The problem with F/OSS office suites is that their audience tends to be uncritical, so much as in the fairy tale "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" (but in inverse), professionals have stopped listening.
I remember at least three incidents where I was instructed to evaluate Open Office, Libre Office or other F/OSS word processing or layout packages. In each instance, the F/OSS products fell short in fundamental ways, and were a total disaster for larger documents. Their main strength was that it was often easier to ex
This. I have done similar comparisons for myself many times. I used OOo way back in the beginning and have contributed bug reports to both OOo and LibreOffice. I upgraded from OOo to NeoOffice to LibreOffice Mac version. But, Microsoft Office 2004 for the Mac is STILL superior so I need both! It kills me! The reason why is "LibreOffice will wreck this layout" and "which means I would not be able to share the document with other people", and also "And even simple things like bulleted or numbered outlines get scr
The reason why is "LibreOffice will wreck this layout" and "which means I would not be able to share the document with other people", and also "And even simple things like bulleted or numbered outlines get screwed up and wrongly numbered when sending from LO to MSO"!! How utterly braindead. And wasn't there a thing where "passwords are not secure so we won't implement them"? Anyway you just have to have MS Office if you want to do work in the real world, unless you can live in a
Hi, and thanks for a great comment. What have found is that there is a clear road to follow in development. Over the years a number of the issues I have submitted, mostly user experience related, are treated as enhancements, even if they are pretty important. Sometimes these get handled much later I think.
The most recent issue I mentioned about RTF and RTFD (LO can't open them but should) was picked up and treated seriously by more than one person and I am excited about that. At least, it is silly if you are on a Mac using TextEdit, Bean, etc. to save an RTF (I keep all my notes in these flat files) but can't open it in LibreOffice.
When I report a bug, I usually find another one or two additional bugs/enhancement issues at the same time. For example, I discovered IIRC that when you try to paste an outline it doesn't work! And I rediscovered the other day (I actually recognized the issue a long time ago) that exporting an LO document with text interleaving two numbered outlines will renumber incorrectly when opened in MS Word. These are really basic!
But let's take a step back. There really is a finite number of use-cases for an Office suite in business. The real problem seems to be a lack of interest or role in the open source project development for a person or team that steers development to real business world issues and pounds on all aspects of user experience including UI, functionality, expectations, interoperability, etc. to ensure that something of high quality will be the answer.
This is the only reason I can figure out the LO still does not have a widget in the scrollbar that you can pull down to make a split view like in MS Word. And you can't tile two windows. So if I wanted to say, translate a Word or PDF technical document into another window I have to drag and align windows in 1 or more applications and not have other windows open in those applications at the same time. The issues about RTF, outline export, and cut and paste are similarly, things that just couldn't happen if there was anybody involved who has a vested interest in making a quality business product. That is why I think there should be a new team added to LibreOffice and maybe other projects, that will have a specific mandate of ensuring ease of use by the business user. These are the people who pay for things after all. I think this might improve as European governments move into LibreOffice but since so many businesspeople have given up on OOo already, I feel there are few people who push to solve these problems, or even do user experience testing (eating their own dog food), otherwise they should discover these problems themselves and be frustrated enough to fix them. My two cents and I certainly love LibreOffice but wish it could be a little better. A little can be a lot.
Many good points, but these two hit me as particularly relevant:
Over the years a number of the issues I have submitted, mostly user experience related, are treated as enhancements, even if they are pretty important.
Steve Jobs left us a hell of a legacy, even for Apple haters. His legacy is the idea that the complete experience is the measure of a product. That includes everything from ordering it, to unboxing, to whether it "just works" when it starts up, to customer service and its ability to stand up to d
When you make your mark in the world, watch out for guys with erasers.
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The problem with FOSS office suites (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with F/OSS office suites is that their audience tends to be uncritical, so much as in the fairy tale "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" (but in inverse), professionals have stopped listening.
I remember at least three incidents where I was instructed to evaluate Open Office, Libre Office or other F/OSS word processing or layout packages. In each instance, the F/OSS products fell short in fundamental ways, and were a total disaster for larger documents. Their main strength was that it was often easier to ex
Re: (Score:2)
This. I have done similar comparisons for myself many times.
I used OOo way back in the beginning and have contributed bug reports to both OOo and LibreOffice.
I upgraded from OOo to NeoOffice to LibreOffice Mac version.
But, Microsoft Office 2004 for the Mac is STILL superior so I need both! It kills me!
The reason why is "LibreOffice will wreck this layout" and "which means I would not be able to share the document with other people", and also "And even simple things like bulleted or numbered outlines get scr
FOSS shoots itself in foot with false claims (Score:2)
You make a really good point:
Re:FOSS shoots itself in foot with false claims (Score:2)
Hi, and thanks for a great comment.
What have found is that there is a clear road to follow in development. Over the years a number of the issues I have submitted, mostly user experience related, are treated as enhancements, even if they are pretty important. Sometimes these get handled much later I think.
The most recent issue I mentioned about RTF and RTFD (LO can't open them but should) was picked up and treated seriously by more than one person and I am excited about that. At least, it is silly if you are on a Mac using TextEdit, Bean, etc. to save an RTF (I keep all my notes in these flat files) but can't open it in LibreOffice.
When I report a bug, I usually find another one or two additional bugs/enhancement issues at the same time. For example, I discovered IIRC that when you try to paste an outline it doesn't work! And I rediscovered the other day (I actually recognized the issue a long time ago) that exporting an LO document with text interleaving two numbered outlines will renumber incorrectly when opened in MS Word. These are really basic!
But let's take a step back. There really is a finite number of use-cases for an Office suite in business. The real problem seems to be a lack of interest or role in the open source project development for a person or team that steers development to real business world issues and pounds on all aspects of user experience including UI, functionality, expectations, interoperability, etc. to ensure that something of high quality will be the answer.
This is the only reason I can figure out the LO still does not have a widget in the scrollbar that you can pull down to make a split view like in MS Word. And you can't tile two windows. So if I wanted to say, translate a Word or PDF technical document into another window I have to drag and align windows in 1 or more applications and not have other windows open in those applications at the same time. The issues about RTF, outline export, and cut and paste are similarly, things that just couldn't happen if there was anybody involved who has a vested interest in making a quality business product. That is why I think there should be a new team added to LibreOffice and maybe other projects, that will have a specific mandate of ensuring ease of use by the business user. These are the people who pay for things after all. I think this might improve as European governments move into LibreOffice but since so many businesspeople have given up on OOo already, I feel there are few people who push to solve these problems, or even do user experience testing (eating their own dog food), otherwise they should discover these problems themselves and be frustrated enough to fix them. My two cents and I certainly love LibreOffice but wish it could be a little better. A little can be a lot.
FOSS needs to focus on quality of user experience (Score:2)
Many good points, but these two hit me as particularly relevant:
Steve Jobs left us a hell of a legacy, even for Apple haters. His legacy is the idea that the complete experience is the measure of a product. That includes everything from ordering it, to unboxing, to whether it "just works" when it starts up, to customer service and its ability to stand up to d