LibreOffice 4.3 Released With Many Exciting Changes

[Azpegath]

Ohh.. what a flame bait! Don't respond to this people.. this lonely POS is not worth it.

Just for the record - the competent proprietary StarOffice developers are the main reason why more bigger changes aren't happening in LO. Just to support more than 65536 characters per paragraph (the bug that is fixed in this release) we had to touch almost every class in the code-base, because the competent proprietary StarOffice developers thought it is a good idea (actually they didn't even talk with each other) to have 6 or 7 different string types (each with its own limitations). So to get rid of that bug we had to convert all to use one common string type (actually 2 - 8 and 16-bit variant) which took more then a year because the code base is so huge and only afterwards this bug could be fixed. The competent proprietary StarOffice developers also forgot to write any kind of automated tests (even for totally basic things) - now have this FUN when you try to refactor or change something!

Great job to take the time to re-write the entire code-base to use the same string representation! The idea of having several of them from the start kind of baffles me.. =)

[Luke_Wolf]

Ohh.. what a flame bait! Don't respond to this people.. this lonely POS is not worth it.

Just for the record - the competent proprietary StarOffice developers are the main reason why more bigger changes aren't happening in LO. Just to support more than 65536 characters per paragraph (the bug that is fixed in this release) we had to touch almost every class in the code-base, because the competent proprietary StarOffice developers thought it is a good idea (actually they didn't even talk with each other) to have 6 or 7 different string types (each with its own limitations). So to get rid of that bug we had to convert all to use one common string type (actually 2 - 8 and 16-bit variant) which took more then a year because the code base is so huge and only afterwards this bug could be fixed. The competent proprietary StarOffice developers also forgot to write any kind of automated tests (even for totally basic things) - now have this FUN when you try to refactor or change something!

And this is why the community should have stood behind KOffice (now Calligra) as opposed to being so enamoured with Sun Microsystems as to take everything from them when there were better alternatives, I'm personally betting we could have beaten Microsoft on the Office front by now if the community had stood behind KOffice because frame based editing is a fundamentally superior design both from the user standpoint and the developer standpoint, and you wouldn't have had this kind of crap code clogging up the works.

[Azpegath]

And this is why the community should have stood behind KOffice (now Calligra) as opposed to being so enamoured with Sun Microsystems as to take everything from them when there were better alternatives, I'm personally betting we could have beaten Microsoft on the Office front by now if the community had stood behind KOffice because frame based editing is a fundamentally superior design both from the user standpoint and the developer standpoint, and you wouldn't have had this kind of crap code clogging up the works.

"frame based editing"?

[RahulSundaram]

And this is why the community should have stood behind KOffice (now Calligra) as opposed to being so enamoured with Sun Microsystems as to take everything from them when there were better alternatives, I'm personally betting we could have beaten Microsoft on the Office front by now if the community had stood behind KOffice because frame based editing is a fundamentally superior design both from the user standpoint and the developer standpoint, and you wouldn't have had this kind of crap code clogging up the works.

It is easy to say you are betting on something when you don't have anything to lose but the important reason why StarOffice was popular earlier on was because it provided an integrated suite with pretty acceptable compatibility with MS-Word documents when KOffice developers weren't paying any attention to that compatibility story and in many cases, actively deridiing it as a proprietary format not worth supporting. Idealogically, they were absolutely right. Practically, every office suite worth mentioning has to support those formats because of the extremely large market share of MS Office. Now if StarOffice was actually designed to be modular with compatibiity implemented in the form of libraries that KOffice could have used, we would all be better off but unfortunately, it was all monolithic and Sun management didn't help much. Rest is history.

[Luke_Wolf]

"frame based editing"?

yes, as opposed to Document-based. Basically instead of your spreadsheet, your word processor, etc being monolithic applications, the components are turned into frames, which are put onto a document. So say you want a table in a document for instance, instead of using some custom element for the word processor you're literally embedding a spreadsheet into the document. There's also another significant advantage to frame based editing (which is why desktop publishing software uses this style exclusively) in that you can freely position, resize, and rotate elements in a document however you choose, and with more advanced frame based editors like Calligra will reflow the text however you choose if you place one frame on top of another.

