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Open Source Linux

LibreOffice 3.5.1 Released With Fixes 128

Thinkcloud writes "The Document Foundation has released LibreOffice 3.5.1. Some of the core fixes include: don't crash for empty input data in charts, UI fix on PDF export dialog, don't copy page styles into temporary clipboard doc, and use the correct db range for the copy. 'Another milestone for the LibreOffice project was hit this past month as well. "The number of TDF hackers has overtaken the threshold of 400 code developers, with a large majority of independent volunteers and several companies paying full time hackers." Although some are paid developers, no company employs more than 7% of developers, keeping the project independent and self-governing.'"
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LibreOffice 3.5.1 Released With Fixes

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  • I wish they'd improve the Base application. It's horrendously slow and clunky and has a horrible interface. I can't stand that I have to right click on the table name and hit paste to paste data into a table, rather than just doing it directly in the the table view editor (the way most people would think to do it).
    • Interesting how un-Access-like the base app is. Is Access 2003's functionality that hard to duplicate?
      • Access 2003? Even Access 2000 would be a huge landmark for open source!

        • by h4rr4r ( 612664 )

          Because a real DB is also free so why use a dumbed down one?

          • Re:I wish... (Score:4, Insightful)

            by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Monday March 19, 2012 @10:44AM (#39402955) Journal
            I'm pretty sure that Access' mission in life is making it comparatively easy for people to develop database frontends(and often get in over their heads and produce some real nightmares...) not to be a database per se. Although I think that MS has been moving toward killing JET, in favor of SQL Server 3-legged-puppy edition, to make upselling to SQL server proper easier, the point is making it easy to dump some forms and buttons in place without having to be a real programmer.
            • Re:I wish... (Score:4, Interesting)

              by ArhcAngel ( 247594 ) on Monday March 19, 2012 @11:09AM (#39403223)
              THIS! We have an Oracle corporate wide license and recently a new manager hired several people for her group. Unknown to IT these people were brought in to create a complete DB in Access. We found out when she approached me and asked me to install Access on everyone's PC. She became irate when I said no that she should be using our Oracle DB. Ironically they were pulling data from one of the Oracle databases to populate their Access DB. Her argument was that it was "easier" to get stuff done in Access and she had never had any problems at her previous employer. Unfortunately she was also friends with the new president of the company and got what she wanted. The guy who created the DB moved on and the DB "broke" and IT doesn't support Access so they had to hire him back to maintain his code. If it was so "easy" why couldn't they get somebody else in their group to maintain it?
              • Would you rather have a 1 million line excel spreedsheet where there are 5 different versions all emailed around and not synchronized instead? Yes, this happens because people do not have time to wait for I.T. and some BS policy on databases. This causes a lot more headaches.

                I will take access thank you.

                If it is such a pain do not buy an Oracle License. Use Mysql or postgresql and use ODBC as an external datasource. A fresh college grad making websites in college should be able to set it up in about a day o

                • Would you rather have a 1 million line excel spreedsheet where there are 5 different versions all emailed around and not synchronized instead?

                  We have that anyway. Every day there is another Excel spreadsheet unleashed that some guy cobbled together to pull in data from twelve other spreadsheets and two external data feeds that he gave to his buddies and now he has left the company and the hard coded credentials he had embedded in the macro no longer works. We are called to "fix" the problem and it needs to be done in less than 10 minutes for a report that is critical to the business.

                  Yes, this happens because people do not have time to wait for I.T. and some BS policy on databases. This causes a lot more headaches.

                  Who said anything about waiting for IT? The tools and abilit

              • Again, I'm not totally deep on the dirty details; but it is my understanding that you can use Access as a friendly rapid frontend development tool for any database that there is an ODBC driver that makes Windows happy available for, which I think includes Oracle stuff. I'm sure that the further from the One Intended Path you travel, the uglier the subtle gotchas get; but your Access enthusiasts must really have been drinking the kool-aide if nobody was able to sneak an ODBC connection to a database that the
                • You are correct. They were pulling data from an Oracle DB via ODBC to build the Access DB. They knew virtually nothing about SQL and had little desire to learn because Access was "good enough" for their needs. Except...when it wasn't
            • by jyx ( 454866 )

              I'm pretty sure that Access' mission in life is making it comparatively easy for people to develop database frontends(and often get in over their heads and produce some real nightmares...) not to be a database per se. Although I think that MS has been moving toward killing JET, in favor of SQL Server 3-legged-puppy edition, to make upselling to SQL server proper easier, the point is making it easy to dump some forms and buttons in place without having to be a real programmer.

