LibreOffice 26.8 is out – local first, and with no AI The latest semi-annual release of LibreOffice, the cross-platform FOSS office suite, is out – and it’s gleefully throwing some shade. The Document Foundation released LibreOffice 26.8 – and sent The Register a press pack before it did so. We’re not going to go through it in great depth: it’s a mature suite, and most Linux …
I'm a huge fan of Libre Office, but I find their claim about "professional typography" deeply ironic when the headline of their press release ("LibreOffice 26.8 brings professional typography, deeper support for the world’s writing systems, and no artificial intelligence") is rendered so badly in all the article's screenshots. That kerning is atrocious.
Is it everywhere this bad or only on the Mac (or that specific Linux) Liam was using?
LO 26.8.0.3 on Server 2025 with that "libreoffice_26_8_press_release_en.odt" shows a much better look. There is a difference to the .DOCX variant though: The "Aptos 12" font is rendered different???? One with Time-New-Roman-Serif and the other looks like Arial?
OH! I don't have the Aptos font installed! And it is hinted with YELLOW background on the font. HEY LIAM! Get that font, 'cause your screenshots show the same yellow color at the font name box!
And Aptos is a Microsoft font to download. LO did shoot in their own foot here choosing THAT font.
"Is it everywhere this bad or only on the Mac (or that specific Linux) Liam was using?"
Libre office on Linux mint user here, and can attest that libre office rendering text properly from documents created elsewhere is always hit and miss. Sometimes reformatting font styles and flipping spacing settings back and forth helps, but not always. Sometimes (rarely) a retype is required when I presume a parameter deep in a settings menu that I can't find or even know exists is to blame.
Still good value though.
That sounds a lot like users doing weird things with documents than an issue with the word processor. I've seen people do really strange things creating documents. Back in the days of WordPerfect when you could see all the formatting, I'd have a document doing something odd and find out the line had something like "[tab][tab][center tab][tab][tab][space][space][space][tab]actual text you read". which did _crazy_things_ when you were editing that line.
> the Mac (or that specific Linux) Liam was using
Yep, a Mac, iMac 27" with latest Sequoia thanks to OCLP.
> HEY LIAM! Get that font,
TBH, I don't care, and I don't really need to fix the issue. The point here was to show how TDF's own PR looked in their own suite, vs the version _they provided_ in the format that _they keep telling us we should not use_. But they used it anyway, and sad to say, it looks better than the native version.
I am not saying "ODT bad." I am not saying "use DOCX". (I dislike the MS XML formats and avoid them myself.) I am just showing how it looked by default. Over on Mastodon someone said "well I don't find it clunky" and this is the exact sort of issue people see in real life, beautifully exemplified by _the TDF's own sample documents_.
It's an example of that old "you never get a 2nd chance to make a first impression" thing. For some people, this would be that chance. MS is alienating people with the cloud and AI. So is the USA as a whole. This is a chance for TDF and LO.
They dropped the ball.
Agreed, they really should have used a PDF.
I'll see myself out -> [ ]
(On a parting note : font substitution is usually done at the OS level, with varying levels of accuracy, avoiding it means using one present by default on all major OS's - not easy, they really ought to publish different documents instead)
Liam, this is almost certainly an unrelated issue, but I hit a typeface SNAFU the other month with Calibre for Mac. The solution required deleting some local fonts and reinstalling them.
As for AI – surely an interested developer would leave this to the user and provide an API for agents if they want to use them.
You dropped the ball just as hard Liam - you used an non-professional OS, that wields a proprietary license to achieve many evil objectives and as a consequence, prevents reliable testing and then you were surprised that kerning was malformed?
As you have seen time and time again, such fruity toys aren't suitable for real work (those are even worse at real work than windows and that's really, really, really, really, really hard to pull off) - alas you refuse to do you job properly by using GNU/Linux at least - instead you work for apple, against humanity.
After looking at the document metadata and some interviews online, my senses are telling me that Italo Vignoli is a windows used - which explains the choice of an Aptos font and the consequence of that mistake, being the odt and docx versions of the document rendering differently.
If only Italo Vignoli used GNU/Linux-libre instead, didn't refer to degenerative LLM's as "generative AI", made downloading the press release not require arbitrary remote code execution and also just not included .docx versions (it would make a lot more sense to provide .odt and .pdf versions of the document instead) - everything would have gone just fine (do things the evil way, things go wrong).
Dear Microsoft employee, I have been recalculating total cost of ownership in a few places that did not make the mistake to further entangle their business by using MS cloud resources, and it appears the "fruity" stuff pays itself back in such a short time that it's essentially a no brainer. You only get an favourable figure for Windows based platforms if you keep OPEX and CAPEX as far apart as you can, and that's indeed how most companies miss out major savings.
