This is pretty much the only way to keep track of changes if you need to send the document for review and don't want to manually track minor changes in a 100+ page document.Yes. Word is much better at that. I still really wish it had some, even basic, version control though.
OO/LO compatibility with MS Office formats is laughable at best.Still hey? That's a bummer. My instinct is to say "fuck you microsoft" for not documenting your file formats properly. But it might not be their fault.
Well, in an office or professional environment, you're probably also using Outlook as wellOutlook is pretty good. It took me a long time to accept thunderbird, which is adequate at best. But as you say, still a gajillion times better than any web interface.
Still hey? That's a bummer. My instinct is to say "fuck you microsoft" for not documenting your file formats properly. But it might not be their fault.Documents get broken even between different Word versions, so it looks like it is just a very hard thing to do. Especially this is visible if you try to open something prepared in Word 97 with any modern version.
Still hey? That's a bummer. My instinct is to say "fuck you microsoft" for not documenting your file formats properly. But it might not be their fault.Documents get broken even between different Word versions, so it looks like it is just a very hard thing to do. Especially this is visible if you try to open something prepared in Word 97 with any modern version.
One of the largest issues using OO/LO in a professional environment is macro compatibility & support.Fair enough. For anything beyond a simple formula a user defined function is highly preferable.
I consult for the financial sector and Excel macros are ubiquitous there, for better or worse. One client catalogued their internal processes and found that in one Line of Business alone, on a day-to-day basis that LOB relied on over 3,000 spreadsheets that's been written & modified over years -- some containing sophisticated financial calculations -- all done in VBA macros.
On recent versions of Word / Excel (recent == last 10 years) the office document format has been standardized by Ecma & ISO.If I once knew that, I'd forgotten by now.
However, rendering of that data on screen (or in print) is a separate matter. Different applications can rightfully chose to render the same data in different ways.Maybe they can choose, but why the hell would they? Maybe you're saying that while all of the information is in the file, some companies change their interpretation of that data from version to version in order to create incompatibility?
That means all the data from Office apps are written to the documents in a standards compliant way, and any 3rd party software including OO/OL can read them perfectly using a standards compliant manner.
I'll tell you what I don't like. I don't like thread titles that invite opinions and also have a clear bias embedded.That's OK.
I like to see less opinions based on personal biases.OK. Me too.
People react to getting libreoffice instead of M$ office as if I am suggesting they masturbate rather than have sex.
I don't get it.
They're extremely complex and sometimes Microsoft does not follow them. Every new version of MS office changes something in the file format / how it's interpreted.It's the other way around.
Domain administration is also a good reason to go for MS products.
There is a clear thing shows up from all the posts above - OO is fine for personal and small business use.Looks like it. Which was pretty much the issue in the past too.
You do need MSO if you want to seamlessly inter-operate with other people, potentially outside of your organization. And seamless operation is not necessarily just simple reading, where formatting may not matter all that much.
Domain administration is also a good reason to go for MS products.I don't know what that is. Domain like DNS, or domain like Active Directory?
OO/LO are neither Transitional nor Strict compliant, largely due to old politics.That's a shame. And pity.
Active Directory?This. Automatic security updates are pretty much a must for an organization with more than 10 people. Office programs are routinely used to open documents from unknown sources and script malware is a real problem.
Apparently the standards suck.
http://en.libreofficeforum.org/node/7505 (http://en.libreofficeforum.org/node/7505)
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/case/complex-singularity-versus-openness (https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/case/complex-singularity-versus-openness)
They're extremely complex and sometimes Microsoft does not follow them. Every new version of MS office changes something in the file format / how it's interpreted.
EDIT: Presumably the only way to achieve perfect compatibility is to recreate MS office itself. Libreoffice has a constant stream of compatibility improvements (https://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/log/?qt=grep&q=docx) that are probably never going to end.
... And microsoft give big businesses and PA licences for pennies so you pay very little for not having to botherYes and that is the big problem. If big business and government are using MS Office after being offered a deal too good to be refuse, then every company working with those big business and government HAVE to use MS Office. All the smaller companies down the chain have to pay full price for their Office.
-Anything other than outlook is trash (Apple's mail not so much, but still sucks)
Is there a specific problem, or is the problem "it is not the same as Outlook"?Once again, for personal use there are lots of good clients. Nothing beats Outlook for enterprise use.
In other words, you get used to the features in one program and somehow you make those features totally vital features. If you didn't have those features, you would have done the same thing just as fast but another way. There really are a huge number of alternatives. Microsoft will have teams of people now inventing new features that you didn't know you needed. Makes you wonder - how did business run at all before Outlook?Is there a specific problem, or is the problem "it is not the same as Outlook"?Once again, for personal use there are lots of good clients. Nothing beats Outlook for enterprise use.
How do I lookup someone's availability time? How do I lookup and reserve a conference room? In a corporate setting with people having to schedule meetings it is a necessity.
how did business run at all before Outlook?How did we get around before airplanes were invented? Very inefficiently.
Back in the 80's we had no email. No outlook. That meant we spent 0 hours a day of company time on Outlook - that is efficiency.how did business run at all before Outlook?How did we get around before airplanes were invented? Very inefficiently.
Try to schedule a meeting with 10 people using email exchange. It is not fun.
Google has a reasoned argument against the Microsoft OOXML standard as a replacement of the ODF standard.
https://www.csun.edu/~hcmth008/odf/google_ooxml.pdf (https://www.csun.edu/~hcmth008/odf/google_ooxml.pdf)
A lot of time, a boss would gather a few people around a desk to talk about one aspect of a problem, then go to another set of people at their desks and talk to them.A typical daily meeting for me will have colleagues from at least 3-4 different States/Provinces in at least two countries and several time zones.
3. The ability of OO to import CSV and txt files into a spreadsheet is far more limited and difficult to use than the MS versions.I'm regularly importing numerical text data from all sorts of obscure sources and OO does very well with it, even with Excel available I would switch between them for their import abilities (Matlab is the king of import if you can get access to it).