              It was... However the latest ribbonified reincarnation of Access is a big bucket of wtf. Its uglier than a hat full of arseholes and as user friendly as a razor blade ice cream. Now its like some sort of bastardized excel with forms. And whilst you might be able to make a case for the ribbon tool bar on word and excel (NOOOOO! I will hate if for EVER!) it sure as hell doesn't belong on a development platform.

              (Can someone please explain to me how the new navigation thingy works? What was so hard about 'table

        • by Anonymous Coward

          LOL, no way. Open source might need the equivalent of 4th dimension.
          Unless the recent versions of Access allow multiuser concurrent connection, and feature an automatic web frontend and server, Access it is utterly useless for modern scenarios.

          legacy access DBs -> mdbtools or plain csv export -> web2py is the best route IMHO.
          Or, if you are illiterate wrt programming, wagn or pythoncard.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        You should try Access 2007, minutes later you'll be reading in braille.

      • Why would I want base to be Access? Access has poor threading, no bigint support, tighter field restrictions then other databases(ms sql 1024, access 255), and is a pain to get it to talk nicely to non MS products. Base is little more useful than the MS Works Database, plays with a wider verity of different databases nicely, and gives more flexibility for people who don't want to program in VB for Applications which isn't even as good as VB.net.
        • Well, can you do ANYTHING with base? If so, could you share your knowledge?
        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          Because it is not a server database.

          It is a personal one. If you need real databases then use an external source like SQL Server or even Mysql through ODBC.

          Access has a great gui that a non IT professional can create a solution quickly without having the hell of 5 versions of a 1 million line excel spreadsheet emailed and unsynchronized floating on the network were 1 - 2 hours a day are spent finding errors. Yes corporate America is doing this more commonly thanks to restrictive I.T. and the high demand for

        • Why would I want base to be Access?

          Because Base is horrid at letting you quickly and easily connect two different data sources together and move data from A to B. In MSAccess, you simply link to the tables and can write queries to move from one to the other, or write out to a temporary table temporarily, etc.

          Or the whole "can't import/export to CSV without going through Calc" nonsense?

          Base is a toy, and a not very useful one at that.
          • I would like you to expand on your reply. As far as I know, linking tables in Base is just drawing a line between them. You may be right about moving data -- but doesn't Base allow SQL?

            Temporary tables, temporarily? Wouldn't that need table descriptions to be executed? I imagine that would be a bit beyond what Base is intended for.

            I thought the purpose of Base was to allow table, form, and report design. And allow links from the tables to spreadsheet and word processor.

            You can put buttons and stuff on a for

      • by hey! ( 33014 )

        Interesting how un-Access-like the base app is. Is Access 2003's functionality that hard to duplicate?

        Having a manual?

        The problem with Base isn't that it's clunky. From my perspective sooner or later *any* product like this starts to look clunky. The problem with Base is that it's almost entirely undocumented except for a handful of "how to's".

        Take the underlying database engine: HSQL. It's actually quite a nice system. Even the rather old version that ships with LibreOffice is head and shoulders above Microsoft's JET both in correctness and standards compliance. And HSQL has pretty good documentation. So

    • by Hatta ( 162192 )

      Do you really need a crappy integrated database app? Aren't one of the powerful free stand alone databases capable enough?

  • by Murdoch5 ( 1563847 ) on Monday March 19, 2012 @10:02AM (#39402481) Homepage
    I'm a Libre Office fan, it's one of the only good office solutions on the market as it's free and cross platform, something Microsoft Office can't say for itself;. My only lasting big peeve is that Libre can't seem to open a docx document with out having formatting / rendering issues. It also can't copy charts from a doc / docx and keep the chart in tact. Other then that's it's a bullet proof office suite, does any one have this issue or have a fix for this issue?
    • by denis-The-menace ( 471988 ) on Monday March 19, 2012 @10:50AM (#39403027)

      It might have to do with MS not releasing how OOXML does some things like âoeAuto Space like Word 95â.

      MS also has 2 versions of OOXML:
      -OOXML original flavour (what current version of MsOffice writes)
      -OOXML ISO-flavour (version of OOXML that MS was able to buy an ISO standard for.)

      I don't know which version LO supports.

    • My pet peeve is really on Calc. Why the hell can't I merge cells which were previously merged?

      • I know what you mean! I forgot about that but it's a small issue.
      • by jasno ( 124830 )

        I tried using calc the other day to deal with a table of hex values. The built-in hex2dec() function couldn't handle a leading '0x'! I tried working around it with a custom function written in basic and ran into endless problems dealing with the poorly documented API/language.

