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Open Source Software

LibreOffice 6.2 Brings New Interfaces, Performance Improvements To the Open Source Office Suite (techrepublic.com) 153

An anonymous reader shares a report: New interface styles and feature improvements are available in version 6.2 of LibreOffice -- the most popular open-source office suite -- released Thursday by The Document Foundation. As with any software update, bug fixes and feature enhancements are present, making this release a significant upgrade, particularly for users coming from Microsoft Office, or working with files created with those programs. LibreOffice now supports SVG-based icons for toolbars in the Breeze, Colibre, and Elementary icon sets as an experimental feature, to better support HiDPI displays increasingly found in notebook PCs. The Elementary icon set was also improved significantly, adding a 32px PNG version, and fixing inconsistencies between the 16, 24, and 32px versions, as well as adding more icons across the set to prevent reverting to defaults. In LibreOffice 6.2, the "Tabbed" interface is now available for Writer, Calc, Impress, and Draw, and is considered sufficiently stable to be a default option. This interface mimics the oft-maligned "Ribbon interface" in Office 2007. The "traditional" Office-style toolbar is default, though the Tabbed interface can be enabled through the "View > User Interface" menus.
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LibreOffice 6.2 Brings New Interfaces, Performance Improvements To the Open Source Office Suite

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  • by trb ( 8509 ) on Thursday February 07, 2019 @12:46PM (#58084726)

    I'm waiting for LibreOffice 365, with the $0/year subscription fee.

    • by bluefoxlucid ( 723572 ) on Thursday February 07, 2019 @01:02PM (#58084834) Homepage Journal

      I'm waiting for them to just move to AbiWord as an OOWriter replacement.

      • Re:LibreOffice 365 (Score:4, Interesting)

        by sheramil ( 921315 ) on Thursday February 07, 2019 @01:56PM (#58085140)

        I'm waiting for the ability to apply a style to a sentence, and not have that style applied to the entire paragraph.

        • Re:LibreOffice 365 (Score:5, Insightful)

          by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Thursday February 07, 2019 @02:06PM (#58085202)

          I'm waiting for the ability to apply a style to a sentence, and not have that style applied to the entire paragraph.

          Make all your paragraphs only one sentence long -- problem solved. :-)

          • not have that style applied to the entire paragraph. https://xender.pro/ [xender.pro] https://discord.software/ [discord.software] https://omegle.onl/ [omegle.onl]
          • I'm waiting for the ability to apply a style to a sentence, and not have that style applied to the entire paragraph.

            Make all your paragraphs only one sentence long -- problem solved. :-)

            But but but... I was told that part of the definition of 'paragraph' was that it was comprised of at least 3 sentences. :(

            Honestly though, the bug being described seems like an odd bug. A structural definition is not as black and white as it needs to be, or else it is a simple programming error that just isn't being fixed... but the second option seems unlikely.

        • Re:LibreOffice 365 (Score:5, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 07, 2019 @02:28PM (#58085314)

          You can already do that, and you have been able to do that for a long time. I use it all the time in my technical writing. It's very handy when you have things like inline code samples that you want to have styled all the same.

          It's called a Character Style and applies to things that are within a paragraph. Use a Paragraph Style if you want to apply the same style to a paragraph or other block of text.

          In my technical writing, let's say I want to describe the getopt() function. I might include some sample program that shows how to implement getopt() in a program. For that block of code, I use a Paragraph Style. But there are instances where I need to mention the getopt() function within a paragraph. I could just use bold for every instance of that inline code. But what if I later want to change it so that it's not bold, but uses the same monospace font that I use for the code blocks? I just update the Character Style once and LibreOffice applies that style everywhere.

          • ^^^ Mod parent up!

          • by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Thursday February 07, 2019 @05:26PM (#58086118)

            You can already do that, and you have been able to do that for a long time. I use it all the time in my technical writing. It's very handy when you have things like inline code samples that you want to have styled all the same.

