LibreOffice blasts OnlyOffice for working with Microsoft to lock users in
neowin.net
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A couple of days ago I bit the bullet and dug into the Excel file and figured out how to redesign everything and get it going again. Yay me. I'll admit I don't like the UI in LibreOffice, but I didn't like it very much when I first tried using it (as Star Office) back in the 90s either. Yet I keep coming back to it.
If I'm going to be locked into a format or app, I'd rather it be something like LibreOffice.
In my experience, it’s much stricter than a standard spreadsheet though. It feels a bit like moving from Python to Java.
Mandatory Excel rant: Excel can't be trusted with data destined for publication. It's bloated, buggy as hell, user hostile, and has set genetics research back with its utterly braindead autocorrect. The default plot options are the exact polar opposite of how data are presented in science, and almost impossible to make serviceable. Everything Excel touches ends up looking like a hastily thrown together 6th grade science project. Libreoffice is also riddled with serious bugs and also loses data, but hey it's free and not a decades old flagship product from a multi billion dollar tech company.
Could you articulate why Gnumeric is better than everything else?
> Therefore, the problem is not necessarily with Excel. Equally, the problem is not with the IEEE 754 standard either. It’s just the complex nature of the world of mathematics and computing that we live in.
Some earlier spreadsheets such as Multiplan used it (but not in the IEEE variety) because it was all soft-float for most users anyway.
As a user of Libreoffice for years, me thinks you are doing fud.
Gnumeric rocks, even features Montecarlo built-in, I have it installed in my personal machine, but a major limitation is that they stopped providing windows builds, up to the last time I checked, so I can't use it at work.
With Excel in particular, there is something I can't put my finger on that I just don't get along with. It's unintuitive in a way that I can't describe, but which I notice about half the time I use it. Sometimes clicking doesn't do what I expect it to do, clipboard contents are lost all the time, scrolling resets or jumps around for reasons I don't understand. I don't have the same issues with LibreOffice Calc, which is why I choose it for my personal work. In fact, I think Google Sheets is the most pleasant to use of the options I've tried, which is something I thought I'd never say about a web-based alternative to a native app...
excel 2003 did 95% of what "modern" excel does without most of those issues...
It feels so bland and hard to read. Maybe that's because of java. How did Excel 5.0 look so good?
LibreOffice uses an extremely dated, also messy, homegrown UI toolkit and has resisted the idea of switching to something last (really) updated this millennium (sic).
If you want to see my efforts, I have a number of branches on github:
Phase 5 can be located here:
https://github.com/chrissherlock/libreoffice-experimental/tr...
Check the source here:
https://github.com/chrissherlock/libreoffice-experimental/tr...
in particular keep an eye on:
https://github.com/chrissherlock/libreoffice-experimental/tr...
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1198/tas.2011.09076
https://exceloffthegrid.com/excel-calculate-wrong-results/
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/microsoft-365...
LibreOffice Calc doesn’t have tables in the sense of Excel “insert > table”. People have been looking for it and asking for it for fourteen years in this thread: https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/creating-tables-in-calc/1433
I wonder if it would be possible to extract the spreadsheet data model and logic into a library completely separate from the UI. This would enable a diversity of UIs, and also interoperability between different tools.
I like OnlyOffice. Their desktop apps are much lighter and better looking. They work fine for my light needs. They also do have a LOT more than just desktop apps.
The last time I mentioned them I was informed they are Russian. If that matters to you. It is actual open source software though. Perhaps the EU should fork it. :) (By the way I hadn't checked last time but, wikipedia says Latvian with Russian origin, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnlyOffice. This page does say they are Russian, https://www.en-zdv.uni-mainz.de/2023/05/30/software-onlyoffi... and that they are switching to the open-source version.)
https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/desktop-apps
EDIT: Some more context. A cryptpad developer says
> we consider the OnlyOffice code upstream as "untrusted".
https://forum.cryptpad.org/d/232-onlyoffice-concerns-vendor-...
Please explain what you mean by this...
