever seen.
I would honestly expect more heated debates these days on the merits of cloud platforms or VMs than this stuff. Is that a reflection of the current poppulation of the SN community? Are we a bunch of grumpy old guys still rehashing the Great War?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Funny) by CirclesInSand on Wednesday February 25 2015, @04:18AM
What's next, the second coming of the vi vs. emacs jihad?
Thank god that fight is behind us. And that emacs won.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 25 2015, @05:48AM
> Thank god that fight is behind us. And that emacs won.
I completely agree with that - except vi won, is all.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Wednesday February 25 2015, @06:52AM
You'd be surprised. I've been working on a project for a couple of years that generates a 2.7 MB HTML file. For an HTML file, it works fairly well. I thought a friend of mine in the financial industry might find my project useful so I emailed it to him. He liked it, but then requested that I convert it to PDF for him. [Sigh.] I just print it out to a PDF and it's over 50 pages -- and it's page broken in all the wrong spots. He still loves it. It's much better as an HTML, though.
Me for one. Phone can't do the things I need to get done. I need laptop power or above. I have documents that I work on that span hundreds of pages. Some things are HTML based, but most are LibreOffice based.
(Score: 2) by tadas on Wednesday February 25 2015, @06:13PM
Wake me up when it has an outline mode exactly like MS Word 2003 (and Word 95, if I recall correctly). People have been pleading for this for over 10 years (I googled my way to an OpenOffice bugzilla request dated 2002-04-10). It keeps getting closed by the idiot developers claiming that Navigator supplies the answer, and it keeps getting resubmitted because NAVIGATOR IS NOT OUTLINE MODE. Waiting 13 years for a fix is embarrassing.
(Score: 0) by Balderdash on Wednesday February 25 2015, @08:36PM
The MS Office ribbon interface is targeted more toward typical business users who only need the dozen or so most basic features. It works for them.
I agree with the above stated, though, because removing old-style menus as an option is a mistake.
I browse at -1. Free and open discourse requires consideration and review of all attempts at participation.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday February 26 2015, @08:13PM
I have never quite expected this. In fact, LibreOffice 4.4 should have been called 5.0, because it is that much better. Perhaps grander changes are needed to justify a full new release. Just think of the possibilities, if we got all this in a single dot revision. Imagine what will happen when LibreOffice finally matures toward the next large release.
If it follows the pattern of too many other software products these days (i.e. Ubuntu, Firefox) version 5.0 will be where they screw up the UI in an effort to attract smartphone users and turn a great product into something you hate using a little more each day.