Apache Is Going To Release A New Version Of OpenOffice

[finalzone]

Am I correct in thinking that LibreOffice can integrate OpenOffice improvements but OpenOffice cannot integrate LibreOffice improvements because LibreOffice are using the more restrictive GPL license?

Yes. Let reminds that OpenOffice was originally under the LGPL2+ license before Oracle handed over at the request of IBM. It was AOO team choice to switch to Apache license knowing that it will allow such process happening a year after initial Libre Office release.

Post #29 gave an excellent summary about the license case.

[sheldonl]

I don't think it is the UI that hinder adoption of Libre Office and Openoffice. I think it is because people are taught to use MS Office. It’s entirely becayse MS has managed to get a de facto monopoly on Office applications.

You just made my point.

[sheldonl]

None of us want that. But we don't want the old interface either. We want something new, something better than ribbon. There were some very good mock-up for it a while ago, one with a sidebar the other without. Both of them looked far better than Ribbon and the calssic UI. I really think that the devs could come up with a perfect solution for LO's UI if they wanted to. But after so many years since the split and after seeing nothing in that direction (except for the sidebar thing, itself inherited from OO) I come to questions their intention to improve their UI in any way...

I don't like the sidebars. Most Text is read by humans horizontally in some fashion, that means sidebars with labels always end up too wide. And while I have a super-wide monitor (2560x1080) I still find I'd rather have a ribbon at the top . The horizontal vs vertical real-estate scarcity argument is a straw man IMO. If you need more vertical space, open another window with the document beside it (or view 2 pages at once) so you can see more of the document on your screen. Working that way give you much more visibility into your document and at the same time means that a horizontal menu is vastly superior to a wide vertical side bar.

[misp]

A lot if people seem to think here that UI needs to be improved/changed, but somehow that's the case for a long time. One interesting thing somehow in that domain was mentioned on LO wiki - should the toolkit be changed to qt? It seems no. There is one limiting factor (like everywhere): resistance to change even from the developer side. Recently added sidebar was advertised as a cool new feature and UI revamp, but its basically nothing important.
What about other stuff that need to be addressed like documentation for macros (all languages), editor for python and JS?

On the ui topic i think that default icons are terrible: unclear, similar can't quickly figure out what they should do.

[droidhacker]

People should just boycott this thing. This sort of fragmentation is just a cancer.

Isn't the defining characteristic of a cancer, that it grows without bounds?

[Cape]

The point is: there is a lot of work to be done, and i know developers are working hard, in fact release-notes are usually quite fat. But in the last 5 years i saw no real improvement to what everyone is complaining about which is the UI. And UI should be fairly easy to modify, even at advanced level of development.
This means either the codebase is so damn messed or the current dev team is not good at it. I have no other explanations...

Either way, i think it's time for a new project to take the lead. I'm using LO heavily for work related activities, and i'm fed up with the constant headache caused by 90s-themed wizards with glitchy visuals, tons of dropdown menus (one of the less ergonomic interface to use) and obfuscated procedures. Add to this the sporadic glitch/bug and you can see your productivity sink down the toilet.

For example, if you compare Calc to Excel (and i mean Excel fucking 2003 because 2007/10 are just way better than current calc) you have the same tools available in most situations, but the UX is completely different: excel feels snappy and clear, Calc feels messy so you end up spending a huge amount of time just figuring out how to do stuffs, which translate into rushing up your work and possibly creating a mess.
This is not tolerable in a work environment where the focus is on your content and you need tools available at-the-ready, that can be used without reading a tutorial/manual on the subject just because menus are hidden, infos lacking and procedures daunting.

[caligula]

I'm using LO heavily for work related activities, and i'm fed up with the constant headache caused by 90s-themed wizards with glitchy visuals, tons of dropdown menus (one of the less ergonomic interface to use) and obfuscated procedures. Add to this the sporadic glitch/bug and you can see your productivity sink down the toilet.

For example, if you compare Calc to Excel (and i mean Excel fucking 2003 because 2007/10 are just way better than current calc) you have the same tools available in most situations, but the UX is completely different: excel feels snappy and clear, Calc feels messy so you end up spending a huge amount of time just figuring out how to do stuffs, which translate into rushing up your work and possibly creating a mess.
This is not tolerable in a work environment where the focus is on your content and you need tools available at-the-ready, that can be used without reading a tutorial/manual on the subject just because menus are hidden, infos lacking and procedures daunting.

Many workplaces and schools have switched from MS Office and Open Office to Google tools. I think they're even more horrible. Maybe they offer some collaboration features with workmates, but the interface is clumsy and it will even corrupt your data sometimes. At least with complex sheets.

[sheldonl]

I don't think it is the UI that hinder adoption of Libre Office and Openoffice. I think it is because people are taught to use MS Office. It?s entirely becayse MS has managed to get a de facto monopoly on Office applications.

I've spent a lot of time with both LO and MS Office and IMHO it's the UI. MS Office's UI is much more convenient, easy to use and visually appealing. LO's UI is ugly, admit it, horribly ugly, with lots of functionality buried in menu's; and the LO sidebar is just silly. Any time I go to use it I dread having to troll down through menus to find things. It really is off putting for the 98% of the rest of the people who use a computer. Now, about the 'sidebar,' all of the arguments that I've seen for it are that people have lots of horizontal real estate on their monitors, but as someone who spends a *lot* of time in an office suite honestly I'd rather lose a few more pixels on the horizontal menu and have my horizontal real estate so I can see multiple pages, compare pages in documents, etc. than have that silly thing eat up so much screen space. Really, adding tab on top for a 'ribbon' doesn't really take away that much more real estate than the menu's and tool bars already do. That's exactly why MS didn't do it. If it makes that much sense to use the horizontal real estate, why did MS, after tons of times doing focus group tests on UI designs not go in that direction? For those that hate the 'ribbon', it's really just menu's laid out in tabs. How is this so much more different than having tabs at the top of your browser screen?

The only 'sidebar' I've seen done remotely well is WPS office, and that's really only b/c they have a ribbon interface (pretty much ripoff of MS's) + a decent functional sidebar. Unfortunately their UI doesn't resize as you resize the window, yet, but I hope they'll figure it out.