Here's the company info on a Latvian org registry: https://company.lursoft.lv/en/ascensio-system/40103265308
I logged in to the platform, not sharing the names myself, but basically:
* company was registered in Latvia in 2010 (e.g. included in VAT register over here)
* board has 1 member since 2009, registered in Russia (Russian passport)
* has 1 shareholder, Ascensio System Limited in the UK (05718967)
* has one beneficial owner, in 2023 updated data from Russia to Turkey (passport issued in Istanbul)
So yeah, the company is registered over here, seems like they're trying to distance themselves from Russia for obvious reasons. Not sure why the downvotes for the parent comment, that's probably nice to mention.
They might have one official employee but there are a bunch of people active on their github. They might be contractors or employees of a different related company.
I tried OnlyOffice and it seemed okay, even if I daily drive LibreOffice most of the time. It's nice that it's open source, but I also understand the people who are cautious about stuff coming out from Russia - I wouldn't hate on software for being developed by people from there, but it also presents an obvious risk.
The beneficial owner is Onlyoffice Capital Group Pte. Ltd in Singapore.
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...
It all seems surprisingly murky - you'd normally expect a relatively small organisation to have a more straightforward structure, even allowing for its international nature.
I'd guess that the happy case is going to be that, yes, this structure was forced on them as a by-product of sanctions or similar negative trade policies. But I'd be worried that the software business is actually a front for something else, which would suggest that OnlyOffice might be more vulnerable to changes in legal climate than most other projects of that size.
I think - we need to have software - not subject to political gimmicks - since countries can get into wars with each other & sanction each other etc
remember when Venezuela was sanctioned and they couldn't access Adobe 360 or whatever it's called.
I only mentioned it because it is a "thing" even though it is not my thing.
My impression is that this is more or less how ISO standards are supposed to work. Personally, I don't want to work in such an environment.
But communists have an absurd love for bureaucracy, and their need to control is unlimited, so they'll argue to the death about stupid shit instead of, you know, actually competing.
The process has its issues and could cause problems, but in practice I don't remember anyone reporting issues.
[1] https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/enter_bug.cgi?format=gui...
I'm sure you know that's not true. I'm sure you know that developers hate taking bug reports from users even when those users have support contracts.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/how-do-i-give-fee...
https://veroniiiica.com/how-to-use-the-feedback-tool-in-micr...
b) they have automated crash report and usage telemetry to tell them what isn’t working
How do you define dated in this context?
Personally, I quite like being able to use the CUA keyboard shortcuts to access menu items. I like consistency over decades but I appreciate that there are other ways of looking at this.
It looks ancient, worse than office apps from 20 years ago.
Ultimately, the "classic" approach taken is because many users feel that the classic style is more usable and makes them more productive irrespective of their learned habits of the past 20-30 years.
Anyway, the point is surely that if LibreOffice really wants to attract users from Microsoft Office, then it should do everything possible to optimise that transition?
Offering the option of a UI mimicking the familiar MS Office layout is not a difficult engineering problem. And if it makes users significantly more likely to switch, it should be a high priority to implement.
Honestly, at this stage, thinking of Gimp, FreeCAD, LibreOffice, and Blender, it’s as though there’s a weird group psychology deliberately against offering even decent (let along best-in-class) UIs in the open source world. These are all apps with excellent fundamental underlying engines/tech which are handicapped hugely by their UI/UX. (Yes I know some of these have improved in recent years, but only after far longer without improvements.)
It's already there. It really feels like such criticisms are from people who haven't used it in 10+ years.
It's not quite identical to MSOffice due to Microsoft's patents, but is pretty close. Perhaps you just didn't spot it in the UI preferences?
> UIs that are barely usable... like Windows 2000
Words fail me.
Perhaps it's that well-known psychological effect where people self-report higher productivity when using an interface they find more visually appealing, whereas studying them proves the opposite is true.
No central place to search for software, files, or settings. You have to dig through layers of menu trees like an idiot.