The issue is really not the cost of hardware - it's usability. If a member of staff saves two days a year using superior UIs that doesn't change every other weak and not having to update once a month visible (Patch Tuesday) and several times a week invisibly (Office 365 updates and sometimes twice daily Edge updates) the higher hardware costs have already been offset. Add to that superior security (as in being less of a colander than most Microsoft products) and the fact that Microsoft is now busy doing what they destroyed Netscape for (everything lives in the browser) and running Windows is nowadays a very questionable choice - certainly when companies are pushed towards hardware refreshes anyway.
I deem a tool "suitable for work" (to use your words) if I can indeed do my job without interruptions and at the time I want to. I open a Macbook, it's ready for use. I'm ready, I close it. I restart it (rarely, but it happens) and I am not faced with updates on shutdown (classic US trick to push that into employee's time) or on startup - WE remain in control, not Microsoft. And what has been learned ones mostly remains that way or gets no more than the occasional tweak.
I would not want to shout too loud 'non-professional' when you want to promote Microsoft, because those that actually KNOW their stuff tend to use Macs is they have a choice, as it both runs a proper, stable, and professionally useful OS as well as all the Open Source tools you want, and unlike that OS you'd like to promote it needs no extras to talk Open Standards - it does so by default - and thus integrates with practically anything you can throw at it.
You want default instability, a shocking lack of security (refreshed monthly), serious privacy leaks and a forever changing UI losing staff time, go Microsoft. If you want to combine professional software with Open Source, use a Mac. And if you want a server that you can trust without having to throw a ludicrous amount of resources at it - well, that's Linux. The only thing not to like is that their every announcement is somehow 'exciting', but I can live with that.
>Dear Microsoft employee, I have been recalculating total cost of ownership in a few places that did not make the mistake to further entangle their business by using MS cloud resources
I am not a microsoft employee - remember that microsoft employees never name the GNU.
Stating the fact that macos is somehow worse, convenience wise, at carrying out work than windows somehow, is not a suggestion to use windows, or the clown services - it's a suggestion to use GNU/Linux instead (at least, although GNU/Linux-libre would be better).
>it appears the "fruity" stuff pays itself back in such a short time that it's essentially a no brainer.
If you can use macos, as all you really use is a web browser, then you can use GNU/Linux instead just fine (being able to use whatever computer and OS costs of $0 to maybe around $20, pays itself off extremely fast).
>If a member of staff saves two days a year using superior UIs that doesn't change every other weak and not having to update once a month visible (Patch Tuesday) and several times a week invisibly (Office 365 updates and sometimes twice daily Edge updates)
I'm not sure what you're on about - macos has just as terrible UI's and apple does change them every other week too.
I'm confident that apple pushes out invisible updates too.
>add to that superior security (as in being less of a colander than most Microsoft products)
macos and windows have an equal level of no security.
>I deem a tool "suitable for work" (to use your words) if I can indeed do my job without interruptions and at the time I want to
Applying that rule as written, windows and macos both disqualify themselves - macos does interrupt, just not as often as windows (for example, macos is defective like windows and cannot apply updates without stopping you from using apple's computer).
Being able to do your job in either case depends on whether microsoft or apple allows you to.
Another example is an anti-feature in macos, where it refuse to run a program, until it sends what program you're about to run to apple and gets a confirmation back that it's "not malware" (definitely what it's about).
This leads to problems where cr…apps don't launch for 30 seconds or minutes and many other issues; https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/30/why-some-apps-sometimes-launch-extremely-slowly/
Also, if such checking server ever becomes extremely slow, then as a consequence, cr…apps will launch extremely slowly (apparently there is a fall though if there is no internet connection, or the server is down).
I could fill pages with links to issues used had, carrying out basic tasks with macos - but I can't be bothered - such OS clearly is not suitable for work, even less suitable than windows (as while windows does surveil what programs are run, issues with the surveillance functionality doesn't seem to cause programs to launch slowly).
>I restart it (rarely, but it happens) and I am not faced with updates on shutdown (classic US trick to push that into employee's time) or on startup - WE remain in control, not Microsoft.
Apple remains in control of their computers.
Apple may not subject you to updates on shutdown, but could at any time decide to start doing so.
>And what has been learned ones mostly remains that way or gets no more than the occasional tweak.
That doesn't seem true - I remember reading about many cases of a lot of macos used complaining about apple changing things.
Things certainly don't stay the same anyway - you can't even do something as trivial as use an old program on a newer version of macos, without the developer porting to that version of macos (compatibility may be retained between a few versions and then it's broken).
>I would not want to shout too loud 'non-professional' when you want to promote Microsoft,
Thinking about it more, it doesn't make any sense that you saw; "(those are even worse at real work than windows and that's really, really, really, really, really hard to pull off)" and "windows used" and thought that I was promoting m$.
>those that actually KNOW their stuff tend to use Macs
Those who actually know their stuff use a real OS - GNU/Linux (those who know better use GNU/Linux-libre).
