LibreOffice 7.0 Is The Version Now In Development With Its Skia + Vulkan Support

[Danielsan]

Libre is sooo behind office. Its sad but I wish Libre got the resources it requires to make it competitive. There's not a slight chance it can compete with ms word or power point, lack of features, templates and even this decade's appearance.

Its blocking my family to moving to Linux actually. They just need office and work with files other people send as docx , pptx etc

While I mostly disagree you can try onlyOffice, it works on WIndows as well so they can actually test if it is a viable solution...

[Mez']

Uh.... then it's not objective... that's subjective....

Yes, that was exactly my point. It was just an absurd reply to somebody saying that it was objectively intuitive.

[schmidtbag]

Yes, that was exactly my point. It was just an absurd reply to somebody saying that it was objectively intuitive.

Except it is. Just because you're used to something else, doesn't mean MS Office isn't intuitive. I grew up using an interface like this:

And although I was very familiar and proficient with that interface, it was not intuitive. Having a bunch of small colorful un-labeled icons on a toolbar while depending on drop-down menus for anything not on the toolbar is a terrible interface. Doesn't mean you can't learn it and use it quickly, but doesn't change the fact that it is actually bad. The ribbon bar is well-organized, it's faster to use (because you can change certain settings in it without the need of a pop-up window), all functions can be found in it, and it tells you what the functions are.
Anyone who thinks something that spoonfeeds you tools in an organized manner is unintuitive doesn't know what a good interface is and is just holding onto what they're used to. That's fine - you're allowed to hate the ribbon bar or prefer the old fashioned toolbar, but that doesn't change the fact the ribbon bar is intuitive.

[Vistaus]

Not really, LibO looks like MS Office used to, when it was still useful. This decades appearance (the ribbon) is just an ever changing button bar that makes it impossible to find the feature you are looking for, except when you know where it is (i.e. you should be able to find the Bold button). The craziness started with Intellisense, the menu bars that were hiding features you don't use often. And then, as you can't find them never use them. Thankfully LibO didn't go this way.

Then when you use it for a longer period (like in my case almost 30 years since MS Word 1.1,writing technical and scientific articles, reports and books) you will find the file formats change all the time, and MS Word can't read it's own format. Thankfully there are ISO standards to resolve this problem, Open Document and PDF. And LibO's support of Open Document is much better than MS Words.

If you really know what your talking about you will find LibO does what Office does, but better (bugs aside) and on more platforms.

That's ridiculous. I've had many occasions where LibreOffice screwed up the layout of my ODF documents that, btw, were created *and* only used in LibreOffice. So no, it's not a better standard, it's a more open standard, but it's the same crap as docx otherwise.

[Mez']

Except it is. Just because you're used to something else, doesn't mean MS Office isn't intuitive. I grew up using an interface like this:

And although I was very familiar and proficient with that interface, it was not intuitive. Having a bunch of small colorful un-labeled icons on a toolbar while depending on drop-down menus for anything not on the toolbar is a terrible interface. Doesn't mean you can't learn it and use it quickly, but doesn't change the fact that it is actually bad. The ribbon bar is well-organized, it's faster to use (because you can change certain settings in it without the need of a pop-up window), all functions can be found in it, and it tells you what the functions are.
Anyone who thinks something that spoonfeeds you tools in an organized manner is unintuitive doesn't know what a good interface is and is just holding onto what they're used to. That's fine - you're allowed to hate the ribbon bar or prefer the old fashioned toolbar, but that doesn't change the fact the ribbon bar is intuitive.

It is, SUBJECTIVELY for you, maybe.

I'm not talking about the interface. I am used to all of them. I enabled the ribbon in LO as well.

I am talking about what you expect it to do. When you set bullet points in Word and you have to battle through consistency with big hits of "format painter" because it randomly broke the numbering, the bullet size, the offset or literally anything (it can get quite creative).
When you want a section break and there's no way with a simple backspace you can get rid of that first empty line you didn't ask for.
Or those tab spaces that never align correctly on a virtual vertical line (and with bullet points with sub-levels, it's even worse).
Or about different and completely random (not set at all) paddings within tables that make it sometimes really hard to get your text on the same horizontal baseline (especially with different font sizes, and considering you asked for the same vertical alignment).

