jmtd → log → Office suite UI and creativity

For some reason I've always hated the layout of Office Suite tools such as LibreOffice, OpenOffice and Microsoft Office (I seem to find the Ribbon interface nicer than what has gone before, although I can't put my finger on why.)

I always find the sheer quantity of UI in these programs have a real negative impact on creativity. I still haven't found anything as inspirational as a blank sheet of paper (or perhaps more accurately, less demotivating than a blank sheet of paper.)

I've tried disabling and removing bits in the past, but I've never ended up with something I was happy with. Recently I tried attaching one of the two standard toolbars vertically, instead of horizontally. Surprisingly to me, the result feels a lot nicer. There's still some way to go, though.

focuswriter is pretty good but I like to have some graphical features. By analogy when I write on paper it's not always straight lines of words, but sometimes bubbles, arrows, lines, strikethroughs, etc. At least I can get bullet points by remembering the write X compose key sequence (alt gr, dot, equals)