5 ms·

I used libre office for years, but I switched for 2 reasons. 1: the export to docx had problems, and most publications require your submissions to be in docx f

I used libre office for years, but I switched for 2 reasons. 1: the export to docx had problems, and most publications require your submissions to be in docx format; 2: it gets laggy with large documents. This lag becomes distracting when writing novels. Seems to start around page 20-50 and gets worse and worse as you go. I wish I had better alternatives to suggest. I wish that publishers would stop demanding we submit our files in docx format.

danuker 4y ago
To be fair I haven't used Writer much. I've used Calc a lot. LO Writer can export to PDF when you need to preserve formatting. But if it needs to also be editable, I guess ODT is the only way. Maybe in light of the recent events you can convince your publishers. About performance, you might want to give AbiWord a try also.
drpixie 4y ago
I hadn't noticed LibreOffice lags any worse than MS-office. But, if you haven't tried, for anything bigger than a chapter or so, do yourself a favour and try a "proper" typesetting system - LaTeX, SILE, or the like. There will be a learning curve but I find my attention stays on the content, as I'm not continually distracted by the format issues that are better delayed until the text is complete. You'll want a reasonable text editor with spell checker, preferably one that knows to ignore formatting commands. Note you will end up with PDF output - if you really have to submit docx, my condolences!