They're not targeting anyone, they're presenting their software and letting you use it under a free-libre & free-gratis license. In many ways it doesn't matter if you chose it or not. It's not being created in order to develop a need in you it's created to meet a need the creators have.
Inkscape is functional. Of course there's no problem with the website being worked on and perhaps made to answer questions one has more easily. But I wouldn't really want to divert resources towards marketing it and away from making it more usable and functional.
Maybe I've misunderstood the economics of FOSS but that's how I see it.
> In many ways it doesn't matter if you chose it or not.
Just to be clear, it doesn't matter to the project creators/authors. We don't know that for a fact, but their behavior seems to imply that. I'll admit, I find that a bit surprising, since I've never worked hard on a public-facing project without hoping people would use it and find it useful.
However from a global welfare perspective it clearly matters a great deal. The over-simplified but not-too-far-off math on the social benefit of a project is that global_welfare_added == (value_added_per_user) * n_users, so a positive multiplier on n_users is a positive multiplier on value so long as the value added is positive.
In this case, making the website look like an actual website isn't about "creaing a need", it's about informing people who have that need (designers who need to edit vector graphics) that the product might fill that need. Currently the site doesn't communicate that at all. Furthermore, that their demonstrated indifference to communicating the nature of their product to potential users makes me loathe to donate dev time or money to fund development of a product that will be little used by those who might value it.
> But I wouldn't really want to divert resources towards marketing it and away from making it more usable and functional.
The tiny user base undoubtedly restricts the project's access to resources in terms of donations of both time and money. Again, it's easy to imagine why the authors would be indifferent to this, and my only point is that's a shame for anybody who values a more widely-used project.
>I've never worked hard on a public-facing project without hoping people would use it and find it useful //
This is not incompatible with what I said. You can desire people to find and use a package without desiring to promote it in a standard marketing way. Perhaps the Inkscape team are happy with the ecosystem they have of supporters and users - that create such things as http://inkscapetutorials.wordpress.com/, http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/, http://screencasters.heathenx.org/ all easily found and all providing advocacy for the project. Along with their part in LGM.
Like you said that's simplistic. If you encourage users that wouldn't benefit, despite Inkscape being a great benefit for many, then you have a negative addition to your "global welfare".
The main reason I referred to this image is because they are using it to advertise a new feature.
This was an image that was selected for marketing purposes. My point is that doing such a thing can make a bad impression. Show only the polished parts of the app.
This image was selected and highlighted on their new features page. They must be aware of the layout issues, surely?
I'm not suggesting that this is horrible software, just that it gives a bad first impression. I am suggesting that these sorts of screenshots shouldn't be used in advertising material until they are polished.
I would be happy if LibreOffice didn't add a single feature for the next year and did the following:
* Improved MS Office Interoperability
* Fixed bugs
* Reduced memory usage/improved performance
In fact, those are the primary reasons my company abandoned our plans to migrate from MSO to LO. I have filed several bug reports with both the AO/LO teams on issues such with incorrectly importing NetSuite generated Excel documents for our sales team. Most of the bugs were validated, opened, and then ignored for the past year.
If you look at the release notes for various versions you'll see that they've been doing this already.
Note that e.g. new volunteers working on build infrastructure things are not going to be happy that they aren't allowed to work on what they're good at. They're not going to switch to coding, they're not suddenly going to care about MS Office. Any company/project can do multiple things at once.
Anyway, just file bugs! In the release notes it said they fixed 3000 in this version.
The problem is that this is a moving target (and event more in motion due to Microsoft's need to port this to some mobile platform, so no matter how much is invested in this issue, they will never get close to acceptable.
Yes, it is a moving target, but you can still get it to a very solid good level. In the past it's always been a few years between updates, and they have version details in the files, so you can say "Supports Word 2007 files" and not worry about Word 2016.
I've written a bunch of Perl code (that I should open source.. maybe some day. anyone here'd find that useful?) for creating and editing docx files. It's not that hard -- it's all XML!
EDIT: I was using a LibreOffice daemon before, but I did this code just because Libre had so many bugs / missing features when converting a document to docx.
Agreed MS 97-2003 .doc is NOT a moving target. Back in 2008 when we were considering moving from MSO 2003 to OO or SoftMaker Office, SoftMaker had near perfect MSO import filters. 5 years later, and only 3 of the 14 .doc import bugs that I filed with OO (now on AOO tracker) have been fixed.
It's too bad the Oracle didn't take OO under their wings. With their resources they could have turned it into a true competitor to MSO. As it stands now, volunteers enjoy adding new features not bug fixing or scouring the 200 page OpenXML spec. sheet.
This is (most likely) not going to happen, at least for a (very) long time - the cause is that StarOffice was originally structured as a single giant application instead of separate ones.
Note the last one was fixed in AOO 4.0. Yay :) After 5 years, but better late than never! Unfortunately they only fixed the .doc import filter and it still exists in the .docx import filter. Asked them if I should post a new report.
