from the how-do-I-convert-my-existing-files? dept.
Google Docs vs. Microsoft Word: Which works better for business?:
Have you been thinking of reassessing which word processor your business should standardize on? The obvious choices are the two best known: Microsoft Word and Google Docs. But which is better?
Several years ago, the answer to that would have been easy: Microsoft Word for its better editing, formatting and markup tools; Google Docs for its better collaboration. But both applications have been radically updated since then. Word now has live collaboration tools, and Google has added more sophisticated formatting, editing and markup features to Docs.
TFA requires free registration, but the question is an interesting one: Have Google Docs arrived at parity with, or surpassed, Microsoft Word for business needs? How much work is required to transition existing documents, macros, and workflows?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday June 02 2020, @02:02AM (8 children)
when the internet goes down, is all that (should) matter.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @02:47AM (1 child)
Why [office.com]
Not? [google.com]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday June 02 2020, @02:02PM
That answer suffices if you expect the internet to come back up again at some point.
But what if it never does?
Because of some Microsoft technology somewhere that permanently disables the internet. Wouldn't you rather have had your documents safely stored in Microsoft Word?
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by richtopia on Tuesday June 02 2020, @04:44AM (1 child)
I've had customers who use both products. They are all bad. Microsoft products used to be the industry standard and more feature complete than Google, but Office 365 keeps providing headaches.
I personally write as much as possible in MarkDown, but that is my personal stuff; I suspect a real business would need something more.
(Score: 2) by julian on Tuesday June 02 2020, @05:50AM
My personal needs are well served by Notepad++ [notepad-plus-plus.org] (Windows), Kate [kate-editor.org] (Linux, KDE), and LibreOffice (available everywhere).
My office needs a lot of collaboration with documents so we do use Google Docs and it's a really great product for what it does. I don't have any technical complaints. I dislike Google as a company and don't use any of their products or services personally (other than watching YouTube with an adblocker). When the Internet goes down, we can't do much anyway, so it doesn't matter that our document collaboration system is temporarily unavailable too. And there are ways to make it work offline, with limited functionality.
We have a few MS Office 365 licenses because occasionally we need to interact with other offices who can't handle open formats, but it's used for little else.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @09:18AM (1 child)
In any case, why you would want to CC a possible competitor in your daily business processes is what puzzles me.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday June 02 2020, @02:06PM
I think you mean BCC.
And even BCC doesn't quite capture it, because the sender is not aware that they are BCC'ing.
But it is a feature! Your documents are being safely, invisibly, and secretly archived "in the cloud!" And if it's in the cloud, then it must be good!
This message paid for by the NSA.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by TheRaven on Tuesday June 02 2020, @09:19AM
Huh? Microsoft Office comes in two flavours: pay a one-off price for a single version of the office suite or pay a subscription for Office 365. In both versions, you get desktop apps. Office 365 gives you Windows, macOS, Android and iOS versions of the core apps (a few, such as Access, are available on fewer platforms).
Office encourages you to store documents in OneDrive / OneDrive for Business, but these sync locally. When you edit a document offline, it works. When you reconnect, if two people have edited it then it will report a conflict and open Word or whatever to merge the changes.
You can also use the versions in the web browser.
I've not used Google Docs for ages, but I think they have a similar offline mode.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday June 02 2020, @10:25PM
I think not being to access corporate memorabilia is the least of your worries when a modern large organization loses complete Internet access.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Hauke on Tuesday June 02 2020, @02:08AM (15 children)
Why not other options in this discussion?
LibreOffice [libreoffice.org] and OpenOffice [openoffice.org]?
I'd love to to hear the discussion regarding Editing, Formatting and Collaboration include all four (if not more).
Cheers!
TANSTAAFL
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @02:37AM (7 children)
I use both LibreOffice and OpenOffice (fwiw, OO has a smaller disk footprint, so I started with it first, years ago). My customers are all Microsoft shops and I often have to deal with .docx files.
Both LO and OO have problems with certain kinds of formatting in .docx (and .doc), for example, numbered lists often display improperly in my experience. While I don't use Google Docs very often, I do use the file viewers in Gmail (are they related?)--the Gmail .docx viewer has the same kind of problem with lists that LO/OO have, mis-numbering and/or mis-indenting. For documents where formatting matters, I can sometimes get my customer to send me .pdf files.
