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LibreOffice 4.1 released
LibreOffice 4.1 has been released. More information about the changes in 4.1 can be found on the "New Features and Fixes" page. "LibreOffice 4.1 is also importing some AOO [Apache OpenOffice] features, including the Symphony sidebar, which is considered experimental. LibreOffice developers are working at the integration with the widget layout technique (which will make it dynamically resizeable and consistent with the behaviour of LibreOffice dialog windows)."
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LibreOffice 4.1 released Posted Jul 25, 2013 15:12 UTC (Thu) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]
And it uses harfbuzz-ng for opentype text shaping on free destkops!
Almost a decade after the first text layout summits GTK, QT, Firefox, Xetex and LibreOffice have finally managed to merge their smart font stacks. When you consider how critical text processing is for all of them and the amount of legacy text processing code they had to change, this is no small achievement.
Congratulations! The free desktop has its uniscribe replacement now.
LibreOffice 4.1 released Posted Jul 25, 2013 17:04 UTC (Thu) by dakas (guest, #88146) [Link]
I am disappointed that this LibreOffice announcement has not yet received its standard bark and scoffing from a well-known source, but am confident that I just looked too early and that I can go fetch popcorn.
LibreOffice 4.1 released Posted Jul 25, 2013 17:48 UTC (Thu) by HelloWorld (subscriber, #56129) [Link]
How is your comment supposed to be any more useful that the comments you're criticising?
LibreOffice 4.1 released Posted Jul 25, 2013 17:51 UTC (Thu) by branden (subscriber, #7029) [Link]
...because he mentioned popcorn.
LibreOffice 4.1 released Posted Jul 25, 2013 18:53 UTC (Thu) by Rehdon (guest, #45440) [Link]
Totally! XD
LibreOffice 4.1 released Posted Jul 25, 2013 20:04 UTC (Thu) by jonabbey (subscriber, #2736) [Link]
He's trolling the announcement over at Ars Technica now.
LibreOffice 4.1 released Posted Jul 25, 2013 20:19 UTC (Thu) by dakas (guest, #88146) [Link] He's trolling the announcement over at Ars Technica now.Yup, but he's not the only one there downvoted quite below zero for good reason. Makes me glad I use TeX/LaTeX. Seriously.
LibreOffice 4.1 released Posted Jul 25, 2013 21:33 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
Thanks. Made it clear who the person is. Seems the continued "get lost" responses on LWN.net finally helped, hopefully the same can be done other sites as well.
Talk about your own product already! LibreOffice announcement actually gives praise towards AOO/Symphony several times in their release announcement.
LibreOffice 4.1 released Posted Jul 26, 2013 11:03 UTC (Fri) by bobdog1 (guest, #92071) [Link]
To be fair even other AOO developers ask him to cool it: https://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/openoffice-dev/...
LibreOffice 4.1 released Posted Jul 26, 2013 12:33 UTC (Fri) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
My only dislike of AOO is his posts. Aside from this I don't care (so no hate but also no love towards the rest). It would be cool to hear more interesting things about it, but seems most people whom I follow work on LibreOffice. I like reading about build system changes, changes to make Calc work differently/faster, switching to gtkbuilder xml files, etc. Personally I don't have much of a reason to run an office suite so I rarely start LibreOffice (IMO usability wise it needs quite a bit of work, just way nicer to use Microsoft Excel). So although I don't use it much, I enjoy the time I spend on knowing what is going on at LibreOffice (read most news stories, blogposts, watch 30min+ video recordings). IMO LibreOffice is the nicest project to lurk. I don't follow their forums/mailing lists, doesn't seem like I am missing out on anything.
LibreOffice 4.1 released Posted Jul 25, 2013 17:58 UTC (Thu) by simosx (subscriber, #24338) [Link]
Congratulations to the community for their work in producing another stellar version of LibreOffice!
Why LibreOffice Posted Jul 25, 2013 18:51 UTC (Thu) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link]
Another nice overview page from the press release is: https://www.libreoffice.org/features/why-libreoffice/
It lists not just the latest 4.1 features with screenshots, but also highlights some interesting improvements since the openoffice community moved to The Document Foundation from the LibreOffice 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6 and 4.0 releases.
Why LibreOffice Posted Jul 25, 2013 19:17 UTC (Thu) by dakas (guest, #88146) [Link] It seems rather hard to read much sense into[...] highlights some interesting improvements since the openoffice community moved to The Document Foundation from the LibreOffice 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6 and 4.0 releases.so you probably should split this into a few separate sentences, possibly make them clearer individually as well as put some explanations between them. In the current form I find it impossible to guess what you mean here.
