LibreOffice 4.0 to be themeable
Linked by the_randymon on Thu 10th Jan 2013 22:17 UTC
Features, Office 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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RE[3]: Comment by jared_wilkes
by ssokolow on Fri 11th Jan 2013 00:16 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: Comment by jared_wilkes"
ssokolow
Member since:
2010-01-21

I'm quite aware that other devs are working on other things. However, one dev wasted his time with skinning and his skills could have been better used otherwise. And someone is telling me I should applaud it.

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.

Reply Parent Score: 11

RE[4]: Comment by jared_wilkes
by vocivus on Fri 11th Jan 2013 11:49 in reply to "RE[3]: Comment by jared_wilkes"
vocivus 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.

Reply Parent Score: 2

jared_wilkes Member since:
2011-04-25

I'll gladly pay for someone to develop software that is good and useful to me. And I will call free software that is not useful crap when I think it is so.

Reply Parent Score: 2