LWN: Comments on "LibreOffice 3.3.2 is now available"

LibreOffice 3.3.2 is now available

halla — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 20:24:23 +0000

As Dorothy L. Sayers put it in "Murder Must Advertise", "if, by the most far-fetched stretch of ingenuity, an indecent meaning could be read into a headline, that was the meaning that the great British Public would infallibly read into it". Your ability to do so proves her point, but not your point that Calligra Suite is a bad name.

LibreOffice 3.3.2 is now available

nye — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 14:55:40 +0000

>Further proof that 'Calligra' is an awful name: this time it took me six rereadings to determine that it was not in fact called 'Caligula', even though the exact same misreading happened last time I read its name here.

TBH I think that says rather more about you than the choice of name :P

Seriously, no name is going to please everyone but Calligra actually seems like a really good choice to me - it's not quite a real word, nor a generic description - like calling it 'Word Processor' - so it's unique and memorable, but it *is* evocative of writing and suggests the purpose of the software more clearly than most names, without being ambiguous or uncomfortable to pronounce (I would feel embarrassed suggesting an application named 'LibreOffice' to my boss).

Off the top of my head, the only OSS application I can think of that's as well named is Inkscape.

LibreOffice 3.3.2 is now available

nix — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 20:42:14 +0000

Further proof that 'Calligra' is an awful name: this time it took me six rereadings to determine that it was not in fact called 'Caligula', even though the exact same misreading happened last time I read its name here.

LibreOffice 3.3.2 is now available

jospoortvliet — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 22:52:34 +0000

Ok, but 35.000 lines of code is nothing but a drop in an ocean of millions of lines of code. I agree with parent that it is time to start porting big parts of LibreOffice to more modern functionality (or indeed focus on Calligra as a project with a less foggy future).

I'm pretty happy with Meeks' blog about a GSOC project to port the canvas to Cairo and I really hope it'll happen. That would be a step forward - re-using and sharing existing Free Software. Standing on the shoulders of giants means LibreOffice has to be a giant itself - which is exactly the problem with it...

LibreOffice 3.3.2 is now available

halla — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 11:04:07 +0000

Well, there is some good news on that topic. Since it's not "mainly" a Qt issue but completely a Qt issue, we were completely dependent on Qt fixing this bug: http://bugreports.qt.nokia.com/browse/QTBUG-10615. But there is movement here, and http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2011/03/14/hint-hint-nudge-nudge-say-no-more/ gives good hope that Qt 4.8 will contain the solution.

Personally, I set hinting to none anyway, since I don't like the thin, spindly fonts hinting gives so I have always had fine font output in Calligra Words :-).

LibreOffice 3.3.2 is now available

jsanders — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 10:28:20 +0000

Has calligra managed to improve its pretty awful text output? The character spacing was all messed up when documents were printed. I understand this was mainly due to Qt, but it would be nice to look at Calligra again if the situation has improved.

LibreOffice 3.3.2 is now available

ingwa — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 11:14:58 +0000

Strange! I understand that these Office suites have a lot of "widgets", but I would have thought that the main work is in the implementation of the functionality of these widgets, not in the widgets themselves..

This is true for Calligra, where there is a very clear separate between what we call our Office Engine and the user interface. It is not true for any other free office suite or application, as far as I know.

In the Calligra source there is now two official user interfaces:
* the desktop one which used to be the standard
* the mobile one which was developed by Nokia under the name FreOffice for Maemo 5 but which has since been renamed to Calligra Mobile.

Many more interfaces are in the works, both by the community and inside various companies.

LibreOffice 3.3.2 is now available

halla — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 17:28:25 +0000

Hey! Our _project_ is pretty good! We're an open, welcoming community, we have plenty of fun things to do for hackers, organize great sprints, don't shirk spending a lot of time with newcomers to get them up to speed. The engine and file import code is pretty good, too. And now the applications are coming together, file export to Microsoft Office might happen this year. All in all, we're in good shape to welcome more volunteers to share the fun!

LibreOffice 3.3.2 is now available

cmorgan — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 15:09:39 +0000

Consider that using QT internally has other advantages of not having to abstract directory searching, unicode character handling, regex and other features.

As an office suite LibreOffice accomplishes its goals if it runs well and works across multiple platforms. Why reinvent the wheel if there are libraries that can both reduce development time (although not in the short term), and simplify/remove/cleanup the project?

Imo if Calligra had the number of developers that OO/LO had it would be a much better project as it is already built on Qt and its code is quite a bit smaller and simpler.

Qt port

eean — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 13:57:37 +0000

The point is that the code is likely all coupled with their widget implementation.

I do think they should be open to the benefits that QtCore can bring to any C++ program. But yea, porting a UI intense app from one graphic toolkit to another isn't a 'port' at all, its just a rewrite.

LibreOffice 3.3.2 is now available

mjthayer — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 09:06:09 +0000

> The only major problem I have right now with LibreOffice/OpenOffice is figuring out how to do even simple box-and-arrows diagrams in a way that is round-trip compatible with MS Word. So far I can do the pictures in OpenOffice so the MS Office user sees them more or less OK, but he cannot edit them.

