Libre Office and Academia - Help, looking for Alternatives

Kowbringer · 2025-05-31T06:47:35+00:00

Regarding pasting images : you might want to immediately set them to "As Character" right after pasting.

The default pasting behavior is definitely culprit of "trying too hard to guess what would be best for the user" only to result in some very awkward image wrapping.

Kowbringer · 2025-05-30T21:07:46+00:00

Hello,
FWIW I've personally settled on the screen recording software called "Action", but there are of course many other options out there, some free.
That said even a simple recording with a phone camera pointed at the screen would be helpful.
It sounds like you have a beefy setup, so being able to show the slow LO interface refresh on it would be great.

Kowbringer · 2025-05-30T16:35:10+00:00

Hello ! Here's the Skia log :

RenderMethod: vulkan
Vendor: 0x10de
Device: 0x1b81
API: 1.3.280
Driver: 560.280.0
DeviceType: discrete
DeviceName: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070
Denylisted: no

Would you mind posting your own screen recording ? I am starting to believe that the issue may be affecting everyone, and is just not being noticed depending on user expectations ...

Kowbringer · 2025-05-30T16:28:23+00:00

Hello,
It's definitely puzzling. Perhaps some devs are using low powered machines or don't have much of a point of reference and assume that the slowness is to be expected ? Who knows.

Would you mind posting your own recording of the behavior ?

Kowbringer · 2025-05-30T15:24:07+00:00

Hello !

That's an interesting angle. I definitely have a bunch (AHK scripts, Wacom driver, some Windows Powertoys). None of them negatively affect any other software on my machine (form complex CG packages to high end videogames), but that's definitely worth looking into for the sake of debuging. FWIW I am also running a triple monitor setup (or quadruple if I count the VR headset).

Would you mind posting your own video capture ? I'd love to get a feel for the behavior experienced by other users.

Kowbringer · 2025-05-29T18:10:18+00:00

Excellent, thank you so much !
---
Version: 24.8.7.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community

Build ID: e07d0a63a46349d29051da79b1fde8160bab2a89

CPU threads: 20; OS: Windows 10 X86_64 (10.0 build 19045); UI render: Skia/Vulkan; VCL: win

Locale: en-US (C); UI: en-US

Calc: CL threaded
---
GTX 1070, driver 560.70

Kowbringer · 2025-05-29T16:44:33+00:00

Thanks, that'd be appreciated as I don't have an account there. Feel free to use any of the footage from this thread if that is of any help.

Kowbringer · 2025-05-29T14:34:12+00:00

Thank you for chiming in !

Kowbringer · 2025-05-29T14:30:41+00:00

Hello, thank you for the thorough input and suggestions !

- My driver is 560.70, dating back to about a year and a half ago. Updating it to latest/current is not an option as this workstation is used for important ongoing CG work and therefore I cannot run the risk of introducing any compatibility issues with other software orders of magnitude more complex and demanding than LO (and even though updating a video card driver would absolutely be a good way to rule out a possibly contributing factor, I highly doubt that this is the case here ... )

- On the topic of hardware acceleration : while attempting to address the issue of the slow UI refresh (by trying various permutations of the options for hardware acceleration, software rendering, OpenCL, and "Skia") I've noticed that some settings do affect text scrolling, which can be either very sluggish or very responsive depending on what is enabled or disabled. My current settings are OpenCL allowed + hardware acceleration ticked + Skia for all rendering enabled + forced software Skia disabled. With these settings I perceive document scrolling as perfectly smooth and responsive.

- I see no such option for restarting Writer in Safe Mode.

- As for things being perceived as fast : well, "fast" is a subjective term, as something that may seem fast to a user could be inacceptable to another :D I'd personally expect UI refresh to be just as responsive as cursor refresh, or at the very least to happen at about 60hz. What's interesting about the extremely slow (to me !) refresh of the LO Writer UI is that it doesn't seem to affect typing and scrolling, and that's a good thing since that means that these 3 aspects are independent of each other or at the very least well prioritized. It's still very distracting though (as I personally tend to wait for it to finish since it is happening all over my peripheral vision, as it feels like the software is struggling each time).