It's why de facto standards use the de facto packages such as Adobe Acrobat, Illustrator, Photoshop, Word, Powerpoint, inter alia, instead of opensource "options" which are good enough to write a letter and print, but to email your CV in ODT may end up in the end user being unable to open to read it in the first place.Powerpoint is the worst possible pile of junk imaginable, the best presenters I know rely on full screen PDF as a presentation format which is very tidy. Send a CV in PDF then you can be quite sure of how it will look, an editable format that has no assurance of layout is a poor choice when you want a finished document or presentation.
A typical daily meeting for me will have colleagues from at least 3-4 different States/Provinces in at least two countries and several time zones.
Physically gathering people "around a desk" gets very expensive, very quickly. The 1990s are long behind us.
Even way back in the 90s, the communication device called "telephone" had already been invented. It could be used to do something known as "making a conference call". This enabled you to have conversations involving multiple people in multiple locations all at the same time. Amazing.
Try to schedule a meeting with 10 people using email exchange. It is not fun.
Back in the 80's we had no email. No outlook. That meant we spent 0 hours a day of company time on Outlook - that is efficiency.how did business run at all before Outlook?How did we get around before airplanes were invented? Very inefficiently.
Try to schedule a meeting with 10 people using email exchange. It is not fun.
Was it hard arranging a meeting and booking conference rooms?
No.
Every now and then there was a clash, but considering that very occasional 10 minutes of wasted time to all the overall company hours wasted on Outlook, we actually spent much more of our day doing real work. No engineer spent one second entering their days activities into an online calendar. Meetings are extremely expensive to a company, so the more a boss can avoid meetings, the better. A lot of time, a boss would gather a few people around a desk to talk about one aspect of a problem, then go to another set of people at their desks and talk to them. That was great - if there was a problem, you could often demonstrate it on the spot. Client meetings were usually coordinated by the receptionist, or by someone in the sales team. When component sales people came (vital when there was no Internet) , they usually came to our work desks - hardly ever used a conference room for something like that. It all worked out.
Stop making sense, it will piss people off.Well when talking about the incredible efficiency in 70s, and the early 80s, I think I forgot to mention a few things. Like the 3 hour lunches we had on Fridays, and when we did get back to work, being a little "tired". The fact we had to draw up circuit diagrams with ink pens on a huge vellum sheet at a drawing board, and every time there was a circuit change, you would start from scratch. The PCB layouts done at 2:1 scale on a big transparent sheet with red transparent tape for one layer and blue tape on the other side of the sheet for the other layer. Remember that the components were through hole which meant the boards were big. At 2:1 scale, the PCB layout sheet was enormous. Every time an IC was moved 0.1", you had to rip up half the tracks and lay the corrected tracks again. We had no DRC checking, so more often then not, the first board would come back with faults. With the very high board costs at the time and the slow turn-around, it was usual to go to production with PCBs with faults. That is why so many of the boards from the 70s and 80s have bodged repairs.
Once you get all the keyboard shortcuts, creating a presentation in Powerpoint can be fast. However, I have experienced numerous times where Powerpoint was incompatible even with itself. :wtf:It's why de facto standards use the de facto packages such as Adobe Acrobat, Illustrator, Photoshop, Word, Powerpoint, inter alia, instead of opensource "options" which are good enough to write a letter and print, but to email your CV in ODT may end up in the end user being unable to open to read it in the first place.Powerpoint is the worst possible pile of junk imaginable, the best presenters I know rely on full screen PDF as a presentation format which is very tidy. Send a CV in PDF then you can be quite sure of how it will look, an editable format that has no assurance of layout is a poor choice when you want a finished document or presentation.
Stop making sense, it will piss people off.Well when talking about the incredible efficiency in 70s, and the early 80s, I think I forgot to mention a few things. Like the 3 hour lunches we had on Fridays, and when we did get back to work, being a little "tired". The fact we had to draw up circuit diagrams with ink pens on a huge vellum sheet at a drawing board, and every time there was a circuit change, you would start from scratch. The PCB layouts done at 2:1 scale on a big transparent sheet with red transparent tape for one layer and blue tape on the other side of the sheet for the other layer. Remember that the components were through hole which meant the boards were big. At 2:1 scale, the PCB layout sheet was enormous. Every time an IC was moved 0.1", you had to rip up half the tracks and lay the corrected tracks again. We had no DRC checking, so more often then not, the first board would come back with faults. With the very high board costs at the time and the slow turn-around, it was usual to go to production with PCBs with faults. That is why so many of the boards from the 70s and 80s have bodged repairs.
The early PCs were unbelievably slow. The classic was the first Microsoft C compiler. It came on about 10 floppy disks (so 14 MBytes in size) and took half an hour to install. Trouble was at the very end of that half hour install, it required you enter a port on the PC for some reason (no plug and play then). To find out the correct port, you had to abort the install (DOS was single threaded), get the port, and start the half hour install again. |O |O
But we didn't waste time on Outlook. :clap:
For the most part it's not Microsoft's fault. Their document formats have been documented for years. The old binary formats were slightly tougher, because they resemble a disk image containing a fairly robust file system. Both the binary and XML formats ultimately encode the same object models. The Word object model, however, is radically different from how most word processors encode documents. Critically, it does not work by embedding inline tags in the text, as most formats do. Instead, text spans are objects, to which styles are linked. Another object maintains the order of the text spans in the document. But while converting to and from radically different object models is not trivial, it is absolutely a solvable problem.OO/LO compatibility with MS Office formats is laughable at best.Still hey? That's a bummer. My instinct is to say "fuck you microsoft" for not documenting your file formats properly. But it might not be their fault.
The really difficult, essentially insurmountable problem is that in order to 100% faithfully display every document all of the time, you must flawlessly reproduce every feature, behavior, and bug that exists in the originating application. But even if you set out to do this, you could never catch up, because the originator has a long head start (and the easier task than you doing the reverse engineering!!!).This is the primary problem. We have seen similar problems with web browsers until the organisation behind the web standards specified how elements should be rendered.
For the most part it's not Microsoft's fault.