            It's called a Character Style and applies to things that are within a paragraph. Use a Paragraph Style if you want to apply the same style to a paragraph or other block of text.

            Dammit, now he's going to have to come up with a different reason that he hates LO.

            • Dammit, now he's going to have to come up with a different reason that he hates LO.

              It doesn't have The Ribbon.

              Oh, bugger...

              • Dammit, now he's going to have to come up with a different reason that he hates LO.

                It doesn't have The Ribbon.

                Oh, bugger...

                Indeed! The ribbon was what got me to look at OO back in the day.

          • LOL. So it is a bug in understanding, not a bug in programming. I kind of figured it had be something like what you described. Nicely done. :)

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • I just tried that and I see that I can apply a style to one sentence, one word, or even one letter within a paragraph without LO applying it to the whole paragraph. I wonder why yours is different.

            Because he's never used LO.

        • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          Why not take the FREEDOM CHALLENGE and https://www.libreoffice.org/ [libreoffice.org]. What can you lose but what I hope is a reassuring guess, fifty years of paying rent to access your content, well not your content in 365 but M$'s content, they own it and you can only rent access to it (gees dude, even your children and grand children and great grand children and on down the line will all have to pay rent to access your content).

    • Re:LibreOffice 365 (Score:5, Informative)

      by PostPhil ( 739179 ) on Thursday February 07, 2019 @02:26PM (#58085298)

      You joke, but they're half way there:
      https://www.libreoffice.org/do... [libreoffice.org]

    • Realistically, a "cloud-enhanced" version of Libre office with collaboration features and seamless server-side storage would be a nice way for LibreOffice to raise money.
    • I'm waiting for LibreOffice 365, with the $0/year subscription fee.

      And your money back if you aren't satisfied.

  • by DarkRookie2 ( 5551422 ) on Thursday February 07, 2019 @12:51PM (#58084752)
    This is good. I never used anything before Word 2007 so the tab grouping are a lot more familiar to me.
  • Icons? Reallly? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cellocgw ( 617879 ) <cellocgw@gmaEINS ... minus physicist> on Thursday February 07, 2019 @12:54PM (#58084764) Journal

    With all the important capabilities that need to be in a doc processing suite, you decided that FancyShinyIcons was what matters?

    What I want, and would have hoped most users want, is improved workflow and an absolute minimum of changes to the interface. Why learn a new set of icons when we just finished learning the last set of icons? Why deal with commands getting rearranged in Ribbon submenus? Let us do our work and just facilitate interfaces and filetype conversions.

    • On high-DPI screens, the icons were so tiny, the interface became unusable.

      Granted, high-DPI is already idiotic itself, as it only wastes energy to display things you can't see anyway.
      But if you're suffering from having to use such a screen, trust me, you do want scalable icons.

      I still think Lotus SmartSuite's InfoBox had the best interface, and everything else is just a half-assed clone of it. (Especially because they don't even highlight which settings were changed from the base template class.) The only

      • HiDPI screens are like the difference between a dot matrix and a laser printer. If you are happy with a dot matrix that is fine, but personally I prefer a laser and a HiDPI screen too.

      • by caseih ( 160668 )

        I've never understood why this has to be so (the small icons). Surely the UI can scale everything according to DPI, right? Even it has to scale a bitmap. In some sense this is what HiDPI does already. But sadly the dream of using vector graphics everywhere for scaling to any resolution died along the way. I'd really like if the entire desktop could be scaled arbitrarily (and look clean and sharp). If I want things a bit bigger, I can. Or smaller. Or make the text exactly 12 pt tall (actual pt). Neve

    • Re:Icons? Reallly? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Immerman ( 2627577 ) on Thursday February 07, 2019 @02:35PM (#58085344)

      I can't say I disapprove of these icon changes, and it's certainly worth noting that new icons are likely made by artists rather than programmers - it's possible some programmers are wearing two hats, but in general the man-hours spent on icons, documentation, etc. in a big project are hours spent by contributors that you wouldn't want working on code anyway.

