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I used to love this project when it was OpenOffice and supported by Sun. At that point in time it was a pretty good MS Office alternative and it was getting bet

I used to love this project when it was OpenOffice and supported by Sun. At that point in time it was a pretty good MS Office alternative and it was getting better all the time. Don't get me wrong, it's great that there is some open source alternative to MS Office. That being said, it felt like they gave up on improving MS Office compatibility at some point. I'm not talking about MS Publisher but the major three: Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. Their support of key features from those three hasn't noticeably improved in the last 10 years. I've tried to use OpenOffice multiple times over the years. I always give up because files I receive from colleagues end up looking really bad.

ptx 9y ago
10 years ago was around the time Microsoft switched to entirely new, XML-based file formats. So it might have something to do with that, i.e. the compatibility work being diluted by now having to aim for a new target in addition to the old one. Perhaps a "fire and motion" strategy[1] on Microsoft's part? [1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/
- megaman22 9y ago
  In theory, at least the XML based format should be easier to maintain compatibility with than the old "dump whatever is in memory" binary formats. At this point, it's been long enough that the old formats aren't seen anywhere near as often as the x formats they replaced. Wonder if it'd be cost-effective to just drop support for doc and xsl and double down on docx and xlsx?
ams6110 9y ago
It's pretty good lately. By no means are all the imcompatibilities resolved. What's happened for me though, is that I'm using Google Docs/Sheets more and more. They have also improved, and are pretty good now. And for collaboration, hands down better than emailing document files around or even trying to share them on Dropbox or similar. I'll still use LibreOffice to open the odd attachment I get, but that's about it.
cesarb 9y ago
> I've tried to use OpenOffice multiple times over the years. I always give up because files I receive from colleagues end up looking really bad. Try LibreOffice instead of OpenOffice. There have been several MS Office compatibility enhancements in LibreOffice which are not present in OpenOffice.
- ryanackley 9y ago
  Sorry, I meant LibreOffice and OpenOffice. I've tried both.

ptx 9y ago

10 years ago was around the time Microsoft switched to entirely new, XML-based file formats. So it might have something to do with that, i.e. the compatibility work being diluted by now having to aim for a new target in addition to the old one. Perhaps a "fire and motion" strategy[1] on Microsoft's part? [1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/

megaman22 9y ago
In theory, at least the XML based format should be easier to maintain compatibility with than the old "dump whatever is in memory" binary formats. At this point, it's been long enough that the old formats aren't seen anywhere near as often as the x formats they replaced. Wonder if it'd be cost-effective to just drop support for doc and xsl and double down on docx and xlsx?

ams6110 9y ago

It's pretty good lately. By no means are all the imcompatibilities resolved. What's happened for me though, is that I'm using Google Docs/Sheets more and more. They have also improved, and are pretty good now. And for collaboration, hands down better than emailing document files around or even trying to share them on Dropbox or similar. I'll still use LibreOffice to open the odd attachment I get, but that's about it.

cesarb 9y ago

> I've tried to use OpenOffice multiple times over the years. I always give up because files I receive from colleagues end up looking really bad. Try LibreOffice instead of OpenOffice. There have been several MS Office compatibility enhancements in LibreOffice which are not present in OpenOffice.

ryanackley 9y ago
Sorry, I meant LibreOffice and OpenOffice. I've tried both.