Microsoft had a lot of help from Digital Research. I was CP/M 2.2, CP/M 3 (yuck), and DR DOS user for many years, but the truth was that DR was heading downwards ever since CP/M 2.2. DR really frustrated me since Gary Kindall was really smart, but they just were continually trying to improve an obsolete operating system, and we really wanted a modern operating system. In the CP/M days, they had the lead on Microsoft, and IBM gave them the first chance for the PC operating system. They totally blew it. Yes, Microsoft did naughty things, but DR needed to go. The kind of innovation we needed was coming from Microsoft and not DR. Even when Microsoft started bringing out the first versions of Windows in the late 80's, the early Windows was totally useless and the market was open to anyone who could come out with a graphical software for PCs. Microsoft was still very vulnerable, but I don't think any other company had the vision and leadership.For the most part it's not Microsoft's fault.
I don't agree. Maybe you are younger than me (I don't know that) but I do remember very well all the dirty tricks they did (and still do)
to kill the competition:
Microsoft's Campaign To Destroy DR-DOS
...In the late 1990's, Opera had easily the best web browser. They had a few years lead over every other browser in speed, performance and features. Netscape (before Firefox) was developing too slowly, and MS Explorer was pretty bad. Everybody had to use a browser to do their MS Updates, and Microsoft also owned other companies. In particular, Hotmail dominated the free email hosting in the 90's. Microsoft deliberately sabotaged the CSS formating when they detected the Opera browser so that Microsoft-owned sites were unusable in the Opera browser. If Opera was allowed to get the same CSS as Internet Explorer, the pages were fine, but instead Microsoft put text on top of other text, and changed to font sizes in Opera so that text was about 1mm high. If you showed a customer Opera, they would try their Hotmail account - they would say "Opera is complete crap" and they would never return. Microsoft were penalised in Europe for this years later, but by then Opera was on its knees and it missed its big chance of dominating the Browser space.
This scenario has repeated itself many times. Initial releases from Microsoft are often very lacking, sometimes even in basic functionality (Edge browser anyone?), but instead of thrashing them, the competition tends to rest easy, knowing they currently have a better product. But it never stays that way, once Microsoft turns its attention to an area of deficit, the improvements come quickly. So many of these other companies that rush to cry foul are even Microsoft development partners and get early access to new versions, and yet fail to have their application ready for a new release of Windows. That's not Microsoft cheating, that's management incompetence.
You seem to forget that, as an application developer, you have a huge advantage when you can use undocumented api's and have insight into the source code of the os.Some truth in that, but a lot of DOS software companies just didn't have the right competence and mindset to write good Windows programs. Someone mention Wordperfect For Windows. I had Wordstar V1.0 for Windows! Good for a laugh. Probably the premier MS Dos wordprocessor used to be Multimate, but they made it hard for anyone outside corporations to buy Multimate. I remember contacting Multimate suppliers in the 80's and they just didn't want to talk to me. Multimate never even make it to Windows.
Still better than installing Netware 3.1x from the pack of some 50 floppy disks, only to have the process fail on the 48th disk....
On recent versions of Word / Excel (recent == last 10 years) the office document format has been standardized by Ecma & ISO.
QuoteGoogle has a reasoned argument against the Microsoft OOXML standard as a replacement of the ODF standard.
https://www.csun.edu/~hcmth008/odf/google_ooxml.pdf (https://www.csun.edu/~hcmth008/odf/google_ooxml.pdf)
Google had a politically crafted argument against Microsoft OOXML standard as a replacement of the ODF standard.
That is, until Google did a 180 degree turn. :-DD
Today OOXML is the default for Google office applications (e.g., Docs) and Google no longer supports ODF on many of their products.
(http://i.imgur.com/FjVNVpO.png)
(Look ma, no ODF!)
In MS Office, when I want to open a file, the whole screen is obscured by the damn menu and then have to click another button to bring the file listing up! This is a step backwards, not forwards. It's the sort of thing which would happen with very old software.
ODF is still supported on the spreadsheet and word processor and their drawing program doesn't support either MS or OOo formats.
Microsoft haven't always been late or lacked innovation. Microsoft showed off tablets years ago but were too inept to make it work; until Windows 8 touch on Windows was horrific and still was on Windows 8. Windows 8 didn't know what it was and so did both touch and mouse poorly.
Thanks. It works on OOo too. How did you find about about that? Keyboard short cuts are not obvious.QuoteIn MS Office, when I want to open a file, the whole screen is obscured by the damn menu and then have to click another button to bring the file listing up! This is a step backwards, not forwards. It's the sort of thing which would happen with very old software.
What?
Ctrl-O. Done. :-DD
Most don't remember that all the MSOffice products were bought out from someone else and the first versions were pretty crappy and not very well integrated.
I'm well aware of Microsoft's aggressive and unethical past. But fair is fair, and in this instance, Microsoft is not to blame. All those incidents are absolutely irrelevant to the question of whose fault it is that right now, OO/LO sometimes has trouble with MS Office documents. They've got the document formats, the object models, and other specs. Nonetheless, OO/LO have failed. I fail to see how Microsoft carries any culpability at this point.For the most part it's not Microsoft's fault.
I don't agree. Maybe you are younger than me (I don't know that) but I do remember very well all the dirty tricks they did (and still do)
to kill the competition:
Microsoft's Campaign To Destroy DR-DOS
Microsoft's Anticompetitive Per Processor License Fees
Microsoft's Retaliation And Price Discrimination Against IBM
Microsoft's Organized Collective Boycott Against Intel
Microsoft's Elimination Of Word Perfect
Microsoft's Deceptive WISE Software Program
Microsoft's Elimination Of Netscape
Microsoft's Attempts To Extinguish Java
Microsoft's Elimination Of Rival Media Players
Microsoft's Campaign Against Rival Server Operating Systems
Microsoft's Failure To Comply With The Final Judgment
Microsoft's Campaign of Patent FUD against Linux and Open Source Software
Microsoft's False Promises of Interoperability
I'm well aware of Microsoft's aggressive and unethical past. But fair is fair, and in this instance, Microsoft is not to blame. All those incidents are absolutely irrelevant to the question of whose fault it is that right now, OO/LO sometimes has trouble with MS Office documents. They've got the document formats, the object models, and other specs. Nonetheless, OO/LO have failed. I fail to see how Microsoft carries any culpability at this point.My understanding is that most of the versions of Microsoft Office do not exactly comply with OOXML, and yet Libre Office is bagged if it does not correctly render documents produced by every version of Microsoft Office. Microsoft rushed out OOXML deliberately to kill ODF, and yet OOXML is not a truly open standard. As I mentioned, Microsoft only say the current OOXML spec can be used by anyone - there is no permission for future versions of the spec. This is important since OOXML involves a number of Microsoft Patents. ODF does include Sun/Oracle patents but the ODF license did give permissions for use of all versions of ODF into the future. OOXML due to its size is probably not a manageable standard, and it is not much of a standard if Microsoft can unilaterally change it any time it suits them. So absolutely you can bag Microsoft on several fronts.
