4 ms·

I switched to Linux. It was great! Then I got some contract work with Redhat. It was great! I completed the contract and provided a summary of my work in a .odt

I switched to Linux. It was great! Then I got some contract work with Redhat. It was great! I completed the contract and provided a summary of my work in a .odt file I wrote on Fedora using LibreOffice. Suddenly it was not great! The team at RedHat said they could not open my file. That’s odd, I’m using their OS. Ok I’ll send the file in LibreOffice’s conversion to Word 2003 format. They opened the file and they said the formatting was off. They said can you just save it in Word and send it to us? I informed them I was using their operating system. They didn’t respond. I sent another message and said I could move to a different computer. Suddenly it was great again! I got paid handsomely for that work, but I had to use Windows. This is why I do not believe you can switch to Linux. Because the world still runs on Microsoft. It was not until office for Mac reached feature parity (with office for Windows) when companies seriously considered macOS. Currently office for the web has not reached that parity. So the world is still smiling at Linux the same way you would at your 9 year old nephew saying “aww how cute” and then going back to the real world

adrian_b 9mo ago
When you create LibreOffice documents and you want to send them to others, which may not be LibreOffice users, the normal procedure is to export your documents as PDF files, which ensures that anyone can use them. Less frequently, you may want to export your documents to MS formats, if you want them to be editable, but that is much less foolproof than exporting to PDF. I have worked for many years in companies where almost everybody was using MS Office, while I preferred to use LibreOffice (nowadays Excel remains better than any alternative, but I actually prefer LibreOffice Write to MS Word, because I think that the latter has regressed dramatically during the last 2 decades). Despite that, my coworkers were not even aware that I was using LibreOffice, as all the documentation generated by me was in PDF format. Product documentation in any serious company should be in PDF format anyway, not in word processor formats that cannot be used by anyone who does not have an appropriate editor or viewer. Even using MS Office is not a guarantee that you can use any MS Office document file, as I have seen cases when recent MS Office versions could not open some ancient MS Office files, which could be opened by other tools, e.g. they could be imported in LibreOffice.
- skeeter2020 9mo ago
  PDF is THE choice for cross-platform presentation and printing, but a real PITA for collaboration, funny enough one of the places where the web version of Word is pretty decent. A lot of industries live in Word/Office, and "generate PDF" is a pretty small part of their workflow. Also remember that printing to PDF without an expensive purchase was not a thing for many decades; I've only stopped using the Win2PDF license I bought 25 years ago on my most recent computers!
viraptor 9mo ago
Not that I don't believe you, but something feels off... > conversion to Word 2003 format That's a twenty year old almost-dead binary format. Why would you do that instead of .docx? Or just a PDF. > They opened the file and they said the formatting was off. Who cares about formatting on a work summary? Did it have something more interesting than you can put in .rtf? > not until office for Mac reached feature parity It hasn't. There's still a difference in feature support.
- graemep 9mo ago
  > That's a twenty year old almost-dead binary format. I assume its an old story as recent version of MS Office can read ODF formats.
- kenjackson 9mo ago
  People often will use .doc rather than .docx when they’re trying to convert to a format that non-Word apps are more likely to be able to parse. And bad formatting can result in an almost unreadable document. For example all bullet levels becoming the same, which is an example of something I’ve seen before. None of this seems off to me.
  - viraptor 9mo ago
    It's the opposite. .doc was never fully reverse engineered properly, but .docx is way easier to handle and was for quite a while.
    - kenjackson 9mo ago
      Yeah, I believe you're right.
ahartmetz 9mo ago
I remember looking into the spec of the... I think it was the DWARF debug info format, mostly just out of curiosity. Also out of curiosity, I checked the PDF metadata. Creator: Microsoft Word. Curious.
graemep 9mo ago
.odt mostly works fine. Its the standard for editable files on gov.uk and it goes entirely unnoticed by most people so MS Word users presumably are able to open them.
shiroiuma 9mo ago
Why on earth would you not just send a PDF? LibreOffice even has a handy button just for exporting directly to PDF. Does your customer need to edit your work summary for some odd reason?

adrian_b 9mo ago

When you create LibreOffice documents and you want to send them to others, which may not be LibreOffice users, the normal procedure is to export your documents as PDF files, which ensures that anyone can use them. Less frequently, you may want to export your documents to MS formats, if you want them to be editable, but that is much less foolproof than exporting to PDF. I have worked for many years in companies where almost everybody was using MS Office, while I preferred to use LibreOffice (nowadays Excel remains better than any alternative, but I actually prefer LibreOffice Write to MS Word, because I think that the latter has regressed dramatically during the last 2 decades). Despite that, my coworkers were not even aware that I was using LibreOffice, as all the documentation generated by me was in PDF format. Product documentation in any serious company should be in PDF format anyway, not in word processor formats that cannot be used by anyone who does not have an appropriate editor or viewer. Even using MS Office is not a guarantee that you can use any MS Office document file, as I have seen cases when recent MS Office versions could not open some ancient MS Office files, which could be opened by other tools, e.g. they could be imported in LibreOffice.

skeeter2020 9mo ago
PDF is THE choice for cross-platform presentation and printing, but a real PITA for collaboration, funny enough one of the places where the web version of Word is pretty decent. A lot of industries live in Word/Office, and "generate PDF" is a pretty small part of their workflow. Also remember that printing to PDF without an expensive purchase was not a thing for many decades; I've only stopped using the Win2PDF license I bought 25 years ago on my most recent computers!

viraptor 9mo ago

Not that I don't believe you, but something feels off... > conversion to Word 2003 format That's a twenty year old almost-dead binary format. Why would you do that instead of .docx? Or just a PDF. > They opened the file and they said the formatting was off. Who cares about formatting on a work summary? Did it have something more interesting than you can put in .rtf? > not until office for Mac reached feature parity It hasn't. There's still a difference in feature support.

graemep 9mo ago
> That's a twenty year old almost-dead binary format. I assume its an old story as recent version of MS Office can read ODF formats.
kenjackson 9mo ago
People often will use .doc rather than .docx when they’re trying to convert to a format that non-Word apps are more likely to be able to parse. And bad formatting can result in an almost unreadable document. For example all bullet levels becoming the same, which is an example of something I’ve seen before. None of this seems off to me.
- viraptor 9mo ago
  It's the opposite. .doc was never fully reverse engineered properly, but .docx is way easier to handle and was for quite a while.
  - kenjackson 9mo ago
    Yeah, I believe you're right.

ahartmetz 9mo ago

I remember looking into the spec of the... I think it was the DWARF debug info format, mostly just out of curiosity. Also out of curiosity, I checked the PDF metadata. Creator: Microsoft Word. Curious.

graemep 9mo ago

.odt mostly works fine. Its the standard for editable files on gov.uk and it goes entirely unnoticed by most people so MS Word users presumably are able to open them.

shiroiuma 9mo ago

Why on earth would you not just send a PDF? LibreOffice even has a handy button just for exporting directly to PDF. Does your customer need to edit your work summary for some odd reason?