Wanting to play with fruity toys or WC's indicates a severe lack of competence.
>as it both runs a proper, stable, and professionally useful OS as well as all the Open Source tools you want,
I do not want degenerate "open source" tools.
>that OS you'd like to promote it needs no extras to talk Open Standards - it does so by default - and thus integrates with practically anything you can throw at it.
You clearly don't know your stuff - macos implements *no* OS "open standards" (unless you regard TLS for example as an OS standard).
"no extras" is totally false - I thought macos could run executable's in the free elf standard, but it can't without 3rd party extra's - it only supports a seemingly proprietary version of the mach-o executable format.
Macos may be POSIX-compliant, but POSIX is a *proprietary* standard, that has a test suite that is proprietary as can be (it's forbidden to give the test suite to someone else, to prevent anyone else who doesn't agree to the proprietary terms, from seeing how far from POSIX-compliant an OS is).
Due to all the copy-pasting from BSD's and how it's POSIX-compliant, macos is somewhat Unix-like, which allows porting software from BSD's and also GNU software and software for the GNU OS.
Many programs compile with minimal porting work, but due to differences, many programs are difficult to port and cannot be used without porting them first, or running a GNU/Linux VM, or some sort of GNU implementation (i.e. without Linux).
As a result, integration with software for the GNU OS is minimal at best - "practically anything" is clearly not true.
>You want default instability, a shocking lack of security (refreshed monthly), serious privacy leaks and a forever changing UI losing staff time, go Microsoft.
If you want default instability, a shocking lack of security (refreshed monthly), serious privacy leaks and a forever changing UI losing staff time, go Microsoft or Apple.
>If you want to combine professional software with Open Source, use a Mac.
If you want to combine garbage proprietary software with garbage proprietary software, use a mac.
When it comes to professional software, the only software I've found to be professional (i.e. works properly and stays working when you get it to work) has been free software.
>And if you want a server that you can trust without having to throw a ludicrous amount of resources at it - well, that's Linux. The only thing not to like is that their every announcement is somehow 'exciting', but I can live with that.
You cannot trust the kernel, Linux - it is composed of >75% proprietary software, without source code.
The resources Linux now requires is ludicrous - it used to fit on a floppy and need only a few dozen MiB of RAM - now <25% of Linux (the source-available part) weighs in at ~600MiB.
Meanwhile, GNU Emacs (Eight Megabytes and Constantly Swapping) continues to directly use 8MiB of RAM (GtK bloat, if used, uses a lot more) and most other GNU packages remain quite lightweight.
If you want a desktop or a server OS that works fine with whatever fast hardware (any decent hardware made since 2000) and that you can actually trust, the only choice is GNU/Linux-libre.
All of that is fine for at home. The moment you have to use commercial software we hit the lamentable state of a lack of applications for Linux. I assume that's because there are actually too many desktops to choose from and no unifying codebase underneath to manage that.
> Stating the fact that macos is somehow worse, convenience wise, at carrying out work than windows somehow, is not a suggestion to use windows, or the clown services - it's a suggestion to use GNU/Linux instead (at least, although GNU/Linux-libre would be better).
Not if you also need to use commercial packages or -worse- are somehow compelled to use Microsoft software such as Office 365. Which many companies do, sadly. As for security, clearly you don't use MacOS so there's no point explaining. As far as I can tell you only use Linux.
As for open standards, it's pretty much anything under *nix. SSH, SSL, FTP, IMAP, SMTP, NFS, caldav, carddav, NTP. Out of the box. That said, the only office application Apple offers that's worth considering is Keynote, that's quite efficient in getting something together quickly. Otherwise I'd use LibreOffice despite the regrettable differences with Collabra.
> When it comes to professional software, the only software I've found to be professional (i.e. works properly and stays working when you get it to work) has been free software.
Depends on what you call professional, of course. It appears we differ in that respect, as I'm dealing with about 2000 users and 8 subsidiary companies. Slightly different perspective unless you're Google or Meta.
>The moment you have to use commercial software we hit the lamentable state of a lack of applications for Linux.
There is plenty of commercial software available for GNU, that is also professional and also happens to be free software.
There is no lack of software - GNU can run the most software out of any OS - even proprietary software.
If you're looking for proprietary handcuffware, that isn't available, but that is a feature, not a bug.
>I assume that's because there are actually too many desktops to choose from and no unifying codebase underneath to manage that.
It's irrelevant what DE the user chooses - the unifying codebase for windowing is Xorg and the unifying OS is GNU and GNU's libraries.
If you target Xorg, the program works the same regardless of what DE the user has preference for.
Even in the case of wayland, which breaks everything, if you continue to use Xorg, things work the same via Xwayland.
>Not if you also need to use commercial packages
Yes, if a terrible business decision has been made and a business had decided to make their business a subsidiary of another business, via another businesses handcuffware, that has been artificially made to refuse to run on anything but windows and maybe macos, such software will refuse to run on GNU/Linux.
