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Review of v4.4 - Finally, LibreOffice Rocks

posted by LaminatorX on Tuesday February 24 2015, @06:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the new-and-improved dept.

"gewg_" writes:

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.

 
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  • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by halcyon1234 on Tuesday February 24 2015, @06:59PM

    by halcyon1234 (1082) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 24 2015, @06:59PM (#149224)

    I know this is the article submitter writing this, and not LibreOffice, but:

    MICROS~1's

    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]
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   0  
       Flamebait=7, Troll=1, Redundant=1, Insightful=6, Interesting=1, Informative=1, Underrated=1, Disagree=3, Total=21
    Extra 'Flamebait' Modifier   0  
    Total Score:   1  

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by mechanicjay on Tuesday February 24 2015, @07:08PM

    by mechanicjay (7) <reversethis-{gro ... a} {yajcinahcem}> on Tuesday February 24 2015, @07:08PM (#149230) Homepage Journal

    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

      by frojack (1554) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 24 2015, @07:55PM (#149261) Journal

      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

        by pe1rxq (844) on Tuesday February 24 2015, @08:49PM (#149281) Homepage

        Get of my lawn!

    • (Score: 1) by waspleg on Tuesday February 24 2015, @09:57PM

      by waspleg (5103) on Tuesday February 24 2015, @09:57PM (#149312)

      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

      by engblom (556) on Wednesday February 25 2015, @07:57AM (#149450)

      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

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @02:50PM (#151060)

        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: 4, Informative) by TheRaven on Wednesday February 25 2015, @10:08AM

    by TheRaven (270) on Wednesday February 25 2015, @10:08AM (#149464) Journal
    First: The parent post is a flame, not flamebait. Second: It is exactly right - let's try to remove the childish language from submissions and at least pretend to be vaguely professional.
    --
    sudo mod me up