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back to article LibreOffice debugs and buffs up to v.3.5

The Document Foundation (TDF) has announced the release of LibreOffice 3.5, which it modestly describes as “the best free office suite ever.” This latest 201MB build strips out a lot of redundant code from the OpenOffice base around which LibreOffice is built, a move which initially caused the software some stability problems …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Impress

    I hope they gave this some love. I tried to use it a couple of weeks ago and found it to be buggy to the point of unusable (losing setting, options being hidden and random changes).

    I wasn't doing anything complex, all I wanted was each bullet to appear after a click. Could it do that? No. Epic fail.

    I have not logged a bug, I guess I really should.

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    1. Norman Hartnell
      Reply Icon

      I've done this many times while editing presentations with LO. My guess is you aren't doing it right.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        @Norman Hartnell

        Nope - it's not me. How do I know that? Well, for starters I read the Help a few times to make sure I was doing it right. Then there's the nature of the fails.

        When I finally get the anim to work, adding a new line screws it all up. They do not appear in the order on the page, but in the order of entry. Which is just stupid, especially when you decide to re-order things. You need to delete the anim and begin the fight again.

        When I make a change to the anim, click "OK" and open the dialog back up, my changes are gone. No warning, no message, no nothing. Just gone. Epic fail.

        This elitist "blame the user" attitude is pervasive in F/OSS and is one of it's largest handicaps and your pithy and useless reply is just one more example of this.

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        1. Anonymous Coward
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          Anonymous Coward

          Re: @Norman Hartnell

          "This elitist "blame the user" attitude is pervasive in F/OSS and is one of it's largest handicaps"

          Sums up what I've been thinking ages quite nicely - thanks!

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        2. Norman Hartnell
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          Re: @Norman Hartnell

          Your OP said "all I wanted was each bullet to appear after a click. Could it do that? No. Epic fail.". Now you are saying that you *could* get each bullet to appear after a click, and that it only fell over after you added another line. You can't expect accurate help if you don't give accurate information!

          I think you should add a bug report.

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          1. Anonymous Coward
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            Anonymous Coward

            @Norman Hartnell

            You offered no help, just a "Works for me!"

            And you missed out about it not accepting changes.

            Yes, a bug report shall be filed (well, I'll check for dupes first)

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          2. RoyalHeart
            Reply Icon
            Linux

            Re: @Norman Hartnell

            Have you checked the *custom animation* settings for each slide?

            The wife and I renewed our vows last October. I created several presentations for the DVD I'm putting together of the ceremony. For one of the presentations I timed the vocals of our song so I could choreograph the on-screen lyrics with the singer.

            Once the timing was done, I added (cropped) stills from the ceremony video to this presentation. After adjusting the timings where needed in the custom animations toolbar, I have a presentation that choreographs the lyrics *and* the stills.

            This was done on LibreOffice 3.4.3 on openSUSE 11.4/KDE 3.5.10 (I've since upgraded to openSUSE 12.1/KDE 3.5.10).

            If I can do it, and I don't use Impress daily, BTW, you can too.

            I took the time to learn how to use the tool properly.

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            1. Anonymous Coward
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              Anonymous Coward

              @RoyalHeart

              "Have you checked the *custom animation* settings for each slide?"

              Why yes, yes I have. That is how I knew it was randomly losing the changes I was making.

              "I took the time to learn how to use the tool properly."

              Oh look, typical F/OSStard response "RTFM!"

              Values not being saved without warning is not, never has been, never will be a user problem. It is a software one and IME it is one that Impress suffers badly from.

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              1. RoyalHeart
                Reply Icon
                Linux

                Re: @RoyalHeart

                > "Have you checked the *custom animation* settings for each slide?"

                > Why yes, yes I have. That is how I knew it was randomly losing the changes I was making.

                Seems you have something very wrong with your install of LO, or your user prefs file(s) for LO are bonkered. (Read-only, wrong permissions, etc. also come to mind here.)

                > "I took the time to learn how to use the tool properly."

                > Oh look, typical F/OSStard response "RTFM!"

                So you would rather someone else "RTFM" then hold your hand whilst they explain and show you, on a 2-year-old level, how to use the application ?

                > Values not being saved without warning is not, never has been, never will be a user problem. It is a software one and IME it is one that Impress suffers badly from.

