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>I run LibreOffice on my Mac and documents ALWAYS render differently than on Word. I always have to proofread on an office computer before I send files out to m

>I run LibreOffice on my Mac and documents ALWAYS render differently than on Word. I always have to proofread on an office computer before I send files out to my colleagues. If you're authoring the documents, you don't need to use docx. Use a more open format that's supported better by both. As for reading documents, who cares if it renders differently? So long as you can read it that's enough. >I literally used Bluetooth this afternoon. I was playing music on an external speaker. I also use it to connect my phone to my car, and my friend was using it late last week to play back an audio recording that we needed to pay close attention to. I was only referring to using your computer for bluetooth, not your phone, since that's the only subject that's relevant to the discussion. Audio is a fair point, though, but I'll point out that I have a pair of bluetooth headphones that works fine with Linux.

Karunamon 10y ago
A more open format? You mean ODF? A niche format that literally only cough free software enthusiasts cough care about? You know what happens when you give someone .ODF in the real world? "Hey, (I can't open this|This looks completely broken), can you resend as doc/docx please?" As for reading documents, who cares if it renders differently? People in enterprise, which accounts for most usage of Office.
- leni536 10y ago
  Both plain doc and rtf are way better than docx in portability, docx is a disaster.
- Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
  >A more open format? You mean ODF? A niche format that literally only cough free software enthusiasts cough care about? Don't be an ass. ODF is a format that works correctly on both, that's all that matters. >You know what happens when you give someone .ODF in the real world? "Hey, (I can't open this|This looks completely broken), can you resend as doc/docx please?" https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Differences-between-the-OpenDocument-Text-odt-format-and-the-Word-docx-format-used-by-Word-Online-1183ee75-0aae-47c2-b2ba-0c839135011f?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US&fromAR=1 https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Differences-between... Again, don't be an ass. >People in enterprise, which accounts for most usage of Office. People in enterprise almost always just want to disseminate information or get forms filled in and rendering correctly doesn't matter for those people. They'll generally use a PDF when it matters. And even failing all that, Office 2010 works in Wine, which is recent enough to be good enough for pretty much everything. Office online and google docs also obviously work fine on Linux.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- vetinari 10y ago
  > A niche format that literally only cough free software enthusiasts cough care about? And ISO and Microsoft. Microsoft cared enough about ODF, that they implemented importers and exporters for the MSO. > "Hey, (I can't open this|This looks completely broken), can you resend as doc/docx please?" Do you realize that you can open and export ODF formats in the MSO? > As for reading documents, who cares if it renders differently? > People in enterprise, which accounts for most usage of Office. They are already used to this - each version or language version of the MSO displays the documents slightly differently. Some layout calculations even depend on the printer driver installed!
  - Karunamon 10y ago
    Do you realize that just being able to save a file in a format does not necessarily mean being able to properly render files in that format that were created by other programs? ODF is basically XKCD 927. It solves no problems in the real world. It has no new features. The effort spent by OpenOffice in implementing it could have been better spent on making the Word filters not suck - to this day I still have Word2003 format documents with tables that OO won't render properly.
    - vetinari 10y ago
      If I had a dollar for every document made in Word version X that didn't display correctly in Word version Y... As an Office for Mac user, I could tell you long stories of inconsistencies (e.g. they finally fixed dropdown controls embedded in documents in the july 2016 update). In LibreOffice defense, it is kind of difficult to implement specification, that says things "works like Word95". In the end, these inconsistencies are not a big deal. Neither between different Office versions, nor between LO a MSO. If you want pixel-perfect layouts, use tools intended to do that (i.e. InDesign or other DTP).
jedikv 10y ago
> who cares if it renders differently? So long as you can read it that's enough. The idea behind word processing is that how you've authored your work should be rendered accurately and consistently without unintended side-effects.
- Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
  Even docx hardly ever guarantees that. Use PDF if you really want that. Most Word documents are written to be read, not to be rendered the same way everywhere.

Karunamon 10y ago

A more open format? You mean ODF? A niche format that literally only cough free software enthusiasts cough care about? You know what happens when you give someone .ODF in the real world? "Hey, (I can't open this|This looks completely broken), can you resend as doc/docx please?" As for reading documents, who cares if it renders differently? People in enterprise, which accounts for most usage of Office.

leni536 10y ago
Both plain doc and rtf are way better than docx in portability, docx is a disaster.
Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
>A more open format? You mean ODF? A niche format that literally only cough free software enthusiasts cough care about? Don't be an ass. ODF is a format that works correctly on both, that's all that matters. >You know what happens when you give someone .ODF in the real world? "Hey, (I can't open this|This looks completely broken), can you resend as doc/docx please?" https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Differences-between-the-OpenDocument-Text-odt-format-and-the-Word-docx-format-used-by-Word-Online-1183ee75-0aae-47c2-b2ba-0c839135011f?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US&fromAR=1 https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Differences-between... Again, don't be an ass. >People in enterprise, which accounts for most usage of Office. People in enterprise almost always just want to disseminate information or get forms filled in and rendering correctly doesn't matter for those people. They'll generally use a PDF when it matters. And even failing all that, Office 2010 works in Wine, which is recent enough to be good enough for pretty much everything. Office online and google docs also obviously work fine on Linux.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
vetinari 10y ago
> A niche format that literally only cough free software enthusiasts cough care about? And ISO and Microsoft. Microsoft cared enough about ODF, that they implemented importers and exporters for the MSO. > "Hey, (I can't open this|This looks completely broken), can you resend as doc/docx please?" Do you realize that you can open and export ODF formats in the MSO? > As for reading documents, who cares if it renders differently? > People in enterprise, which accounts for most usage of Office. They are already used to this - each version or language version of the MSO displays the documents slightly differently. Some layout calculations even depend on the printer driver installed!
- Karunamon 10y ago
  Do you realize that just being able to save a file in a format does not necessarily mean being able to properly render files in that format that were created by other programs? ODF is basically XKCD 927. It solves no problems in the real world. It has no new features. The effort spent by OpenOffice in implementing it could have been better spent on making the Word filters not suck - to this day I still have Word2003 format documents with tables that OO won't render properly.
  - vetinari 10y ago
    If I had a dollar for every document made in Word version X that didn't display correctly in Word version Y... As an Office for Mac user, I could tell you long stories of inconsistencies (e.g. they finally fixed dropdown controls embedded in documents in the july 2016 update). In LibreOffice defense, it is kind of difficult to implement specification, that says things "works like Word95". In the end, these inconsistencies are not a big deal. Neither between different Office versions, nor between LO a MSO. If you want pixel-perfect layouts, use tools intended to do that (i.e. InDesign or other DTP).

jedikv 10y ago

> who cares if it renders differently? So long as you can read it that's enough. The idea behind word processing is that how you've authored your work should be rendered accurately and consistently without unintended side-effects.

Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
Even docx hardly ever guarantees that. Use PDF if you really want that. Most Word documents are written to be read, not to be rendered the same way everywhere.