My understanding is that most of the versions of Microsoft Office do not exactly comply with OOXML, and yet Libre Office is bagged if it does not correctly render documents produced by every version of Microsoft Office. Microsoft rushed out OOXML deliberately to kill ODF, and yet OOXML is not a truly open standard. As I mentioned, Microsoft only say the current OOXML spec can be used by anyone - there is no permission for future versions of the spec.Sorry but this is completely wrong.
Sorry but this is completely wrong.And that Ecma standards group is chaired by a Microsoft employee, the standard was developed and submitted without any public involvement, and there was only 30 days for the public to comment on the 6000 page standard.
OOXML is not a Microsoft spec. It is an International Standard, maintained by ISO and IEC. An industry consortium called Ecma publishes and distributes the same standard for free.
Microsoft doesn't need to give permission to anyone to use any version of the OOXML spec, current or future. Again, OOXML is not a Microsoft standard -- no permission from Microsoft would be required. Furthermore under Ecma & ISO rules Microsoft must provide any implementer fair access to any Microsoft patents required to implement the standard. Microsoft has gone a step beyond and has agreed not to pursue any patent claim against any conforming implementation.OK Lets say that Libre Office want to push for new features in the standard that will require a change to the OOXML standard. To do so, they probably have to develop the features first that will not be compatible with current standard. But the moment they do this, they are no longer covered by the Microsoft Promise and they no longer have any right to use any of the Microsoft Patents. Microsoft, on the other hand, can freely do any new development they want even if it diverges from the current standards. Microsoft could issue a new promise that is GPL compatible, but they choose not to. Have I got this wrong?
ISO defined two levels of OOXML conformance: Transitional and Strict. Microsoft Office has been compliant at the Transitional level since Office 2010, and compliant at the Strict level since Office 2013.Is this true? There seems to be a fair effort by OO/LO to comply to this incredibly complex standard, and there are continual projects to improve compatibility every year. It is not like you can get full OOXML conformance by just adding a line in your C++ code
LibreOffice is not conformant at either level. LibreOffice developers made a political and financial decision not to be compliant, because they fear if OOXML is a success then there is no longer a reason to use LibreOffice. For years they lobbied governments to legislate the use of ODF instead.
#define ABSOLUTE_OOXML_COMPATIBILITY trueOf course LibreOffice backers / consultants make millions of dollars from government projects implementing ODF. It's all about $$$, in the end.Come on. Microsoft earned almost 100 billion in revenue from MS Office in 2015 and they want to quickly double this figure. You are complaining against a competing group who might indirectly make millions for the crime of supporting a simpler, a more open and an easier to maintain standard?
If Libre Office doesn't render a Microsoft Office document properly, why is Libre Office always blamed? You can just as easily blame Microsoft, and the only way to resolve the issue would be to dig into the document and the 6000 plus pages of the OOXML spec to see whose rendering is the more correct. I have never seen anyone do that. It is easier just to always blame Libre Office for not matching undocument aspects of Microsoft Office.
If Libre Office doesn't render a Microsoft Office document properly, why is Libre Office always blamed?
When a document, made with ms office, doesn't look right in Libreoffice, it's the fault of Libreoffice.I think you meant to say
When a document, made with Libreoffice, doesn't look right in ms office, it's the fault of Libreoffice.
When a document, made with ms office version x, doesn't look right in ms office version z, it's ... normal!
When a document, made with ms office version x, doesn't look right in ms office version z, it's the fault of Libreoffice.:)
I think you meant to say...
When a document, made with ms office, doesn't look right in Libreoffice, it's the fault of Libreoffice.
When a document, made with Libreoffice, doesn't look right in ms office, it's the fault of Libreoffice.
When a document, made with ms office version x, doesn't look right in ms office version z, it's ... normal!
If Libre Office doesn't render a Microsoft Office document properly, why is Libre Office always blamed?
When a document, made with ms office, doesn't look right in Libreoffice, it's the fault of Libreoffice.
When a document, made with Libreoffice, doesn't look right in ms office, it's the fault of Libreoffice.
When a document, made with ms office version x, doesn't look right in ms office version z, it's ... normal!
That's the case for a HUGE group of people in professional environments, ...
If you are talking about inside an organization, everybody can switch to LO.
However, between (professional) organizations, one should never exchange office documents. Just pdf.
If the document is ODF, as far as I know MS cannot read it.
However, between (professional) organizations, one should never exchange office documents. Just pdf.
They are darn near giving away Office now - given what you get with an E3 level subscription to Office 386 (Email, SharePoint, Lync (sorry, Skype for Business..) - AND full copies of Office apps - and not one per user, but FIVE. I have three computers at home plus my work laptop all using Office 2013/2016 from my work Office 365 license and it's completely legal. And I still have one install left.
In recent years many local administrations in Italy are transitioning to open source office suites, so as a supplier or a consultant in order to present a bid or a technical expertise I must edit the .ODT document they send to me.
... they had almost non-existant protection and so it was the wordprocessor of choice to pirate. University students in the 80's were using Microsoft Word. The same people were the ones choosing office packages in the 90's. For some reason, companies like Wordperfect could not even conceive a world where everybody would want to have a PC at home with a full-featured wordprocessor.
It seemed so at the time. Microsoft Word was trying to enter a market dominated by Wordperfect, Wordstar, Multimate and a few others. In the DOS era, it was all about learning key combinations, so once someone mastered the Wordstar key combinations, you couldn't shift them to another wordprocessor. But good wordprocessors were very expensive - hundreds of dollars.... they had almost non-existant protection and so it was the wordprocessor of choice to pirate. ..
Do you think that was / still is a conscious decision by MS?
Is there an estimate of how much taxpayers money they save by using open source software?
