3 ms·

I made a slideshow in LibreOffice Impress for my grandfather's funeral last week. We ended up playing it via PowerPoint because of how the chapel's AV system wa

by sh-run 7y ago

I made a slideshow in LibreOffice Impress for my grandfather's funeral last week. We ended up playing it via PowerPoint because of how the chapel's AV system was set up. PowerPoint rendered the images in the ODP poorly, like it jacked the contrast up to 100. Saving the document as a PPTX within LibreOffice and then playing it on PowerPoint fixed the issue. From my naive perspective MS Office seems to have issues with ODF just like LibreOffice has with docx/pptx/xlsx/etc.

mattbk1 7y ago
I'm sorry for your loss. Dealing with technical issues at a funeral sounds terrible.
Enginerrrd 7y ago
This to me is THE quintessential issue surrounding potential adoption of libre office. If formatting & commands remained 100% consistent between the two, I think you'd see a lot more people switch, out of the shear convenience of not having to whip out their wallet. Students would probably be first to adopt because they usually operate on a tight budget to begin with. That would filter out into the business world eventually. But if you can't absolutely rely on it to be totally compatible, then it's a total non-starter. Not worth the risk.
- davidgerard 7y ago
  I think you're wrong there. Counterpoint: Google Docs. Its OOXML compatibility is for shit. Its adoption is HUGE. Not one person mentions how amazingly shit its OOXML compatibility is, even for quite simple DOCX. Almost nobody in an office uses the fancy bits of Excel. Spreadsheets are mostly used as flat-file data stores. And Office is notoriously incompatible between different versions of itself. In practice, I don't think the file compatibility objection to LibreOffice is real. It's just an excuse. The actual competition is Google Docs, which is a shitty word processor and a shitty spreadsheet and a shitty presentation app, but absolutely brilliant at quick and convenient collaboration. That's why LibreOffice is working super-hard on the web-based online version.
  - Shorel 7y ago
    > Almost nobody in an office uses the fancy bits of Excel. Spreadsheets are mostly used as flat-file data stores. This has never been my experience. Even if there's a more robust DB based system, someone will do everything in Excel.
bingerman 7y ago
This is why I always export my slides to pdf. (Obviously doesn't work so well if you've got fancy slides.)

by sh-run 7y ago

mattbk1 7y ago

I'm sorry for your loss. Dealing with technical issues at a funeral sounds terrible.

Enginerrrd 7y ago

This to me is THE quintessential issue surrounding potential adoption of libre office. If formatting & commands remained 100% consistent between the two, I think you'd see a lot more people switch, out of the shear convenience of not having to whip out their wallet. Students would probably be first to adopt because they usually operate on a tight budget to begin with. That would filter out into the business world eventually. But if you can't absolutely rely on it to be totally compatible, then it's a total non-starter. Not worth the risk.

davidgerard 7y ago
I think you're wrong there. Counterpoint: Google Docs. Its OOXML compatibility is for shit. Its adoption is HUGE. Not one person mentions how amazingly shit its OOXML compatibility is, even for quite simple DOCX. Almost nobody in an office uses the fancy bits of Excel. Spreadsheets are mostly used as flat-file data stores. And Office is notoriously incompatible between different versions of itself. In practice, I don't think the file compatibility objection to LibreOffice is real. It's just an excuse. The actual competition is Google Docs, which is a shitty word processor and a shitty spreadsheet and a shitty presentation app, but absolutely brilliant at quick and convenient collaboration. That's why LibreOffice is working super-hard on the web-based online version.
- Shorel 7y ago
  > Almost nobody in an office uses the fancy bits of Excel. Spreadsheets are mostly used as flat-file data stores. This has never been my experience. Even if there's a more robust DB based system, someone will do everything in Excel.

bingerman 7y ago

This is why I always export my slides to pdf. (Obviously doesn't work so well if you've got fancy slides.)