LibreOffice 7.2 RC1 Released Ahead Of Official Debut Next Month

[uid313]

Wow!
This looks to be a really exciting release!
GTK 4 and new document templates, I very much look forward to it! 👍️

[tornado99]

↵

I haven't used WPS Office, but OnlyOffice is anything but pretty. If you remove the colors for each task (as for MSO, green for spreadsheet, blue for word processor, and orange for presentation), it really has nothing better than LO. And it's actually less featured in my opinion. Also, with the tab thingie, you can isolate your current document from the main interface, but you can't get rid of that main useless interface to just have your document running, and that's a huge bother in my books.

With the tabbed interface (ribbon-like) and SiFr icons, LO is very decent. If they were to add those 3 colors to distinguish your document types, I'm sure everyone would find it much prettier than OnlyOffice.
MSO is more refined esthetically though, that much I can agree on. But its counter-intuitive workflow has never really worked for me. It's full of little assumptions that never work as I would expect, e.g. spacing before/after paragraph is a dreadfully inconsistent mess.

This is why I find the LO GUI ugly and a poor effort, in more detail:

• The icons are all the same size, when there is no good reason to be. MS/WPS Office use different sizes (e.g. paste button is larger) which helps make the ribbon easier to visually navigate, and more important functions are given prominance
• When you horizontally decrease the size of an MS/WPS Office window, the ribbon intelligently reflows, some icons disappear to make the most of the reduced space, and you can scroll the ribbon. LO just cuts off the icons on the right and sticks them on a stupid little pop up rectange.
• The tabbed interface is just a mess. The tab buttons are far too large, and you end up with a chunk of unfilled space on the right of the "ribbon" at most sizes. mppix
• The interface has no "visual flair"

My only conclusion is either LO has never managed to find any graphics/UX designers, or has scared them all away. The GUI is what I might expected on software built for a mission to Mars, not the home/office environment.

[Saverios]

New features are always exciting, but there are still some show-stopper bugs in the DOCX import filters like https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/....cgi?id=140799 which really prevent me from even considering switching.

I know most of the work is done from volunteers that choose what to work on, and this is highly appreciated. I really think having a "product management"-type steering would result in more efficient development. In LO's case, unless they sort out DOCX importing, adoption will always be out of reach.

[Slartifartblast]

Did they add WMF/EMF import filters for OOXML files? I think this would be a huge thing for me, since I occasionally have files with them. IIRC, WMF was one of the few formats I knew that supported vector images in Word.

SVG is supported....

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/edit-svg-images-in-microsoft-office-365-69f29d39-194a-4072-8c35-dbe5e7ea528c

[Mathias]

SVG is supported....

Huh good to know. Supported since 2016 ... at least with an office 365 subscription... maybe not for me then.

[skeevy420]

New features are always exciting, but there are still some show-stopper bugs in the DOCX import filters like https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/....cgi?id=140799 which really prevent me from even considering switching.

I know most of the work is done from volunteers that choose what to work on, and this is highly appreciated. I really think having a "product management"-type steering would result in more efficient development. In LO's case, unless they sort out DOCX importing, adoption will always be out of reach.

A: Not ideal, but you can open Word, copy/paste into LO, and fix any issues if they appear.

Q: How did skeevy420 convert Word to OOO in the early 00s?

I'll take "Views of debianxfce" for 200, Alex.

Unfortunately, I did that form Works to Word in the late 90s and a few years later from Word to OOO when I quit dual booting because my PC sucked for gaming back them. IMHO, there's no point in running Windows if your system can't play games....especially when you've set it up so you can do your work on practically any OS....as long as the OS supports LO and Firefox I can make it work professionally. Drafting, research, and purchases.

Since LO has opened up all my OOO files I haven't had to do any major formatting in quite a while. The few times I've come across MS files that LO didn't open I copy/pasted from a free 365 account which was pretty painless compared to back in the day where I'd risk getting gibberish when copy/pasting formatting changes between editors. In the past 5 years I've had more issues dealing with Google formats than I have MS formats in LO.

[gigi]

100 bugs? is this intentional?

[finalzone]

↵[/LIST]My only conclusion is either LO has never managed to find any graphics/UX designers, or has scared them all away. The GUI is what I might expected on software built for a mission to Mars, not the home/office environment.

An unfair statement considering that LO is open source unlike both MSO (both Windows and MacOS version are completely different engine wise) and WPS (funded by a fairly large company, tested it but crashed at the start) having seen several changes of hands in history code wise. VCL rendering (which shows its age) needs modernization and revamping in order to fully take advantage of back-end like GTK4 (work in progress)or QT5 meaning anyone can access the source codes and work on it. Be in mind majority of work on LO are done by contributions in their spare time. Looking to improve the user interface, you can start to contribute.

[mppix]

↵

This is why I find the LO GUI ugly and a poor effort, in more detail:

• The icons are all the same size, when there is no good reason to be. MS/WPS Office use different sizes (e.g. paste button is larger) which helps make the ribbon easier to visually navigate, and more important functions are given prominance
• When you horizontally decrease the size of an MS/WPS Office window, the ribbon intelligently reflows, some icons disappear to make the most of the reduced space, and you can scroll the ribbon. LO just cuts off the icons on the right and sticks them on a stupid little pop up rectange.
• The tabbed interface is just a mess. The tab buttons are far too large, and you end up with a chunk of unfilled space on the right of the "ribbon" at most sizes. mppix
• The interface has no "visual flair"

My only conclusion is either LO has never managed to find any graphics/UX designers, or has scared them all away. The GUI is what I might expected on software built for a mission to Mars, not the home/office environment.

While I may partially agree with some of the arguments, I am perfectly happy using LO for pretty much any task if I work alone.
My biggest grief with any office solution (other than MS office) is that you need MS office for collaboration :/

[Slartifartblast]

Huh good to know. Supported since 2016 ... at least with an office 365 subscription... maybe not for me then.

If you don't like paying subscription prices (the Microsoft end game) then I suggest using LibreOffice and SVGs