Unless the business has the plan of being sent broke (soon enough, or eventually), such business needs to escape from such handcuffs.
>or -worse- are somehow compelled to use Microsoft software such as Office 365. Which many companies do, sadly.
clown365 stuff seems to mostly be webshit, thus you'll get the same level of unusability on GNU/Linux as macos and windows.
In most cases, LibreOffice is the professional replacement if you need to handle MOX formats.
Even for outlook, there's the web interface, or the professional Evolution with evolution-ews, which actually works properly as an email client, unlike outlook.
>As far as I can tell you only use Linux.
I also use Hurd as my kernel.
>As for open standards, it's pretty much anything under *nix. SSH, SSL, FTP, IMAP, SMTP, NFS, caldav, carddav, NTP. Out of the box.
windows happens to also support most of those free standards out of the box (it even still supports SSL, when it should only support TLS) and there's plenty of software available to provide the rest as needed - but that is not a reason to use windows.
>Depends on what you call professional, of course. It appears we differ in that respect, as I'm dealing with about 2000 users and 8 subsidiary companies. Slightly different perspective unless you're Google or Meta.
You're torturing 2000 used huh? What a shame.
Interesting that you choose alphabet or meta as an examples - both realize that proprietary software is not professional and thus use mostly free software (GNU/Linux and many programs for that OS).
On the computers that run the business and thus need to work, there is no macos or windows - there is GNU/Linux.
alphabet primarily uses GNU/Linux on both servers and desktops - an employee who wants to use windows on a desktop need to first gain approval, so the computer can be appropriately firewalled (I suspect the same rules apply to macos).
I haven't looked into meta.
You realise that you're basically telling Liam that "he's holding it wrong"?
This may be a minor technical issue but that's exactly why it shouldn't happen with a press release, especially one touting "professional typography". Liam's right when he says that what matters is that press release looks better (on his machine) in MS Word. He'll still use the software but I can think of lots of people who would blame the software and not want to use it as a result.
> You realise that you're basically telling Liam that "he's holding it wrong"?
No, that interpretation is too far fetched. My hint was what I would call an actual mistake, and not a weird twisted reinterpretation. But you did not read all I wrote, 'cause actual finger pointing "holding it wrong" goes to the document foundation, for releasing such a cringy press "We are the most free office ever! Look at our kerning! The best evar!" release with a proprietary Microsoft Font.
What baffles me a bit is that there are clearly some very skilled people here debating kerning and fonts and other things that I'm personally really not an expert on - don't they know they can actually have a voice in development? Heck, they even took a suggestion of mine (long ago, forgot what it was now) and I am absolutely not a developer.
Try that with Microsoft..
Just downloaded the press pack and opened the odt file in LO Writer 26.2.1.2 which is what is on this machine. Aptos font is not installed, but whatever has been substituted looks a lot better than whatever was used to make the screen grabs in the article!
I agree with other replies in this thread that perhaps TDF might use fonts that are likely to be found on most computers, or at least fonts that are metrical equivalents (liberation?).
But, yes, I am grateful that LO is available, and is ai unenhanced and local only. One hopes that the organisational turf war can be settled before the blast radius becomes too large.
A word processor is for typing, not typesetting. Manual kerning isn't a trivial embellishment like underline or strike-thru; it's something that has to be learned over several years. "Professional typography" is done with professional design tools, full stop.
"open source" you say?
GNU groff is free software!
groff --version
`GNU groff version 1.23.0
Copyright (C) 2022 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
GNU groff comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
You may redistribute copies of groff and its subprograms
under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
For more information about these matters, see the file
named COPYING.`
Question: are there resources where someone can upskill themselves on that topic? I know that the Canva app also integrated Affinity Publisher so the tools are there, but I would like to have a bit more insight in how to work with it. I will never claim to be a pro designer, but the small shop I have occasionally needs some literature made so I'd like to have at least a basic idea.
Essentially, *I* want to design, not involve some AI, also because using AI I have found it most efficient if you have at least a reasonable insight in what you're asking. And I don't have that at the moment.
Thank $DEITY for that. I was getting worried, in spite of all the other goodies; I hope they _never_ lose the menu/toolbar option.
Now, while I'm thinking such thoughts... wouldn't it be nice if it had a mode to _enforce_ styling, and to have styling options like LaTeX does?
I did not need to change. I upgraded my LO yesterday, and it seemed to have kept my old settings of "NO RIBBON". Where is the menu option to activate and test tough?
(found it) Argh, my most important option in calc are not on the main page... "AutoFilter" and "Freeze first row". Most often used 'cause opening .CSVs and save them ad .odt/.xlsx is something LO still can do better. (Though Office 2024 got better there. Office365 apps, sadly, not.)
