Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

Users are invited to submit ideas for consideration for inclusion in future versions of OpenOffice. These are being gathered at
https://www.google.com/moderator/#16/e=2011d5

Registration is required; you may use your Forum nickname if you wish but you will have to undergo the Google registration.

Any ideas will be considered, but there is no guarantee that they will be implemented.

RoryOF, Moderator.

Well, that's quite a mess. There are several times the same question (save in OOXML for example). It will soon become unreadable.
List of the questions seems to change when someone posts a new one or if its ranking changes, rather weird.
Note that you don't need to register to see the ideas.

They will need volunteers to file the most popular ideas into bugzilla I guess...

I doubt there will be any added value but let's see.

We should leave them to do it! From the data they are likely to get a picture of the most popular requests, also some good ideas for improvements, in a way that they might not get from Bugzilla.

I was about to make a suggestion but then remembered that I haven't updated to the Apache version.

My suggestion is to add the ability to move columns or rows in a spreadsheet by grabbing and dragging them. Is that a new feature already?

You can do it, it's just not particularly easy to find (or to do). Press and hold Alt while dragging a row or column.

You can do it, it's just not particularly easy to find (or to do). Press and hold Alt while dragging a row or column.

But it should work as in Base (and Excel) where you drag the column/row header. This implies that your entire columns/rows belong together which is granted in a database but not in a spreadsheet.

Hagar Delest wrote:Well, that's quite a mess. There are several times the same question (save in OOXML for example). It will soon become unreadable.

LibreOffice contributors spend more time with proprietary file formats than with anything else. Nevertheless, LibreOffice spoils many OOXML documents simply because too many MS features are not implemented. Ignoring unknown OOXML attributes is not possible in any case because of complex interdependencies with known attributes. You can not interprete the same set of interdependent attributes in the same way unless you write a clone of that other software.
Apart from technical issues, not writing OOXML it is a matter of self-respect.

Villeroy wrote:Apart from technical issues, not writing OOXML it is a matter of self-respect.

I fully agree. I've voted against of course and have replied Rob Weir's proposal about that, let's see if there is a discussion that follows...

Villeroy wrote:not writing OOXML it is a matter of self-respect.

Why really? OOXML is today an international standard, just like OpenDocument. Sad but true.

LibreOffice spoils many OOXML

LibreOffice rather spoils Microsoft Office 2007/2010 documents that do not really conform to OOXML specs.

I don’t think that proper implementation of OOXML would harm, but this is not a priority either.

esperantisto wrote:Why really? OOXML is today an international standard, just like OpenDocument. Sad but true.

It has been bribed through the standardization boards to fight ODF.

esperantisto wrote:LibreOffice rather spoils Microsoft Office 2007/2010 documents that do not really conform to OOXML specs.

The same people who want a free OOXML suite want exactly the same file format support as they know from MS. They do not give a shit on ODF or any standards.
Writing an MS Office clone and leaving behind ODF is the only way to meet their requirements.

esperantisto wrote:OOXML is today an international standard, just like OpenDocument.

Only the strict OOXML flavor.
It's not clear how the difference will be handled: how to make clear for users which format they use?
But it is certainly the trick used by MS to spread their transitional version that supports all the MS features.

acknak wrote:You can do it, it's just not particularly easy to find (or to do). Press and hold Alt while dragging a row or column.

When I press the Alt key and click on a column or row header or first cell, the window reverts from its maximised state to the 'restored' state. Perhaps you are referring only to the Apache versions?

As I said, it's not particularly easy to do

You have to
1) select the row or column (plain left-click on the header)
2) click on the selected area, hold and start to drag; if you do it right, the mouse cursor will change to indicate the start of a drag operation
3) drag the row/column to the new location (you may have to sort of guess where the thing is going to go)

When you're ready to drop it, you can choose from three different outcomes, depending on what modifier key you're pressing when you release the mouse button:
a) No modifier: the row/column is moved & replaces the row/column you drop it on; the source row is left empty(!)
b) Press Ctrl: drop a copy
c) Press Alt: move, with insertion (no overwriting)
d) Press Alt+Ctrl: copy, with insertion

When you move a column with Alt, there's no indicator where the operation is going to take effect; the result is sometimes surprising. There used to be a thick vertical line showing the location, so maybe this will come back at some point.

The Alt+... combination is used by some Linux window managers, so these may not work, or may be grabbed for some other function, in some cases; they work (and have worked for some time) for me with Fedora/Gnome. What function you get may depend on exactly what order (or at what point) you press the Alt key.

In the end, the necessary operations should be possible, but they're not easy to find and a bit awkward to use.

Thanks. I managed to move a column. In the light of your post, it seems to me that there is a lot of room for improvement.

I got tired of trawling through page after page of suggestions. I agree it's a mess, particularly when one of the 'ideas' points to some wiki page listing a lot of suggested changes. In any case, I filed this 'idea' relating to moving and copying columns and rows.

I just noticed the front page now starts with

Apache OpenOffice 4.0 (completed)

Note: We have completed this round of brainstorming for Apache OpenOffce 4.0. Thanks to all who participated and submitted and/or voted on ideas.

We'll now review these ideas as we put together plans for the next releases of OpenOffice. The top ideas will also be featured, with commentary, on an upcoming blog post at http://blogs.apache.org/ooo/

The blog post it refers to has not yet appeared.

Give them some time for the analysis. The list was downloaded today for that, as I understand it.