What do you expect from Libreoffice Draw in the future?
Libreoffice promotes its graphic tool with the words:
‘Draw lets you produce anything from a quick sketch to a complex plan, and gives you the means to communicate with graphics and diagrams. Draw is a an excellent package for producing technical drawings, general posters, etc. … powerful and intuitive flowcharts, and you can even create an entire photo album with it’.
Sounds like the famous swiss-knife.
From a usability point of view, it makes sense to have a clear vision about the scope of the application. While the technical basis might be powerful and versatile, it’s better to focus the workflow and the interface on the most relevant aspects. This is of particular interest when it comes to the question of future enhancement. Do we improve the vector drawing capabilities, or should we rather invest in flow chart features? Or perhaps it’s better to focus on the core applications (Writer, Calc, Impress) and keep Draw as a supplementary tool.
Here you come into the play. We would like to know what you expect from Libreoffice Draw. How do you use it? In what situations and for what purposes? Have you ever used the tool?
Please answer a few question, and feel free to add all your ideas. But please keep in mind that we just want to figure out the basics – there is actually no development ongoing.
http://user-weave.com/survey/b0edf831f89d4d23bb3d6b6ba3e574a9?12
(Survey closed on 2016-Feb-19, 9:00am UTC)
We will report the results here as soon as possible.
PS: Please spread the word and share the link to this study.
FYI, the “Twitter” Link in this Blog points to a wrong address:
http://twitter.com/https://twitter.com/liboDesign -> https://twitter.com/liboDesign
Thanks for reporting. It’s fixed now.
Draw is ok now.
Please, don’t touch the Draw!
Better go home and care about your babies – don’t touch the Draw!
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Don’t bother with draw. I use it, and for current needs it’s enough. For anything more, there are lots of free or freeware tools which are both faster and more functional (like Inkscape, GIMP and yEd).
They are so far above the head of Draw, I would say Draw will require complete rewrite just to scratch the surface of getting close.
bad program
Ich arbeite sehr viel mit “Draw”. Was ich mir noch wünsche: einen Ebenen-Manager auf der rechten Seite um schneller zwischen den Ebenen wechseln zu können und die Schreib- und Druckrechte zu verwalten.
Sounds like an interesting enhancement. If we do not get this idea from the survey it would make sense to file a feature request on the bug tracker.
PS: Yousuf points me right now to an existing report https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=90244 – looks like this is what you want.
To the English speakers: Bernhard wants a layer manager on the right hand to quickly switch between layers and to manage write and print access (remark: don’t know if both ideas are intentionally connected)
Yes, the bug tracker seems to take up my idea and brings a striking comparison with corel-Draw
It would be of great utility to increase the power draw to the flow diagrams so you can use it as a program to create mental maps
adding this functionality, if would be made great, would also stall all other LO development, or will be stalled itself. Or it will be made bad, but why do it at all then?
If you want mind maps, why not use XMind or FreePlane?
If you want diagrams, what stops you from using something specialized in it? I personally found yEd head above anything else, even commercial packages (Visio).
Because every mind-mapping program has its own format, which is not a standardized format, and already I happened to have to lose all my work once I decide to stop using that mapping program, I would be sure to see always my job on multiple devices as possible over the years.
thanks for the reply
FreeMind/FreePlane «.mm» format is standard de-facto, most mindmapping programs and online services can import it. In worst case, it’s just XML, you can retrieve text from it using any text editor.
Every formatted-text editing program has its own format too: MS Word 07-2003, MS Word 2007-2016, MS Works, ABI Word, Star Office, Open/LibreOffice – all have different “native” formats, but this doesn’t stop you from using text editors, does it?
Just find a program which can export in format you want (svg probably?) and quit frustrating. Edit in native, archive in standartized format, and be happy.
By the way, when you “decide to stop using that mapping program”, why didn’t you convert documents into format you want?
How it will be different if you will ever “decide to stop using Draw”?
I think Draw is the stepchild of the LO project. I work a lot with it and it has some very annoying features/lack of features. I cannot say any replacement for LO Draw (no, InkScape is not, Gimp is not one). Thus, I have to admit that Draw is sooo poor.
If I could place the connector labels in a better way then it would be amazing. https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=75301
okay, GIMP is definitely from different area, but why Inkscape? I’d rather say that Draw is an Inkscape replacement rather than conversely.
Yes, Draw has some CAD features, which Inkscape lacks, but they’re barely sufficient to call it even minimal CAD. Better get FreeCAD or LibreCAD (Community QCAD fork).
Aside from features, performance of Draw is so terrible I don’t want to work in it for anything complex. Waiting tens of seconds for screen update after simple operation (like moving an object or even just selecting something) is norm for draw, but nothing nearly acceptable for any human.
Add sudden crashes to this (there are expected crashes, which are not so bad because you get used to them and learn to avoid or save), and you’ll understand why I’m saying “complete rewrite”.