(switching back to classical)
That's by default. Upgrades keep your user settings as you have defined them. Only fresh new installs have to make a decision with the "User Interface Wizard" (which you can indeed run yourself under "View", if you're curious about ribbons and laces and such).
That alone confirms its high value for me: I can upgrade and nothing really changes until I'm ready to explore features. You don't get a new UI rammed down your throat because some moron in Redmond decides that half the planet must now waste time relearning everything. Just working out what that costs in man hours alone should give any properly managed company a headache.
I work on Microsoft, MacOS and Linux, and most of the desktop work I do on the Mac because it really is the most efficient. Most of the server work is Linux, because once you set something up it just keeps running, but as desktops go I am baffled why people keep accepting what is essentially abuse of users. The Microsoft UX is really rubbish, and that's before we mention the distractions that it now forces onto users too.
You can indeed. One day I shall tell the tale of formatting (somebody else's) two thousand page document, each paragraph of which had a different style, even though they were all theoretically the same.
I refer to projects using LaTeX like LyX, which does not allow, without jumping through a lot of hoops, random styling. More significantly, it offers by default a selection of styling libraries such that your document will come out matched to a house style.
Weird, I get totally different results when I do an online search for "latex user" :).
Joking aside, it's astonishing how well these tools have stood the test of time. Compare that to the IMHO rather unstable MS Office offerings over that same time..
After using LO for roughly 10 years (default in all distributions I tried) this year I finally gave up on it.
The endless enshittification proved too much to bear.
I had not seen this bit before.
Found it after installing the previous version to see if there was some driver/version problem withy the one I was using.
From the [README_en_US]:
[quote]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Graphic Performance
----------------------------------------------------------------------
By default, LibreOffice favours nice-looking graphics over speed. If you experience slow graphics, switching off 'Tools - Options - LibreOffice - View - Use Anti-Aliasing' may help.
[/quote]
That did it.
I went ahead and (with deliberate prejudice) purged [LibreOffice] from my Devuan system and installed the last available version of [OpenOffice].
Installation was a breeze, worked with no issues "out of the box", did not bitch about anything and opened my spreadsheets/documuments without failing in any.
ie: [*.xls], [*.ods], [*.doc] and [*.odt].
None of the issues I was having with [LibreOffice].
Quite happy with it, not to mention the lack of enhancements*, which now seem to include an MS style ribbon.
* A ribbon? WTHF! - What's next?
"By default, LibreOffice favours nice-looking graphics over accurate, repeatable calculations with reproducible results"?
.
I use OpenOffice still on my core-duo museum quality thinkpad T60 (nice keyboard, xfce4, Alt-F11 and oOo is full screen with menu available &c). There is a very stark contrast in responsiveness between oOo and LO, the latter runs like treacle and is not happy. That machine does not connect to the Internet usually (disabled wifi and bluetooth in BIOS, cable still works if needed).
I do take the precaution of setting the load/save settings on the LO install on my main laptop to odf 1.2 legacy extended for round-trip editing. Especially important for diagrams and such.
Locally installed software does give us the ability to retain older releases, and we have to take the consequences of that
... very stark contrast in responsiveness between oOo and LO ...
To put it mildly/politely.
But not only between [oOo] and [LO].
Also between the previous version installed (7.4.4.7 from the Debian reps) and what I manually downloaded from the LO servers.(26.2.5?)
Practically unusable.
My Sun Ultra 24 (Q9550/8.0Gb) with a mix of SAS and SSDs and three monitors could not make [LibreOffice] run properly whilst [OpenOffice] is as snappy as can be.
Last but not least, it does not cause me any grief.
.
Upon first load you get a choice between ribbon and "classic" toolbar UI layout (I can't stand the ribbon interface personally). Not sure how that skipped you by, it even mentions it in TFA.
I'd noticed the occasional lag with LO but in honesty never that bad. Admittedly a far older version that was bundled with Debian 12 but even on my ancient single-core intel Atom powered Netbook it runs okay.....
> the last available version of [OpenOffice]
What's with the random formatting, BTW?
Anyway: OK, you do you. TBH if you chose Devuan that shows a good degree of tech knowledge and willingness to put up with things that are maybe a little broken or wonky.
I rarely use LO any more -- I mostly just work in Markdown now. Quicker, less distractions. But if I found performance lagging and there was an option to improve it, I would -- you know -- _try that option_ not rage-quit, uninstall, and install something which is unmaintained and obsolete.
If you RTFA then there's a link as to why not run OOo in there:
https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/openoffice-2026-usability.html
You are free to disagree. You do you. All I can give is general advice.
I do have some very low-end kit that I occasionally use, and on them, I uninstall LibreOffice and install Abiword and Gnumeric instead. They're enough to do the job and 10% the size of OOo. But all I really want now, 90% of the time, is a Markdown editor with a preview.
The link is classic FOSS fan stuff: it didn't work on my computer so it couldn't possibly work for anyone else so you mustn't use it or you're horrible and I want a pony.