Why LibreOffice Posted Jul 25, 2013 19:30 UTC (Thu) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link]
Sorry not a native English speaker. But I think the page speaks for itself. It has lots of pictures which tell more than a thousand words :)
You are probably right that in English one should write shorter sentences. And one should not try to make "combined" sentences. How about:
Another nice overview page from the press release is: https://www.libreoffice.org/features/why-libreoffice/ That page shows lots of cool features with screenshots. It lists not just the latest 4.1 LibreOffice features. It highlights improvements made since the openoffice community moved to The Document Foundation. That includes notable features from LibreOffice 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6 and 4.0.
Is that better English?
Why LibreOffice Posted Jul 25, 2013 19:48 UTC (Thu) by dakas (guest, #88146) [Link] Most importantly, it puts "move to" and "from" insince the openoffice community moved to The Document Foundation from the LibreOffice 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6 and 4.0 releasesinto different sentences. You've interwoven several sentences in a manner where it was not possible to figure out what belonged where. Now that you've made clear what you actually wanted to say, I have to say that the since the openoffice community moved to The Document Foundationis such a loaded representation that I would consider any popcorn consumed on the basis of irate replies to it undeserved. It's more fun picking sides if at least one of them is taking the high road. Seems like both still have a chance to be first.
Why LibreOffice Posted Jul 25, 2013 20:14 UTC (Thu) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link]
Ah, OK. Apologies again then. I thought that was just a fact. But I guess how one describes what happened in 2010 might indeed distract from the message. So lets just try again:
Go look at https://www.libreoffice.org/features/why-libreoffice/ it has lots of screenshots of features since 2010.
Hope that is both grammatically correct English and unoffensive.
Why LibreOffice Posted Jul 25, 2013 20:43 UTC (Thu) by dakas (guest, #88146) [Link] I thought that was just a fact.Well, if since the openoffice community moved to The Document Foundationwere just a fact, there would not be anything but LibreOffice now. So it is more like "since The Document Foundation was formed in order to rally a community around the LibreOffice project forked from the OpenOffice code base". As a point of comparison, I don't think I remember ever reading something as loaded as "since the Emacs community moved to Lucid Emacs" and that topic was really Shitstorm Central. But indead: instead of finetuning the political correctness of a statement about a sensitive area, just say "since 2010" and be done. The easiest way not to step on anybody's toes is to not cover unnecessary ground.
Why LibreOffice Posted Jul 25, 2013 21:38 UTC (Thu) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link]
I was just referring to why and by who The Document Foundation was created in 2010 https://lwn.net/Articles/407383/ as explained on their website https://www.documentfoundation.org/foundation/
Why LibreOffice Posted Jul 25, 2013 22:08 UTC (Thu) by dakas (guest, #88146) [Link]
Well, I wanted to say that it takes some time until people understand that inflammatory material does not really help anybody (and indeed, the XEmacs and Emacs websites have both seen their fair share of purging those over the time): there is nothing gained by drawing newcomers into the old animosities, however well they might have seemed to be deserved at one point of time.
But following the link you pointed out, I did not actually find the same kind of apodeictic claim to the OpenOffice community that your statement contained. So unless somebody cleansed the website just today, it would appear that you are mostly responsible yourself for coming up with a view of the situation that others might with good reason consider out of balance, whether or not that was intentional.
If there is one thing that the great Emacs schism has taught, it is that nobody gains anything from keeping bad blood boiling. This lesson has not just improved Emacs/XEmacs relations, it probably also helped keeping the gcc/egcs fork under control and limited in duration. And it might have made people realize that some kinds of resentment are not worth the trouble of maintaining.
All the best
Why LibreOffice Posted Jul 26, 2013 3:19 UTC (Fri) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
I'm sorry but Emacs XEmacs is not the correct analogy....
Jenkins/Hudson is more like it.... and sure, there is still a Hudson.... heck even hosted at a renowned Foundation...
Why LibreOffice Posted Jul 26, 2013 7:25 UTC (Fri) by branden (subscriber, #7029) [Link]
"Apodeictic"?
*Godlike* certainty? :)
Why LibreOffice Posted Jul 26, 2013 11:01 UTC (Fri) by bobdog1 (guest, #92071) [Link]
The OOo community did move. Then Oracle fired the StarDivision remaining developers. Then there was a code drop onto Apache. Look at the Apache Incubator list from June 2011 and look at postings from IBM people trying to work out how to rebuild the community and its infrastructure from scratch. AOO is mostly new people.
