LibreOffice?

[XFool]

GOD! I hate LibreOffice. I hate it with a spite and a venom that cannot possibly be overestimated.

I used to use OpenOffice, that was a computer program. Sure it has become 'obsolete', nobody who is anybody works on its development. It wasn't up to speed with all the latest whiz bangs, it was a bit buggy, it was supposed to be unsecure. OK, but it worked! That is, when I wanted to do those very simple things that I wanted to do it simply did them - that's what I need!

LibreOffice? Everybody who is anybody is in the development team, it has a wonderful, knock out, fully professional looking promotional website. But every time I use it it is like going to a knife-fight. It's LO or me, one of us is going to die tonight. Better bring a baseball bat to the fight. Better still, bring a loaded Magnum 45 - it ain't going to be me if I can help it!

I have ALWAYS found it a pain - right from the off it would not even install on my spanking new (slightly used Dell) PC. Not until I had installed this and that updates. Then I was surprised to find it was all in one big lump, not modular with install options like OO.

Then it turned it's nose up at my favourite font (for financial reports) Line Printer Gothic - One size only 8.5pt, one typeface only; as it comes. No bold, no italic, no underlining. LO accepts it exists by name, but will not display it or print it directly on the HP laser printer. Not "good enough" for it, no doubt.

Then whenever you do anything in the spreadsheet it surrounds the cell with an annoying dotty line that you have to hit Esc to get rid of before it makes you dizzy - no apparent option to turn this 'feature' off. But don't talk to me about "display" in LO! e.g. It has a signifier for a comment in a cell - just like OO did - but, unlike OO and it's discrete yellow triangle in the top right of the cell OO puts a red square in the top right of the cell. Which, with the small cells and fonts that I like, means that's the end of seeing the least significant digit of any numeric values.

But then, why does LO's default cell positioning try to chop the top off all the digits in the first place? Sure, I just have to format every important cell to 'Middle' positioning. But why is that not the default?

The simplest, most reliable way of moving stuff from Cell A to Cell B in LO seems to be to just retype the whole thing in Cell B. "Copy & Paste, Cut & Paste" I hear you say? Have you ever tried it - never mind that dizzying dottiness - try that sort of malarkey in LO and there is no knowing what will happen. Will it be a spell check? Not now! If I touch anything will it convert some cell's intricate formula into: "K9", "XQ666* - #func Error!" all in black? Who knows...

Why does it do that? BECAUSE IT CAN!! Much as it insists on capitalising the first letter of any text I put in the sheet, like eps or dps. Sorry! I mean Eps, Dps. Why does it do that? BECAUSE IT CAN!! LibreOffice and me have frequent knife-fights over spelling.

You can tell I've just been working on a spreadsheet using LibreOffice, can't you? Yes, I have. I have been converting some cells to Named Cells, to make life easier (Should have gone to OpenOffice?) and one cell was empty, lacking data, through me not knowing the dollar eps for Verizon. Off to the web to find out: Ah! There it is, in dollars too. Pick it up, see I have heard of "Copy & Paste", and plop it into LO's vacant cell. OK. But it doesn't look quite right... OK, it's the wrong size font, correct it to be the same as all the others. Still doesn't look quite right. Oh, its Liberation Sans or something, rather than Albany as all the others are, courtesy of LO, of course. That's easy just find Albany on LO's Font List - it's LO's chosen default for the whole sheet, after all. "Albany, Albany, Agency, Aharoni...? It isn't there!" How can this be? It was LO that chose this damn font in the first place.

I have no choice - remember, this is an LO spreadsheet - I cut and park the dollar value to another cell, I'll type it back in when the time comes (this is LO). The blank cell has already, remarkably, reverted to Albany all by itself. That is, the very font LO denied knowing anything about only a moment ago, the one it chose for the whole spreadsheet. So I type in the value - don't want to chance it, do we? OK. Ah. I have to format it as a dollar value, of course. No problem, just format the cell as Currency, Dollar, Dollar, Dollar... What happened to the Dollar? FFS!