On my four Linux Mint XFCE computers, attempting to zoom in on a large font in LO instantly crashes the xfce4 session. On that basis I demand that everyone stop using LO
Horses for courses. If you're writing stuff for the web then I can see the attraction of Markdown. If you're preparing stuff to print and you're fussy about getting the pagination just right then you need a proper WP of some sort, be it LO or something else.
One thing I do occasionally find handy is having a second application, being OO or something else (Calligra in my case) that will open the same file format for those occasions when you get in a tangle after multiple changes and think "What did it look like before I started?", try reopening and the application goes "Already open, mate, here it is" and just brings your editing window back to the top. OK, so you could save the edited file under a different name and go back to the original but if you have another application available it's the easier option.
For the record I've used Devuan for years. The only issues currently are the missing secondary search on Synaptic is missing and Informix server isn't starting up due to a missing library. The first is certainly due to the underlying Debian no longer having a maintainer for the relevant library and the second is probably also Debian related and I'll fix it when I need it as the only stuff on Informix is some genealogical material I haven't touched for a long time.
The stand-out new feature for me is the result of László Németh's work on microtypography and the paragraph-formatting algorithm in justified text:
https://numbertext.org/book/#__RefHeading___Toc884_14568774771
You see, up until now, like many other office suites, LibreOffice would only adjust kerning on a single line, not the complete paragraph. Németh's work might not be right up there with Don Knuth's work on TeX, but it's certainly a huge step forward for LibreOffice.
It looks good and I wish I'd had it a few months ago when I was preparing the final draft of a book.
I daren't change anything that might impact layout right now. I'm in the middle of introducing proof-reader's corrections and the ability of a slight change to cascade into pagination changes is mind blowing. e.g. changing a comma to a colon pushed the last word off the end of a line. That ran through the paragraph to push a couple of words off the end of the original last line so that added a line. Moving the rest of the page down a line fit the widow/orphan rules and move two lines onto the next page ...
I'm looking forward to using this when it works properly (I edit large books that are generate in LO).
However, I've just tried this latest version for Mac and I end up with ragged left and right margins for justified layout when using the composer. I'll stick a bug report in when I get a chance and see if I can help get it polished. This is the last feature I really need so that I don't have to maintain "professional" tooling for layout.
As such, we are pleased by TDF’s stance with LibreOffice. It is a native app, with separate ports for Windows, and Linux, and macOS. All run as native local apps, they do so entirely on your machine, and they do not attempt to save anything into “cloud storage” for you. Your software, your data, on your computer, on your premises. For us, that is how it should be.
See title for appropriate closing exclamation....
Yesterday I downloaded a .xlsx spreadsheet (from the ICO no less) and opened it in LO. I was mystified to find lots of vital text missing, until I realised that it was rendered black on a very dark blue background. I can't imagine that the originator saw it like that so I assume it's a compatibility problem. I had this years ago with presentations, and it made me stick with MS for professional purposes. Now I'm retired I prefer to use LO, but was surprised that this still seems to be an issue.
I suspect the originator has a super bright display and weird colour settings, thus black on a dark blue background looked fine.
Regardless, you just fix the document - select the broken cells and remove the colour or set a suitable replacement colour - freedom only costing 5 seconds of work is a very good outcome after all.
You get compatibility problems trying to view m$ office documents in the same version of office on difference computers - you're asking a bit much from LibreOffice if you expect it to automatically mitigate all of the intentional sabotage.
I've personally never had issues viewing .xlsx spreadsheets produced with office, with LibreOffice on GNU/Linux-libre.
Ditto here - no problems. I zapped the last bit of Microsoft software from my Mac quite a while back (about a decade now, I think), and both the Linux box and the Mac run LO just fine.
That said, I do understand both sides of the LO - Collabra divide. They're not as far apart as they seem so I hope they come to some understanding.
I look at the LO-Collabora competition from the opposite angle - why is Collabora trying to compete with LO on the desktop? I don't want an electron app, I want a full suite of native applications. Collabora offers a version of the native suite as collaboraoffice-desktop, but on the download page it says, "not for production - for testing only". Stay in your lane, Collabora, do the online office thing - which works pretty well by the way. But stop trying to say your are competing with a full native desktop suite when all you are offering is an electron app and a "don't use this in production" set of native applications.
So, no classic menu bar with toolbar beneath?
Or is that still in there but so old and boringly unremarkable it's not even worth a mention any more?
I frequently use my screen width to open two docs or views side by side, no room at the sides for sidebars, no room at the top for an inch-thick ketchup sandwichribbon.
Seriously, every time you add smarts to a UI, you remove usability for the power pro. Options yes, but leave the smart config to us.
I suspect that the choice of default UI layout will be based on what TDF think that the majority of users will expect to see. Ribbon has been around for a long time now. The menu bar/tool bars option is still present as I think the OA says.
