RE: [libreoffice-design] You've got hate-mail

Hi,

I do think he has several valid points, but I do see how it will require a lot of time and 
coordination to implement it. I thought I would address them on a point by point basis:

1.The first thing to point out is the name. Running OpenOffice.org all together to make one word 
was dumb and Lbre Office is trying to do the same (LibreOffice). Worse yet was how people would say 
"O-O-O" and now I see people calling this new office suite "LibO" on the mailing lists. If you want 
a shorter nick name you should call it "Libre" as saying freedom just sounds cool and certainly has 
a lot of excitement behind it. It makes me think of tech savy youth in the Middle East that are 
willing to risk their lives for libre/freedom. 

    -This is more a marketing discussion than a design one. IMHO, I don't see this as a huge 
problem at this moment. 

2.The web site for Libre Office is horrible, which was initially ok as it was just getting started, 
but now that they've put a little effort into the site it actually looks worse. While paper does 
provide a good metaphor for office productivity, the clipped paper icon that appears everywhere is 
really no good. Below I have a suggestion for the logo that i made rather quickly.

    -As I've stated in previous emails here, we need a motif that doesn't center on the clipped 
paper design. This issue should be resolved once we decide on a motif.

3.Also, all the mime type icons also used that clipped paper concept. I also have some samples for 
that as well below. 
I'm not quite sure what the color palette is being used by Libre Office for its marketing and icon 
development, but I would like to strongly recommend looking at using the same color palette as the 
Tango icon set as it seems rather well thought out.

    -This seems to also fall under the motif discussion and a valid question.

4.Another item to address with respect to the application itself are the fonts. This is a good 
chance to introduce non-Linux users to some of the great fonts that are out there. I think that 
Libre Office should use the Liberation Fonts for its default values.

    -This seems to also fall under the motif discussion and a valid question.

5.Laslty, I would like to address the user interface of Libre Office itself. The current version 
looks like a really bad imitation of Microsoft 2000. I would like to see a more document centric 
interface that takes advantage of today's widescreen monitors. By the way, bold, italic, and 
underline should be represented with a "B,I, and U" instead of an, "A, A, and A. Below is also a 
quick mock-up of Libre Office.

    -This is true. In fact, changing the UI is something I really want to participate in with this 
project. I know that 'radical changes' is never greeted well, but the UI really needs a radical 
change. With vertical real estate on the monitor becoming increasing more costly then horizontal 
real estate, we should attempt to create a new UI that improves on current systems like KOffice or 
Office 2010 and doesn't imitate them.

-Daniel Merker
________________________________________
From: Christoph Noack [christoph@dogmatux.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2011 11:30 AM
To: design@libreoffice.org
Subject: RE: [libreoffice-design] You've got hate-mail

> [...]
> Finally, many of the open questions can be resolved by talking about it. So I think we should 
> think about the open letter like something the non-LibO community >perceives when looking at us :-)
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