No visual preview to find the right open window. You have to alt-tab through a list of windows like an idiot.
No way of separating windows into work spaces / desktops (whatever you might call them). You have to either constantly kill windows or work your way through layers of them. The point above doesn't help with that.
This one has less to do with Windows 2000 but was part of the state of the art of the time for software: Walls of icons and buttons and not even a way to group them. Sometimes the entire window is just one wall of tiles sometimes there's the tool bar of doom at the top.
On top of lacking usability, Windows 2000 is ugly. Mostly because all main UI elements like buttons are visually thrust into your face by faux 3d elevation. This had it's place at the time when most of your users would not have had experience with computer UIs in the first place. With those users UI designers back then felt they needed to overemphasize visual cues from the real world. Nowadays you can show the user just a box or something that looks like a link (because people are used to browsers now). Maybe give a cue by changing the emphasis on hover.
The other reason that comes to mind why Windows 2000 is so ugly is colors. Again, this is due to its time and the capabilities of graphics cards back then that mostly didn't allow more subtle color differences.
I'm just using Windows 2000 as pars pro toto here. Pretty much all graphical UIs back then were lacking modern usability features and UI sensibilities, regardless of OS.
> Perhaps it's that well-known psychological effect where people self-report higher productivity when using an interface they find more visually appealing, whereas studying them proves the opposite is true.
You have your slightly condescending explanation for why we disagree and I have mine. Let me give you a hint quoting Douglas Adams:
"I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."
MS may have done usability studies earlier (say, when they cared about dethroning Lotus 123 and WordPerfect) but that war was long won when the ribbon UI came out, by then they only cared about milking the cash cow.
Microsoft did those usability studies on the versions of Office that were current before the ribbon. The ribbon followed those studies as their attempt at a solution.
A few times over the years I've tried to search for usability studies of the ribbon interface because I've never got on with it myself. I find plenty of others asking the same thing online, and everybody points them to those same earlier studies from before the ribbon, while wrongly telling them it's a study of the ribbon.
Those studies are unable to tell us whether or not MS's attempt at a solution actually fixed the problems.
I believe the ribbon was a downgrade in usability terms (but people expect it in office suites, purely because it's seen as looking more modern). And I'd love to see real intensive research to tell me whether my belief is right or wrong.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/jensenh/
Unfortunately those blog entries have been destroyed because the images are no longer there.
I read all of them, they were at least 6-7 and quite detailed and I remember thinking that the thought process behind the ribbon was very solid.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/jensenh/the-...
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/jensenh/ye-o...
etc - you can find all of them there plus many other related blog entries.
Parts of those blog posts were unintentionally revealing of the groupthink of an enclosed bubble of people who couldn't see the wood for the trees. A great example is this piece about moving menu entries around so you couldn't build muscle memory, and had to take the time to look for what you wanted:
> First, remember that we're analyzing this with 20/20 hindsight... there was a lot of excitement (not just at Microsoft) about "auto-customization"... to present exactly the right UI for the person at hand. Now, it's easy to say that today people are generally against this idea... but we know that mainly through trying... the adaptive UI in Office 2000
As I recall it, the vast majority at the time - users, reviewers, UI/UX writers - considered its downsides to be completely obvious and were firmly against it. Its designers were apparently the only ones who needed 20/20 hindsight to see that.
> I remember thinking that the thought process behind the ribbon was very solid
I agree, the historical research, and the work on identifying the problems, was very solid. But the massive criticisms of the ribbon suggest it was not an entirely successful attempt at a solution.
I've seen it said that there's no way Microsoft would have neglected to carry out major usability studies on such a major UI change, and that the fact that nothing's been published, after all the blogposts and talks beforehand, suggests they chose to bury a bad result. No idea whether there's any truth in that of course, but it does sound plausible.
I have version 25.8.4.2 running here. It looks rather better and most importantly offers me the choice of a ribbon or not and many other choices rather than enforcing a single "opinionated" interface.