      I am generally annoyed with gratuitous icon changes - but in this case it seems like they (mostly) maintained recognizability, while improving legibility, which should be especially nice for those who choose to use smaller icon sizes. Can't tell you how annoyed I get about projects that go for the monochrome icon b.s. - icons are important functional components that must be easy to recognize, and they remove one of the most dramatic differentiating features for an arguable improvement in aesthetics?

      • I am generally annoyed with gratuitous icon changes - but in this case it seems like they (mostly) maintained recognizability, while improving legibility, which should be especially nice for those who choose to use smaller icon sizes. Can't tell you how annoyed I get about projects that go for the monochrome icon b.s. - icons are important functional components that must be easy to recognize, and they remove one of the most dramatic differentiating features for an arguable improvement in aesthetics?

        You can say that again. Prime example of the moment being Blender, a massive, popular open source graphics app with hundreds of icons, no less. They are re-designing their icons in black and white designs for their major new version that is expected to make a big splash on this market segment, and it's caused pretty big arguments...

        https://blenderartists.org/t/n... [blenderartists.org]

        • It sounds like they're talking about color-coded monochrome icons, which might actually be an improvement over arbitrarily colored ones. Maybe. I'll reserve judgement until I see at least some proper mockups, though I can't say I'm super hopeful.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Because LibreOffice probably wants to make more people happy than just the old 90's tech crowd. Like it or not, any company considering the transition to LO would probably deal with user pushback if the UI looks 20 years out of date.

  • I'm going to put a hold on LibreOffice updates until I get around to loading it up in a VM for testing,

    I'm all for feature and security updates but after having to deal with all the UI "improvements" in the UI's of various application (Firefox, Word, Windows, etc.) over the years I am hesitant to give up what I have become familiar with if I can avoid it.

    • What warning? (Score:5, Informative)

      by sjbe ( 173966 ) on Thursday February 07, 2019 @01:57PM (#58085146)

      I'm going to put a hold on LibreOffice updates until I get around to loading it up in a VM for testing,

      Why would you do that if you weren't doing it before?

      I'm all for feature and security updates but after having to deal with all the UI "improvements" in the UI's of various application (Firefox, Word, Windows, etc.) over the years I am hesitant to give up what I have become familiar with if I can avoid it.

      You didn't read the summary. They didn't change the interface. They merely gave an alternative option that is NOT the default. The default is approximately unchanged. Some people like or at least are used to the current Microsoft interface so why not have an option to make those people comfortable? It won't be what I use but if it works for someone else then that is fine. My user interface preferences do not have to be universally shared.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Because the idiot who wrote the summary misrepresented the additional UI by saying:

        In LibreOffice 6.2, the "Tabbed" interface is now available for Writer, Calc, Impress, and Draw, and is considered sufficiently stable to be a default option.

        When what he should have said was:

        In LibreOffice 6.2, the "Tabbed" interface is now available for Writer, Calc, Impress, and Draw, and is considered sufficiently stable to be included with the official release. The "traditional" Office-style toolbar is still the default

    • If only there was a way to go back to the old one..... Oh wait, there is. View->Toolbars
  • Good for them (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Thursday February 07, 2019 @01:16PM (#58084914) Journal

    I'm grateful to the LiberOffice folks. They're been the "Office-but-better" suite on my computers for a while now, and I'm very happy with it.

    If you use LIbreOffice (like I do), you should go donate if you can (like I do) and/or contribute to improvements if you're capable (I am not).

    • by fermion ( 181285 )
      I like the fact that there is a lot of development on the free front, both openoffie and libreoffice. I stoped using libreoffice when it broke on the Mac, and now tend to use the commercial Apple stuff or google docs for the simple stuff I do. More complex stuff I use LaTex as it tends to be technical.

      I am sure there is a business case to continue to buy MS Office, but given the cost I don't really understand why small firms would do so.

