rikard.me/blog/016.txt                                Mon 15 Jul, 2024


                    A rant about LibreOffice Calc


LibreOffice Calc is the worst spreadsheet software ever made.

Let's say that you have a range filled with data and you wish to
quickly sort these alphabetically.  The intuitive thing would be to
select the range, right-click and then have sort options presented to
you in the context menu.  Sadly, LibreOffice is all but intuitive.
Instead you have to use either the tool bar or the menu bar, both of
which are slower.  You would think such an intuitive solution to such
a common action would have been implemented by now.

It displays page breaks by default.  This is such a weird design
decision and is so indicative of how little thought the developers
have put into their software.  The modern software industry is plagued
by hash toking potheads who have no business being in the industry;
who have no sense of design or experience with the real world in which
their software will be used.  The free software sphere is not free
from these types.  Who, in 2024, creates a spreadsheet with the intent
purpose of printing it?  Why is this a default?  'It's fine though',
you might think, 'surely you can disable it'.  Yes, you can, in the
most obscure way possible.

Page breaks are saved on a document level, which makes total sense,
this is expected behaviour.  But, page break visibility is also saved
on a document level, this makes a lot less sense.  There's no quick
way to toggle them in an existing document either, you have to:

 1. Click 'Tools' in the menu bar.
 2. Click 'Options...'.
 3. Select 'LibreOffice Calc' in the menu on the left.
 4. Select the 'View' tab.
 5. Toggle the check box called 'Page breaks'.

This is pants-on-head retarded.

Why is this option not available under the 'View' tab in the main menu
bar?  It'd be too sane, that's probably why.

There is still, in the year of our lord 2024, no auto-tables like in
Excel.  Did Microsoft patent this, or is this yet another case of The
Document Foundation not knowing anything about the market that they
are developing their software for?

For people who care about software freedom, it is insane that there
are no better alternatives than the absolute garbage that LibreOffice
is.  There is no wonder people flock and stick to proprietary
software, there is no incentive whatsoever in using free software
other than ideological ones.