If we look at LibreOffice and compare:
LibreOffice, that is *good* (not more) software and
*excellent* public relations.
OpenOffice, that is *excellent* software and *pretty bad*
public relations.
Secondly, as alluded to above, we should prepare ourselves
for the FUD, the "AOO is dead" victory chants, the numerous
anti-AOO and anti-Apache spewings, etc... There are some
who will use this as a self-serving soapboxing opportunity,
and warp the facts into some Bizarro alternate universe
history. We should be there to set the facts straight but
also resign ourselves to the fact that their voices will
likely be louder than ours.
[...]
But the main reason why, imo, was because we were also
end-user. End users needed to make a *choice* between
AOO and SomethingElse.
Don't say the word.
By no longer being an end-user application, that goes away.
End users play no role any more? Good luck with that.
My experience would be the contrary. I felt Libre Office had better document compatibility and a better user experience, so I stopped using Open Office. Maybe it improved since then. I would also like to see something to back up the claim you are talking about.
In my personal experience, when I first tried Open Office it ended up being a clunky, unreliable clone of older Microsoft Office products. It was still better than a kick in the teeth though.
In all honesty, after writing my own simple manual editor for PDF, I really don't envy the task of making something compatible with multiple other formats. It would be nice to see the project archived or completely released to the community to continue work on.
> ... clunky, unreliable clone of older Microsoft Office products. It was still better than a kick in the teeth though.
That's exactly why i am using Open/Libre office; at some point Microsoft Office got such a complicate UI (ever since they pushed the ribbon bar - that's when they kicked me in the teeth) that i am unable to use it - the alternative uses a much less complicated UI so i am with it.
Does the MS Office UI conform with the Windows UI guidelines ? I am not quite sure..
As for 'unreliable' - i can't share this perspective; LibreOffice works for me; didn't have any problems with OpenOffice either - before i switched to LibreOffice. I switched because LibreOffice is supposed to have better support.
Interesting that MS often gets to a point where the UI is quite adequate, but then they have to come up with something new, so they come out with an update that breaks it all. Happened with Windows, Office, Visual Studio, Visual Basic - you name it; i think it also happened with gmail - so it does not seem to be something exclusive to MS; i wonder if that is a general law of software development.
I almost never use any MS Office product (Latex for serious writing, R for statistics, ...) but when I have to because of a client or whatever, I find the Ribbon to be convenient for a non-power user.
It also makes shortcuts discoverable! Just hit the alt-key and virtually every thing pops up with it hot key. Hitting alt in a standard windows app only tells me what menus are available, not which actions are available.
Ok, maybe shortcuts are discoverable, but actual actions no longer are. Not everyone finds the ribbon an improvement; I feel the need to point that out since so many comments appeared praising the awfully opaque ribbon.
My disability means that I have to read through every single option, verbalizing it. Changing the layout that I know so well has meant that MS Office is no longer on the list of applications I bother with.
I know where everything is in Libre Office, it's quicker and less stressful to use. A number of people have told me that it's too bad, I'll just have to learn the new system. Honestly? I really don't care what those Microsoft fanboys think. The "new" system is just far too much work for me to be bothered re-learning. Libre Office/Open Office is more than good enough.
In my opinion yes. Or rather, Windows users have had decades being trained to find certain functionality under certain menu options to the degree that most will do it by second nature irrespective of the application they're in. The ribbon menu throws all that muscle memory away and leaves you trying to find it again in an interface that no other applications use.
I don't frequently need to use office products but when I do I find them absolutely infuriating.
The "no other applications use" is not strictly true anymore, and hasn't been for a while - most stock Windows apps use Ribbon now, even Explorer.
But in general, the problem that you (and the other adjacent comment) is describing is different - you're not talking about discoverability so much so as learned muscle memory. Obviously, changes do break that, but this doesn't necessarily imply that for a new user, discoverability is worse. You'd need to run a study to determine that.
The ribbon is probably the best example of "people are resistant to change". In retrospect, because I was grumpy about it too at the time. But once you get used to it, it's vastly superior in every conceivable way to the old UI.
It wasn't optimized for "people like it", it was optimized for ease-of-use and discoverability.
You could simultaneously hate it with a passion, and also be 3 times more efficient at editing a document while using it, and that counts as a success.
When the ribbon works, which is most of the time, it's pretty good.
When not, it can be a complete PITA. A few years ago I tried to change the scaling of an axis of a chart in Excel from linear to log, and it was so convoluted that I had to look up in the help each time I did it.
I guess the relevant question is whether this would have been easier if the ribbon didn't exist, and you had to do it through the menu bar.
It appears to me that the issue here is that Excel makes scaling the axis of a chart convoluted. Not that the ribbon makes it harder than the regular menu bar.
Love the ribbon too. OO/LO/iWork have become unusable for me since the ribbon.
The initial implementation of the ribbon sucked. It was too static, it didn't hide and took up a whole lot of space, and it didn't give you any pointers on KB shortcuts.
It also took MS some time of gathering data and telemetry to improve the layout. And frankly, it took users some time to adjust to the change.