A couple of years ago, the city employees were so dissatisfied that a study was proposed to see if Munich can switch back to Windows. But there's no switching back... they're in too deep, they just have to live with the mess.That was a story going around a few years back, but Munich is still embracing Linux/Libre Office. They have 41 Windows-only applications left, and they are now going to get them replaced by 2019.
http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/08/linux-on-the-desktop-pioneer-munich-now-considering-a-switch-back-to-windows/ (http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/08/linux-on-the-desktop-pioneer-munich-now-considering-a-switch-back-to-windows/)
For the most part it's not Microsoft's fault.
I don't agree. Maybe you are younger than me (I don't know that) but I do remember very well all the dirty tricks they did (and still do)
to kill the competition:
Microsoft's Campaign To Destroy DR-DOS
Microsoft's Anticompetitive Per Processor License Fees
Microsoft's Retaliation And Price Discrimination Against IBM
Microsoft's Organized Collective Boycott Against Intel
Microsoft's Elimination Of Word Perfect
Microsoft's Deceptive WISE Software Program
Microsoft's Elimination Of Netscape
Microsoft's Attempts To Extinguish Java
Microsoft's Elimination Of Rival Media Players
Microsoft's Campaign Against Rival Server Operating Systems
Microsoft's Failure To Comply With The Final Judgment
Microsoft's Campaign of Patent FUD against Linux and Open Source Software
Microsoft's False Promises of Interoperability
Actually I don't know. I don't think it is a government decision, but the various local administration are going this way.
That's very interesting, and encouraging! Who (ie at what level of government) made the decision? Was it mainly of cost grounds? Is there an estimate of how much taxpayers money they save by using open source software?
I've just tested it in MS Office and it's still rubbish. The whole screen is obscured by the menu which only shows the recently opened files. To open a file somewhere else, I have to click on computer, then browse.QuoteIn MS Office, when I want to open a file, the whole screen is obscured by the damn menu and then have to click another button to bring the file listing up! This is a step backwards, not forwards. It's the sort of thing which would happen with very old software.
What?
Ctrl-O. Done. :-DD
They are darn near giving away Office nowI wouldn't use MS Office, even if it was free. I only use it at work because I'm paid to do so and the company policy prevents me from installing anything else on their computer.
I do not know how you guys survive as a business, running such obsolete software and dealing with complications, when you can fully license the entire MS Office suite for less the price of one cheap lunch each month.
It's just $8/mo for a full set of licenses which includes Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, OneNote.
No one uses Ctrl+O. Whack the start button and type the document name, then hit enter.That's only any good if you know what file you want to open.
Well that's easily solved by thinking just after you press Ctrl+S...Which is useless if it was someone else who saved the file.
Well that's easily solved by thinking just after you press Ctrl+S...Which is useless if it was someone else who saved the file.
That article isn't completely relevant here, since not only is it talking about switching OpenOffice.org but desktop Linux too. Here in the UK, OOo is installed on many PCs in job centres (presumably to save licensing costs) and it works quite well. Compatibility with MS Office is not a problem because jobseekers are always advised to avoid complex formatting which can create problems with different versions of MS Office too.QuoteIs there an estimate of how much taxpayers money they save by using open source software?
For enterprise it's usually cheaper to just use Microsoft.
Look at the experience Munich went through. They spent 30 million Euros to convert from Windows to Linux and OpenOffice. They had to pay $$$ to specialists for the original conversion and ongoing support, instead getting bids from the thousands of Microsoft partners available.
Then they had so many issues with OpenOffice that they had to spend millions again to switch to LibreOffice. Then they had massive issues with LibreOffice 4.1.x and KDE 4. When they got new hardware, Linux didn't have the right kernel drivers...
They supposedly "saved" money but an independent study showed they would have actually spent less of taxpayer's money had they stuck with Windows. The real cost of conversion might have been as high as 60 million Euros. Cost had they remained with Windows: 20-30 million Euros.
A couple of years ago, the city employees were so dissatisfied that a study was proposed to see if Munich can switch back to Windows. But there's no switching back... they're in too deep, they just have to live with the mess.
(http://www.eevblog.com/[/url)
For enterprise it's usually cheaper to just use Microsoft.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/03/french-police-saves-millions-of-euros-by-adopting-ubuntu/
Quotehttp://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/03/french-police-saves-millions-of-euros-by-adopting-ubuntu/
That's a one-off that can't be repeated elsewhere, in part because the deal with the French gendarmerie is in effect subsidized by various parties including the company behind Ubuntu.
E.g., Canonical only charges them something like $1/machine/year for support. That's less than $100,000 to support 90,000 machines... less than the salary of just one Canonical engineer!
If the gendarmerie had to pay the same rates as everyone else, there would be no business case. The typical SMB customer can't get Ubuntu desktop support from Canonical for less than $150/machine/year... 150x price difference!
Well that's easily solved by thinking just after you press Ctrl+S...
Well that's easily solved by thinking just after you press Ctrl+S...
If your using Microsoft Office Excel and your spreadsheet is 277k rows long Ctrl+S brings up a dialog that says "not enough resources to complete" and then another that says "document not saved"
Try opening a CSV file with 8,000 data points and graph it. LibreOffice will puke every time.How long since you have tried Libre Calc?
Try opening a CSV file with 8,000 data points and graph it. LibreOffice will puke every time.
How long since you have tried Libre Calc?
I just loaded a CSV table of GPS data - 15 columns x 14400 rows. Loaded in 3 seconds.
Added a graph made from two of the columns (all 14400 rows) - 3 seconds.
Saved and reopened spreadsheet with graph - 4 seconds.
Libre Office has done a lot of work to speed up the Office packages in the last few years. They were slow.
I'm running LibreOffice 5.0.3.2 on OS X. I was able to generate a graph with time and four temperatures for 8,000 lines. I can open the same data extended to 20,000 lines. While trying to make a graph of the 20,000 lines LibreOffice hangs and I eventually have to force quite. Could be a memory allocation issue.I am using the latest 5.1.2.2 which apparently has more speed improvements. Tried your 20,000 lines of data and it didn't hang. Data loaded very quickly. A graph showing all columns was sluggish, but it worked. I changed some data, and it showed up in the graph after a few seconds. It looks like the spreadsheet + graph is using 233MBytes of RAM to run.