      • Re:Good for them (Score:4, Insightful)

        by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Thursday February 07, 2019 @02:19PM (#58085270) Journal

        I use LaTex

        I love LaTex. It's the one document production software that I feel really gets me since Nota Bene disappeared. I learned to use it when I was helping my mathematician wife with her PhD thesis (I was no help with the math part, but I like to make nice documents). My publications were all written in LaTex. Years later, it's still on every computer I own because if I want it to look just right, it's the best way.

      • Re:Good for them (Score:5, Informative)

        by Immerman ( 2627577 ) on Thursday February 07, 2019 @02:59PM (#58085458)

        >I don't really understand why small firms would do so.
        One word: compatibility.
        I'm not a fan of M.S. Office, but small firms often do business with big firms, and any digital paperwork that gets passed around will almost certainly be in MS Office format - which last I checked is neither fully documented, nor even fully compatible with their partially documented "open" format.

        LibreOffice, Google Docs, etc. mostly do a pretty good job of working with MS files - but mostly isn't perfect, and leaves open the possibility of costly mistakes, as well as introducing a steady stream of headaches and frustration from dealing with inevitable incompatibilities, with costly effects on morale.

        Plus, most new employees will already know their way around MS Office, and would require extensive training to use the alternatives. Not because they're any more difficult, but because most people seem to learn how to use their tools by rote memorization, so that any change requires them to relearn everything from scratch.

        When an Office365 subscription costs less than a day's wages per year, it's not really that hard a decision to make.

        • Re:Good for them (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Thursday February 07, 2019 @05:42PM (#58086180)

          >I don't really understand why small firms would do so. One word: compatibility.

          Cool story Bro!

          Microsoft Office isn't even compatible with itself. We used to get PowerPoint files that were done on the Windows version, annnnnd...... Nope, don't look at all the same. Weird printer business, and font issues in word processing despite supposedly identical fonts. Version differences not working, and often within one platform.

          I kept a copy of OO because it could handle that kind of stuff.

          Now I have control of some Linux, some MacOS, and some Windows system. And we don't cut Linux out of the loop, so it isn't a matter of compatibility, it's no options at all.

          So here comes LO, and the work done on any platform looks like the work done on the others,

          That's compatibility, not just saying "compatibility" Because MSO isn't even compatible with itself.

          • Hey, you're preaching to the choir here. If I had my choice everyone would use .ODF or some other open format and we could pick our office suite based on personal preference.

            Sadly, I'm not in charge. I'm one guy in a small firm that uses MSOffice, because they can't afford any format friction with the companies they do business with. And I can say from personal experience (because I refuse to use that tripe) that at least 20-30% of the documents that cross my desktop can't be read properly by OO, LO, or

        • usually when that happens (firm sends me a .doc or .docx that they want filled in) I usually fill it correctly and then send them back a .odt
        • small firms often do business with big firms, and any digital paperwork that gets passed around will almost certainly be in MS Office format

          Funny, I find it's almost always PDFs these days.

          • PDF is intentionally designed to work only for non-modifiable documents (and simple forms)

            • by hawk ( 1151 )

              I'm convinced that pdf stems from a far more malign drug experience than the LSD origins of HyperCard . . .

              When I was practicing immigration law, we had to keep three different pdf programs to work with the government documents, as they are all hostile to one another. It seems that they *deliberately* find ways to add data that won't appear in other documents . . .

              PDF is as standardized as the 16k RAM chips (for those young enough to chase off my lawn, the industry came up with a standard pinout--and then

        • by Anonymous Coward

          >... MS Office, and would require extensive training to use the alternatives.

          Yeah right, like when Ribbons were introduced.

          Oops, these were introduced to MS Office, and afterwards LibreOffice and OpenOffice were more similar to MS Office than MS Office.

          • Yep. Behold the power of institutional inertia.

            There was a brief window in which it could have changed - but unless a large percentage of institutions made the switch, you would still need to train every new employee. "Everyone" learns MS Office in school. If they went to college they probably learned how to do more advanced things... also in MS Office. If they worked somewhere else they probably also learned how to do more domain-specific tasks...in MSOffice.

