While I don't have any software fanboi allegiances, I must say, OO is a pile of crap. MS thinks so, too. (http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/10/microsoft-posts-video-of-customers-criticizing-openoffice.ars?comments=1#comments-bar) The comments on the bottom are kinda funny, too.
There is MS Office Online, and I think that's free. I could be wrong, though. At least Office Online is more like a Toyota Camry.
Well I'm still using MS Office 2000... OO isn't even close to that for functionality or usability, and they've had 10 years to catch up!
It's a crying shame though, I'd much prefer there to be some competition, MS Office has just gone sideways since 2k (frills, docx bollocks, etc).
I'll admit I don't ask for much from it, so heavier users might be better placed to provide more balanced critique. I can well understand why Joe Average wouldn't want to bother trying anything other than what everyone else is using though.
I'm not sure I agree with you, Rajagra, on that point. MS probably wasn't getting many sales there regardless (aside from bundled packages, which net them far less than retail anyway).
Moar LaTeX.
What Tim said. The open source community needs to one-up MS, not emulate it.
Well, they take quite different approaches to solving the same problem. Don't you just hate it when someone posts or emails a doc file when they really should use a PDF?I am a big fan of PDF files. Lightwight, look good, anyone can open them, allows you to keep control of source material that while distributing what is needed. Plenty of tools from advanced software from Abode to lots of easily available open source. Good stuff.
I am a big fan of PDF files. Lightwight, look good, anyone can open them, allows you to keep control of source material that while distributing what is needed. Plenty of tools from advanced software from Abode to lots of easily available open source. Good stuff.
I actually find PDF files to be highly bloated, CPU intensive, and very large (especially with scanned documents, easily scales gigabytes with a few files).
Foxit reader seems to work very nicely, but seriously, the new adobe reader versions are extraordinarily bloated. I probably notice it more since I install this new stuff on older computers still.
In terms of compatibility, office 97 is probably the best. It also supports word perfect formats and a whole variety of others. The only disadvantage is there is no support for docx... that I know of.
Compared to what? What's the better alternative? Maybe a jpeg but you'd be giving up a lot.
I won't argue about software bloatware. I don't like it. But bloated software is easier to produce than tight code. So if most computers out there can handle it without complaints, that is what we get, what the market will bear. At least with a widespread standard like PDF there are alternatives.
Can't agree in my case since I have to load the new formats like docx, xlsx, pptx while I probably haven't seen a word perfect file for at least a decade.
I'm sure if the PDF format was worked on more extensively, it could be very light weight (one thing that should be eliminated is "layers," they're pointless, and even if you can select text on a scanned image, often or not, the text selected is rendered improperly anyhow). I recommend foxit if you're using adobe reader.
For writing I like office 07 with the ribbon (may seem odd)... otherwise I write it with my *favourite computer* in office 97.
Office 2010... I don't like how they removed the little orb in the ribbon. They have to change everything don't they? Then it's not about updates anymore, but remixing and recreating... which is the opposite of updating. I was hoping they'd leave the ribbon alone.
lol... you know what? I should just run every single version of microsoft office released, problem solved.
Anything specific that OO can't do?
Anything specific that OO can't do?
Ok. I've just downloaded the latest version, and I must admit it has improved since I last tried it.
But for starters... is there an outline view mode in 'Writer'?
Work?I don't use OO a lot but it's worked with MS Office files when I did use it. Really don't know how to respond to "****ting itself" as a specific criticism so won't, :biggrin:, hah. But I think you're right that for work, you should use the real deal and not **** around with open source alternatives since you're quite likely to eventually waste enough time ****ing around with differences to justify the added cost.
No seriously, it seems to **** itself when it has to deal with MS Office stuff.
FWIW, IBM Lotus Symphony (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Lotus_Symphony) is another good free alternative to MS Office.
I don't currently use it, but I tested the beta version a couple years back and recall being pretty happy with it. Might download it again for the hell of it.
I don't think so, strictly speaking. But check out the Navigator (http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/OOo3_User_Guides/Writer_Guide/Using_the_Navigator).
Yeah I found that, but it's not even close to being as useful as outlining in the main view. Quite honestly, I couldn't compose any substantial document without a decent outline mode, so it doesn't matter (to me!) what else it can or can't do :)
I recommend foxit if you're using adobe reader.
Work?
No seriously, it seems to **** itself when it has to deal with MS Office stuff.
As far as Open Office is concerned, I personally think that the devoping team should review the interface to begin with. I'm pretty sure more people would be tempted to use it if it looked nicer. If every suite out there looked almost the same fine, but not when the other suites look much much nicer. We can say what we want, but look does matter, and does matter a lot.
Second, how the dictionaries are handled leaves a lot to be desired if you asked me. I don't use the dictionaries a lot for spell checking. I much prefer to make sure I get the words right and will consult a proper dictionary if I need to. However, I do use the thesaurus a lot for synonyms. With MS Office, it's a matter of right clicking on a word to get the synonyms. Not so easy on Open Office.
