LibreOffice 4.4 Is Coming Soon With New Features

[brosis]

Your argument is still as illogical, incoherent and irrelevant as ever. It's like I'm reading a random group of words that a monkey happened to type while rolling his face over the keyboard. What kind of person loads a text file, picks a font and size? Word 95 is a text editor? What the crap Universe did I just land in? Do you even know what a text editor is? Hint: it's not a document editor -- it's a text editor. You don't change fonts in a text file...

Perfect - Gnome3 seems to become exactly like it supposed to be - asshats attract only asshats. Ignorant (-- reponses for the sake of trolling, exact the same way he lives his life), elusive (-- uhh who is gonna need that feature anyway), brainless (-- ugh, I cant answer the original challenge, so I am just gonna play dumb on OLE/classic text processors) aliens(--Wrong universe). Yes, Word 95 is a text editor - because outside of .doc format, everyone called it a text editor back then. I hope your spaceship is not four button powered, or do you have four hands?

[eydee]

How about leaving own paws from a software that is NOT part of any collection - neither Gnome, nor windows. How about adding alternative interface as an option? How about using own brain to determine where to go and if there is a need to go anyway, instead of a habbit of keyboard scratching for the sake of change or pointlessly mimicking something? No, lets just upset huge part of a userbase without asking their opinion, and introducing fresh bucket of bugs because this is how its done. I guess this way to think demands IQ of an Einstein...

I think that huge part of a user base has no issues recognizing sarcasm, what most of this thread is...

[wander]

Perfect - Gnome3 seems to become exactly like it supposed to be - asshats attract only asshats. Ignorant (-- reponses for the sake of trolling, exact the same way he lives his life), elusive (-- uhh who is gonna need that feature anyway), brainless (-- ugh, I cant answer the original challenge, so I am just gonna play dumb on OLE/classic text processors) aliens(--Wrong universe). Yes, Word 95 is a text editor - because outside of .doc format, everyone called it a text editor back then. I hope your spaceship is not four button powered, or do you have four hands?

Clicks to got to font size dialog:
Gedit: 4
Kate: 4
Kwrite: 4
Geany: 2

So what's exactly your point? Changing the font (size) in a text editor is something most users only do once, when they do the initial setup. If you like to do it more often - why? - use geany or some other editors. Gedit is and has been a basic text editor, just like Kwrite and changing the font has never been considered as a frequently used feature.

[wander]

Perfect - Gnome3 seems to become exactly like it supposed to be - asshats attract only asshats. Ignorant (-- reponses for the sake of trolling, exact the same way he lives his life), elusive (-- uhh who is gonna need that feature anyway), brainless (-- ugh, I cant answer the original challenge, so I am just gonna play dumb on OLE/classic text processors) aliens(--Wrong universe). Yes, Word 95 is a text editor - because outside of .doc format, everyone called it a text editor back then. I hope your spaceship is not four button powered, or do you have four hands?

Clicks to got to font size dialog:
Gedit: 4
Kate: 4
Kwrite: 4
Geany: 2

So what's exactly your point? Changing the font (size) in a text editor is something most users only do once, when they do the initial setup. If you like to do it more often - why? - use geany or some other editors. Gedit is and has been a basic text editor, just like Kwrite and changing the font has never been considered as a frequently used feature.

[Slartifartblast]

Two screens are really needed for a decent cad station, one for menus and one design screen - MS Office is heading that way.

My Mrs was give a 14in laptop just recently for here new job, it's pitiful to watch someone battle office on anything less than 22inches.

You don't see the overhead of images and visual fsckup in ones face, do you?

In the "ribbon" above, image:
(Menu: CAM) -> (Submenurill)
(Menu: CAM) -> (Submenu:2D Miling) -> Dialog to choose type.

The real reason is all this screen estate available and then wiseguys who either:
* push everything in ones face at once ("ribbon" symptom)
* hide everything behind one button ("gnome3" symptom)

God, give me enough kerosene!

[TheBlackCat]

Clicks to got to font size dialog:
Gedit: 4
Kate: 4
Kwrite: 4
Geany: 2

You can increment or decrement the font size in kate or kwrite with two clicks, a keyboard shortcut, or ctrl+mouse wheel.

[wander]

You can increment or decrement the font size in kate or kwrite with two clicks, a keyboard shortcut, or ctrl+mouse wheel.

But that's only temporarily, so you'd have to change it after every start and for every file.

Edit: And btw. this is also possible with gedit. You just need to enable a builtin (?) plugin.

[knegen]

It isn't necessarily that crystal-clear. Ideally, you are right it would make sense. But it only works really well when toolbar items can only reasonably belong to one category, which in practice is often not the case. This can lead to problems when your mental image of how things should be grouped doesn't agree with the mental image of whoever put together the ribbon. This is a problem I often run into with ribbon interfaces: I often have to look through at least 4 different places to find what I am looking for because whoever designed the toolbar thought the item belonged somewhere else than where I thought it belonged. In this regard conventional toolbars are better (and sidebars are better still) because, even if the grouping is weird, everything is always visible.