Microsoft are stuck in the Transitional mode disaster for over 7 years, and there is no sign of then going to strict mode. Almost all the current documents written by the latest Office are all in transitional OOXML format.
I do not know how you guys survive as a business, running such obsolete software and dealing with complications, when you can fully license the entire MS Office suite for less the price of one cheap lunch each month.Perhaps but that would mean having to learn to use the stupid ribbon interface. I'm sticking with Office 2003 and simply ask people to send me doc or xls files if I need to edit them. OTOH the Libre Office which comes with Debian does a good job opening docx and xlsx files so problem solved.
I am using the latest 5.1.2.2 which apparently has more speed improvements. Tried your 20,000 lines of data and it didn't hang. Data loaded very quickly. A graph showing all columns was sluggish, but it worked. I changed some data, and it showed up in the graph after a few seconds. It looks like the spreadsheet + graph is using 233MBytes of RAM to run.
Well that's easily solved by thinking just after you press Ctrl+S...
If your using Microsoft Office Excel and your spreadsheet is 277k rows long Ctrl+S brings up a dialog that says "not enough resources to complete" and then another that says "document not saved"
If you're doing that, you're using the wrong tool for the job. You need a database.
Also you can install 64-bit Excel and throw some more RAM in your box.
OO/LO compatibility with MS Office formats is laughable at best. If you need to work with docx, xlsx, etc. in a professional environment, then OO/LO simply will not cut it. That's a show-stopper for many people, myself included, and is literally the only reason I keep a Windows VM around.
I'm not a Libre/Open Office fan. I just hate superficial deductions.
This is the kind of disrespectful and superficial comment that's read almost everywhere from ignorant people. The background story is much more complex than that low quality observation.
I'm not a Libre/Open Office fan. I just hate superficial deductions.
I'm not a Libre/Open Office fan. I just hate superficial deductions.
I'm not a Libre/Open Office fan. I just hate superficial deductions.
This is the kind of disrespectful and superficial comment that's read almost everywhere from ignorant people. The background story is much more complex than that low quality observation.
So stating a fact makes me ignorant, superficial, and disrespectful?
I never said the OO/LO developers were worthless idiots who can't implement a standard, I never even remotely implied it.
I simply stated the fact that OO/LO is a far cry from being compatible with MS Office documents, which keeps it from being used in professional environments where that compatibility is a prerequisite.
This says nothing about who's at fault or who's to blame, it simply a statement of the current situation. You might not like it and you can point fingers at whoever you like, but it doesn't change the facts of the matter.
This "low quality observation" is my opinion about what makes Libre/Open Office less capable than MS Office, which is exactly what the thread is asking for.
Calm down and have a beer.
They are two standards created by two competing industry groups with their own self interests.
If ISO were to give OOXML with its 6546 pages the same level of review that other standards have seen, it would take 18 years (6576 days for 6546 pages) to achieve comparable levels of review to the existing ODF standard (871 days for 867 pages) which achieves the same purpose and is thus a good comparison.
Objectors also claim that there could be user confusion regarding the two standards because of the similarity of the "Office Open XML" name to both "OpenDocument" and "OpenOffice".
Process manipulation
In addition, the standardization process itself has been questioned,[115] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open_XML#cite_note-groklaw-115)[120] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open_XML#cite_note-BRM-120) including claims of balloting irregularities by some technical committees, Microsoft representatives and Microsoft partners in trying to get Office Open XML approved.[115] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open_XML#cite_note-groklaw-115)[120] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open_XML#cite_note-BRM-120) "The editorial group who actually produce the spec is referred to as "ECMA”, but in fact the work is mostly done by Microsoft people."
Stuff is in a different place. It is called differently. Excel functions are called differently.You can blame it on the double-standard ::) .
All in all, you dont save money using it, because you waste time. And sometimes when you send it to someone, and the least bit of tiny difference can cost you way more than the price of the software. I used free software for important documents. It was one of the biggest mistake I've ever made.
Stuff is in a different place. It is called differently. Excel functions are called differently.I think it is safe to say Microsoft managed to keep their vendor lock-in AND make interoperability worse by abusing semi-open standards. That is quite an achievement! Still I find some aspects of Libre/Open Office easier to use then Microsoft's counterparts so basically I use both depending on the job at hand.
All in all, you dont save money using it, because you waste time. And sometimes when you send it to someone, and the least bit of tiny difference can cost you way more than the price of the software. I used free software for important documents. It was one of the biggest mistake I've ever made.
...
MS office doesn't handle ODF well either — up until a certain version you needed a plugin to convert OOXML to ODF. And that plugin was far from efficient. That's really weird, isn't it? A format specification that's ten times less in volume not implemented correctly... Hmmm.. could it be because MS management decided to spare no effort to screw document standards? (which was exactly my point, as was the conference tenant's, whom I talked about.)Probably.
Imagine the situation being reversed. Just a few seconds. If ODF were the most used document format (forget about the usability of the interface, i.e. LibreOffice for a moment), who would *you* blame for not supporting the other «competitor»?Why would it matter who I "blame"? Why are you so caught up in blaming somebody?
I think it is safe to say Microsoft managed to keep their vendor lock-in AND make interoperability worse by abusing semi-open standards. That is quite an achievement!
Still I find some aspects of Libre/Open Office easier to use then Microsoft's counterparts so basically I use both depending on the job at hand.
If Libre Office doesn't render a Microsoft Office document properly, why is Libre Office always blamed?
When a document, made with ms office, doesn't look right in Libreoffice, it's the fault of Libreoffice.
When a document, made with Libreoffice, doesn't look right in ms office, it's the fault of Libreoffice.
When a document, made with ms office version x, doesn't look right in ms office version z, it's ... normal!
Who cares who's fault it is? When you need to interface with other people who use MS Office file formats, and OO/LO is incapable of reading OR writing those file formats so they can be properly interpreted by the people you're interfacing with, then OO/LO will not work for your application. It doesn't matter if it's Microsoft's fault or OO/LO's fault, MS Office does work for that application, OO/LO does not, end of story. That's the case for a HUGE group of people in professional environments, which is what keeps MS Office the de-facto standard. If the OO/LO developers want to change things, they need to start with being truly compatible with the MS Office file formats, regardless of who's "at fault" for the current incompatibilities. Microsoft doesn't want to change things, so you can't expect them to take the initiative to correct the problem.