That is probably an area well worth spending effort in - in fact the most valuable effort might be in making the import/export filters understandable and accessible to "small time" contributors. I must admit that I haven't looked at the filter code myself, but I understand that that it is hard enough going that making it easier to contribute to would be a respectable challenge.

LibreOffice 3.3.2 is now available

eru — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 05:58:40 +0000

Considering that OO's interface looks like something from 80-s right now, a new UI would definitely be a good feature.

80's? More like mid-1990's, as in Windows 95. (See Windows 2.0 or the original Macintosh for what the quite a bit more primitive 80's UI looks like). And I don't consider it a bad style at all from the point of view of getting work done. There are some small inconveniences that I think could be fixed without redoing everything. Mostly inconsistencies in what setting is in which menu. There also could be recently-used list of styles, or a customizable "favorite-styles" menu.

By contrast, I find the MS Office ribbon interface terribly confusing.

The only major problem I have right now with LibreOffice/OpenOffice is figuring out how to do even simple box-and-arrows diagrams in a way that is round-trip compatible with MS Word. So far I can do the pictures in OpenOffice so the MS Office user sees them more or less OK, but he cannot edit them.

LibreOffice 3.3.2 is now available

Cyberax — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 02:30:27 +0000

Spreadsheet panes and text editing pane are indeed custom widgets and will remain that way even after a rewrite.

But that doesn't mean you need to reinvent the wheel to build them. For instance, drawing and compositing can be done using QT primitives (which may be accelerated). Event handling in QT should be adequate for them as well.

LibreOffice 3.3.2 is now available

grantingram — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 23:50:12 +0000

Having given it a quick spin, the improvements in Impress are umm impressive. Admittedly the slide handling in the old version wasn't great but it is a real step up.

LibreOffice 3.3.2 is now available

Cyberax — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 23:38:42 +0000

Considering that OO's interface looks like something from 80-s right now, a new UI would definitely be a good feature.

And MS has actually made a good decision with their "ribbon" interface. We've tried MS Office 2010 on new users here and its interface works wonders - people here are now using styles instead of manually stuffing things with spaces.

LibreOffice 3.3.2 is now available

csigler — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 22:52:19 +0000

> Links point to x86_64 directory but the actual files contain x86/i586 rpms.

Already reported on the LibreOffice dev discussion mailing list. Should be fixed as of 6:15 PM EDT 3/22/11.

LibreOffice 3.3.2 is now available

cmccabe — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 20:59:40 +0000

Maybe it would be better to spend that immense amount of effort on features that users care about?

I know, I know. That's crazy talk!

LibreOffice 3.3.2 is now available

s106660 — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 20:27:52 +0000

Anyone else noticed that x64 rpm packages do not exist? Links point to x86_64 directory but the actual files contain x86/i586 rpms.

LibreOffice 3.3.2 is now available

Cyberax — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 19:56:40 +0000

I'm fascinated by the LibreOffice and I'm following its development closely.

Porting it to QT is not really that a big deal, and it can be done in stages. First add QT as a backend for OO's own drawing and then slowly refactor code.

It's an immense amount of work, but it can be done gradually.

LibreOffice 3.3.2 is now available

moltonel — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 18:10:45 +0000

>> Everyone I have spoken to said that porting LibreOffice to Qt is more like reimplementing
>> from scratch and your efforts should better be focused on improving KOffice, err, Calligra.
>
> Strange! I understand that these Office suites have a lot of "widgets", but I would have
> thought that the main work is in the implementation of the functionality of these widgets, not
> in the widgets themselves..

The thing is, for most things in an office suite, the widget *is* functionality. A generic grid widget doesn't come near the needs of a spreadsheet for example. Word processors do not use their toolkit's text-wrap facilities, because of pixel-perfect compatibility concerns.

Sure you could replace the menus and option screens with standard QT widgets, for a start (handling two event loops at once, somehow). But the transition period will be long and really painfull, for an end result that'll only be marginally better.

LibreOffice 3.3.2 is now available

renox — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 17:03:10 +0000

> Everyone I have spoken to said that porting LibreOffice to Qt is more like reimplementing from scratch and your efforts should better be focused on improving KOffice, err, Calligra.

Strange! I understand that these Office suites have a lot of "widgets", but I would have thought that the main work is in the implementation of the functionality of these widgets, not in the widgets themselves..

LibreOffice 3.3.2 is now available

spaetz — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 16:48:55 +0000

> LibreOffice is a great project but the codebase is filled with overlapping libraries, old unused code etc.

The first couple of months have focused on removing cruft. I stopped counting at 35k LOC removed.

> I'd love to see them port to qt or some other cross platform library that would focus the project on building an office suite and get away from having to build tools and widgets to be cross platform.

Everyone I have spoken to said that porting LibreOffice to QT is more like reimplementing from scratch and your efforts should better be focused on improving KOffice, err, Calligra.

LibreOffice 3.3.2 is now available

cmorgan — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 16:31:32 +0000

LibreOffice is a great project but the codebase is filled with overlapping libraries, old unused code etc. I'd love to see them port to qt or some other cross platform library that would focus the project on building an office suite and get away from having to build tools and widgets to be cross platform.