TD;LR we are getting old
> it's not even worth a mention any more
I specifically did mention it!
It says right there:
«
If you don't like the ribbon, LibreOffice 26.8 still lets you switch to classic repositionable toolbars – ideal for widescreens
»
Underneath the screenshot _showing vertical toolbars_.
What more can I do?
There are no menu bars in the screenshots because it's a Mac, and the menu bar is at the top of the screen, not in the LO windows. But it's there and works.
On my Ubuntu machines it's in the same place, thanks to Unity, and on my single Debian box, the same place again because that's how I have configured Xfce: to look like a Mac. I like the global menu bar -- it makes good use of the top panel and saves space in all other windows.
But if I had taken screenshots on Windows, or GNOME, or COSMIC, you would have seen it.
I didn't, because I don't normally run Windows, so it would have meant half an hour of updates and a few reboots first, then download and install. On Linux, installing a new version of LibreOffice is trickier on Linux -- you either need a Snap or Flatpak or something, or remove the integral copy and install unofficial packages. On a Mac, it's dead easy and quick: download disk image of app + of the language pack, drag'n'drop the app, unmount and bin the image; then run the UK English installer, then bin it. Job done.
You got macOS screenshots because I had a podcast to record at 3PM and I just did not have the time. Sorry about that.
Yes it has a menu bar. And toolbars, either 1 global one, or a ribbon thing but crucially one that can be vertical, or multiple repositionable toolbars. Personally in normal use, I turn all the toolbars off anyway.
> What more can I do?
> There are no menu bars in the screenshots because it's a Mac, and the menu bar is at the top of the screen, not in the LO windows.
Macs? I know naathing, Señor (and splitting the menu out of the app is quietly insane, no? Rather glad I don't know). You could have put that note in the article, perhaps. But thank you for making it clear now.
splitting the menu out of the app is quietly insane, no?
No, your muscle memory will find menu options faster if they're always in the same place, which can be either the top/side of the screen or where the pointer is (context menu). If the menu options are anchored to the window then the menu moves around the screen.
> If the menu options are anchored to the window then the menu moves around the screen.
That is exactly how my muscle memory works. Relatively not absolutely. Move the window and the menu moves with it, always the same vector from point X in the GUI. Two apps up, two menus not jumping on top of each other. You just made my case for me, thanks.
In theory anchoring the menu in the top-left of the screen is easier because it's on the same place on the mousepad every time (if the mouse pad/DPI is the right size). I'm not going to argue against the other way, but I always have preferred this way as it's what I started with.
The work people usually use any office suite for is transfer from brain to some useful digital representation, be that text, numbers, whatever. That's not readily autometable unless you have a brain/computer interface. But if you want to push oodles of money along with screenshots etc to Microsoft to some still unspecified end instead of automating it by scripting it to run locally for free, I suppose that's just down to the way you were brought up.
"unspecified end"? I am talking about Business! Commerce! Running a company!
Are you living in some kind of communist utopia? Or have you never worked a day in your life? Here in the real world, the capitalist world, it is all about competition and if your competitors are paying Microsoft tens of thousands of pounds to have their data harvested then you need to do the same or else the world will end. This is day one on any MBA course.
TDF has dropped the ball by refusing to make smooth scrolling a priority. Smooth scrolling feels natural and basically everything else has had it for at least a decade.
Using LO feels like the old days of playing a FPS on insufficient hardware. Choppy, stuttering, jumpy, unnatural. Doesn't feel immersive.
Jumpy scrolling in software was a real usability problem before we had any better. Now that we've trained our brains to smooth scroll, going without it is even worse, especially when reading/reviewing something.
Can't even fathom how many people try LO on a recommendation or out of frustration with MS, only to feel "something just isn't right" within the first few minutes, then quit in disappointment.
Potential users aren't waiting on $OBSCURE_FEATURE to switch. Most need an office suite which handles the basics. Smooth scrolling, especially in text-heavy software, has been a basic feature for many years.
I don't like smooth scrolling at all. I deliberately disable it, when possible. One cannot read while the smooth scroll effect is still wasting the time to do the smooth scroll. After that eyes need a bit extra time to readjust from "oh, now it is scrolling" to "oh, now it has stopped".
But I still miss XYZ/Surface chart which Excel can do since (at least) 1992. I just stopped bugging them about it and accept that LO will improve, but not necessarily on my pet missing feature. Other example is a better conditional formatting of cells in calc, still cannot keep up with the Excel UI / options. You have to make weird workarounds.
I don't like smooth scrolling at all. I deliberately disable it, when possible. One cannot read while the smooth scroll effect is still wasting the time to do the smooth scroll. After that eyes need a bit extra time to readjust from "oh, now it is scrolling" to "oh, now it has stopped".
Many of us do. Have been doing that since the days of clicking and holding a mouse wheel. Entirely on trackpads now, which makes it even more reflexive and feel like holding a page.
