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Caveat Emptor for the new versions of LibreOffice

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solanus
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Caveat Emptor for the new versions of LibreOffice

I must say I love LibreOffice, I love what they are trying to do, and I love their "stick it to the man" attitude.
However, with their rapid release cycle and parallel numbering system, it falls on the user to very thoroughly read the release notes and bug reports when downloading.

For example, they have just released 3.4.1, which is supposed to be "safely deployed for production needs by most users". However, it STILL contains several very significant bugs, including "Problems with printing table borders and pictures from Writer (workaround: PDF) (fdo#37488)" and "MS Office 2010 complains about damaged MS Office 2003/XP documents created by LibreOffice 3.4 (fdo#37516)".

So, it's possible to "upgrade" to a higher number version and have more bugs!

Also, there are still bugs that are in every version, specifically around PDF creation. I still have to use OpenOffice to create PDF forms, because LibreOffice text fields are so misaligned as to be unusable. You wouldn't know this beforehand unless you read the bug reports, because they don't list them as bugs in any release report.

Finally, this parallel branch thing is going to be problematic here, unless we want to support portablizing both branches for eternity - double work for our already overworked developers.

Let me repeat that I do love LibreOffice (and I eagerly look forward to the day that they fix the PDF rendering bugs so that I can FINALLY delete OpenOffice).

But let the buyer beware when upgrading, and please read the release notes before you do, so you don't find yourself with an inferior version that happens to have a higher number.

SakiTC
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And bug #37516 you mentioned

And bug #37516 you mentioned didn't even make it to the most annoying bugs list still containing 18 critical bugs.
And the orange exclamation mark still stands next to 3.4.1 downloads, as opposed to the green "check" mark standing by 3.3.3 downloads.

No typin th las lette ca sav yo plent o spac

Simeon
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Thanks

for this post. Saved me the time to read through their pages which arent really user-friendly in terms of overview/find what you look for.

"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate

HarryR
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Can I suggest ...

... that PortableApps.com should only ever portablise the current most stable version.

Any user who wants to live on the bleeding edge is probably able to look after themselves in terms of portability. The whole point of PA.Com is that it makes it easy for everyone else. Given limited resources among those expert enough to do the portablising, you will get most bang for the buck by keeping up to date with stable releases only.

... just my 2c ...

crichton007
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I have to disagree with you

I have to disagree with you there. I have installed and use 3.4.1 but I don't know how to turn it into a portable version. I would like to have it as a portable version but since i don't know how to do it myself I visit the forums from time to time to find what news I can but I'm perfectly willing to wait since others are doing something that I'm not likely to be able to do for myself.

vasa1
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Maybe it's an issue

of resources. There maybe some constraints that you and I don't know about.

If portableapps.com does only the really stable updates, I'd be grateful.

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