Also, both LO & OO have problems with large embedded graphics (plots from Matlab with tens of thousands of data points). Redisplay can take many seconds per page or fail completely. MS-Word has no problems with these large image files. My Win 7 machines have 8Gb memory, so I don't think I'm having swapping problems...
The Gmail .docx viewer often screws up pagination and I think it sometimes gives up on large embedded plots. Note that different versions of Word also screw up page boundaries, so there is plenty of blame to go around on that score!
I'm sticking with LO and OO for my primary use, since they both have sensible menus that don't take up too much screen space and don't hide things away like MS does.
I do have old versions of Word (Office 97 and 2003) around--these have one obvious advantage, on modern hardware they are blindingly fast. 97 is, iirc, the last version that you install and it does not "call home" to Redmond. I used Office 97 to draft a large textbook c.1999 and it was a terrible dog on the hardware back then (swapped frequently and locked-up often), but that experience taught me many workarounds and other "tricks"...and it's actually pretty pleasant to use now (but I can't get it to print through Win7--have to save and open in LO/OO if I need to print.)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @04:56AM (2 children)
All the problems you describe are Microsoft problems, not the problem of software that follows a standard. If Microsoft's Word garbles lists and math, I just do not use it. Problem solved.
Oh, I suppose you still need Word for games, eh?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @10:07AM (1 child)
Yes, I agree these are primarily Microsoft problems. But since my customers (large companies) are MS shops, they become my problems too. Just pointing out that LO/OO are not as compatible with MS formats as some people like to think.
The only game I play on Win7 is the original MS Solitaire (moved sol.exe over from an XP box).
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday June 02 2020, @02:17PM
It is sad reality to have to use Microsoft products in business, and build products for customers using this wretched junk.
MCSE: Minesweeper Consultant and Solitaire Expert
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Tuesday June 02 2020, @11:56AM (1 child)
I've had real issues with both OO and LO handling labels. In OO 4.1.7 (Mac version), simply choosing New / Labels results in the app abruptly abending. Just starting and trying to exit LO 5.3.5.2 results in a hang. Later versions somehow screw up the margins and formatting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @05:00PM
stop using EnslaveOS.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @07:56PM
When I want to exchange between Microsoft Word and Libreoffice I save as .doc. It works much better than .docx.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @07:02PM
The change to Skia may have alleviated much of that. Cairo has been a clusterfuck for years, and I don't know if they were using it in LibreOffice all that time, but if they were it may have caused a lot of those display problems under non-standard use cases.
If it turns out it did, please do reply back and let us know. Not many of us get to deal with complicated documents like that, so hearing feedback would be helpful :)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by AHuxley on Tuesday June 02 2020, @02:46AM
+1 for something open that's not from an ad company.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MostCynical on Tuesday June 02 2020, @03:20AM
more specific link to the online version page [libreoffice.org]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 5, Informative) by coolgopher on Tuesday June 02 2020, @04:23AM (1 child)
A colleague of mine just learned the hard way that you cannot (successfully) export Google Docs containing mathematical formulas to Word format (.docx).
OpenOffice apparently can manage it in a way which preserves the way the formula looks, but not the actual formula. The example given was that "a + b-subscript-i" structurally ends up being "(a + b)subscript i".
Moral of the story: just stick to LaTeX for serious documents.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday June 02 2020, @11:54AM
I'll second that. I use LyX myself and have always been happy with the results.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by zeigerpuppy on Tuesday June 02 2020, @04:53AM
CollaboraOffice https://www.collaboraoffice.com/code/ [collaboraoffice.com] running on a nextcloud server is a really great option.
It uses LibreOffice under the hood and supports real time collaboratie editing as well as fallback to LibreOffice (files synced using Nextcloud).
We have some big deployments of this now and customers have been really happy.
Personally, I use LaTeX (Sharelatex self-hosted) and CodiMD (self-hosted) and am moving more and more towards using R-Markdown for all documents.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday June 02 2020, @10:33PM (1 child)
Because documents by themselves are useless. No one enjoys writing and then reading their own processed document except madmen.
The entire value of documents comes from sharing them with other people, collaboratively editing and commenting on them, and for organizations, controlling access to the documents. Not having seamless cloud/web integration is a huge detriment.