What is the state of the relationship between OpenOffice and LibreOffice? I remember that there were some licensing issues that caused the fork in the first place. Are they at feature parity? Any chance the two projects will merge ?
LibreOffice has had more development time (both features and bugs) than OpenOffice. OpenOffice was entirely dead for over a year and then Apache put the effort into redeveloping features so they could be relicensed under the Apache license instead of the L/GPL.
The one big addition to OpenOffice was the contribution of IBM's Lotus Symphony sidebar properties dialogs. LibreOffice 4.1.0 adds these as well but considers them 'experimental' as they are new and largely untested. LibreOffice has a larger and more active development team and can pull bug-fixes and features from OpenOffice as the L/GPL 3.0 is Apache compatible. OpenOffice can not pull features and bug fixes from LibreOffice unless they re-license as L/GPL.
The projects are unlikely to merge. Every major Linux/Debian/BSD distro now ships with LibreOffice instead of OpenOffice. OpenOffice may still be more popular on Windows, though, due to name recognition. I don't know what the public numbers are in terms of downloads for the same period to compare.
> Integration of libmwaw written by Laurent Alonso brings support for a multitude of pre-OSX Mac word-processing documents in different file-formats.
Although it's great to support very old formats, I wonder if it makes sense to integrate this to the main distribution, and thus increase the code size with features few people need. They should have some kind of plugin system to support this.
"A very large number of bugs have been fixed at an estimate of around 3000 bugs, of which 400 came from authors with apache.org mail addresses."
I believe that the Apache OpenOffice developers have been complaining that the LO guys just cherry-picks their changes and don't do anything. This should hopefully put paid to that complaint!
I would forgo all of these new features if LibreOffice would create more compatible MS Office docs. As it stands, I can no longer use LibreOffice in my current work environment. Everyone complains my MS converted docs do not open correctly, AND VICE VERSA, on their MS Office apps.
If not confidential, could you please file bugs regarding bad conversions? LibreOffice actually has various test cases to make sure they do not regress such bugs.
MS Office support has been coming a long way over the last few releases - some massive improvements in this release and 4.1. You can see come examples of what's been fixed in this version here - http://vmiklos.hu/blog/lo-41-ooxml-improvements.html (and there's a link there to what was fixed in the last version).
If you are having issues with it on work documents, you could really help out in having them fixed by trying to replicate each problem you find in a sample document, and attaching that to a bug report. Far better than just hoping someone notices it and fixes it.
I've filed almost 40 MSO interop bugs with LO and 20 with AO over the past as 5 years. Far as I can tell only about 3 or 4 of them have been fixed.
This is a personal issue with me, because I lost some face with the owner. I had pushed for OO instead of MSO 2007/2010, but after a partial migration, it was clear OO was not up to the task.
Michael Meeks once said they want to get rid of as much of Java as possible. Not sure of all the reasons. Just having Java enabled in OO.org used to be a major cause of OO.org starting up slowly. I haven't checked if that is still the case in LibreOffice, but not needing Java is quite nice. IIRC the Java dependency was not really made on technical reasons, more that either the developers (Sun) knew+liked it or that they wanted to push it.
I really appreciate that they're reducing the amount of languages in the project, makes it easier for new developers to join. There are loads of things that they're doing just to make it easier for developers. Pretty weird reason to prefer LibreOffice because of this, but that's me :P
I much prefer LibreOffice. OpenOffice fell behind during the hiatus when a majority of their development team quit to form LibreOffice. LibreOffice has a big headstart on OO and a more active development team. Plus, they can pull features and bug fixes from OpenOffice while the OpenOffice team can't pull from LibreOffice due to licensing.
As you can see from the earlier child posts, opinions differ!
Using yum localinstall, I installed LO4.1 and oOo4.0 on a CentOS based desktop last night along with the native LO3.4 install. At present, I'm finding oOo has scrolling issues (nvidia graphics, proprietary drivers) and the 'use hardware acceleration' option is un-ticked and greyed out on installation. LO4.1 has the option ticked and editable on installation.
LibreOffice works on multiple versions at the same time. So 4.1.0 is just out, that'll be advertised as "potentially buggy" (forgot what name they gave it). Then they will still continue to release new updates for 4.0.x and IIRC also the version before that.
So suggest LibreOffice, as you can choose what kind of stability guarantee is good for you.
I've used both, but I stuck with Apache Openoffice because it's usually given me less grief than Libreoffice, it also integrates better with OSX than Libreoffice does.
Excel can use any OLE DB driver or ODBC just fine to access other databases. It's not restricted to Access and SQL Server. From the dated look of the dialog windows involved I'd say it's been that way for a long time and isn't new in 2010.
OLAP is not like SQL or ODBC. It shows things in a cube. OP is talking about OLAP, not just SQL/some database (which is of course works perfectly fine). Note: Aside from knowing that OLAP is different, not much practical knowledge.
