Make the Writer comfortable again?

In the past Ī̲ argued that LibreOffice (at least, Writer) is handier than Microsoft Office. For example, LibreOffice 4 has «Case» item in the context menu (which appears upon clicking the mouse button; it, as far as understand, corresponds to «Format» of the main menu bar). One can change letter case for a word (or selection) with two mouse clicks. Assignment of a style sheet to the paragraph is easy to see and change. And where something is missing from menus by default, there is the Tools→Customize→Menu thing to fix it.

LibreOffice 6 dropped the «Case» item and Ī̲ am unable to find such thing as «Format» within Tools→Customize→Menu but, at very least, Tools→Customize itself rests in place. Now devels (of LibreOffice 7) are preoccupied with making it look like Microsoft. No drop menu for text style sheets (this new Writer encourages clueless formatting practices), «Tools→Customize» is hidden under the ۞ widget, it again mentions the «Format» item (which is now absent from the main menu), but no reference to the new «Home» stuff, and Ī̲ cannot find the «Case» command/submenu there anyway.

It seems that chaos of pointless tweaks took over the development. Should Ī̲ update past 4.x, indeed? Or a fork of LibreOffice exists preserving LibreOffice 4’s fine points?

If the context menu item is so important, well, use Apache OpenOffice maybe.

You compare LibreOffice version 4 with version 7 and expect no evolution of the software. Nothing changing at all through the life cycle of a product generally is considered “stagnation”. Use LibreOffice version 4 if that is what you are looking for.

I wonder which UI kind does OP use (or is that some OS-specific, like macOS), with all those “LibreOffice 7 hides this menu bar by default”, “«Tools→Customize» is hidden under the ۞ widget”, etc. It seems strange to use some new UI variant (not existed back then) and expect the same placement of elements, when the good old “Standard Toolbar” interface does not hide menu or “Customize”.

Hello,

  • use Format -> Text to get the “Case” stuff via menu
  • use Shift+F3 to cycle through “Case” options
  • use Tools -> Customize -> Tab: Context Menus-> Target: Text to get back the “Case” context menu entries

Should Ī̲ create a submenu in that Text context menu?

I did not for testing purposes (and I don’t use that functionality, so I never cared about a perfect place form me) - but it is at your discretion.

Thanks much – made the submenu, at last, although the Tools→Customize UI is awkward and confusing.

although the Tools→Customize UI is awkward and confusing.

This statement needs to be directed to developers …