If one used LibreOffice, one would have to, at a minimum, attach new versions of the file for each change and send them via email to every single person, coordinate email comment replies, and explain to everyone what an ODF file is (in the real world, you usually don't have the option to choose to only collaborate with intellectual elites who all know what LibreOffice is). When you're competing with "Click Share", you've already lost.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @03:39AM
I must be mad...?
Lots of what I write is shared around with customers and friends.
But I also write notes to myself (my future self) all the time--little reminders of what I did, or how I did something. On the screen it might be the address of a useful webpage that I added to the Wayback Machine for future use--added to the relevant file (more likely to find it this way, although I bookmark it too). In the shop it might be details (on paper) of how I built a specific custom bike wheel (including drilling the blank rim)--convenient for the next time a similar order comes in.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @02:14AM
Bank Street Writer is where it's at.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @02:17AM (4 children)
Boomers forced everyone to stay home at gunpoint to give Boomers a safe space.
Boomers forced every business to close at gunpoint to give Boomers a safe space.
Boomers forced everyone to wear face masks at gunpoint to give Boomers a safe space.
Boomers caused the worst economic depression in history to give Boomers a safe space.
Whiny entitled Boomers are the worst generation ever to live.
No longer.
Boomers must be made to pay with their lives for crimes against civilization.
The Final Solution to COVID-19 is to exterminate every Boomer.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday June 02 2020, @02:20AM (3 children)
So, who do you have a beef against exactly?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @02:23AM (2 children)
Stop trying to cheat death, Boomer. Catch COVID-19 and die now.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @02:34AM
You first!
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @03:35AM
Needs more William Shatner.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @03:50AM (1 child)
commercial software is all garbage
all of it
commercial software development is a field that rewards hucksters, con artists, and worse
who has to deal with it when commercial software is shit, when their cloud goes down? never the vendor. grab the nearest tech dweeb and bully him until Google comes back up
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday June 02 2020, @01:28PM
Maybe for things that free software advocates care about.
In the music world, commercial software is king. Sure, there's MuseScore and LMMS as free solutions, but they seriously lack the domain understanding that commercial products like Sibelius, Dorico, ProTools, Logic, Reason, FL Studio, and many others demonstrate.
Granted, the number of applications I can rattle off shows a level of competition that can only come from Microsoft and other big tech companies not breaking the free market. It's also only really possible because this stuff is expensive. Pro musicians expect to spend thousands on hardware, so a few hundred bucks for a software suite is definitely within reason. Especially when some of those applications, like ProTools, can also replace some of that hardware with virtual instruments powered by cheap commodity MIDI keyboards.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bart9h on Tuesday June 02 2020, @04:53AM (14 children)
I don't know any WYSIWYG editor that didn't suck.
Is there any?
LaTeX is the only sane way.
I lets you focus 90% of your effort on the content, not the format.
With the WYSIWYG editors, it's pretty much the other way around.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by deimtee on Tuesday June 02 2020, @05:58AM (4 children)
Best wysiwyg I ever used was Wordperfect in 'reveal codes' mode. But that was 25 years ago, and usability has done nothing but drop since then across them all. Poettering probably has "add ribbon interface to Libre Office" on his todo list.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Common Joe on Tuesday June 02 2020, @08:18AM (1 child)
Reveal codes was one of the biggest losses I ever experienced when transitioning between word processes. I still miss it.
But we won't be getting it back anytime soon. Most of the information that was made by open/close commands in WordPerfect are now embedded in the paragraph mark at the end of the paragraph in LibreOffice and Microsoft Word. It's been that way for decades. To change it would probably be a major undertaking.
No, he won't get the chance. It's already an option [ghacks.net]. They added it experimentally in 2017 and it finished rooting in 2019, although it's still listed as an experimental feature and is called the "tabbed user interface". Instructions to turn it on are here [ghacks.net].
Before you get mad, there are a couple of things to be aware of: 1) I hate ribbons as much as you. 2) Not everyone shares our opinion. Some people prefer it. No, I can't imagine why either. I suspect it has something to do with being more visual people (icons) instead of readers (menus). 3) As a coder, I always believed there was room for both options for both types of people. I hated Microsoft for shoving ribbons down our throats. LibreOffice did it (mostly) right. Both options exists for both kinds of people.
(Score: 3, Informative) by meustrus on Tuesday June 02 2020, @01:35PM
I quite like the way MS Office works on OS X. Because OS X has a permanent application-defined menu, there's no reason to take File/Edit/View/etc away from the user. So the ribbon simply provides the superior visual language without taking away the menus that provide the superior text-based-discovery.