And third, setting language is not as nicely done as in MS Office.
All in all, I would say that Open Office has some catching up to do when it comes to minor details, but minor details can mean the difference between winning a contract and not winning a contract, between winning a sport final and not winning the final. So if money is not a problem, I will get MS Office over Open Office. If money is a problem, however, I will have to stick to Open Office.
I am not against Open Office however. If anything, I wish it was much better. I like competition. I seriously gave it a try but sadly found out it was not for me...for now. Once I'm done with University, it will not be a problem anymore. Like Rajagara has said, competition is what is making Microsoft change some of its practice. They did admit that Firefox pushed them to review their browser.
Well, there you go, sounds like you found something you can't live with. Guessing I'm too primitive in that respect to appreciate the problem. I mean, I can make an outline with "tools->outline numbering" and manipulate it with navigator if I need to. That's more than I'll likely use anyway.
You asked me what Office did that OO couldn't. I indulged you (and my own curiosity) and downloaded and installed OO. It didn't take me long to find something, that as it turns out, would really bother me. Fine if it doesn't bother you, I wouldn't call you primitive because of it, so why imply that what bothers me is somehow esoteric?I gave you credit. I asked you for a specific and you provided it. Didn't mean to dismiss it or imply anything about you, just that it's lost on me as I'm not that sophisticated. My wife has forgotten more about word processors than I'll probably ever know. That's just the way it is. She uses word now and I'm sure would never touch OpenOffice. Hell, there was a time when she used, what was it, Frame Maker I think and wouldn't touch MS Office. That changed so maybe this will as well. Clearly I've got a lot to learn about word processing. But if I don't really need it, might not happen, :wink:.
Outline numbering has got little to do with outlining as I was using the term BTW. I meant the ability to fold up sections of the document, and to drag them around in situ to change both position and level, in a view that displays the document hierarchically rather than linearly. Without that, the Navigator is just a kludge. But... it would be nice to have both!
Guess I got the wrong end of the stick then :)
I certainly don't think of myself as sophisticated when it comes to using word processors, in fact I hate writing documents. So if I find something that makes it easier, I'm sure as hell going to use it, and feel pain when it's not there. But it's not a case of literally needing it I suppose, at least not in the same way as needing to be able to insert diagrams into a technical document for example.
Emacs or go home.I used to support a bunch of really sharp developers who swore by XEmacs. It was too much for me at the time. And still in fact, although maybe it's worth another look.
Emacs or go home.
SPF Lite (http://spflite.co.nr/)
Theres Lean, and then there's yuck.
Microsoft chooses 14 quotes from a Microsoft sponsored 'study' on why MS Office is better than OO and attributes them to 14 Microsoft clients.
Move along now, nothing to see here.
The rest of the world has been using OO for years now and the only people saying it's **** are people that don't use it or Microsoft themselves.
Make up your own mind.
People in my workplace don't even notice the difference between one and the other..
Nice try, but you're in a forum of experts.
I like the concept behind Open Office, but it is too slow. And before anyone spouts ye olde "get a faster computer" tripe, let's just say that there's no excuse for a word processor chugging on any modern computer. I'm being extremely generous at this point: I have an old copy of Powerpoint that absolutely flies on a 386. Same thing for Wordperfect.
Is it functional? Yes. Is it responsive enough to make me want to use it? Not even close.
WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS was t3h sh!t...
Moar LaTeX.
Professional documents (including CVs, resumes, etc.) typically have to be in MS Word format (as nearly all the recruiters and hiring managers I've come across use Windows/MS Office). So, I really don't get how anyone can get away with using 'just' a command-line (or other minimal-feature) word processor/text editor.
Professional documents (including CVs, resumes, etc.) typically have to be in MS Word format (as nearly all the recruiters and hiring managers I've come across use Windows/MS Office).
By ensuring that the software being used supports saving in a format that MS Office can open?
Why not use PDF?
Professional documents (including CVs, resumes, etc.) typically have to be in MS Word format (as nearly all the recruiters and hiring managers I've come across use Windows/MS Office). So, I really don't get how anyone can get away with using 'just' a command-line (or other minimal-feature) word processor/text editor.
I think any serious CV I've ever seen was in PDF format, which is what LaTeX spits out in the end.
Professional documents (including CVs, resumes, etc.) typically have to be in MS Word format (as nearly all the recruiters and hiring managers I've come across use Windows/MS Office). So, I really don't get how anyone can get away with using 'just' a command-line (or other minimal-feature) word processor/text editor.
If I were sending out CVs, I'd be sending them out in PDF format to prevent any slimy critters from altering them. It's not totally unheard of for CVs to be fiddled with before being passed around.
You write in latex and can export to anything, pdf, html, doc whatever. This is a format that's been around for decades and will be supported pretty much forever. Write professional documents in proprietary formats at your own risk.