If the OO/LO developers want to change things, they need to start with being truly compatible with the MS Office file formats [...]
^This. Some odd responses in this thread about what the 'right' tools are, what any given tool 'should' or 'should not' be doing, etc. So completely and utterly irrelevant to anyone trying to get work done in a business environment. Nobody in the business gives a crap about open source software politics or compatibility or who's fault it is for x or y. We're trying to get work done. All I want is for my colleagues on the other side of the planet to be able to read and add track changes to my documents. I want the scientific journals to be able to read and alter my drafts. I want my students to be able to submit their papers. For better or worse my industry runs on MS Office and we don't care because it works. Changing over would cost us millions of hours in productivity that could be better spent doing our jobs. We are not alone.
Nobody in the business gives a crap about open source software politics or compatibility or who's fault it is for x or y.
If ISO were to give OOXML with its 6546 pages the same level of review that other standards have seen, it would take 18 years (6576 days for 6546 pages) to achieve comparable levels of review to the existing ODF standard (871 days for 867 pages) which achieves the same purpose and is thus a good comparison.
Why was ECMA voting almost unanimous (with the Exception of IBM) while ISO members were so much divided?
In addition, the standardization process itself has been questioned,[115][120] including claims of balloting irregularities by some technical committees, Microsoft representatives and Microsoft partners in trying to get Office Open XML approved.[115][120] "The editorial group who actually produce the spec is referred to as "ECMA”, but in fact the work is mostly done by Microsoft people."
The question is about one being a whole load of insanity and inconsistencies. One is viable, the other one not.
What amazed was the number of abstentions in the voting process, which was far from reaching a consensus!
New doubts about ISO's fast-track standardisation of Microsoft OOXML
So now it is not about blame, but it should not be about excuses either. If the ODF "standard" cannot be consistently rendered it is not any more useful than any other "standard".
More like a fizzer then?So now it is not about blame, but it should not be about excuses either. If the ODF "standard" cannot be consistently rendered it is not any more useful than any other "standard".
LO renders the standard for me, or at least until you can demonstrate otherwise.
If the OO/LO developers want to change things, they need to start with being truly compatible with the MS Office file formats [...]^This. Some odd responses in this thread about what the 'right' tools are, what any given tool 'should' or 'should not' be doing, etc. So completely and utterly irrelevant to anyone trying to get work done in a business environment. Nobody in the business gives a crap about open source software politics or compatibility or who's fault it is for x or y. We're trying to get work done. All I want is for my colleagues on the other side of the planet to be able to read and add track changes to my documents. I want the scientific journals to be able to read and alter my drafts. I want my students to be able to submit their papers. For better or worse my industry runs on MS Office and we don't care because it works. Changing over would cost us millions of hours in productivity that could be better spent doing our jobs. We are not alone.
I thought I had clearly explained why that "^this" is impossible. The current state of document formats defined by Microsoft makes it technically and humanly impossible for anyone else than Microsoft to build tools that are [what you call] "truly" compatible .
And this:No, it isn't. Because I was hired by my employer to perform a specific role with the goal of making more money for the business. Wasting time worrying about whether other software products may or may not be able to do the same job I already do does not in any way further that goal. And since no-one else in my industry is going to change, the point is moot anyway. The tools we have do the job.Nobody in the business gives a crap about open source software politics or compatibility or who's fault it is for x or y.
*is* a problem on its own.
And since everyone in my industry uses up-to-date MSO applications, this is a problem because...?Please don't exaggerate, everyone in your industry does not use up-to-date MSO applications.
I've never had an issue with document incompatibility between different MSO products that in any way affected the way we do business. But apparently my industry should spend millions of hours re-training and learning to use different pieces of software that do not actually have all the functionality we need because 'reasons'.
As an example, notice how much better HTML is these days than in the early days when IE dominated.
IE dominated in large part because it was better than earlier (open) browsers like the original CERN browser and NCSA Mosaic.
QuoteAs an example, notice how much better HTML is these days than in the early days when IE dominated.
That's not much of an argument. IE dominated in large part because it was better than earlier (open) browsers like the original CERN browser and NCSA Mosaic.
We make fun of IE today, but core concepts of the modern web were Microsoft innovations. Dynamic HTML, modern event handling, IFRAMEs, AJAX, CSS, drag and drop, etc., were all first implemented in IE.
/***** Selector Hacks ******/
/* IE6 and below */
* html #uno { color: red }
/* IE7 */
*:first-child+html #dos { color: red }
/* IE8 (Everything but IE 6,7) */
html>/**/body #cuatro { color: red }
Some examples of CSS selector hacks from stack overflow.
IE dominated in large part because it was better than earlier (open) browsers like the original CERN browser and NCSA Mosaic.
No, IE dominated in large part because it was bundled with windows. Microsoft is convicted for abuse of their dominant marketposition.
The mistake the judge made was to not split up microsoft in two companies, one for the OS, one for applications.
I ran into an issue today. A research paper I was writing. We were given a template to use and just had to delete the stuff and replace it. I worked on it in Word, but in class, the computers had Open Office. When I opened it, the page headers showed someone else's name. Apparently there was a hidden header that somehow enabled itself.That is why you should distribute PDFs! Sometimes you can discover the most interesting information from a Word document by looking at the change history. When I need to distribute a Word document I create it from scratch and copy existing text into it -hoping this avoids copying old changes-.
But before Microsoft adopted CSS in IE3, we didn't have any CSS selectors.So MS finds somebody else's standard implements parts of it, adds its own undocumented hacks and deserves congratulations?
That's my whole point. Back then, there were various specs for competing style sheet mechanisms floating around, but no commercial browser supported any of them.
OpenXML was designed from the start to be capable of faithfully representing the pre-existing corpus of word-processingWhich is why it is such a long crappy standard.
documents, presentations, and spreadsheets that are encoded in binary formats defined by Microsoft Corporation.