Though it's been a few years since I had any reason to author a printed document. These days I do basically all of my (non-code) writing in Markdown.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @01:20PM
Man I miss "reveal codes," best feature ever for figuring out why doing this thing causes this weird behavior.
Flip on reveal codes and you can see ever start/end italics, every space, everything. It was perfect (TM). Also, the equation editor was, for the time, pretty good.
(Score: 2) by dw861 on Thursday June 04 2020, @08:23PM
Yes, exactly. And this is why, in 2020, I'm still using WordPerfect for Linux.
http://xwp8users.com/ [xwp8users.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @06:04AM (1 child)
My experience with business users (on both sides of the document) is that they *need* pretty formatting that they are able to handle with minimum effort on their side. And they really absolutely *need* that formatting to hide the unconvenient / distressing actual content behind it.
So using LaTeX to focus them on the content that they want hidden, taking away the mostly-working formatting tool that they can handle without putting in any effort, is the same as taking away the prime purpose that they're using the tool for.
And that's why LaTeX will never fly in business.
It's never about the news, people watch the show only for the looks of the anchor. (I don't like it either, but you really should get it through your head)
(Score: 1) by CowMan on Tuesday June 02 2020, @08:29AM
Both sides ? Most business docs fly about as PDFs from my experience, like 99%.
Interestingly I have also seen a growing uptick of tex, particularly for data heavy reports as almost all inputs can be automated based on the output of technical programs, add a couple plain text files, and it's one click to generate a full report PDF using corporate standard templates.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @06:09AM
What latex viewers do you use?
Last time i fired up some old(4yrs only) .pdf they had lost math formula here and there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @09:42AM (4 children)
WYSIWYG editors suck. LaTeX sucks too. It ain't even markup, it's a fucking programming language. Literally.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday June 02 2020, @03:28PM (3 children)
I've long ago discovered that to be able to focus properly on writing I need a document compiler, not a word processor. And it needs to cooperate with distributed version control (which all "word processors" I've seen don't).
I still haven't found one I like.
Aside from some ancient ones running on mainframes in the 70's, and some homebrew that's a low-grade stopgap, I've looked at Scribble. Markdown, and, of course, Tex.
-----
TeX:
Even as a programming language, TeX wasn't designed with the knowledge that existed in the programming language community. No idea of scope rules. Everything is in one huge namespace, implemented by macro processing, and capable of redefining the syntax in obscure ways.
Once a few TeX "modules" have contributed their contents to the global namespace, you have no idea *what* your notations do.
Oh yes, these days TeX generates pdf files, and not much else.
At least TeX does do mathematics.
-----
Scribble:
Scribble *is* based on a decent programming language, Racket, which is a dialect of Scheme, which is a dialect of Lisp. But it does not have Lots of Irritating Single Parentheses. It is, simply, a different syntax for Lisp that looks like plain readable text with mark-up. The markup is where the Lisp is hidden. Each straightforward markup command is actually syntactic sugar for a Lisp expression. The bulk of the built-in textual layout semantics is written in Racket, and merely called from the Scribble document.
And Scribble can produce output in either TeX or HTML. This is a decided plus.
In theory, if you want to do something that's different from built-in, you just have to write some Racket functions to do it. So it's quite extensible. Except that the Racket code for Scribble is huge, and hard to understand unless you're willing to exert a major effort to get into it. And there are a few standard document formats and unless you're happy with one of those, you're involved in rewriting parts of Scribble. In practice, this makes your novel look like a manual.
And Scribble doesn't have a notation for mathematics.
-----
Pollen:
There's a variation of Scribble called Pollen. It's main distinction is that it's like Scribble with most of its guts ripped out so you're in a do-it-yourself situation. You can generate any output file format you want, as long as you do it al yourself.
-----
Markdown:
And the there's Markdown. Easy to use, also deficient. It is poorly defined. It has multiple implementations that differ in the corner cases. It has multiple incompatible notations for tables. It lacks an "include" feature to allow you to split a large document into multiple files.
And it doesn't do mathematics.
-----
If anyone can tell me where I'm wrong, or what tool might actually meet my needs, I'd like to hear it. At present I'm using homebrew code that has too few features, translates into HTML, has trouble producing decent TeX, and completely fails in producing any well-known word-processor file format such as .fodt, otd, or Word.
