LibreOffice Begins Landing GTK4 Support Code

[Yndoendo]

Zen programming. This is what I call fixing issues found while updating or modifying a feature. You do search for the bug fixes but find them just by adding new content.

I actually stopped using modern word processors and went straight to Markdown for word processing. Makes life easier when the whole document to PDF is automated with the ability to do nothing for the table of contents or add user agent modeling with gantt charts. Only time I use Microsoft Office or LibreOffice is when I'm modifying someone else document they made or actually need a spreed sheet or presentation. Main stream word processing seems to need so much extra work than just using Markdown auto-document conversion.

I welcome LibreOffice moving to GTK4. No different than moving from SQLIte 2 to SQLite 3, lessons learned in improving and mainstreaming quality designs.

[finalzone]

The screenshots look a lot worse then what I can reproduce on my machines. It seems to depend a lot on what your distro sets for font rendering settings as explained in the issue.
It does not look any worse on either my two workstations running Fedora 34 nor my Pinephone running mobian nor my notebook.

I can confirm that I failed to reproduce the blurred font issue on HP Envy x360 Ryzen 5 2500u running Fedora 34 with displayed scaled to 125%. Using a builtin magnifying view on GNOME Shell displays a crisp font rendering. The font issues seems specific to distributions.

[kpedersen]

I do. If you want a word processor with no fun, use LaTeX

What? LaTeX offers loads of fun! The amount of hours I have spent writing cool little MACROs rather than writing my actual document

[Vistaus]

Going to be honest. "Modern" and "Fun" are not two key requirements I had in mind for a word processor!

I do. If you want a word processor with no fun, use LaTeX

[Vistaus]

Quite agree. In fact absolute most Linux users around have horrible font rendering. I don't know how they work with their computers without screaming in pain all the time.

Font rendering on GNOME and GTK has always been a nightmare for me, but on Qt desktops I have no issues whatsoever. And on Enlightenment, it's a bit less good than on Qt IMHO, but still much better than on GNOME/GTK.

[kpedersen]

Great!

I hope this can make for a better LibreOffice experience that feels more modern and fun.

Going to be honest. "Modern" and "Fun" are not two key requirements I had in mind for a word processor!

[birdie]

To be honest I think both font renderings in the screenshots of the merge request look horrifying and blurry, like something with hinting is broken.

Strokes show different thickness to other characters ("D" vs. "m", "i" vs. small L "l") and are inconsistent for the same character (small L, etc.).

It's highly irritating and terrible to read and anything but a calm text block.

Quite agree. In fact absolute most Linux users around have horrible font rendering. I don't know how they work with their computers without screaming in pain all the time.

[Azrael5]

There is the Qt5 flavor of Libre Office, to improve that is in the hands of those who want Libre Office running on a proprietary sold toolkit.

Libreoffice works via Qt or GTK3 on Kde?

[Alexmitter]

I don't get what makes Mathias say that. When I look at screenshots, the new rendering is clearly worse, and now I join the peoples who would really like to slow down GTK4 adoption because the less apps use it, the better user experience would be, at least for now (and if the issue is "not a bug", then really forever).

The screenshots look a lot worse then what I can reproduce on my machines. It seems to depend a lot on what your distro sets for font rendering settings as explained in the issue.
It does not look any worse on either my two workstations running Fedora 34 nor my Pinephone running mobian nor my notebook.

Anyways, I am looking forward to this GL based proper font rendering solution as seen here: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-..._requests/3393

[reba]

To be honest I think both font renderings in the screenshots of the merge request look horrifying and blurry, like something with hinting is broken.

Strokes show different thickness to other characters ("D" vs. "m", "i" vs. small L "l") and are inconsistent for the same character (small L, etc.).

It's highly irritating and terrible to read and anything but a calm text block.