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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: 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.