For years, developers decried the tight fist Sun kept on the development of its office suite, preventing the hacker culture from improving its software. So now that LibreOffice is, well, free, it's not surprising to see one ambitious hacker has developed a mechanism for theming it. Let's have a round of applause for Jan Holesovsky, whose patch in the upcoming 4.0 edition of LibreOffice allows you to style LibreOffice using FireFox Personae. Holesovsky's blog is full of other interesting UI changes made to LibreOffice, proof perhaps that letting hackers hack is the best way to keep your project improving.
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Member since:
2005-11-29
Member since:2010-01-21
Member since:2007-09-22
I believe Mozilla renamed the Personas project to themes or something like that because they wanted to create the Persona project.
Which is an implementation of the BrowserID-protocol they created.
The BrowserID protocol is basically a VerifiedEmailAddress protocol which is an improvement over the protocols like OpenID for signing up and signing in to websites.
Member since:
2011-04-25
Member since:2005-11-29
I don't think every developer is working on the same thing at the same time.
It was a developer submitted patch, likely an unpaid developer's patch.
If I'm unpaid, I don't really much care for what direction others (who are not paying me a salary for my time) think I should go in.
RE[2]: Comment by jared_wilkes
Member since:2010-01-21
This is exactly the crap that consigns such open projects to mediocrity or worse again and again and again... It's not a positive, it's a negative, plain and simple.
Are you going to pay him to do it?
I look at you and all I see is someone who seems to feel entitled to someone else's leisure time. Just be happy someone decided to spend their leisure time productively.
I know that, when I program something, if I couldn't do what I wanted, I'd probably be playing games or reading sci-fi instead.
Member since:2010-03-13
If someone decided to stick little flower stickers on my car for free I wouldn't thank them for it despite their generosity.
Producing a good product is as much about what should be left out of it as what should be put into it. And seriously, theming should be left out of a productivity application, especially one that needs as much work as LibreOffice. It's like lipstick on a pig.
Member since:2011-04-25
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Developer clearly stated that he did this project because it seemed to be fun. So either he did this project or didn't do anything for LibreOffice at all. What seems to be better?
BTW it's so very frustrating when other people tell you what you should do with your free time. So, what are you doing for LibreOffice? You don't know programming, you say? Why don't you stop doing whatever crap you're doing now and start learning programming so you could be useful for something finally? And after you learn programming, let me choose you some really important project you'll work in your free time.
RE[4]: Comment by jared_wilkes
Member since:2010-01-21
I am not telling someone what to do with their time; I am telling someone what they did with their time was useless and made a product worse.
Also, judging a product does not require, not only being able to create the same product, but actually participating in the creation of the product. I can tell you a Yugo is a completely shit car without ever needing to have built an engine or an entire car.
In other words, you have what books on building successful projects (open source or otherwise) describe as a "toxic attitude".
Member since:2005-08-11
Member since:2011-04-25
Does his work make LibreOffice a crappier product that I am less likely to use or recommend?
Absolutely 100%.
As I said, it's this silly notion that any work done is good work because eventually an infinite number of devs with craptons of spare time will eventually do the work that needs to be done that makes a lot of OSS software mediocre, tedious, or entirely unusable.
Member since:2005-08-11
Why does it make it crappier? Is it forcing you to use Personas? No. Did it take resources away from something else? No.
When somebody gives me stuff for free, stuff that took a lot of work, I generally keep my mouth shut about things that I don't like that doesn't affect the functionality I need. It's called "Not looking a gift horse in the mouth"
Try showing some appreciation for the LibreOffice devs hard work.
Member since:2011-04-25
If I'm not using, it's just bloat. And if I were to recommend it (again, I'm now less likely to), I may have to support someone else needlessly using it.
Also, no, I'm not thankful for things that I don't need and actively do not want just because they are free.
Edited 2013-01-11 18:12 UTC
Member since:2005-07-12
Member since:2011-04-25
No, quite the opposite. Whenever I show up at parties a collective moan of, "Crap, it's the guy who thinks OSS devs wasting time and resources on skinning makes OSS projects look like shit," rings out, the music screeches to a halt, the alcohol stops flowing, and everyone goes home.
Oh wait, not that... No one at a single party I've ever gone to has ever cared about or been influenced by my opinion of OSS devs spending their time on inanities.
Member since:2005-07-12
I mean that you seem to be the type to shit on other people's conversations because somebody has different priorities than you.
I mean, what if the guy who made the change did it as an exercise in practicing UI design for the sake of just learning something? Does it even matter to you?
Are you going to walk into his party and do an upper-decker* just to feel smug?
"Hey. Look at this cool model rocket I built."
"Pfft. Who cares. We already have rockets that can send probes to the outer plants. You've contributed nothing."
*(If you don't know, you might not want to look that up)
Edited 2013-01-12 10:56 UTC
Member since:
2005-11-13
Member since:2005-06-29
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I believe it has its own internal icon theming which offers three choices: Oxygen, Human, and Tango.
(On my system, I'm using Elementary as the icon theme and LibreOffice's automatic mode chooses Tango as the closest available option. Manual selection is available through Tools > Options > View)
Also, a lot of distros package all three separately, so a system may not have all of them available by default.
Edited 2013-01-10 23:26 UTC
Member since:2005-06-29
Member since:2005-06-29
Check this out:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/108905/install-faenza-icons-on-libre...
It worked. I've got Faenza as my icon set now for LibreOffice - it looks stunning.
Member since:2008-03-17
That is because Libre Office does not use GTK. It has its own toolkit so it makes direct theming changes not work all that well
Edited 2013-01-11 00:00 UTC
Member since:2006-12-05
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Member since:
2006-11-19
One of the biggest problems of OpenOffice is that it uses its own GUI toolkit. I really which they would port it to uses GTK or QT.
At least GTK and QT apps can now read the same theme info, QT apps looks just fine under Gnome and well, have not tried GTK under KDE, but I assume that GTK is smart enough to do the right thing.
Anyway, QT does have its problems, but it is a better toolkit than the OpenOffice widget set.
Member since:2006-08-15
Member since:2010-01-21
You assume too much.
Qt has QGtkStyle as an officially-supported component.
The GTK+ equivalent is a 3rd-party project that seems to have withered on the vine and the only build of it I've seen for modern Ubuntu is as part of the Trinity PPA. (Trinity is the KDE 3 fork)
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2009-10-12
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2005-07-06
Fun to see all the anger on this post. I agree graphical changes to the UI shouldn't be the highest priority on this project, but this was one guy's contribution and it's cool. Also, I will receive it for free, which is also cool and thanks to the generosity of that one hacker, who has done some other useful things as well.
That said, I worry LibreOffice is kind of floundering these days. I wish them well but their time should be spent on things like .docx compatibility (I know, it's impossible). I've switched to www.softmakeroffice.de instead and like it: it's fast and its compatability with .docx is really excellent. The things I liked most about StarOffice and then early versions of Libreoffice were the things that made it different from Word: the side toolbar, and really prominent stylists and navigator, the database interface on the top of the screen and the message window at the bottom. I've gotten bored with it since it has turned into something so similar to Word. Maybe the birds on the toolbar will make the difference, ha ha ha.
Member since:2012-03-14
I agree. Some how people assume that if this guy is adding these features in his own time it takes time out from the overall project.
Isn't this the point of open source if you don't like something contribute and get it added. So a portion of OS News readers don't like it, they don't have to use that feature at all.
From the look of his blog his main skills are in tinkering with the UI. Who knows what his skills will be like in a years time.
Libre Office could use a UI upgrade and no one is going to learn those skills overnight.
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2008-01-09
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2011-09-10