            That's the problem with someone having a nea

        • by hawk ( 1151 )

          >One word: compatibility.

          I've been using StarOffice, err, Open Office, I mean LibreOffice long enough that compatibility was a *reason* to use it instead of MS. It simply did better at importing from last year's (or next year's) version of MS than MS did.

          And it wasn't even necessarily from different versions--I had to deal with students coming in with nominally the same versions of Windows and MS Office, yet the file wouldn't work *quite* the same way for both.

          These days, for my practice, I just send wh

        • Microsoft Office doesn't offer the compatibility its proponents claim. I've seen a lot of documents that don't render the same way across successive versions of Microsoft Office, so forward compatibility is shot. Microsoft Office 365 won't load and render all of the documents Microsoft Office 2016 (with all updates) will generate, so compatibility across current versions is not there either. Word also isn't designed for large documents; I never would have advised using Microsoft Word to begin this documenta

    • by Anonymous Coward

      The world has lots of volunteers for all kinds of 'worthy causes'. If people want to donate their own time and/or money to something that they feel passionate about, then good on them! But I really wonder about all the users out there who complain when someone chooses to make changes that they do not like. It is free software! The people building it do not get paid to make it do what YOU want. They work on features that they think are fun, not ones that necessarily add value for you. You are not a customer,

      • It's like the homeless guy who complains about the food at the soup kitchen because it is not on par with the finest restaurant.
        • It's like the homeless guy who complains about the food at the soup kitchen because it is not on par with the finest restaurant.

          It's not really like that at all.

    • I use and I like it, but I confess I haven't donated (yet). Maybe I'll go send 'em a few bucks.

      LIbreOffice is fast and clean- I wish it was the standard rather than MS Word.

      Word on Windows: Meh
      Word on Mac: Yuck

  • by Anonymous Coward

    In LibreOffice 6.2, the "Tabbed" interface is now available for Writer, Calc, Impress, and Draw, and is considered sufficiently stable to be a default option. This interface mimics the oft-maligned "Ribbon interface" in Office 2007.

    Obligatory "you were supposed to destroy them, not join them" post.

    At least the classic view still exists and is the default.

    • Re:Ribbon (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Immerman ( 2627577 ) on Thursday February 07, 2019 @03:06PM (#58085482)

      I've heard The Ribbon has improved a lot since it's introduction, so perhaps it's getting good enough to be worth cloning.

      It would also be quite hilarious if LibreOffice manages to make a ribbon that is actually an improvement over traditional toolbars, exposing the fact that the problem is not ribbon interfaces themselves, but Microsoft's general incompetence at making UIs.

      I know the times I've used MSOffice I've felt like the ribbon had a lot of potential, if only it weren't so infuriating to use.

      • I've heard The Ribbon has improved a lot since it's introduction

        Nope. The ribbon is still a mess in the current Office 365 version. Luckily I don't have to use that pile of crap too often.

  • an enhancement and if I can not go back to classic. I will stick with old versions or find a new choice.

    Just my 2 cents ;)
  • Just last week we were talking about why people don't update their programs. Changing the UI was a biggie. LibreOffice Draw changed it's UI a year or two back, took me an hour or two to figure out where things went and, when I did, I preferred the old UI.

    Ditto ribbons. I've been using them for several years now, still don't like them, much prefer the older way of doing things.

    LibreOffice does what I need it to do, as they're changing the UI again I doubt I'll ever update it again.
    • by sconeu ( 64226 )

      Did you even RTFS (much less RTFA)?

      Tabs/Ribbon are available, they are not the default interface. If you are a masochist, you can turn them on. Otherwise, it looks the same (modulo icons).

      • "In LibreOffice 6.2, the "Tabbed" interface is now available for Writer, Calc, Impress, and Draw, and is considered sufficiently stable to be a default option."