It's always on here, along with the UK pound and the Euro; until LO says it isn't. I see another option, select, select US Dollar (UK) Uh? Never had to do that before. At last. Done!

Not quite. As I Cut & Pasted that wonky dollar value I've now wiped out that cells Name, so now I just have to...

If I ever have to write a letter I think I'll stick with WordPad, probably safer.

Does anyone here feel the same as I do about LibreOffice?

[doolally]

Are you using Libreoffice version 0.0.0.1 on a Spectrum 64 by any chance?
My version 7.4.5.1 on Windows 10 is fine. Perhaps not quite as slick as Excel, but does all I need and more.
doolally
edit.... if you hate it that much, why do you use it?

[JohnB]

LO on Linux is fine. My only niggle is the clumsy way it leaves multiple windows when opening files

[XFool]

Are you using Libreoffice version 0.0.0.1 on a Spectrum 64 by any chance?

No. It's version 7.3.6.2 (x64)

if you hate it that much, why do you use it?

That's a good question (one I increasingly ask myself). My PC came with MS Office on board, perhaps I should switch to that (so far never used)?

I didn't have MS Office and had never really used it, so don't know what it is like. I used OpenOffice on my previous PC. When it came to the next one I had to decide what to do: Install OpenOffice, which I felt loyal to, or 'desert' to LibreOffice. I knew the situation with OpenOffice and could see that LibreOffice was 'the future' and so swallowed hard and deserted my OpenOffice.

More than once since I have thought of going back to OO, although everybody writes it off nowadays.

It seems to me LibreOffice represents the very worst type of programming philosophy. The BIG BOX 'smart' program that does everything, takes care of everything: "So anybody can use it".

Right... Just not to do what I WANT to do. Right here, right now. It seems keener to get started on all the things I have no desire to be doing. It's a long time since I last used OO, so my memory may be wrong, but it seemed to me that in OO if you selected a cell on a spreadsheet... that was it. It was then up to the user to decide what to do in that cell. LibreOffice always seems to have several ideas of its own on that score, and is not shy about getting started on them - whatever I think or want. I have always hated that sort of program, I want the machine to do exactly what I want it to do - nothing less and certainly nothing more.


Just an aside about those top chopped characters: seems to be LO's way of showing it's disdain about my favourite LinePrinter font, as it seems not to happen with its internal fonts.

[gpadsa]

When I 'paste' I always do 'ctrl-shift-v' i.e. 'paste special' even when I;m only pasting a single number, because it gets the formatting correct (from above/below in the spreadsheet)

The simple 'unformatted text' option in the popup gets the formatting correct (for me anyway) although sometimes I use the 'dialogue box' option if the date format or text delimiters come out wrong

It is an extra step or 2 compared to 'paste'/'ctrl-v' but the latter can do bizarre things & horrible formatting especially if the number was copied from a website because it tries to keep the source formatting while I want the formatting to match how I've set up my spreadsheet instead

gpadsa

[DrFfybes]

I don't have a Problem with Libre Office.

Certainly well worth the money.

I gather there are alternatives, but you get what you pay for.

Paul

[bungeejumper]

I don't have a Problem with Libre Office.

Certainly well worth the money.

I'm sure I wouldn't know. It costs me about £60 a year for an MS Office 365 Family licence from Amazon that covers six computers/phones/whatever. (With separate accounts, so the sprogs can't read each other's emails. But nb, without Access, which I don't need these days.)

£1.15 per week, or one glass of cheapo vino collapso. Or 20p a week for each user, if that sounds easier. Oh, it's the evil empire all right, and Bill Gates owns my eternal soul, but I can probably live with that.

BJ

[XFool]

...But has it got LinePrinter Gothic?

[bungeejumper]

...But has it got LinePrinter Gothic?

LOL, I've spent half my life in press and publishing, including layout, and I've never heard of that one. But isn't LPG a non-scalable graphic font from the days of the dot matrix printer and the Amstrad 464? Effectively a bitmap? And last seen on the walls of the Lascaux caves, and looking resplendent in shiny red woolly mammoth blood?