-- hendrik
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @05:20PM
Org mode https://orgmode.org/features.html [orgmode.org] works for me as a simple plain textish format that exports well. I mostly export to HTML but it lists ODT as included and mentions there are other exporters available.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @08:14PM
Have you tried lout?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @03:59AM
This page compared a number of markup systems:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_document-markup_languages [wikipedia.org]
More history,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markup_language#Types_of_markup_language [wikipedia.org]
In the '80s and '90s I used various versions of Mark of the Unicorn products, first Mince (Mince is not complete emacs) and Scribble (CP/M 8080 version of Carnegie Mellon Scribe text formatter).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribe_(markup_language)#Related_software [wikipedia.org]
Later the two were combined into MotU FinalWordII (MS-Dos) which served well for a number of 100+ page structured user manuals, and also a 900 page book. This still runs in a DOS emulator and the pdf output is still perfect, the .ps files can be opened directly by SumatraPDF for viewing/printing.
FWII was also sold as Perfect Writer and later to Borland which became Sprint Wordprocessor. Amazingly enough there is still a Sprint mail list, I get a post every year or so these days...
Scribble/FWII formatter/Sprint all lacked multi-line formatting, thus no good equation editor (I faked it, but took a lot of manual spacing, not good enough for publication).
The full blown Scribe was expensive, but it did include an equation editor and much better image support than the Mark of the Unicorn microcomputer ports. I think the reason TeX won was that it was free (as in beer and as in freedom), the Scribe maintainers never offered a free version, so there was never a big user community like for TeX. But, for years major structured documents like Intel documentation were done in Scribe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @12:10PM
I like LyX. Not really a WYSIWYG, maybe a mid option.
From there site:
LyX is a document processor that encourages an approach to writing based on the structure of your documents (WYSIWYM) and not simply their appearance (WYSIWYG).
LyX combines the power and flexibility of TeX/LaTeX with the ease of use of a graphical interface.
https://www.lyx.org/ [lyx.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by inertnet on Tuesday June 02 2020, @07:44AM (4 children)
I normally use LibreOffice, but got a company laptop with Office 365 on it. It can't properly save CSV files because there's no option to quote text fields. So the laptop now has LibreOffice on it.
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Tuesday June 02 2020, @09:55AM (3 children)
I use LibreOffice, too, but older versions of MS Office would quote fields if necessary, i.e., if they contained the delimiter character. Have they "fixed" this in newer versions?
My main quarrel with csv files in MS Office was that they weren't really csv (i.e., comma separated value) files, but ssv (i.e., semicolon separated value) files, despite the use of that name. LibreOffice has support for arbitrary separator characters, both when saving and when loading, so it is a much better choice for dealing with csv files.
However, one problem with LibreOffice is MS Office compatibility. It's good enough if you want to read a file produced by MS Office, and will probably produce good enough MS Office documents, if you don't use LibreOffice features for which there is no MS Office equivalent. However, if you need to accurately reproduce the formatting of an MS Office document, this may not always be possible.
E.g., in Greece, during the COVID-19 lockdown, you had to carry with you a special permit, if you needed to go outside. The simplest way was to send an SMS to a special number, with the permit being the automatic reply you received. An alternative was to print a form, supplied by the government, fill in your name, tick one of six check boxes describing the reason you wanted to go outside, and sign it. (Yes, there was a third option for those who couldn't do that either: just jot the stuff on a piece of paper.) The form was provided in both PDF [forma.gov.gr] and docx [forma.gov.gr] format. In the PDF version, which, presumably, had been exported from whatever version of MS Word the form had been created, the check boxes were perfectly aligned with the corresponding descriptions. When opening the docx file from an older version of MS Office, the checkboxes were slightly misaligned, even though you could easily tell which box corresponded to which description. If you opened the file from LibreOffice, the checkboxes were completely misaligned. Instant vendor and version lock-in!
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Tuesday June 02 2020, @11:22AM
This is a quote from a Microsoft site about quotes in csv files:
After that they show a complex macro with which you can program this feature, which simply used to exist in Excel in the past.
I know about the formatting differences between MS Office and LibreOffice, because it happens to my children's homework too. As students they get a free MS account (smart move from Microsoft because most will never learn about alternatives), but I refuse to buy a subscription just so I can view or print my kid's work exactly as they created it.