This is particular a problem in something like Matlab, which only has a handful of toolbar items to begin with, it causes nothing but headaches. Developers padded the number of items by moving things out of the sidebars where they are close to and logically connected to the items they would be working with, and even then only ended up with three ribbon tabs.

On the other hand, something like CAD software, where there are a huge number of very closely-related tasks, I would think ribbons would be ideal.

MS Office is somewhere in-between. For someone like me who seems to have weird mental models, it is a problem. It is probably more useful to most people, though.

However, I still don't see a situation, at least on the wide-screen monitors that are typical today, where a ribbon beats sidebars.

Yes, the transformation to Ribbon in Autodesk Inventor (CAD) was a very, very good move. The interface, in the old style, would take an enormous space, or, would require me too be constantly navigating through menues and searching/looking.

It's just like you said;
*Modelling - then I only want/need the modelling tools (Why would I want the sketch-tools available men working with the 3D geometry?)
*Sketching - I only want sketching tools (why would I ever want tools visible for an example rendering when modelling?!?)
*Assemblying - Only the assambleing tools (why would I want modelling or sketching visible?) etc.

Sketching (creating the basics)


Modelling (working with the shapes/bodies)


Stressanalysis (will the structure work)


Assembling (putting the parts together)


Render


Prepare for production (CAM simulation)
The image earlier

CAD softwares are extreme example regarding functions/features, but Autodesk really shows of how well the Ribbon interface can work. Can you imagine the menues above without Ribbon, the constant strolling through, and learning, of an ocean of menues?

I feel, however, unlike what Autodesk manage to do, that Microsoft Office (I use especially Excel 2003-2010 daily) was poorly executed. The Ribbon is badly organized, the Office suit lacks tons of features (which should have been with the suit) that we need for our daily basis. But this does not make the idea of Ribbon bad.

For an example;
*I start to work with figures - only figure tab visible with all its features (no right clicking or strolling through menues should ever be needed)
*I switch to work with the text - only the text tab visible with all its features (no right clicking or strolling through menues should ever be needed)
*I start to work with tables - only the table tab visible with all its features (no right clicking or strolling through menues should ever be needed)
etc.

This would mean a faster and more productive work, and enable LibreOffice for the future when more and more features/functions are added.

[Sonadow]

It isn't necessarily that crystal-clear. Ideally, you are right it would make sense. But it only works really well when toolbar items can only reasonably belong to one category, which in practice is often not the case. This can lead to problems when your mental image of how things should be grouped doesn't agree with the mental image of whoever put together the ribbon. This is a problem I often run into with ribbon interfaces: I often have to look through at least 4 different places to find what I am looking for because whoever designed the toolbar thought the item belonged somewhere else than where I thought it belonged. In this regard conventional toolbars are better (and sidebars are better still) because, even if the grouping is weird, everything is always visible.

This is particular a problem in something like Matlab, which only has a handful of toolbar items to begin with, it causes nothing but headaches. Developers padded the number of items by moving things out of the sidebars where they are close to and logically connected to the items they would be working with, and even then only ended up with three ribbon tabs.

On the other hand, something like CAD software, where there are a huge number of very closely-related tasks, I would think ribbons would be ideal.

MS Office is somewhere in-between. For someone like me who seems to have weird mental models, it is a problem. It is probably more useful to most people, though.

However, I still don't see a situation, at least on the wide-screen monitors that are typical today, where a ribbon beats sidebars.

those screenshots in Inventor are the biggest proof of how ribbons beat sidebars. A function sidebar is going to need a shitton of vertical scrolling had Autodesk not introduced the ribbon. And a menu-driven interface would be just plain cruelty, period.

Office's Ribbon is also great that it is context aware; if you import or drop in an image the ribbon immediately changes to the Image tab and then back to the normal Home tab when image manipulation is complete, ditto for adding headers / footers. For the most part there isn't even a need to click on the Ribbon to change tabs since Office does it all automatically.

[brosis]

Clicks to got to font size dialog:
Gedit: 4
Kate: 4
Kwrite: 4
Geany: 2

So what's exactly your point? Changing the font (size) in a text editor is something most users only do once, when they do the initial setup. If you like to do it more often - why? - use geany or some other editors. Gedit is and has been a basic text editor, just like Kwrite and changing the font has never been considered as a frequently used feature.

gedit - 7: /// button, parameters, fonts, click on current font, pick font and size (as one action), choose button, X on parameters dialog.
kate - 6: Settings, configure Kate, Fonts and colors, font, pick font and size (as one action), okay.
kwrite - 6: same as kate
mousepad - 4: View, change font, pick font and size (as one action), okay.
libreoffice - 1: pick font size on panel

doing once - nope, sometimes you do change text over time, depending on task. It has either to be quick via profiles or at least logically nested. I noticed gedit actually improved from previous versions, but look is completely alienating. I have an impression I am running android or wine application.