I also prefer wearing glasses over contacts for screen work, so keeping active focus in the middle ~2/3 of the screen is even more important.
Something which comes down to matters of reflex and vision can't really be second tiered as a pet feature when it's much more fundamental than that.
I'd consider it on par with a UI's dark mode as being much more than just a preferred theme. Dark mode exists to ease eye strain and glare. That's a way different motivation then usual for custom app skins.
It doesn't have smooth scrolling? I've used it for years and never even noticed whether it has or not.
The more I think about it,the more fascinating a concentration on scrolling mechanism seems. I've been using onscreen editors such as vi for even longer, say >40 years, and I doubt I've even paid any attention to how the text moves at any time. I'm puzzled as to how it can become such a critical factor for some, such as the A/C and Jou, albeit in opposite ways, and something to which others such as myself are completely oblivious. There must be a psychology PhD in there for somebody.
You have never experience smooth scrolling in an office-GUI application I bet. You don't get it in a console, and AFAIK there is none on a linux which has it.
> There must be a psychology PhD
Yeah right, go ahead patronizing for your lack of experience. Be right in line with the orange leader.
Would gladly contribute $1000 toward fixing it and I suspect many others feel the same way. But the project ignores the problem.
Hate having to use LO for this reason alone. But I hate Microsoft more.
Just read through the 26.8 release notes. Yawn.
Excellent article. Just a warning on LibreOffice handling of .xlsx files: LO has saved me files I have made on Excel at work several times, because it can magically fix .xlsx corrupted files, but if the file contains work done in Power Query, it will delete it. So if you work with Power Query, do not use LibreOffice to open and save the .xlsx file.
.xlsx and many others (including LO documents and epub etc) are glorified .ZIP files with .xml etc inside. Unpack them beofre fixing. High probability that you will find you nuked query among the unpacked .xml files. This open a secondary fixing path btw: I fixed a few times an .xlsx by unpacking, cleaning the main .xml, packing again.
Because the version they originally installed just works. MS has made us all a bit paranoid about updates.
It's a proper executable, not cloud-based crap, and it has no AI. What's not to like?
No desire for the ribbon, but as an option for those that want it, no problem.
Don't bitch about any MS/LO issues. Bitch about having to use MS at all.
In a world of really shitty tech, tainted by SaaS and AI, LO is brilliant.
Virtual hug for them.
Started with OO in 2001, then went to LO after the split. Never regretted the decision, especially after Office2007 and the ribbon.
I don't use the new MS fonts and I have a set of templates using Carlito as the normal font and Cambria for headings. Not had any trouble with spacing or wrapping and my documents are anything up to 250 pages long, rarely less than 70 pages with CAD diagrams and photos embedded.
LO makes better PDFs than Word and more compact from the same source.
As my docs contain a mixture of portrait A4, landscape A4 and A3 I find LO much faster to alternate between page styles. The other thing I really like is work completion.
Word only gets used if a customer specifically needs a .docx format document.
Might argue that the "slightly" could be omitted in a goodly number of cases.
Every couple of years I have to explain to her indoors that she should save documents to .doc (Office97) format if she is going to email it to others and that .odt is fine if only she is going to use it or print it. The recipients aren't businesses etc but mostly retirees who typically run ancient software on decrepit hardware.
I actually purchased an Office 2016 license and installed it for her to replace the Libreoffice or Openoffice on her PC. A few months later I was summoned to fix Microsoft Word - it didn't look right and she couldn't use it. Looked all ok to me (as much anything MS does.) After some close questioning and "show me" I determined what she called Word was LO/OO writer (swrite.) She created new documents by double clicking on an old document and renamed it when saving.
Somehow the file association must have changed. Anyway the easiest (arguably best) fix was to uninstall MS Office.
Personally, I have never seriously used a word processor. The last real document preparation I ever did I managed with troff (groff) and the Mom package although I concede LaTEX would be a far better choice.
Even if there no AI in libreoffice there could be an MCP like interface that allows people to plug a LLM of their choice into the tools to do stuff like document generation, grammar / rewording, citations, synopses, translations etc. That LLM doesn't even need to be in the cloud, it could be something like LM Studio.
Hey! I've seen Tron and I know exactly what the MCP is. Why would you want that? Trying to get a letter wrote to the gas board and the next thing you know you've been lasered in the arse and David Warner's trying to wallop you with a glow-in-the-dark frisbee? No thank you Sir. Good on the TDFs for sparing us that.
The Libre folk are great. I donate some $$$ to them every month - would rather do that than give M$ another penny.
Do wish though they'd make up their mind on a self-hosted Docs app.
Also wish they'd merge with Mozilla. For the GUI folk, having a great Document suite, plus a browser, plus a truly great email client, would be good turnabout for what The House That Bill Built is still trying to stick down all our craws.