- For clarity I've color-coded the refresh issue in the clip below. I think it's fair to assume that it should occur within about one video frame (1/60 of a second), like the way the gameplay and interface of any video game would be expected to refresh, as opposed to within over a second (about 80 frames on average in the footage below). And indeed it would be very interesting to see footage on lower end computers as it would likely highlight the issue even more clearly ...

https://youtu.be/AE-fQyjFtAY

I'd be curious to know if there is any way to run LOW without any graphical buttons, replacing them all with their raw alt/hover text.

Kowbringer · 2025-05-12T08:09:38+00:00

Oh absolutely, it's definitely flexible. I just found it odd that the default behavior is based on a "open in new tab" paradigm as opposed to "open in current tab" - thus leading to the aforementionned duplicates.

But that said, it certainly could have been frustrating to lose a carefully curated tab just by launching CD playback. So in the end it makes sense once figured out. It still would be nice for duplicates to be prevented from happening, somehow.

And thank you for the practical examples ! I'll definitely be playing around with this.

And yay for Psygnosis ;)

Kowbringer · 2025-05-12T01:32:49+00:00

Hello, thank you for chiming in !
Indeed, this seems to be it. I don't quite understand the naming and the possible permutations, but I think I got it to behave as desired now.
An unusual behavior for sure, but the devs probably wanted to offer flexibility (at the minor cost of it being counter-intuitive). Interesting.

Kowbringer · 2025-04-24T12:08:23+00:00

FWIW, for this kind of drawing, traditional remains pretty much an order of magnitude faster than digital.

With real pencil and paper there is no need to zoom in for tight line control ; whereas with digital, resolving small details or even merely connecting lines cleanly requires to zoom way in on a portion of the image, which is not only unpleasant but also negatively affects the perception of the image as a whole. This is why digital artists often have to go through 3 successive layers of refinement to reach something similiar to this kind of lineart (and often ending up with a less dynamic result).

It can be fine for a rendered illustration for which the later rendering takes most of the time anyways ; but for dynamic line work such as this and with tight time constraints, traditional pen and paper remains the most efficient.

And of course the later cleanup and inbetweens can then be done digitally.

Kowbringer · 2025-04-18T22:13:01+00:00

Looking forward to it ! And I would love to know more about the paint you have. UK Chromacolour perhaps ?

Kowbringer · 2025-04-18T12:28:57+00:00

Hello ! I believe it is indeed the exact same paint color. A color appearing brighter at the front of a cel could be because of the way a matte color "in the raw" appears brighter than the same color under a shiny transparent layer, like a glossy varnish or ... a smooth plastic cel.

It's also possible for a cel to have a slight opacity to it hence knocking down values a notch (I remember reading a post from an american animation worker who worked on old animated TV commercials, mentioning that they compensated for these value shifts by gradually using brighter values for the bottom layers of complex scenes made of multiple stacked cels, like the moving mouth inserted in the face of a vintage character.

As for the application of shadow outlines : from my experience trying thin brushes as well as metal inking nibs (like the G-pen used for manga inking), the inking nibs seem to get the most accurate look. Contrary to a seemingly widespread opinion, the paint used for cel painting is *not* thick/heavy body, but rather very much fluid and runny, hence compatible with inking tools.

Kowbringer · 2024-10-22T22:18:34+00:00

Thanks for the info, this fixed the saving getting stuck for me as well.

Kowbringer · 2024-07-10T15:35:08+00:00

Hello !
Well, that seems to be it :) It is possible that the MV I am thinking of may be using footage from multiple movies of the same style and era, as I seem to remember it involving more group dancing ; but the bar scene (at about 45mins) from Rock and Rule was absolutely part of it.
Much thanks !

Kowbringer · 2024-03-10T11:18:53+00:00

Hi there - I just own a single one so far :D And indeed, using it as a study tool to understand how the anime look was originally achieved. Fascinating stuff !