Then it turned it's nose up at my favourite font (for financial reports) Line Printer Gothic - One size only 8.5pt, one typeface only; as it comes. No bold, no italic, no underlining. LO accepts it exists by name, but will not display it or print it directly on the HP laser printer. Not "good enough" for it, no doubt.

Ah yes, I thought so. Mr Google says that most modern word processing apps simply can't be @rsed with the resizing technicalities that LPG would require, and will try to fob you off with you courier instead. Or just seize up completely. Or explain that it would like to help you but unfortunately your printer is missing a mammoth blood cartridge.

BJ

[Alaric]

will try to fob you off with you courier instead.

Hasn't Courier been the way of getting fixed width fonts on screen ever since the days of Windows 3.1?

[bungeejumper]

Hasn't Courier been the way of getting fixed width fonts on screen ever since the days of Windows 3.1?

Windows 3.1? Huh, fancy arriviste rubbish that'll never catch on. If you can't hand-code your own bespoke fonts into your 1980s Amstrad, then what kind of a techie will you ever be? (I had a friend who actually did that, and sold them too. )

Believe me, those new-fangled scalable fonts are the very work of Satan. Mind-rotting degenerative filth that will encourage idleness among the young. Pah!

BJ

[UncleEbenezer]

If you don't like LibreOffice, use one of the many alternatives available.

Anecdote: I recollect once upon a time doing battle with a recalcitrant StarOffice, the suite that later became OpenOffice (and hence also ancestor of LibreOffice). A friend came to meet me at my office - we were going somewhere after work - and told me exactly how to do what I wanted. She had never used StarOffice, but her day job involved lots of MS Office which she knew well, and which involved exactly the same obscure menu options to do what I wanted.

I hated them both for hiding functionality under deeply obscure and counterintuitive menu options (and for so-called "help" systems that only ever told you the bleedin' obvious, never what you needed). Things have improved a little - perhaps primarily 'cos it's now easier to google someone having posted the same problem - but functionality buried in menus is often still a complete pain.

[XFool]

...But has it got LinePrinter Gothic?

LOL, I've spent half my life in press and publishing, including layout, and I've never heard of that one. But isn't LPG a non-scalable graphic font from the days of the dot matrix printer and the Amstrad 464? Effectively a bitmap? And last seen on the walls of the Lascaux caves, and looking resplendent in shiny red woolly mammoth blood?

Yes! More or less...

It is indeed a non scalable, mono spaced font, that comes in only one spacing and size 16.67/8.5pt and no varieties of typeface. Presumably the laser printer's emulation of a simple dot matrix type font. It was in fact, one of the built in fonts of the original Canon and HP laser printers - certainly the early ones. Looking it up on my printed sheets from the HP 'PCL 5 Font List' I see it described therein simply as "Line Printer 16.67/8.5 INTERNAL 45 - INTERNAL 53", with relevant ESC sequences.

It's unadorned, clear, compact, simple, small and mono spaced - exactly what is needed for financial statements and reports. It was commonly used in the 1990s for such purposes, until it disappeared. Often replaced by Courier until something more fashionable turned up.

Ah yes, I thought so. Mr Google says that most modern word processing apps simply can't be @rsed with the resizing technicalities that LPG would require, and will try to fob you off with you courier instead. Or just seize up completely. Or explain that it would like to help you but unfortunately your printer is missing a mammoth blood cartridge.

Yes indeed, LibreOffice palms me off with Courier. Surely the most boring typeface in the world? Why, the CIA announced a few years ago that even they had abandoned it.

Recently though, when printing, I tried altering a setting on the print device Advanced Options menu to "TrueType Font: Download as SoftFont". When I printed, it wasn't Courier! OK, it wasn't exactly Line Printer either, but it was small and neat - a bit thin - but might in the circumstances be an acceptable enough compromise.

[DrFfybes]

...But has it got LinePrinter Gothic?

You can get Ransom Font for Libre Office.

I use it a lot for notes for the neighbours.

Paul

[XFool]

...Wicked!