5 ms·

I used OpenOffice then LibreOffice for about two years. I did a lot of homework and presentations from LibreOffice, including my senior thesis. I switched to M

I used OpenOffice then LibreOffice for about two years. I did a lot of homework and presentations from LibreOffice, including my senior thesis. I switched to MS Office 2011 and then MS Office 2016 afterward. The 2016 suite is by far the best from UI design to response time. Besides interop (since at work everyone uses MS Office suites) (I am using Outlook at work so I don't bother with a separate Office suite), but also because of stability and performance. Perhaps now LibreOffice is better, but I am going to stick to Office, plus I've an educational license (forgot if it's 4 or 5 years for ~$100) from using my university's email address.

pbhjpbhj 9y ago
MS Word being able to open MS Word proprietary format files isn't "interop". You can claim MS Word is good at interop if it can open, display, and save the other main wordprocessor file formats with good verity. Arguably you'd want [reverse] interop as part of that too, that MS would openly publish all details of their formats to enable other programs to use those formats. What you describe is using a format for the benefits of the monopoly position of that format. That's very different from interop. I'm not saying you're wrong to do that, just IMO wrong to describe it as interop.
- WalterGR 9y ago
  > What you describe is using a format for the benefits of the monopoly position of that format. What benefit is there to having a plurality of word processing formats? HTML has a monopoly. Is that a bad thing?
  - ethelward 9y ago
    HTML is an open documented standard, Office's are not. That's why it's a bad thing.
    - WalterGR 9y ago
      Office's are not. Yes they are. For a decade. (Now, my understanding is that they aren't a great open documented standard, but making the niceness of the format the issue would be moving the goalposts.) So I'm still curious about what I asked above.
- WalterGR 9y ago
  MS would openly publish all details of their formats to enable other programs to use those formats. (I must have missed this when I made my other comment.) They have. For a decade. ECMA-376, ISO/IEC 29500.

pbhjpbhj 9y ago

MS Word being able to open MS Word proprietary format files isn't "interop". You can claim MS Word is good at interop if it can open, display, and save the other main wordprocessor file formats with good verity. Arguably you'd want [reverse] interop as part of that too, that MS would openly publish all details of their formats to enable other programs to use those formats. What you describe is using a format for the benefits of the monopoly position of that format. That's very different from interop. I'm not saying you're wrong to do that, just IMO wrong to describe it as interop.

WalterGR 9y ago
> What you describe is using a format for the benefits of the monopoly position of that format. What benefit is there to having a plurality of word processing formats? HTML has a monopoly. Is that a bad thing?
- ethelward 9y ago
  HTML is an open documented standard, Office's are not. That's why it's a bad thing.
  - WalterGR 9y ago
    Office's are not. Yes they are. For a decade. (Now, my understanding is that they aren't a great open documented standard, but making the niceness of the format the issue would be moving the goalposts.) So I'm still curious about what I asked above.
WalterGR 9y ago
MS would openly publish all details of their formats to enable other programs to use those formats. (I must have missed this when I made my other comment.) They have. For a decade. ECMA-376, ISO/IEC 29500.