4 ms·

LibreOffice is terrible. I cannot believe how anyone can do anything with it. I cannot stand Word but it's just impossible to find a true replacement for it. On

LibreOffice is terrible. I cannot believe how anyone can do anything with it. I cannot stand Word but it's just impossible to find a true replacement for it. OnlyOffice should get more recognition. It is the closest you can get for Word replacement

tasuki 1y ago
> I cannot stand Word but it's just impossible to find a true replacement for it. As someone who's never used Word: what do you use Word for that it's hard to find a replacement? (For me, the "light" things I want to note down and version, I use one of the lightweight markup languages. The "heavy" things, I either use TeX or something to convert my lightweight markup into a pdf or whatever people want. What am I missing?)
- Suppafly 1y ago
  >what do you use Word for that it's hard to find a replacement? Opening files created by other organizations and expecting them to load correctly and accurately, and then editing them and expecting them to load correctly and accurately when I send them back.
v5v3 1y ago
LibreOffice does everything I need it to... Most people only use a small percentage of functionality in any app.
- kube-system 1y ago
  Individually, sure. But in an organization, the larger it is, the more probability that all of the features are being used approaches 1. Then you don't have a software issue anymore, you have a business workflow, retraining, or retooling issue.
  - v5v3 1y ago
    Most admin staff don't do anything complex aside from writing letters. They don't create complex docs with table of contents and images and so on. I have worked for companies prior who gave basic online office 365 to 99% of staff and then more expensive subscriptions on a as needed basis.
    - kube-system 1y ago
      Using multiple tiers of the same application is a good strategy. And using partial MS Office and partial LibreOffice is also certainly an option, but whether it will be successful depends on an organization's workflow, because that introduces an additional interoperability risk which isn't an issue if everyone uses the same tool.
seanw444 1y ago
How is it terrible? I keep hearing people say this, but I've never actually experienced any shortcomings personally. Granted, I don't really use word processors much. But when I did, I never had any.
- toast0 1y ago
  Fit and finish aren't there, and have barely improved. It just looks bad. And it starts slowly (but so does Microsoft Office). Having to decide which fork to use is a problem. Otherwise, I haven't had major issues. Sometime it doesn't work well with complex excel sheets, or complex word docs; create doc in X, edit in Y, view in X is likely to be disappointing if formatting is critical, but I've seen people use a publish to PDF, edit by change requests flow for that instead. Other than multiplayer support, it's still much nicer than Google Docs, which can look better but likes to get into weird partially loaded states or runs simple spreadsheet tasks very slowly due to mandatory interaction with a server.
tomjuggler 1y ago
Yeah I tried so hard to use LibreOffice. OnlyOffice is great

tasuki 1y ago

> I cannot stand Word but it's just impossible to find a true replacement for it. As someone who's never used Word: what do you use Word for that it's hard to find a replacement? (For me, the "light" things I want to note down and version, I use one of the lightweight markup languages. The "heavy" things, I either use TeX or something to convert my lightweight markup into a pdf or whatever people want. What am I missing?)

Suppafly 1y ago
>what do you use Word for that it's hard to find a replacement? Opening files created by other organizations and expecting them to load correctly and accurately, and then editing them and expecting them to load correctly and accurately when I send them back.

v5v3 1y ago

LibreOffice does everything I need it to... Most people only use a small percentage of functionality in any app.

kube-system 1y ago
Individually, sure. But in an organization, the larger it is, the more probability that all of the features are being used approaches 1. Then you don't have a software issue anymore, you have a business workflow, retraining, or retooling issue.
- v5v3 1y ago
  Most admin staff don't do anything complex aside from writing letters. They don't create complex docs with table of contents and images and so on. I have worked for companies prior who gave basic online office 365 to 99% of staff and then more expensive subscriptions on a as needed basis.
  - kube-system 1y ago
    Using multiple tiers of the same application is a good strategy. And using partial MS Office and partial LibreOffice is also certainly an option, but whether it will be successful depends on an organization's workflow, because that introduces an additional interoperability risk which isn't an issue if everyone uses the same tool.

seanw444 1y ago

How is it terrible? I keep hearing people say this, but I've never actually experienced any shortcomings personally. Granted, I don't really use word processors much. But when I did, I never had any.

toast0 1y ago
Fit and finish aren't there, and have barely improved. It just looks bad. And it starts slowly (but so does Microsoft Office). Having to decide which fork to use is a problem. Otherwise, I haven't had major issues. Sometime it doesn't work well with complex excel sheets, or complex word docs; create doc in X, edit in Y, view in X is likely to be disappointing if formatting is critical, but I've seen people use a publish to PDF, edit by change requests flow for that instead. Other than multiplayer support, it's still much nicer than Google Docs, which can look better but likes to get into weird partially loaded states or runs simple spreadsheet tasks very slowly due to mandatory interaction with a server.

tomjuggler 1y ago

Yeah I tried so hard to use LibreOffice. OnlyOffice is great