4 ms·

Why are people shitting so much over LibreOffice? Possibly from past experience; I can't be the only one who's had a red face after emailing a document, only t

Why are people shitting so much over LibreOffice? Possibly from past experience; I can't be the only one who's had a red face after emailing a document, only to find out that in Word, the formatting's off just slightly enough to make the entire thing look unprofessional. This was a good many years ago, and I accept that things may have changed, but Word and Excel work for me right now, and have the added bonus that I can trust what I'm sending to clients. Just for the avoidance of doubt, I realise that this entire situation could be avoided by using tools meant for the job. Sadly, that wouldn't go down as well with a lot of clients who aren't as technically-savvy as the average HN user.

polshaw 14y ago
send as pdf if you need exact formatting (and not editing), surely?
- mootothemax 14y ago
  That's why I wrote: I realise that this entire situation could be avoided by using tools meant for the job. Sadly, that wouldn't go down as well with a lot of clients who aren't as technically-savvy as the average HN users. Edit: Being more helpful, have you ever had to try and explain to a client who would much rather be doing other things, why they can't edit the document you've sent them?
yourapostasy 14y ago
I have found out that very, very few non-technical users (and even many technical users) ever use Word the way it is meant to be used; i.e., using styles. Most Word users are pretty much still manually manipulating Word documents like the very first WYSIWIG word processors, as glorified typewriters that happen to have some character- and line-oriented formatting features. So I export my LibreOffice Text documents to PDF, then use Acrobat Pro to export the PDF to Word format. What Acrobat Pro does is render a pretty literal representation of the PDF into Word. For someone used to using styles in Word, it is a generally horrid conversion. But I'm in the minority, and everyone I've sent Word documents rendered in this way is satisfied, which completely mystifies me. For documents that I'm frequently asked to share, like contracts, I deliberately keep them dead plain text simple as much as possible. I have a contract generation program that pulls customer and project data, and populates a LibreOffice template so I can focus on just the specifics of the proposal. The contract parts that a customer's legal team might want to mark up with track changes enabled is kept simple enough that LibreOffice can still faithfully export it to Word. I generate simple spreadsheets for myself, but keeping formatting consistent from spreadsheets I get from others has held me back from ditching Excel entirely. I still haven't been able to work out a way to switch away from PowerPoint slide decks that I have to share with others (which is pretty much every presentation deck I produce). I'm a pretty heavy user of animations in PowerPoint, and the faithful conversion of that is non-existent. If Microsoft was better with keeping parity between OS X and Windows Office, then I would have never explored adopting LibreOffice, but since there are enough differences to matter, I figured it couldn't hurt to wean myself from Office where feasible.
slowpoke 14y ago
>Just for the avoidance of doubt, I realize that this entire situation could be avoided by using tools meant for the job. No, this situation could be avoided if Microsoft would actually correctly implement their own fucking pseudo-standard. Not that this is possible, of course, since the 600+ page behemoth that is OOXML is stock full of inconsistencies, contradictions, and missing details. Oh, and of course there is ODF, which is just plain better than OOXML. If that doesn't work, there is again just a single entity at fault: Microsoft. So don't blame LibreOffice for shortcomings of Microsoft Office and start demanding Microsoft to get their shit together.

polshaw 14y ago

send as pdf if you need exact formatting (and not editing), surely?

mootothemax 14y ago
That's why I wrote: I realise that this entire situation could be avoided by using tools meant for the job. Sadly, that wouldn't go down as well with a lot of clients who aren't as technically-savvy as the average HN users. Edit: Being more helpful, have you ever had to try and explain to a client who would much rather be doing other things, why they can't edit the document you've sent them?

yourapostasy 14y ago

I have found out that very, very few non-technical users (and even many technical users) ever use Word the way it is meant to be used; i.e., using styles. Most Word users are pretty much still manually manipulating Word documents like the very first WYSIWIG word processors, as glorified typewriters that happen to have some character- and line-oriented formatting features. So I export my LibreOffice Text documents to PDF, then use Acrobat Pro to export the PDF to Word format. What Acrobat Pro does is render a pretty literal representation of the PDF into Word. For someone used to using styles in Word, it is a generally horrid conversion. But I'm in the minority, and everyone I've sent Word documents rendered in this way is satisfied, which completely mystifies me. For documents that I'm frequently asked to share, like contracts, I deliberately keep them dead plain text simple as much as possible. I have a contract generation program that pulls customer and project data, and populates a LibreOffice template so I can focus on just the specifics of the proposal. The contract parts that a customer's legal team might want to mark up with track changes enabled is kept simple enough that LibreOffice can still faithfully export it to Word. I generate simple spreadsheets for myself, but keeping formatting consistent from spreadsheets I get from others has held me back from ditching Excel entirely. I still haven't been able to work out a way to switch away from PowerPoint slide decks that I have to share with others (which is pretty much every presentation deck I produce). I'm a pretty heavy user of animations in PowerPoint, and the faithful conversion of that is non-existent. If Microsoft was better with keeping parity between OS X and Windows Office, then I would have never explored adopting LibreOffice, but since there are enough differences to matter, I figured it couldn't hurt to wean myself from Office where feasible.

slowpoke 14y ago

>Just for the avoidance of doubt, I realize that this entire situation could be avoided by using tools meant for the job. No, this situation could be avoided if Microsoft would actually correctly implement their own fucking pseudo-standard. Not that this is possible, of course, since the 600+ page behemoth that is OOXML is stock full of inconsistencies, contradictions, and missing details. Oh, and of course there is ODF, which is just plain better than OOXML. If that doesn't work, there is again just a single entity at fault: Microsoft. So don't blame LibreOffice for shortcomings of Microsoft Office and start demanding Microsoft to get their shit together.