        The problem is from reading the FS and not the FA. The summary is misleading and makes it sound like the ribbon-style interface is a default. The article says it's included in builds by default but you have to turn it on yourself in the menus.

  • by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Thursday February 07, 2019 @02:32PM (#58085338) Homepage
    Many years ago, I was using Microsoft Word. I wrote something for more than 3 hours. I then discovered that Microsoft Word was not able to load that file! Yow!

    I was able to load the file in LibreOffice. Since then, I don't use Microsoft Word.
    • by jwhyche ( 6192 )

      I find stories like this both amusing and unbelievable. Makes me wonder what kind of weird ass format you saved your file in to prevent MS Office from loading it. I just loaded a file that I wrote on WordPerfect 4.1 on the Amiga in Office 365.

      • I've had that happen many times. Word's older file formats are really nuts. Among other things they contain raw memory dumps from Word, which are then reloaded and instantiated when the document is opened.

        It's a miracle (and a sign of the immense amount of work to fix quirks the developers put in) that it works as well as it does. Word not being able to read Word documents is very common.

        WordPerfect is well supported, on the other hand. That file format is well documented and sane. I am not surprised that c

        • by jwhyche ( 6192 )

          I've been using MS Word for years, since office windows 95/98. I have directories full of documents from practically every version off office. I can go down the list here and load every one of them. I plain short story documents all the way up to complex business documents. They all are loading fine.

          • am not surprised that can be opened in a modern word processor. The issue is with Word, not the age of the documents. https://audacity.onl/ [audacity.onl] https://findmyiphone.onl/ [findmyiphone.onl] https://origin.onl/ [origin.onl]
          • I have the same. Lots of old documents. And mine usually load fine. The few that did not, I opened in LibreOffice and saved in a more reliable format. In the end I did that with all of them, since I don't keep Word on my personal systems any longer.

            But I have fixed countless Word documents for clients. Documents saved in the Word version they then tried to open them in, to no avail. It happens frequently enough that people know to contact me for help.

            I've encountered it once with an Excel document, but then

        • I've had that happen many times. Word's older file formats are really nuts.

          Older word formats, Fonting issues, printer problems, where the document only wanted to be printed on the original printer, then changing it to the printer in use caused the document to fly into outer space. PowerPoint files done on a Windows machine transported to a Mac Office machine, and freaking out needing to be pretty much redone, than the same thing when it goes back to the PC.

          The amount of time my group spent fixing Microsoft Office files was more than the amount of time for their initial creatio

      • by Trongy ( 64652 )

        To anyone who used Microsoft Word in the 1990s or early 2000s this story is entirely believable.

  • by labnet ( 457441 ) on Thursday February 07, 2019 @02:37PM (#58085364)

    I would love to roll Libre out to our company, but it still can’t open up 10 year old word or excel docs without screwing up the formatting.

    • and not have that style applied to the entire paragraph. Make all your paragraphs only one sentence long -- problem solved. :-) [url=https://audacity.onl/]Audacity[/url] [url=https://findmyiphone.onl/]Find My iPhone[/url] [url=https://origin.onl/]Origin[/url]
    • by ledow ( 319597 )

      Strange. Have you got the MS fonts installed?

      I've been using LibreOffice to open up old formats because it does a damn sight better job that Word has ever done.

      P.S. try opening an old Publisher file in any other version of Publisher than the one it was created with whatsoever.

      If your business literally has SO MANY documents that you can't afford to lose the formatting on that it's a business issue, you should have converted them to signed, timestamped PDF years ago for archival purposes. And probably crea

  • by Compuser ( 14899 ) on Thursday February 07, 2019 @03:44PM (#58085642)

    The biggest thing for me is that they are working on the animations. Which is big because right now animations is the number one horrid thing in LibreOffice. If they can fix this aspect then the office suite will be instantly tons more usable.

  • I just updated to 6.1.4 yesterday, to patch a security flaw. Later in the same day they have a new major release? Bah.

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