521
LibreOffice is right about Microsoft, and it matters more than you think.
(www.xda-developers.com)
this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2025
521 points (98.9% liked)
Technology
74073 readers
3112 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
hey LibreOffice when are you gonna make the keyboard shortcuts in LibreOffice Calc match the keyboard shortcuts in Microsoft Excel?
Wait, isn't this just a matter of generating a config text file that you could set keybindings with that would specify all the custom keybindings necessary to give a basic degree of commonality in keybindings for a newbie?
Coming from emacs the idea that a program as complex as the Libreoffice suite wouldn't have a generalized modular way to shift between different keybindings styles is a bit odd to me. Isn't it just a matter of exposing the keybindings in a text file config format that could easily be imported/loaded into your Libreoffice program?
I don't have any skin in this game, but I do think that it is worth emphasizing how useful it is to accomodate people who want radically different keyboard shortcut styles, or rather how obviously common sense it is to prioritize this in development. Keep a main keybinding style, specify a config format and then let the weirdos fiddle with alternate keybindings on the side.
Keyboard shortcuts can be dealbreakers especially for someone stressed out and overwhelmed who is having trouble getting momentum in a new software, thus for an open source project this is a natural target for software development focus because it is possibly one of the simplest, most effective and broadly applicable ways to expand the usefulness of a software tool to a bigger audience (who will hopefully eventually become contributors or support the community in some way themselves).
There's the rub. The last time I checked, there was no way to package keybindings in a modular way, which is a massive oversight in my opinion for a project meant to replace that which millions of office workers have years of muscle memory engrained
It feels like making a car for an international market that is meant for anybody but is locked into one language in the user interface for no good reason and either can't be changed without overhauling a big part of the car construction process involving somehow parts of the actual powertrain needing to be changed or it is only a moderately difficult process to begin and they haven't prioritized it which makes me wonder how they establish priorities for creating a car that is useful to as much of the world as possible in the first place...
I mean I am thankful for useful FOSS software, and having ANY alternative to microsoft office, especially a functional free option is amazing.... it is just... come on LibreOffice!!!!!
Let a cottage community of weird LibreOffice keybinding schemes flourish!!!