        The word processor is fine for basic work, but for spreadsheets I'll stick with the copy of MS-Office provided by my employer.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Ihmhi ( 1206036 )

      OpenOffice had the same problem and probably still does.

      I'm sure I'll be modded down into oblivion for saying the following, but it bears repeating and it's true, so... yeah. I really don't care if a bunch of people want to be shut out from hearing something true but uncomfortable.

      The inability to nail down problems like this is one of the reasons open source is not always taken seriously in the business world. You can't claim to be a good alternative to the paid thing if your product doesn't do what it's s

      • You shouldn't get reamed out for that, it's true and I can agree to every word you said. I'm in a small program at University of 4 people, we have 6 profs in total. Everyone in the program knows I use Linux on my Computers for numerous reasons but for the short version because it works. I have to use Libre office because Microsoft Office just isn't a viable solution for me. I know it can run using crossover but that's not a program I want to buy when I can just use Libre. For the most part documents
        • by Ihmhi ( 1206036 )

          You shouldn't get reamed out for that

          But I will (and you probably will, too). I already have a bit, judging by the comment history. Talking about Linux or FOSS here in anything other than a positive light is tantamount to sacrilege. It'd be as if I went to the Apple community and called Steve Jobs anything other than a technological revolutionary. It's not a big deal, though - every community has its unreasonable fanatics.

      • I've tried to introduce people to OpenOffice (and LibreOffice after they forked from OO). I've had more than a few instances where a friend tries to open an old college assignment or something in OO/LO and the formatting is completely fucked.

        Works other ways too: last autumn a schoolwork doc of mine including charts and line art was all Looney Tunes when afterwards viewed in MS Word. For this kind of quirks LibreOffice is too dangerous to be used in the real world.

        The thing is, as a word processor, LO is excellent. But the compatibility with Word needs more work regarding the accuracy how documents are displayed and opened/saved. This is important thing to get right.

        • It's my experience that the only repeatability you have with printing from MS Office is on the same computer with the same fonts (no new font-installs). If you're lucky. Change computers, and repeatability just will not happen.

          Otherwise, print-repeatability is out the window.

          You were saying...?

      • by Microlith ( 54737 ) on Monday March 19, 2012 @01:03PM (#39404641)

        It's hilarious how people bash LO for not being 100% compatible with what is effectively an undocumented, proprietary format that shifts greatly between versions. Even OOXML is deeply tied into Microsoft internals and features a ridiculously large spec full of binary blobs. Seriously, I'd buy the criticisms if the all of the formats were open and fully documented but virtually every criticism is specific to undocumented formats that the vendors leverage to hinder competitors from encroaching on their market share.

        The rest of your arguments are off topic for the subject at hand.

        I had better stock up on the KY for the reaming I'm about to get in downmods.

        Ironically, if I were to downmod you rather than post, it'd be because of this silly passive-aggressive statement.

        • by Ihmhi ( 1206036 )

          It's hilarious how people bash LO for not being 100% compatible with what is effectively an undocumented, proprietary format that shifts greatly between versions.

          ...that nearly every business, government, university, high school, and grade school in the world uses.

          Use, .doc, .docx, OOXML, etc. are fucked, but they are the (unfortunate) standard. And if LO/OO can't render them properly then they are all but useless in those situations, which is honestly the majority of places you would use a word processor.

          And I'm not passive agressive. You're passive agressive! And kind of a poopy head! So there. d=

          • by treeves ( 963993 )

            It wasn't passive aggressive. It was a common strategy on Slashdot (I've seen it several times and it always seems to work) for pre-empting downmods and gaining up mods. I'm not sure why it works but it does.

      • by antdude ( 79039 )

        Ditto. It's funny that even old, updated Office 2000 SR-3(?) with converter packs, does a good job handling with all newer Office documents. LibreOffice and OpenOffice still can't. :(

      • by rastos1 ( 601318 )

        The inability to nail down problems like this is one of the reasons open source is not always taken seriously in the business world. You can't claim to be a good alternative to the paid thing if your product doesn't do what it's supposed to do.

        Let me explain that to you: OpenOffice/LibreOffice is supposed to allow word processing, creating and editing spreadsheets and presentations. It is not a product supposed to import Microsoft files. Once you accept that, you have to say that OOo/LOo do what they are

        • by Ihmhi ( 1206036 )

          Let me explain that to you: OpenOffice/LibreOffice is supposed to allow word processing, creating and editing spreadsheets and presentations. It is not a product supposed to import Microsoft files. Once you accept that, you have to say that OOo/LOo do what they are supposed to do. And they do it well.

          I... I am aware of this. Perhaps you did not read my post in its entirety?