                Wrong. I have permissions on files get accidentally changed where an application couldn't save preferences/configuration in *my* home directory. Once I realized the problem and corrected the permissions, the preferences/configuration saving problem disappeared.

                It's not always a software issue. Pick an application and mark its settings file read-only. Then change a few settings, restart the app, and see if the settings were saved. More than likely not.

                (I marked my file associations preferences file read-only to keep *my* preferred associations from being "helpfully" changed when I install a new app.)

                And I have *YET* to have *any* component of LO fail to save values, of any kind.

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  2. squilookle

    I'm mostly working on Google Docs now. I do use LibreOffice every now and then, I have have MS Office on both my work and home computers, but the convenience of being able to work on a document on one computer, go to another computer and read it back or pick up where I left off is too tempting, as is not having to install software or keep it up to date.

    I like Google and happily use quite a few of their services, but if I can find an open source/free alternative to Google Docs (if it's something I can install and run on my own server creating accounts for me and any family/friends that want to use it, even better) then I will definitely be interested. .

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    MS Office, OpenOffice, LibreOffice...

    I've used all three in the past. At the office it's MSOffice (if I really *have* to) or OpenOffice, at home it's LibreOffice purely because when OS X Lion came along, OpenOffice didn't want to play (and yes, I had the Java Runtime). So LibreOffice it was.

    Frankly, they are much of a muchness, although I must say that Excel and Oo Calc have their foibles and their advantages over each other. Oh well, we'll see how good LO 3.5 is...

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: MS Office, OpenOffice, LibreOffice...

      Just curious... Why you've tried OpenOffice and LibreOffice on OSX, but not NeoOffice? They are all much of a muchness but I find NeoOffice the best of a bad bunch:

      • 'Native' GUI [still fugly, but slightly less 'java-esque']

      • faster than OO or LO

      • Works with Quick Look to allow previewing documents.

      Not much in it, but enough to keep me preferring NeoOffice, for the meantime.

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @squilookle

    I wonder how your company's information protection policies line up with your use of Google services. There is nothing confidential in using the world's largest data miner. Your convenience is not what should be the consideration here.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: @squilookle

      Maybe it's his own company???

      I see what your saying tho. I recently quit as IT Director at a PLC that is making the switch to Google Apps for the very reason you state. There is no security or auditability at any level. Even the 2 factor authentication systems they are half-heartely (i.e. only one person bothered) trying to implement, are akin to writing your PIN on the back of your credit card.

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    2. squilookle
      Reply Icon

      Re: @squilookle

      To clarify, I'm talking about non commercial usage - personal and side projects run by myself. Putting stuff from my day job on Google docs would be stupid, ofcourse. For that, I use whatever systems the company provide.

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Just downloaded and tried the new version today and I cannae see much difference from the last time I tried LO, a couple of months ago. Sad fact is that, on OSX anyway, and for all its sluggish, bloated fugliness, NeoOffice still pisses all over any other OO incarnation out there.

    Why the hell Apple can't just embrace Open Document format in Pages and put us out of our misery, I don't know. Thank God, I mostly do graphics stuff, so don't have to open a Word Processor that often because, every time I do, I feel like I've fallen through a time-warp into the 1990s.

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  6. techfreak
    Thumb Up

    Keep at it!!

    LibreOffice 3.5 will make its way to my current Ubuntu installation. LO is very powerful in its own right, but needs a bit more polish to satisfy me. I don't mind the toolbars and the menus, but some aspect of the user interface seem vary dated (e.g. form controls that don't use the current theme making them hard to seem, jagged graphic elements). Meanwhile, on paper at least, it bring much competition to the market.

    My experience from the work environment is that average user's needs would be completely fulfilled with Abiword, and Gnumeric.

    I'm wondering why never hear of other office suites (e.g: Kingsoft Office, Softmaker Office)

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why does the LibreOffice 3.5 installer want me to close Firefox before it will complete?

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  8. Aqua Marina

    @ site admins

    I did a search for "libre" hoping to find this article and amke a comment, but only came up with an article from 3rd Oct 2011.

    Have a chat with your website admins please!

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    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  9. JDX Gold badge

    @Bruno Girin

    It's software development 101... if 'improving' the codebase makes it less stable, you're not doing it right.

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  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Access 2000

    I'd still miss it for general data manipulation and small level import / export / update tasks to various odbc databases.

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