About comma vs semicolon, here in the Netherlands it's impossible to use csv files from Excel with comma separators, because our decimal point is a comma. Your only hope of parsing csv data correctly is not to use a comma as separator. And you can't have fields with carriage return and/or line feeds in them, if these fields have no quotes around them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @03:57PM (1 child)
> If you opened the file from LibreOffice, the checkboxes were completely misaligned. Instant vendor and version lock-in!
No this was all solved by having 2 different formats both called docx. One of them is compliant with standards and one isn't. It's not their fault that everyone didn't change the default noncompliant docx to the complaitn docx. The market has decided I guess?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @12:44AM
It is actually 9 different formats. If you smooth over the various BC/FC issues and don't need certain features, you can get that down to 4. Whee. Are we having fun yet?
(Score: 5, Touché) by KritonK on Tuesday June 02 2020, @09:05AM
The obvious choices are the two best known: Microsoft Word and Google Docs... and LibreOffice... The three choices are Microsoft Word and Google Docs and LibreOffice... and OpenOffice.org... The four... no... Amongst the choices... are such office suites as Microsoft Word, Google Docs... I'll come in again.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kreuzfeld on Tuesday June 02 2020, @12:53PM (2 children)
The correct answer is https://www.libreoffice.org/ [libreoffice.org] . It's done the job for me for the last 13 years, through six different employers across three states and two countries.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @03:59PM (1 child)
Bzzz WRONG.
LO equation editor SUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKS hairy choad every minute of its sorry existence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @05:05PM
have you even bothered to report your experience to the LO devs?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @07:53PM (3 children)
The 'moat' in office suites is Excel expertise. LibreOffice Calc and even Google Sheets have a colossal set of features, but if you're an Excel power user the opportunity cost of climbing the learning curve to switch your funky ten sheet, five-hundred-formula sheet to an alternative is just too high. And damn near every company with more than ten people has some Excel power users in it.
From the small to medium business side, the strategy has to be migrating your complex Excel sheets to a stand-alone application. For projects or companies trying to eat Microsoft's lunch, they should focus on mimic'ing Excel features as closely as they legally can - right down to VBscript and every other Excel wart.
I don't like this situation, it's just what I keep encountering through my career. I use Etherpad and Ethercalc that I host myself. But when I suggest Excel alternatives to friends, relatives, and employers, I am inevitably stopped cold by the Excel power users. And from a financial perspective, their objectives makes sense - if it takes you 500 hours to get the same level of advanced proficiency in LibreOffice Calc and 100 hours to translate your existing critical Excel sheets to LibreOffice Calc, between 600 hours of your labor and 600 hours you couldn't spend doing something else the transition never pays for itself.
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Wednesday June 03 2020, @10:56AM (2 children)
TFA is about MS Word vs. the competition, not about MS Office in general, so the point about excel is moot in that context.
For people like me, who have very little use for spreadsheets, apart from adding a few columns of numbers, the deciding factor for choosing an office suite is how easy it is to work with the word processor. For what it's worth, I find working with LibreOffice Writer much easier than MS Word.
Perhaps excel should be delegated to the status of a legacy program for running legacy excel applications and nothing else, with no need to upgrade and risk breaking them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @01:01PM
I realize the article was about Word vs Google Docs and not office suites, but in practice businesses standardize on office suites. I don't know anyone that works at a business that uses a word processor from one company and spreadsheet software from another.
I don't use that many advanced spreadsheet features either. As I wrote, for personal spreadsheets I use EtherCalc (an open source equivalent to Google Sheets, though with far fewer features).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @01:34PM
It's not moot in the Real World. Because when the Boss starts deciding on which to go with, the Excel users are often quite loud. And if their spreadsheets are important to the Boss (they often are) then the choice is Microsoft Office.
Don't forget the Sales team with their PowerPoint presentations...
(Score: 2) by corey on Wednesday June 03 2020, @10:08PM
We've been slowly forced to use the above lately and they both open Office docs in the embedded editor (or in the browser).
That editor is horrendous. I'm sick of having to right click > Download, then open explorer to then open the file with real Word/Excel.
The way it's going, where Office 365 is rolled out more and things go online, I'm happy to convert over to Google Docs as I'm sure it's better than Microsoft's web interface editor. That is, if it's out of those two options only. Otherwise LibreOffice.
On a related note, the two above Microsoft tools are also horrible. So badly designed that they do not serve their purpose.