3 ms·

It inter-operates better than Microsoft's own software. Try opening a document that was saved from an older version of word in the newest. LibreOffice is better

by soperj 9y ago

It inter-operates better than Microsoft's own software. Try opening a document that was saved from an older version of word in the newest. LibreOffice is better.

PeterisP 9y ago
I could have agreed with your claim 10 years ago, but not now. I've had such problems with MS software back in office97/2000 era, but not now - on the other hand, I have had interop issues with Libreoffice back when I used it last year, so it's currently not good enough (yet?) to be used safely. To be clear on definitions, my understanding of "interoperability" involves the following workflow - if I open a complex document made by someone else in MS Excel or Word, change one word in it, save it (in MS format) and send it back, then I have to be sure that I haven't corrupted anything else in that document - layout nuances, styles,references, pagination, whatever. Currently it's not the case, and it makes it unusable, since I can't even verify if something looks different on my computer than it had looked in MS Office. I mean, it's a simple test - if opening ("importing"? "converting"? technically that might be more appropriate than merely opening) a document and immediately saving it changes it somehow, it's not ok.
- soperj 9y ago
  Use a open standard. Save it as an odt.
  - PeterisP 9y ago
    That's switching to another workflow, not interoperability with the existing one.
blipmusic 9y ago
I had a bunch of old Word-documents from a late researcher using non-latin scripts and custom fonts that needed fixing for archiving (the only important step was to make these readable by humans). Don't remember what encoding. Current version of Word wouldn't even touch these, raising errors left and right. In the end I changed the strings that specified the problematic/missing fonts in a hex editor (I naively assumed that would do the least damage...) to a compatible font I eventually found after some digital archaeology. LibreOffice accepted these files but didn't display them correctly (as in: according to what my eyes and brain expected - "machine readable" was in a different universe at this point). I saved the hex-edited documents in whatever version of docx LibreOffice exports to. Word accepted these, displayed them as well as could be hoped, and a little bit of modern history could be saved for future generations. Not a very technical approach, I guess. I feel the 1990's in general did a lot of damage. It's not only Word. Competing, proprietary formats together with lacking text-encodings (and in my case custom fonts messing up character tables, due to academic/linguistic needs) has caused more information loss than the decades before and after for the data I've worked with. Suffice to say I use plain text as much as possible (markdown, latex), as text-encoding alone is hard enough.
- sangnoir 9y ago
  That's sounds like a proper programmer-archaeologist gig to make Vernor Vinge proud.
yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
Reminds me of wine, which apparently has better luck with old programs than do new versions of Windows.

by soperj 9y ago

It inter-operates better than Microsoft's own software. Try opening a document that was saved from an older version of word in the newest. LibreOffice is better.

PeterisP 9y ago

I could have agreed with your claim 10 years ago, but not now. I've had such problems with MS software back in office97/2000 era, but not now - on the other hand, I have had interop issues with Libreoffice back when I used it last year, so it's currently not good enough (yet?) to be used safely. To be clear on definitions, my understanding of "interoperability" involves the following workflow - if I open a complex document made by someone else in MS Excel or Word, change one word in it, save it (in MS format) and send it back, then I have to be sure that I haven't corrupted anything else in that document - layout nuances, styles,references, pagination, whatever. Currently it's not the case, and it makes it unusable, since I can't even verify if something looks different on my computer than it had looked in MS Office. I mean, it's a simple test - if opening ("importing"? "converting"? technically that might be more appropriate than merely opening) a document and immediately saving it changes it somehow, it's not ok.

soperj 9y ago
Use a open standard. Save it as an odt.
- PeterisP 9y ago
  That's switching to another workflow, not interoperability with the existing one.

blipmusic 9y ago

I had a bunch of old Word-documents from a late researcher using non-latin scripts and custom fonts that needed fixing for archiving (the only important step was to make these readable by humans). Don't remember what encoding. Current version of Word wouldn't even touch these, raising errors left and right. In the end I changed the strings that specified the problematic/missing fonts in a hex editor (I naively assumed that would do the least damage...) to a compatible font I eventually found after some digital archaeology. LibreOffice accepted these files but didn't display them correctly (as in: according to what my eyes and brain expected - "machine readable" was in a different universe at this point). I saved the hex-edited documents in whatever version of docx LibreOffice exports to. Word accepted these, displayed them as well as could be hoped, and a little bit of modern history could be saved for future generations. Not a very technical approach, I guess. I feel the 1990's in general did a lot of damage. It's not only Word. Competing, proprietary formats together with lacking text-encodings (and in my case custom fonts messing up character tables, due to academic/linguistic needs) has caused more information loss than the decades before and after for the data I've worked with. Suffice to say I use plain text as much as possible (markdown, latex), as text-encoding alone is hard enough.

sangnoir 9y ago
That's sounds like a proper programmer-archaeologist gig to make Vernor Vinge proud.

yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago

Reminds me of wine, which apparently has better luck with old programs than do new versions of Windows.