[quikee]

yes, as opposed to Document-based. Basically instead of your spreadsheet, your word processor, etc being monolithic applications, the components are turned into frames, which are put onto a document. So say you want a table in a document for instance, instead of using some custom element for the word processor you're literally embedding a spreadsheet into the document. There's also another significant advantage to frame based editing (which is why desktop publishing software uses this style exclusively) in that you can freely position, resize, and rotate elements in a document however you choose, and with more advanced frame based editors like Calligra will reflow the text however you choose if you place one frame on top of another.

This is how LO works for the most part - Charts and Formulas work like that (all across components), you can embed Calc spreadsheet into writer if you want (Writer has its own table for good reasons and doesn't just use a spreadsheet for this and Callibra does the same). You can also insert a Draw image and the text will correctly reflow. Of course it is not perfect but you can't say there is not "frame based editing".

[RGB-es]

yes, as opposed to Document-based. Basically instead of your spreadsheet, your word processor, etc being monolithic applications, the components are turned into frames, which are put onto a document. So say you want a table in a document for instance, instead of using some custom element for the word processor you're literally embedding a spreadsheet into the document. There's also another significant advantage to frame based editing (which is why desktop publishing software uses this style exclusively) in that you can freely position, resize, and rotate elements in a document however you choose, and with more advanced frame based editors like Calligra will reflow the text however you choose if you place one frame on top of another.

You are mixing two different thing here, IMO. On the first half of your answer you are describing what on Calligra's world is called "kparts" and on MSOffice world is called "OLE Objetcs".

You can insert a Calc Spreadsheet on Writer or a Writer block on Draw/Impress, for example (I know, you'll end up with a headache doing so, but it works... sort of). In fact, each time you call the equation editor you are inserting a "Math object". And on Writer all those objects (and all the pictures) are contained by frames.

On the second half, yes, you are describing a real "frame based word processor". But real world is something complex and what works for you will not work for other people. There is a reason why scientists use LaTeX and not Scribus to write their papers or their PhD thesis: DPT tools are good for things like magazines or photography books where the layout of each individual page is important, but sucks when you need to write a technical books where content flow is more important than the individual page on which that content ends. For my PhD thesis on Physics (long time ago!) I did not care where figures ended: content flow and a proper structure where far more important.

But even if you only need to write a plain text novel DPT tools are overkilling: you just need a couple of paragraphs and page styles and you are done, specially if someone else will do the final formatting .

Regards,
Ricardo

[TheBlackCat]

This is how LO works for the most part - Charts and Formulas work like that (all across components), you can embed Calc spreadsheet into writer if you want (Writer has its own table for good reasons and doesn't just use a spreadsheet for this and Callibra does the same). You can also insert a Draw image and the text will correctly reflow. Of course it is not perfect but you can't say there is not "frame based editing".

Embedding and frames are not the same thing. Embedding is putting a non-native document inside another document, but it is not really a native part of the original document. No matter how hard they try it never works exactly the same as a native part of the document.

With a frame-based editor, there is no such distinction. A spreadsheet object in a word processor document is treated no differently than a text object in a word processor document. It is just another frame. You can also have a text object inside a spreadsheet inside a graphics object inside a poster.

[droidhacker]

So sounds like a pretty good big bug was flattened with this release. Congrats on that.


HOWEVER....

The biggest imaginable bug has yet to be *seriously* addressed;
In order to WIN, you need to obtain CUSTOMERS.
You obtain CUSTOMERS by being the first to nail their target PLATFORM.

Android.
The fastest selling operating system in the history of the world.
Still does not have ANY viable word processor, and no, Andropenoffice doesn't count since its a horrid bloated mess with xorg and vnc.

Right about the ONLY thing that actually is keeping a few customers still buying up MS phones is that they have a word processor.
Libreoffice for Android will not only help libreoffice to get to the FRONT of the list, it will also bury MS.

[RahulSundaram]

Android.
The fastest selling operating system in the history of the world.
Still does not have ANY viable word processor, and no, Andropenoffice doesn't count since its a horrid bloated mess with xorg and vnc.

Right about the ONLY thing that actually is keeping a few customers still buying up MS phones is that they have a word processor.
Libreoffice for Android will not only help libreoffice to get to the FRONT of the list, it will also bury MS.

I doubt that since Android has already MS Office and QuickOffice (Google) which are pretty decent. LibreOffice has to do a ton of work to be a viable competitor (not that they shouldn't try)