Why LibreOffice Posted Jul 26, 2013 13:06 UTC (Fri) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link]
Factually correct. But as pointed out above how you call something is a political minefield that invites debates on who the name truly "belongs to", or who "forked" from whom. So lets leave the historical renaming of the community for what it is and just talk about the technical features and improvements that the community was able to achieve in the last 3 years. That was really all I wanted to point out. That the press release also included a link with that nice overview of progress made these last 3 years.
Why LibreOffice Posted Jul 29, 2013 19:30 UTC (Mon) by rcweir (subscriber, #48888) [Link]
The portion of the community that moved to LibreOffice moved to LibreOffice. The portion that moved to Apache moved to Apache. Any other statement of this is at variance with the facts.
In the end you need to stand on your features and quality, not on your creation myth and your manifesto.
Why LibreOffice Posted Jul 29, 2013 19:49 UTC (Mon) by rcweir (subscriber, #48888) [Link]
And nothing at all happened since 2011? If your story about AOO ends in 2011 it is a rather odd and distorted story.
I think we have a good set of volunteers:
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OOOUSERS/Dire...
There are some old names there, ex-Oracle OpenOffice experts as well as other long-term developers, some with 20+ years experience with the code base. Many of us have known each other for many years working in the OOo community. I, for example, presented at the OpenOffice conferences in Lyon, Barcelona, Beijing and Budapest. I see many people at Apache now who were also at these conferences. We went to Apache not LibreOffice. I realize this is inconvenient for you to accept, but your view of a community total and entire that took actions to go to LO as a body, is a fiction, and a ridiculous one at that.
And it is hardly a criticism to say that we had to establish new infrastructure. You did as well. The difference with us is we don't need to maintain it entirely by ourselves. We're able to tap into broader expertise at Apache for this. Ditto for press relations, trademark management, domain registrations, fundraising, conferences, etc. Yes, it took some time to get started at Apache, but now that we are, we can focus almost entirely on coding. This improves our efficiency. We don't have developers reviewing tax forms like you do.
To ... from ... Posted Jul 25, 2013 20:21 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
It's not the length of the sentence which is the problem per se.
The sentence you wrote /looks/ like it ends with a to ... from .. pairing, which is a common choice in English. Here's an example sentence which does that:
"On Friday, after six months of turmoil, I finally made it to Houston in Texas from the village of Little Farthing in England"
The to ... phrase and from ... phrase are a pair, which the reader understands as a transition from one to the other. In my example sentence they're both places, but they could be employers, states of mind, any comparable pair that would naturally be separated by space or (thanks to the way metaphor works in English and most languages) time.
In your sentence we have "to The Document Foundation" and "from the LibreOffice 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6 and 4.0 releases" which are different kinds of thing, one is an organisation and the other a series of software versions or events. Of course you didn't intend someone to try to imagine a transition between software releases and an organisation but the to ... from ... formula makes native speakers expect a transition, when they don't find one they have to start over in understanding the sentence. So careful writers would avoid doing this.
There are some other infelicities, but I think it is this in particular that makes people likely to be a little confused.
To ... from ... Posted Jul 25, 2013 20:34 UTC (Thu) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link]
I think the problem would be solved by simply changing "from" to "starting with" in the original sentence, no?
To ... from ... Posted Jul 25, 2013 20:41 UTC (Thu) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link]
Thanks. That makes sense. So s/moved to/joined at/ would also have worked to avoid the confusion. "...improvements since the community joined at The Document Foundation from all previous LibreOffice releases."
To ... from ... Posted Jul 26, 2013 11:33 UTC (Fri) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
Hmm, as a native speaker I don't find that much clearer after all. Maybe the sheer distance (between "improvements" and "from all previous LibreOffice releases") really is a barrier to understanding. I also don't think you can use "joined at" like that in this sentence.
Oh well, this stuff is hard, thanks for trying, and now back to actual discussion about the release, features etc. hopefully.
LibreOffice 4.1 released Posted Jul 26, 2013 7:35 UTC (Fri) by maxiaojun (subscriber, #91482) [Link]
I always wonder, given that many OpenDocument jerks all over the world, why ODF 1.2 is still not accepted by ISO?
LibreOffice 4.1 released Posted Jul 26, 2013 7:58 UTC (Fri) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]
Jerks. You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means. Go look it up, please.
LibreOffice 4.1 released Posted Jul 26, 2013 10:01 UTC (Fri) by oever (subscriber, #987) [Link]
ODF 1.2 has been submitted to ISO and is still in process of being approved.
Status of ODF 1.2 ISO Submission
LibreOffice 4.1 released Posted Jul 27, 2013 9:28 UTC (Sat) by maxiaojun (subscriber, #91482) [Link]
Another question is why ODF is still a second-class citizen in Google ecosystem.
http://www.muktware.com/4529/why-google-killing-open-docu...
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