I appreciate the effort of everyone involved in this complex project but I think that we should see something like an opensource replacement to google docs in our future
The problem with that is the issue of storage and functionality (aka, you have to host it). No one is really going to pay to host it or roll their own when there's a 'free' version already available. And the fact that while the word processor in Google Docs is moderately functional, everything else in the suite is nowhere near a replacement for the actual applications.
We're moving towards minimal formatting, and web-based solutions (like Google Docs).
You might be. Some of us have been moving back the other way, after discovering that doing real work using children's toys instead of grown-up tools is inefficient and frequently produces substandard results.
People have written entire books specifically on how to present information effectively, on top of a vast body of knowledge about graphic design, typography, and the like. The fact that a typical web-based word processor today offers only trivial formatting tools doesn't invalidate all of that previous experience and understanding; it just means that a typical web-based word processor today isn't very good at producing well-presented documents.
> The fact that a typical web-based word processor today offers only trivial formatting tools doesn't invalidate all of that previous experience and understanding; it just means that a typical web-based word processor today isn't very good at producing well-presented documents.
Or it could be that for many people, "good enough" is good enough; they simply don't care about the incremental benefits of "well-presented documents" enough to abandon the convenience of Web-based word processors.
It's sort of like the audiophiles who love vinyl record albums and vacuum-tube amplifiers but can only listen in their sound rooms, versus the iPhone users who can take their 10,000 songs everywhere they go.
Or it could be that for many people, "good enough" is good enough
I don't think there's any "could" about it. What you said is certainly true, and a huge proportion of the most successful web apps have been built on that premise, and there's nothing wrong with that.
However, that doesn't mean those who still need or want something of higher quality are dinosaurs who are somehow being left behind the times. While I understand your music analogy, I don't think the relative differences in quality and flexibility are very similar at all in the two cases.
Yeah, just like people replaced their pc with a tablet that can only do 1percent of what a pc does but still live with it. That does not mean there is no need for PCs anymore.
> doing real work using children's toys instead of grown-up tools is inefficient and frequently produces substandard results.
While I agree that Google Docs are a joke, the damage done by clueless users with Office that could be avoided by taking away all possibilities of custom formatting is not to be underestimated.
I'm mainly talking about captioning images by aligning the following line at its center and creating headlines by formatting a line very big.
I use Google Docs, but I dislike them. The worst part is, that this dislike is pretty much irrational—Google Docs just seem extremely fragile to me. I don't know why I get this feeling but it is there and I am not sure I will ever trust any non-trivial documents editin within web browser.
Are there other feeling the same way? Maybe you have some idea why do I have this kind of mistrust?
I feel the same way. Dislike. It just never seems to do what you want it to do and things don't quite interoperate. In a previous life I could draw something in Visio and copy paste that into e-mail (Outlook), make a graph in Excel and copy that as well. Communicate; you know. In gmail you can try inserting an image but more often than not it comes out as gibberish and forget about any other form of interop.
There's no reason why you couldn't do everything within a browser but we don't seem to quite be there yet.
Feature-wise, Google Docs hasn't caught up with these Office applications; no doubt about that. However, there's nothing wrong with it objectively: plenty of people use it quite happily, and it has no serious deficiencies.
In short, I think your mistrust arises purely from familiarity with the desktop solution; don't let it cloud your judgement, because I really don't think these dinosaurs have a future.
I think there are quite a few users who need a local Office package storing files on their computer. Shonky internet connections, local distribution of templates, control over documents &c.
I agree this may be a shrinking number of people, aligned with the PC/Laptop numbers I imagine.
LaTeX is great, but the skill set required in use is high. I find sending people a document in LO/oOo is easier for them to change &c.
I meant when will it be good enough. I'm looking for anecdotes, not particulars. Several people in this thread have expressed that at present LibreOffice is much better than OpenOffice. I'm wondering how much better and if enough work is being done on AOO that its expected to catch up anytime soon.
I think you will find the current (4.0) oOo 'good enough'. The differences between oOo 4.0 and LO 4.1 seem to be minor but noticeable. I used oOo for years through the 2.x and 3.0x incarnations and produced a lot of work with it.
'Good enough' really depends what you need it for. I understand that LO has more people working on it than AOO, so I wouldn't expect the latter to catch up unless there's some big shift in the landscape.
StarOffice was already good enough over a decade ago for me to buy it. Back then, WordPerfect was still around. Today, OpenOffice and LibreOffice are the last of their kind but the latter has a much quicker development pace. They could just box it up and ship it like OpenBSD does, 10/10 would buy again regardless of how they call it.
For example https://www.libreoffice.org/assets/Uploads/EN-Project_images... — the "Properties" button and "Line Type" drop down are completely misaligned.
These design issues add up and end up giving a poor impression of the software, regardless of its features.