          P.S., I used OpenOffice and now use LibreOffice in my home on all of my computers and I love it. It's great when you create documents natively in it. It just isn't always that great when opening docs from other programs, but I'm a technically-savvy person and I can adjust. The layperson can not.

          The problem isn't one person using LO/OO. It's someone else using Word and sending a document to someone who uses LO/OO. Even if you can get them to put in the effort to change it to a different format (and if it's some luddite manager up in a corner office, you can forget that shit ever happening), the majority of people will not and you are still out in the cold.

          I also take issue with the whole "it's not supposed to support Microsof

      • One thing people need to keep in mind is that POORLY FORMATTED documents will usually fall apart when anything is changed. Just because something looks good on the screen at the moment, doesn't mean proper formatted was used.

        For example, a document that did not use tab stops, but someone just used a bunch of spaces to position something- if the destination system doesn't have the EXACT SAME FONT, the spacing will change and the wrapping might fall apart. Same thing with lines- it is SO common for people t

    • OOXML standard is a few dozen megabytes, and that is without the scripting part. While OpenDocument standard is a 7,4 Mb zip file. It isn't suprising that LO couldn't support OOXML properly.

    • My experience is that it is MSWord that is incompatible, I have fixed broken Word documents using LibreOffice to get them to open in Word ... and corrected layout issues in LibreOffice because I could not fix them in Word

  • by Bananatree3 ( 872975 ) on Monday March 19, 2012 @10:05AM (#39402519)
    The Document Foundation is eating Open Office's lunch. When will Open Office merge with the Document Foundation?
    • by Kjella ( 173770 )

      As I understand it LibreOffice nabs anything useful from OpenOffice anyway since it open source and LibreOffice doesn't need any copyright assignment. So in practice I just expect it to slowly die off like xfree86 did after everyone continued on as xorg. Maybe they get the name back or maybe they don't, but it'll practically be a rename not a merger.

  • I hate office suites, but they're a necessary evil. And I'm beginning to mellow and even like certain parts of LibreOffice like the spreadsheet component.

    Thanks for all the hard work, TDF guys and gals.

    • Re:Thank you, TDF! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by b0bby ( 201198 ) on Monday March 19, 2012 @11:23AM (#39403373)

      I just installed the new version because I needed to work on an old Visio diagram & I had read that Draw supports Visio imports. It didn't actually support the ancient version I was dealing with, but I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to just duplicate the old diagram in Draw, connectors & all. Big thumbs up!

      • Please note that there is almost NO difference in LO Draw and OO Draw. But your discovery is typical... most people have NO IDEA how powerful Draw is. It is actually quite useful and flexible.

        • by treeves ( 963993 )

          Is it better than Inkscape?

          • It depends on what one means by "better". I would say there are features in both that are better than the others. The primary advantage of Draw is that it is contained in the same suite as the other OpenOffice apps. So the menus, use, etc are consistent and easier to learn. It is also more tightly integrated with the rest. But IInkscape has certainly progressed beyond the capabilities of Draw.

            I drew a scale, many-layer vector diagram of a huge facility in Draw. With connected objects, snap grid, etc.

  • Quick question (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19, 2012 @10:10AM (#39402551)

    Did they, finally, remove that nonsensical Java dependency?

    It made strategical sense as long as it was Sun's baby. But, technically, it really is just a huge "WTF?"

    • Re:Quick question (Score:5, Informative)

      by dkleinsc ( 563838 ) on Monday March 19, 2012 @10:34AM (#39402823) Homepage

      According to the System Requirements [libreoffice.org] documentation, LibreOffice will run without Java, but still has some features that make use of it.

      • Re:Quick question (Score:4, Insightful)

        by twocows ( 1216842 ) on Monday March 19, 2012 @10:38AM (#39402875)
        That's the way OpenOffice was as well. But Java was loaded by default if it was available, which slowed down performance. That behavior should be removed if the Java features aren't commonly used (they aren't) and it gives a big performance hit (it does).
        • The java features were the wizards ( the GUIs for them ). If you do anything more than type a note you would miss their presence.

          Seriously, they should write new things, fast things, to replace that stuff.

        • That's why gentoo use flags exist! :D

    • Re:Quick question (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19, 2012 @10:35AM (#39402839)

      Work is under way, but it's a non-trivial task since large bits of the code are in Java, most notably in Base. The rest will as far as I know run without it but you might get errors when you try to use some functionality. Patience, my friend.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Not yet, there is only so fast they can remove it without breaking working features, they are making progress though. Among other gradual improvements help has just been made Java independent and there has been some rather extensive work on wizards, although I understand the latter is not yet good enough to use for end users.

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