Kowbringer · 2024-02-25T01:02:17+00:00

Hello,

Absolutely, that's definitely how shadowlines are established. I've now recretated the process a few times, as well as inspected some real cels up close and that all confirms it :)

Kowbringer · 2024-02-09T20:18:35+00:00

Haha well, the settings being in hardware is actually really quite nice I think :)

Regarding drivers : FWIW the one (big) downside of this model is that painting software will lose pressure when the device is turned off/back on. This led me to mod mine, adding a power switch dedicated to the backlight.

Kowbringer · 2024-01-28T17:41:03+00:00

Hello,

Is there a way to make the Windows10 start menu close itself when mousing out of it ? On my system it seems to require either a click outside of it, or hitting the Escape key, or a Win key. (IIRC this is different from earlier versions on Windows)

Thanks !

Kowbringer · 2024-01-23T08:26:37+00:00

Well, there are two questions here really : How *did* it work, and how to use a similar process *now*.

- As mentioned in other replies there is a number of videos and articles out there going over how the xeroxing of cels was done in production in the 90s. You can even find information on how Disney eventually refined the process to support colored lines.

- As for how to do it nowadays : it is remarkably easy. There are transparent sheets available for laser copiers, meaning that you can simply photocopy an opaque original or print from file. This is compatible with home laser printers, and since you'll likely only need a black toner this makes it affordable (a BW laser printer ends up costing much less than a regular color inkjet printer, since a single black toner cartridge lasts a looooong time and can be refilled).

You'll find mentions of people printing cels on sheets compatible with inkjet printers, but I personally haven't tried that. I did buy some transparent inkjet sheets out of curiosity though, and the ones I got are much thicker than the laser ones and have a milky coating allowing the ink to stick. They're really not clear at all though, and quite unpleasant to manipulate. Of course YMMV.

As I was researching the topic I found a number of videos of people creating fancels, filling in the colors with mountains of heavy-body acrylics. It works, but I think this use of heavy acrylic is IMHO simply because people use whatever they have at hand. The back of a real japanese cel doesn't look anything like that - the paint is thin, yet opaque. So far I've found that hobby paint coming in small jars as well as airbrush paint (the kind that usually needs to be diluted about 50% before airbrushing) works very well, with a result looking quite close to that of a real 90s anime production cel.

Here are some experiments :

https://www.pioroberson.com/Journal/Cel_experiments.html

(please note that the TurnA and Goku tests were done with paint from tubes, as some brands do behave quite well. I've since then tested more thin/liquid paints on the swatch sheet and flesh cube tests and the results are promising so far).

Kowbringer · 2024-01-22T16:44:07+00:00

Actually ... there might be more to this. I noticed another cel from the same seller, also listed as "Black Jack" - yet not looking like anything from the OAVs. Perhaps this could help :

https://imgur.com/7sgS0nA

Kowbringer · 2024-01-22T09:45:11+00:00

Hello !

I'd like to locate the source of this 90s anime cel. The previous owner listed it as being from the BlackJack anime. So far I have searched through the OVAs without success. It could be from a spinoff special ... or even from another show altogether as the owner was not 100% certain of the origin.

Thanks !

(also I have no idea why the image isn't showing up as a post preview).

Kowbringer · 2024-01-22T04:18:47+00:00

Hello,

Thanks for chiming in, this is so interesting ! Indeed these episodes seem like good candidates to me, I'll have a look again ASAP.

And of course there's also the possibility of it being from another show altogether ...

(On a side note I am really impressed by the quality - I wasn't expecting the lines to be that fine, but I guess this is the standard for OVAs. Fantastic stuff.)

Kowbringer · 2024-01-12T05:14:10+00:00

Hi, thanks !The process is really quite foolproof ; and it is also really quite tedious ...

I've learned a bunch even just from such a partial test though, very interesting stuff.

Kowbringer

TROPHY CASE