Or about the enter stroke in Excel not doing what I would expect it to do. I'm talking about having to alt+enter instead. I'm talking about a go**am single quote randomly needed after that alt+enter for your text not to be interpreted in a random formula way.

Or about the fact that it decides for you in Powerpoint the font size depending on the number of bullet points (until here, it's OK per se), which makes your first bullet point location completely inconsistent throughout slides, whereas it should stick on the exact same spot on the screen (it's just cleaner when you go through slides to have a fixed starting point).

Again, when I read documents produced by my colleagues (and as a consultant I've seen many in various different company cultures), they are never quite right. Always something weird in the fomatting because they gave up spending time on fighting Office. And how many times have they asked for my help because they were pi**ed at a non natural behaviour and not knowing how to do simple (because supposedly intuitive) stuff.

And I could go on and on. Basically, it always does something else than I would naturally expect it to do. And most of the time (not always), in LO I don't have that issue of it doing something I didn't ask for or didn't expect. It feels more natural and lets you decide what you want to do, it is not forcing random stuff upon you.

I'm not saying you can't work with MSO apps. I'm just saying over the course of an hour, you spend 40 minutes on the content and 20 on the formatting (yes half the time), whereas in LO the proportion is around 50/55-10/5. That's where I find MSO to be very unintuitive. And given how inconsistent documents produced by others look, I'd say it's a seriously generalized issue.

[ferry]

That's ridiculous. I've had many occasions where LibreOffice screwed up the layout of my ODF documents that, btw, were created *and* only used in LibreOffice. So no, it's not a better standard, it's a more open standard, but it's the same crap as docx otherwise.

ODF is a standard, period. LibO is an application. If it deviates from the standard, that's a bug. Same if MS Office deviates from the ODF standard.

And yes, both formats don't always capture the way you intend the document to look like. For instance where do you want your graphics / charts etc.positioned?I would like them on the top of the page where the reference is, with text flowing above and under it (no gaps). A 2nd graphic should go to the bottom of the page and not overlap the first. And if I change paper size from Letter to A4 these rules should continue to be obeyed automatically. I don't know of any word processor that does this. It's a pain. If you don't want any changes to happen, choose pdf.

But many people position text using multiple spaces. Or tabs. And yes, that can be screwed up if letter spacing changes. If you know what you are doing and position stuff using tables you'll be better off. But there is room for improvement I give you that.

[tildearrow]

Libre is sooo behind office. Its sad but I wish Libre got the resources it requires to make it competitive. There's not a slight chance it can compete with ms word or power point, lack of features, templates and even this decade's appearance.

Its blocking my family to moving to Linux actually. They just need office and work with files other people send as docx , pptx etc

Linux people are about "systemd or sysvinit", PulseAudio/JACK/ALSA/whatever, everything that composes the system, Wayland, X11, compile from source, Meson CMake Autotools SCons waf, etc etc.

Average Joe doesn't care and should not care about that. He wants to use his system the normal way and let that be it.

[bigbruno]

True. When I need to use an Office suite, I'll typically go with Google Docs or LibreOffice. Microsoft Office has nothing I need nor want to give Microsoft money for it.

That said, with all the hate I'm seeing towards LibreOffice here, I decide to try out the 5 day trial version of Office Professional 2019 and it works alright on the Linux desktop. You just need to configure a *reverse* WSL2 type setup and make simple app launcher scripts for the office apps on your machine and you're good to go.

Please, share how you make this, i don't know what is "You just need to configure a *reverse* WSL2 type setup"

[tildearrow]

True. When I need to use an Office suite, I'll typically go with Google Docs or LibreOffice. Microsoft Office has nothing I need nor want to give Microsoft money for it.

That said, with all the hate I'm seeing towards LibreOffice here, I decide to try out the 5 day trial version of Office Professional 2019 and it works alright on the Linux desktop. You just need to configure a *reverse* WSL2 type setup and make simple app launcher scripts for the office apps on your machine and you're good to go.

What is that? Arch Windows? Debian Microsoft/Windows?

How did you get the Linux window appear on top of the Windows ones with full decorations, shadows and even pixel masks?

[Vistaus]

Btw, since this is Phoronix, I expected at least one person to infiltrate this thread to tell us all about how LaTeX beats any office suite. But nobody did lol

(never used LaTeX myself, looks too complex to me)