Moving to LibreOffice 8?

[Németh László]

Hi Italo and All,

Regina Henschel <rb.henschel at t-online.de> ezt írta (időpont: 2023. márc.
28., K, 15:40):

> Hi Italo,
>
> the change from 6.x to 7.0 happens together with the change from ODF 1.2
> to ODF 1.3. If the decision it to keep this kind of numbering, I think a
> change to 8.0 should happen when LibreOffice starts support for ODF 1.4.
> ODF 1.4 will hopefully be released end of 2024.
>

After the previous end of lives 4.4, 5.4 and 6.4, moving to 8.0 is more
traditional, than using 7.6, and I agree with Italo, version 8.0 has
greater marketing value, and likely this was the reason to avoid of version
3.7, 4.5, 5.5 and 6.5. (LibreOffice 3.6 was a different case, because that
numbering was inherited from OpenOffice.org, and LibreOffice started with
version 3.3.)

The next release has already got major improvements. My favorites (
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/7.6):

– Start of multi-page floating tables in Writer blog post
<https://vmiklos.hu/blog/sw-floattable.html> (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
– Citation handling: added plumbing in Writer to build Zotero-like
functionality blog post <https://vmiklos.hu/blog/sw-zotero-plumbing.html>
(Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
– Added support for OOXML files created in zip64 format tdf#82984
<https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=82984>, tdf#94915
<https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=94915> (Attila Szűcs,
Collabora)
– Export to PDF v.1.7 by default. commit
<https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/e624e07cc54c408bb86bd2e52cfed3c7ec59fb4a>
(Michael Stahl, allotropia)
– Tagged PDF
<https://help.libreoffice.org/7.6/en-US/text/shared/01/ref_pdf_export_general.html>
is now produced by default, for improved accessibility. (To further improve
your PDF's accessibility, the PDF/UA
<https://help.libreoffice.org/7.6/en-US/text/shared/01/ref_pdf_export_universal_accessibility.html>
option is available in the export dialog and will trigger the Accessibility
Check
<https://help.libreoffice.org/7.6/en-US/text/swriter/01/accessibility_check.html>
tool). tdf#39667 <https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=39667>
(Samuel Mehrbrodt, allotropia)

Related to API changes, 7.6 and 8.0 are the same case.

No problem with year based numbering, but I suggest to use ISO 8601 date
format for the first office suite based on an ISO document format:

LibreOffice 2023-08

or

LibreOffice -23-08.

And what about LibreOffice 365? We can follow that with 366, 367, or
similar to Donald Knuth's numbering scheme for TeX, with approximation,
here to the anomalistic year length in days: 365, 365.2, 365.25, 365.259,
365.2596, 365.25963, 365.259636 etc. [
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/02/24/think-you-know-how-many-days-are-in-a-year-think-again/
]

I think, there is no bad decision, so we can choose the best for marketing,
e.g. 8.0, and that was the essence of Italo's proposal, many thanks for it!
I like also the idea of infinity, and I wish LibreOffice another 38
successful years, which number also contains digit 8 –, also the birth of
our code base: 1985 (StarOffice).

Best regards,
László


> Kind regards,
> Regina
>
> Italo Vignoli schrieb am 27.03.2023 um 19:11:
> > Moving to LibreOffice 8 (instead of 7.6) makes sense for marketing
> > purposes, as media is looking at LibreOffice as the real innovator in
> > the open source office suite market, and the feeling of journalists is
> > that we are forever stuck at 7.x.
> >
> > We all know that the next version will not include any significant
> > innovation which can justify the change of version, apart from the new
> > build system for Windows and the availability of LibreOffice for Arm
> > processors on Windows (which has not been announced).
> >
> > Playing with the number 8, which can be rotated 90° to become the
> > "infinite" symbol, we can frame the next version as LibreOffice for an
> > infinite number of users, as we cover all hardware platforms and all
> > operating systems for personal productivity.
> >
> > This is my opinion. If the community wants to stick with 7.6, I won't
> > insist. I have received enough insults both public and private for the
> > marketing plan, and I am still receiving them from a few people, that I
> > am not willing to enter into that process again (even if the decision on
> > the "community" tag has not been mine, but it looks like people have a
> > very short memory).
> >
> > Looking forward to your thoughts.
>
>
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