Me: I started off with the likes of Wordperfect and Wordstar, Lotus 123 and Quatro Pro, Harvard Graphics, and rather a lot more and that's just on MS's efforts. I've also taught PageMaker, CorelDraw and a lot more stuff that I have forgotten.
I am (probably) rather older than you and that does not make either of us "right" or "wrong".
However, I have been an IT trainer on and off for 30 odd years and I have seen how all the differing design paradigms and UI efforts have scarred end users.
Have you ever noted how awful all and I mean ALL UIs are generally awful? I'll give you two examples - Apple and KDE, that came up for me recently:
Apple tablet or phone: Print something. This is from memory but the UI is so shit it doesn't matter if I get it wrong. Press the rectangle with an up arrow, select a printer, press the word Print (next to the other icon that might do something)
KDE: I can't be arsed at this point to bother. There are things that are not intuitive.
If LO doesn't work for you then that's fine - buy something that does. For me, I create some horrendously complicated documents and it does work OK and believe me - I know how to stress an application - its my job and has been for some years. I also find it easier to teach people how to use LO as opposed to MSO.
That's just me. I'm sure you have some anecdotes of your own.
Plus if it runs on Android it must support snackbars.
I think this is a matter of choice and it is nice that there are choices. As other posters in this little sub-tree have suggested, there are people who value continuity over a period of time.
Congratulations on figuring this out. It's not like the commenter you replied to said, it "feels dated" ... Oh no wait, he did.
This kind of UI is a dealbreaker for many new users, especially Gen Zers. How could open source conquer the world without attracting our youngest generations?
They should have bundled GTK like GIMP does. That would make the experience feel much less like it is from the XP era.
(I know these types of comments often get downvoted, but I challenge you to explain why you disagree.)
Ok, all other things being equal: Microsoft is no longer a good arbiter of UI/UX design.
This is extremely well documented.
Old doesn't automatically mean worse, though I understand that people feel that way on an emotional level when they see old "ugly" UI.
A big selling point for me. Needless reworking of familiar interfaces plagues MS Windows ecosystem and I'm glad LibreOffice is displaying healthy conservatism by not fixing what isn't broken.
Anyone who doesn't get that simply doesn't have enough IT skills to work in this day and age; it's time to say it loud and clear.
Essentially ALL features of all office suites I know are sub-par to most other classic tools born before them, and they also are limited and limiting.
I dont like this "skill issue" rhetoric. The barrier of entry being lower is good for everyone, if you dont directly use simple tools, then you will still benefit from others in society using it to produce information and what not. Also how do you propose spreadsheets work with markup?
TBH I don't think de-big-tech will ever succeed in a capitalistic world.
Microsoft Office has a project leadership that believes that Office Open XML is the best and most open office format. That's very convenient for them, considering that Office Open XML is a standardisation of the native file format of that lineage of office suites.
Now, OnlyOffice is presumably something written from scratch, unrelated to those two lineages. They chose to prioritise compatibility with the market leader's standard, and the second place in the market is upset that a competitor isn't favouring them instead.
I think this is a bit silly.
Beyond marketing fluff, I don't think anybody at Microsoft genuinely believes they have an "open office format" or an actual "standardization". Even Apple back in the day had to reverse-engineer the Microsoft formats. [1]
Whether you'd like to denounce OnlyOffice taking part in this masquerade or not is a political issue. But giving Microsoft any form of benefit of the doubt on this matter is historically wrong and, I believe, ethically evil.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45144758
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interopera...
(I do not doubt that the OOXML standard is a mess though.)
That's why administrative interop formats are standardized XML files with a schema and not a random Oracle SQL export from any given entity with their custom database layout.
Edit: Further, the ooxml format was heavily criticised ~20 years ago, back when it was introduced. This is old news.
What should have happened was that ten years ago Apache should have "retired" OpenOffice. That's Apache's terminology for projects which are abandoned. But instead it has limped on for all these years, sucking up valuable effort by users with Apache claiming that it'll be fine somehow.
Surprisingly moving a lot for something dead