OpenOffice Ribbon-like UI

Refer to the link "http://lifehacker.com/5331438/openofficeorg-screenshots-preview-a-ribbon+like-toolbar".

"This is not how OpenOffice should go..." as many OpenOffice users and supporters would criticise the latest OpenOffice Impress screenshot. This is the same comment I would use for the latest screenshot. Ribbon-like UI is for MS Office and let's leave the sucky and hard to navigate Ribbon-like UI for MS Office. I have tried MS Office a few times and the UI just sucks and is hard to understand and navigate.

While MS Office tries to make itself more unique, it also makes it's UI more unfriendly. Would it be better if you have the traditional menu bars and tool bars where everyone is accustomed to or the latest supposedly revolutionary Ribbon UI ? I prefer the more conservative and traditional yet easy to use menu bars and tool bars. Yes, it's outdated but it's been in use for so long and everyone is accustomed to it already.

Another danger of the Ribbon UI is that you have no idea what patents or stupid copyright stuff Microsoft have for it. You never know until it bites hard and bad.

So why not let's go to the traditional UI and don't ever touch the Ribbon UI because Ribbon UI is for Microsoft use as we have no idea what patents and hidden or open agenda Microsoft have installed and we have no idea what is out there waiting for us to walk into it's traps.

Anyway, from a GUI design point of view, Ribbon is unintuitive and sucks. Imagine you have such a huge 'Paste' , 'Copy' and 'Cut' button... like as though the user is a total idiot. The bar for containing the Ribbon UI takes up so much of screen space, I rather dedicate these space for a small button with a simple icon and then put a tool tip text to it. You can put stuff inside the right-click menu as well and it's more effective as people are used to right-clicking and expecting to see a list of options drop out from a menu.

The problem with most software is that the top menu bar, tool bar ...etc... are just hogging up space and the workflow is always disruptive. How does it become disruptive. Imagine you are typing and you have to move your mouse and look through some menus or tabs for some options or tools to use. Why not design something like an intelligent tool bar where as you type, certain valid options like bolding of changing text size is available and appears in a small translucent menu beneath the text. In Java, this can be done using a glass pane. Can you imagine having a bold tool for text available when you are trying to insert an image or a sound or video file in your document (i.e OO.o Impress) ? As you run into different scenarios, the menu would update itself showing you the possible options you can use rather than flooding the menu and tool bar with every thing. This is a better and more intelligent design isn't it ? Yes it requires better processing powers on the machine but these days, technology are advance and so are the processing powers with processor cores like Core 2 Duo ...etc...

I think we shouldn't try to ape someone's design blindly like OO.o(OpenOffice.org) did. We should use rationality instead of trying to ape MS's Ribbon UI.