LibreOffice 5.3 Alpha Tagged, New Features Inbound

[foolishgrunt]

Good question. I just know that people aren't comfortable using the current LibreOffice versions and the impression they get is that it's outdated and missing features. They often also talk about OpenOffice when using LibreOffice.

Vague references to other peoples' passing impressions are not very helpful. I use LibreOffice as my default suite and have used it to create all of the products you mentioned in your post. Your posts don't give me the impression that you have even used the suite yourself, have you?

[dkasak]

Qt5 isn't even planed so I don't care.

Oh dear! That's quite a hang-up you have there.

[SpyroRyder]

The notebookbar is actually coming along nicely for people who want something like a ribbon in LO.

I think I prefered the photoshop/gimp like panels approach that was talked about once, but hey any change from the toolbars is a plus

[jacob]

Good question. I just know that people aren't comfortable using the current LibreOffice versions and the impression they get is that it's outdated and missing features. They often also talk about OpenOffice when using LibreOffice.

I think it's just a matter of habit. Of course you can do very advanced work with LibreOffice, I have been using it almost exclusively for many years. But when someone is used to MS Office, the feature they may be looking for is not found in the same place in LO, or works differently, so they conclude that LO can't be used even for simple things. It's a little bit like an Ubuntu user saying that Fedora is a useless distro because it doesn't have apt-get.

[Sonadow]

It's also missing the ribbon which is 100% crucial.

Who says there's no Ribbon in LO?

[wdb974]

Vague references to other peoples' passing impressions are not very helpful.

It's true though, at least in my own experience.

People's complaints almost always boil down to LibreOffice not being MS Office. It's like they know everything by heart down to the features' X and Y coordinates on their screen, without really understanding what they're doing – kind of the "not my job" mentality, if you will. On the other hand, relying on unstable or badly set up software solutions does not help people to embrace LibreOffice, especially if they didn't receive a short training to ease the transition from MS Office to LibreOffice. For instance, I've seen an IT worker with Open Office 3.3.0 on his own work computer in 2015. That alone might indicate how up-to-date his colleagues' computers were.

Maybe open source software should make a "think different" sort of campaign. Then, those users might think the differences are normal. I mean, you don't hear people complaining about their Macs that often...

[mitch074]

Having used pretty much all versions of both MS Office and Open/LibreOffice since 2000 (starting from, and including, Office 97 and StarOffice 5.3), and having helped many people on both, I must say:

• older versions of MS Office were VERY unstable; things started changing with Office 2003 with a definite plus in Office 2007 sp2. The Ribbon interface is good for those 80% of people that use 20% of the suite's capabilities, but sucks for power users (who usually rely on keyboard shortcuts anyway). As soon as you try to separate content from styling in your document though, which is a requirement for long documents, you get the shaft; things started to get better with Office 2013, but aren't quite there yet.
• Version 1.1 of OpenOffice were very stable and rather easy to use, but OOo 2.x threw that down the drain with too much Java code thrown in: crashes, hardly used features would be unusable due to bugs. OOo 3.x made things better with a lot of code cleanup, but the uptick really came with LO 4.x that finished the code cleanup and started some heavy refactoring. LO 4.4 was actually a joy to use, removing quirks and putting useful features within easy reach. Version 5 is, for the moment, packing up some heavily needed new interface features, and upcoming 5.3's improvements will definitely improve my workflow.

[Julius]

A bit OT, but the OnlyOffice desktop editors are now fully open-source and a nice alternative to LibreOffice if you are looking for something a bit closer to MS-Office in terms of GUI. It also has a very interesting collaborative editing support if your set-up your own server:

http://www.onlyoffice.com/blog/2016/10/onlyoffice-desktop-editors-go-open-source/

[starshipeleven]

It's true though, at least in my own experience.

People's complaints almost always boil down to LibreOffice not being MS Office. It's like they know everything by heart down to the features' X and Y coordinates on their screen, without really understanding what they're doing – kind of the "not my job" mentality, if you will. On the other hand, relying on unstable or badly set up software solutions does not help people to embrace LibreOffice, especially if they didn't receive a short training to ease the transition from MS Office to LibreOffice. For instance, I've seen an IT worker with Open Office 3.3.0 on his own work computer in 2015. That alone might indicate how up-to-date his colleagues' computers were.

In other words: people is stupid on average. Totally newsworthy.

Maybe open source software should make a "think different" sort of campaign. Then, those users might think the differences are normal. I mean, you don't hear people complaining about their Macs that often...

Wrong tactic. Apple is selling physical products, not their OS.
To get open software to replace MS's you need to do the same MS did back then, convince companies and organizations and PAs to use it, and from there it will snowball to rank-and-file dumbasses.

And the reason is mostly the same, bulk of $$$ of Office products comes from work places, not from private citizens that tend to crack it.
Opensource software has usually 0 gains from being widespread in private citizens that usually equate "opensource" = "don't have to pay for it", while there is a long track record of companies or organizations that do most work or sponsor successful open software.

[edmon]

any MS Outlook replacement planning?