The ribbon is much better now. But the people who like it, possibly still suffering from having to maybe defend it when it legitimately had flaws, are not as loud about it online.
I sort of think the infrastructure is in mostly in place to allow for themes that largely mimic the ribbon. Optional, of course :-)
The default should not be the ribbon, but there are aspects of the Ribbon LO could use.
But it's funny - the Symphony stuff that was given to Apache by IBM, and which Apache integrated and we snagged and further fixed and are enhancing is in so many ways better than the Ribbon! The Sidebar could, IMO, be enhanced and turned into the Ribbon.
"Does the MS Office UI conform with the Windows UI guidelines ?"
Definitely not. The ribbon style and circle menu are a different design universe entirely. I agree that moving things around was annoying.
"As for 'unreliable' - i can't share this perspective; LibreOffice works for me; didn't have any problems with OpenOffice either - before i switched to LibreOffice. I switched because LibreOffice is supposed to have better support."
The unreliability for me was a mixture of not such great support and occasional crashing. Libreoffice was much better.
I originally moved from Microsoft office because I got tired of pirating the latest version. It was a hassle because of the time to download (I had a slow connection) and the risk of viruses each stage. The move to Linux was the final nail in the coffin for me.
As time has gone on I have come to appreciate open software, which again makes Windows (or Apple) not an option for me.
My last remark was too snarky and out of context, I am sorry. You want both projects to merge again with OO being the 'core' and LO the 'user interface'? Sounds intriguing, but are both code bases still compatible enough for that? Would this not be more effort than gain?
What is obvious is that the AOO project cannot support, at
the present time, being an end-user focused effort. I would
suggest we focus on not being one, but instead being a
framework or library that can be consumed by actual
end-user implementations.
OpenOffice and LibreOffice are already "merged". In fact in the past years, after the fork, LibreOffice developers regularly tracked OpenOffice source code repository and merged all the useful changes they could find, by either picking the original code or re-implementing it their own way.
In addition to that they also completely overhauled and simplified the build system, removed tons of dead code and translated German comments which where there since StarOffice, replaced Java components with equivalent ones written in C/C++, are in the process of switching from GTK2 to GTK3 (mandatory to get Wayland support in Linux), etc. Doing so they made the LibreOffice source code base sustainable on the long term and lowered the difficulty entry level for new contributors, while apparently OpenOffice buildbots are not even able to rebuild their software since last year...
The only useful asset which remains to OpenOffice is the trademark.
"In fact in the past years, after the fork, LibreOffice developers regularly tracked OpenOffice source code repository and merged all the useful changes they could find, by either picking the original code or re-implementing it their own way."
And therein lies the problem... AOO was simply consumed. There was no quid-pro-quo where these were then donated back to AOO. Of course, the ALv2 does not require that, and so LO was perfectly within their right to not donate back. But it also seems somewhat "shady", and not the kind of behavior one would expect of a fellow FOSS project, but more like a corporate FOSS bottom feeder.
So development was basically all single stream... what was useful was used but nothing was given back.
I wish people would recall this when they mention how "arrogant" Apache is, or how Apache acted in bad faith and stuff like that or that Apache wanted to "control everything". Certainly if a single, unified OO eco-system was important to LO/TDF, they had opportunities to help make that happen. Let's at least be honest here.
LibreOffice exists because Sun wasn't accepting useful contributions to OpenOffice or putting much effort into maintaining it, and then Sun was acquired by Oracle, an open-source-hostile (to say the least; they killed OpenSolaris and sued Google for reimplementing Java!) company. So they had to fork.
Of course, because everyone then ran away to LibreOffice, OpenOffice basically died. And, as expected, Oracle hardly cared for it, stopped work on it entirely and handed it off to the Apache Foundation to die.
Really, they should've transferred the trademark and copyright to the Document Foundation instead, or at least coöperated with them. But that wouldn't have been spiteful enough of the community. In fact:
> Oracle was invited to become a member of The Document Foundation. However, Oracle demanded that all members of the OpenOffice.org Community Council involved with The Document Foundation step down from the OOo Community Council, claiming a conflict of interest.
> It was originally hoped that the LibreOffice name would be provisional, as Oracle was invited to become a member of The Document Foundation. However, Oracle rejected requests to donate the OpenOffice.org brand to the project.
Why should LO have an interest to switch to an OO core/library? Just to gain the OO name back and be present on the website? Tough deal. Also, I still think the code bases are too different by now [1] and there is little to gain.
Without at at least one 'consumer'/UI (which you do not want or cannot provide) there is little point in developing an OO core/library, or is it? Which leads to my snarky comment about end-users and their role...
The Open Office eco-system is larger, by far, than LO and AOO. Maybe LO may not benefit at all from a permissive licensed core (although it certainly has benefited from it, as noted elsewhere), but certainly other OO implementations might.
We have seen, and even the FSF admits it, that open standards do best with permissive licensed implementations. So if you want wide adoption of open standards, a permissive license is likely better.
The world is not just LO or AOO. After all, the enemy, so-to-speak, is this proprietary s/w called MSO...
