Observations on First Time Use

[BigJimSlade]

I was asked to look into Libre Office as an alternative to M$ Office. I have looked at writer.

1. Hyphenation seems better in Libre Office than word.
2. Libre Office is extremely difficult when you want to use Points rather than inches. For vertical spacing, points is easier to work with then inches. Line spacing, spacing before and after paragraphs need a point mechanism. If it exists, it is not apparent.
3. The formatting of list styles is not intuitive. You would think selecting a number style from the list would display number styles to the right. It took a while to figure out that you have to right click.
4. For legal work, top level headings are not numbered. I see no way to do that.
5. The import of numbering from word to Libre Office was not very good.
6. There appears to be no opentype support.
7. I see places where the text (i.e. entire single letters) goes outside the right margin.
8. Text justification, like word’s, is not so good. Lot’s of rivers in the text.
9. It is not apparent how you would set shortcut keys for styles.

[oweng]

Thanks for the feedback. This is a user forum and so there are limitations to what users of the site can do to address your concerns. Some are valid and some can be solved by an option in LO (of which there many). I will try and address each of your points in turn, however it may take several edits as I am limited for time at present.

A1: Thanks. Good to hear this.

A2: This is set under Tools > Options… > LibreOffice Writer > View (from memory) > Measurement Unit.

A3: Agreed, however this is complicated by the fact that in ODF there are list styles while in OOXML there are none. The most effective way to use list styles is to associate them with a paragraph style.

A4: Question requires editing for greater explication.

A5: Highly likely a know problem. May be related to the list styles issue mentioned although there are likely ways this can be addressed.

A6: There is OpenType support but some features are not yet supported. Question requires editing for greater explication.

A7: There are many known DOC/X import filter limitations. These are being worked on. Question requires editing for greater explication.

A8: High-level publishing features (e.g., justification/hyphenation in a manner comparible with LaTeX / Adobe InDesign) are not a target feature for LO. One day they may be, although the general industry workflow for this type of work is spelling / grammer / content editing is a word processor followed by layout in DTP software.

A9: Refer the answer here.

[LibreGuy]

Every new program is difficult to master. With all respect, but I do not truly see the purpose of your “review”. To me it more seems like a list of what (in your opinion) Microsoft Office does better than Libre Office. So why don’t you keep using Microsoft Office then? There is a target audience for every program. I am also quite new to Libre Office, and yes some things could be better. But I do appreciate the fact that the program is free to use and that some enthousiastic people doing their best to improve the program. I don’t hear anything about that in your review, so personally I don’t see why you posted this review and what you want to achieve with it. But that’s just my opinion.

[PythonNoob]

I think feedback and criticism are important - they help to evolve. However, I don’t know if this is the right place, since the opening post is no question and probably won’t reach the right audience.

[LibreGuy]

Well, the TS says he was asked to review the program. To me it’s more of a “what’s wrong with the program” list. I don’t see any good points, so not much of a review in my opinion.