Linked by the_randymon on Thu 10th Jan 2013 22:17 UTC
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: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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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.