How can you create two connected boxes in Inkscape so that if you move any of them then the connector also moves/changes its shape and connects the boxes permanently?
How can I create a text object in a box so that the box or the text changes its size if I modify the text?
I don’t know how I could do these very basic things in Inkscape. If I can’t then Inkscape is not a Draw-alternative for me.
Connector https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-0cnYSEg4V4
Text fitting http://www.inkscapeforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=999
Though this is not exactly the same thing Draw does, I found Inkscape producing much better looking and predictable results. I avoid using text auto – sizing in Draw, especially considering unexpectedly lost lines and blank ones when printing (seemingly due to difference in font kerning on screen and when printing in all LO programs).
But according to the questions, I think you better take a look on yWorks yEd. It’s seriously better for diagrams than even Inkscape, not even mention Draw. It also able to auto- layout you diagrams. Or XMind, if you’re drawing specific types of diagrams,it will auto layout right while you adding nodes. yEd is freeware, XMind is freeware and open source.
Use libreoffice a few days and I noticed another useful feature of Draw that I have not mentioned in the questionnaire, and it is the ability to import PDF and you can edit, improve even more this function and especially the import speed of some pdf, so draw will become even better.
thanks and good job
+1 for this. PDF editing could be unique feature, alone worth installing whole LO. If done well.
I really like LibreOffice Draw, i think is great i wish i knew about it early, i would had use it in school a lot. Now I am a lawyer and i mostly use it to edit PDF’s and it is the best.
Whit that in mind, i wish it had an option to allow to select a lot of text boxes and merge all of them, as text, because when i merge them, they all change to an image wich is not useful, that way I can not longer align the text or change the hole text to bold, and that kind of things. It would be really useful for me, because not all pdfs are forms to be filled.
(If my ideas are not that clear, please let me know so i can explain my self a little better, as english is not my first language)
The best way to file a feature request is to use the bug tracker at https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/enter_bug.cgi. If you just want to ask how to achieve this go to Ask LibreOffice at https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/questions/, which is available in other languages too.
it would be so cool to use mouse to zoom as option at least.
Hold down Ctrl and scroll with your mouse wheel and it will zoom in based on your mouse location. This same combination works in most graphics apps.
Flow Chart features should be a definite, combined with few free drawing features would be great.
GIMP already exists for a more powerful image manipulation activities. I expect LO to compliment for my work, not replicating what GIMP does and provide nothing.
I have been looking for a good open source tool to help me with flow charts and finally ended up buying Visual Paradigm for GNU/Linux.
I’d happy to donate the $100 I pay each year to VP if Draw supports (not the complete software development tools of course) flow charts, activity diagrams, organization diagrams, etc (similar to Visio – which I use at work).
I mainly use Draw as a replacement for Visio to create network diagrams. But it’s impossible to copy them from Draw to anywhere: everything gets changed during the copy&paste, specially connectors. I always end editing a screenshot to paste a bitmap. And this happens with any destination app, even with Writer. There are a few bugs open on this from a lot of releases back. This is a hard stopper for anybody I’ve tried to introduce to Draw…
Make a drawing with libreoffice draw is a hard work most of the time.
To improve the User Experience is important to facilitate the task with some improvements.
Maybe we can look at one little program I use if I need to make a quick draw: yEd.
In less than a minute you have a very complicated draw.
I think libreoffice draw need many of the features of this little program.
yEd is free and you can get it from https://www.yworks.com/downloads#yEd
yEd is a well-known tool and was frequently reported as a prototype for the future development. Have a look at the follow-up blog posts. Btw, yEd is highly specialized for flowcharts while Draw is a swissknife.
I think Draw is the weak point of LibreOffice.
When one compares Word Writer, Excel Calc, Power Point Impress and Visio Draw it seems Draw is weakest competitor compared to its reference point.
I wish more resources would be invested in it. Visio 2017 as a reference point will be good.
A nice feature would be integrating Graph Sktecher based on OmniGraphSketcher which is Open Source:
https://github.com/graphsketcher/GraphSketcher
Thank You.
Draw is not comparable to Vision. It’s comparable to tools like Corel Presentations Graphics. People are asking for way too much because they are using the wrong reference point for comparison.
Team should focus on performance, primary.
Visio too…
I’ve using Libreoffice for sometime now and the only frustrating thing for me is, some of the tools in Writer should be in Draw. I found that making some graphics, logos etc I had to jump back and forth between the two and then try to save the work in one or the other. Also I had to go to Inkscape to finish a logo then copy it to Draw and Writer which made Libre crash everytime I had to close the page. Two suggestions, 1. make Writer and Draw as one program like Gimp, and give it all you can. And or make Draw with all the tools you can.
Interesting idea. Have a look at https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org/2016/04/01/the-many-faced-god-part-2-how-libreoffice-draw-is-expected-to-evolve/ (and the first part) where others see the future of Draw.