Many office tasks simply cannot be shoehorned into such a restrictive workflow. For one thing, as others have said, organizations do not live in bubbles; interoperability with external organizations is usually critical. And equally critically, this must often be read-write compatibility. PDF is ideal for distribution of final documents, but documents frequently go back and forth for editing. PDF was not designed for editing (quite the contrary, it was originally designed precisely to prevent it), but rather for document display fidelity without needing to have the originating application around (digital printouts, in essence). If you want to edit, and even more so if you use change tracking (which is usually highly advisable), then you need source document compatibility. (As an aside, LO's change tracking is literally years behind MS Office's. LO's simply does not meet the needs of professional writers/editors.)That's the case for a HUGE group of people in professional environments, ...
Depends whether you are talking about exchanging documents inside an organization or between organizations.
If you are talking about inside an organization, everybody can switch to LO.
However, between (professional) organizations, one should never exchange office documents. Just pdf.
If an organization insists on sending or receiving office documents, it's entirely their problem if something messes up.
And more broadly, you imply that LO can do everything MS Office can. But to put it bluntly, it can't. LO doesn't come close to having the features of MS Office. And while everyone speaks of bloat in MS Office, MS's own user studies have found that while any given user uses less than 20% of the available features, the MS Office user base as a whole regularly uses essentially all the features. You can't strip any of those features from MS Office, and if LO never put them in to begin with, it necessarily cannot be a viable substitute to all MS Office users.
This is a known bug that seemed to be the result of a code update on Dec 9th 2015. This was code that used the GetScanlineSize call instead of calculating the Scanline Size (whatever that is). Obviously, the GetScanlineSize call did not work exactly as the programmer intended. The problem has been fixed and I gather the fixed code will come in Libre Office 5.2.0.LO has a more powerful PDF printing support
You mean random diagonal line artifacts when exporting PDFs with embedded images (does not happen all the time, quite random)?
Those things are all true, but I was simply disputing the implication that LO could replace MS Office for everyone. It can for many people, but decidedly not for all, especially in many professional workflows.And more broadly, you imply that LO can do everything MS Office can. But to put it bluntly, it can't. LO doesn't come close to having the features of MS Office. And while everyone speaks of bloat in MS Office, MS's own user studies have found that while any given user uses less than 20% of the available features, the MS Office user base as a whole regularly uses essentially all the features. You can't strip any of those features from MS Office, and if LO never put them in to begin with, it necessarily cannot be a viable substitute to all MS Office users.
This whole argument just comes down to a difference in philsosophy. In your world, MS Office is the only choice for ever, and everyone should have to pay a price that has no relationship to Microsoft's development costs for the rest of their lives - the MS Office tax, for the reason that Microsoft will always do all it can to make sure that no-one can ever claim to be totally identical to MS Office. If LO catch up, MS will have added new features ensuring that LO is still not compatible.
Some of us think that this is a bleak future.
So when you talk above about the features necessary to match MS Office, some of us think just in terms of "Office", and then we can see the features missing from MS Office that are also very important. Some of them are:
- LO supports more platforms
- LO can be installed and run where there is no Internet access
- LO can be installed and run without needing permission from a company
- LO can run from a USB stick without installation
- LO is free which is a democratising factor around the world where incomes differ dramatically
- LO supports 111 languages compared to MS Offices 96
- LO supports Right-to-Left languages like Arabic on all platforms. MS Office has only supported this very recently in Office 2016 on OS/X. Previous versions do not.
- LO has a more powerful PDF printing support
- LO has much greater support for CMIS protocol for Document Management Systems. MS tends to support this for other MS products only.
- LO can import many legacy formats that MS Office cannot including MS Works and old MS Word for Mac documents
and so on.
Of course you can make a similar list for MS Office, but the list above is impressive. It does show that MS office really falls down in some areas.
As a class of programs, I am unimpressed by all Office packages including MS Office and LO in that I do not see the kind of brilliance in the structure, and the extensibility that I see in other software areas such as many of the Internet RFCs. Office packages seem more like layer upon layer of hacks that somehow work, rather then a clean simple concept with ideas that are genius. Where are the big concepts - such as "How do future generations read the documentation of today?". Microsoft absolutely do not care less about this as they use proprietary copyright fonts by default, and these fonts are not defined in the OOXML standard. Microsoft is earning over 100 Billion dollars a year from MS Office, and yet they refuse to act like a visionary with a concern for the future of the world. Microsoft's vision is "Let's get every household in the world paying us $10 a month".
If I can make choices that will allow for the concept of "Office" rather then "MS Office", I am happy to make those choices. From the point of view of "Office", I think that Microsoft could and should do much more then it is doing now. I also think that ensuring the viability of the alternatives is essential, and the only way I can help there is to use an alternative. Even if MS Office is better in some ways.
Those things are all true, but I was simply disputing the implication that LO could replace MS Office for everyone. It can for many people, but decidedly not for all, especially in many professional workflows.Absolutely. There are not many people who thinks there shouldn't be MS Office, and choosing MS Office is a good safe choice. Things would be better if the Office world was oriented more to standards that make it easier for companies to have compatibility and standards that would accept new ideas if they are good ones equally from anywhere.
Genuine competition has been great for the web browsers. It is unfortunate that the Office market hasn't gone the same way.
This is a known bug that seemed to be the result of a code update on Dec 9th 2015. This was code that used the GetScanlineSize call instead of calculating the Scanline Size (whatever that is). Obviously, the GetScanlineSize call did not work exactly as the programmer intended. The problem has been fixed and I gather the fixed code will come in Libre Office 5.2.0.LO has a more powerful PDF printing support
You mean random diagonal line artifacts when exporting PDFs with embedded images (does not happen all the time, quite random)?
Italian military to save 26-29 million Euro by migrating to LibreOfficeWow that is almost the price of a MIM-23 Hawk firing unit! Surely it is worth saving that over several years, with a lot of effort!
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/italian-military-save-26-29-million-euro-migrating-libreoffice (https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/italian-military-save-26-29-million-euro-migrating-libreoffice)
Italian military to save 26-29 million Euro by migrating to LibreOfficeYeah they should probably ask Munich about that...
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/italian-military-save-26-29-million-euro-migrating-libreoffice (https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/italian-military-save-26-29-million-euro-migrating-libreoffice)