Hmm interesting...but can you style the documents in much the same way you can do with Word? Can you make them look nice? Or do they just look like basic text files?
Professional documents (including CVs, resumes, etc.) typically have to be in MS Word format (as nearly all the recruiters and hiring managers I've come across use Windows/MS Office). So, I really don't get how anyone can get away with using 'just' a command-line (or other minimal-feature) word processor/text editor.
Hmm interesting...but can you style [LaTeX] documents in much the same way you can do with Word? Can you make them look nice? Or do they just look like basic text files?
MS Office has styling? Anytime I use it for anything more than a basic letter, I find myself fighting against weird defaults that it has which cause it to throw text in random places...
MS Office has styling? Anytime I use it for anything more than a basic letter, I find myself fighting against weird defaults that it has which cause it to throw text in random places...
+1 trolling
See This PDF document (http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/6553-sample.pdf) for an example of typesetting by LaTeX.
It is indeed possible, with a lot of effort, to produce a nice-looking document in Word (by which I mean a document that follows the traditional rules of typesetting). Making an ugly Word document is much easier.
LaTeX is the opposite. It typesets beautiful documents by default, and you need to work hard to make it output something ugly.
I wasn't trolling...I asked a question about something I didn't know about. That LaTeX typesetting looks great. However, you are wrong that it takes a lot of effort to make a nice-looking document in Word. In Word 2007 it's quite effortless actually.
And putting [LaTeX] in my quote is lame since I wasn't really talking about it. I was talking about command-line driven abd basic word processors in general in comparison to Word. LaTeX appears to be something quite different.
To those who reccomend PDF - I agree that PDF is fine, that's a good point. I guess my point is that if you can't style it much and it just doesn't look good (like a basic text file) then you wouldn't really be doing yourself any favors.
PDF can be reverse-engineering quite easily now. It's no longer considered a fail safe format for alteration of content.
Hmm interesting...but can you style the documents in much the same way you can do with Word? Can you make them look nice? Or do they just look like basic text files?
Having to learn a markup language in order to create documents seems like a lot of work. People seem to think developers just like to code constantly but I'm of the opinion that software should automate, not obfuscate.
Even so, I'll check it out.
The link I posted above is for the Lyx program which makes it easy for you to use without having to learn the language
Sigh :D Try it man, you'll see what the deal is.
Why would I recommend something you need to learn a language to use :)
However, you are wrong that it takes a lot of effort to make a nice-looking document in Word. In Word 2007 it's quite effortless actually.
And putting [LaTeX] in my quote is lame since I wasn't really talking about it.
Having to learn a markup language in order to create documents seems like a lot of work. People seem to think developers just like to code constantly but I'm of the opinion that software should automate, not obfuscate.
Even so, I'll check it out.
For a one-page memo, maybe. But the way Word hides and mixes layout information with content, and its poor support of styles, makes it hellishly difficult to ensure typographical consistency in a long document (or even a short document with many authors).
If you go back one page, you will find that the question of yours that I quoted was indeed about LaTeX.
I hear only poor people like LaTeX.
I hear only poor people like LaTeX.
Admittedly I got started with making documents with markup languages, but I don't see too much of a difference in concept between LaTeX :-
\begin{quotation}
Some text.
\end[quotation}
And the Word way of doing it - write 'Some text", find the Styles palette, scroll down to "quotation" (or make it), and select that style for the paragraph (or selected text). In both cases you're telling the software that "Some text" is a quotation and needs to be formatted as such.
The trouble with markup languages such as LaTeX is that most (all?) editors for it won't show you a visual preview of the formatting whilst showing the markup code. Something like LyX (which I greatly appreciate) shows you the formatting without the code; everything else I've seen with support for highlighting LaTeX markup makes it look like you're writing code. Seeing on screen exactly what you get on the printer is vastly overrated, but a reasonable approximation is pretty important.
One area where markup languages really shine is in large and complex documents - particularly if it is convenient to pull information out of a database over there, include some source code from this repository, etc. Having just come out of a 2 year project which involved writing lots of large documents (plus a little bit of thinking), it does seem that Word results in spending lots of time trying to figure out formatting issues. This is partially at least due to Word allowing people to ignore styles when formatting text.
Fuel to the fire:
http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2010/10/microsoft-gives-its-blessing-to-openofficeorg/index.htm (http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2010/10/microsoft-gives-its-blessing-to-openofficeorg/index.htm)
Did someone say "Sphinx"?Show Image(http://www.zgeek.com/forum/gallery/files/1/0/8/goatse_reaction.jpg)
OpenOffice is pretty bad, but the god damned bastards haven't ported MS Office to Linux yet. So I use LaTeXI'll say one thing. OO is better on Linux than MS Office does. Why? Because Micro$oft has never and seemingly will never natively support Linux. I should and will try Latex but for being able to open and product basic MS Office docs, OO does the job. Outside of Windows, Mac and mobile platforms, Micro$oft hasn't shown any intere$t in porting M$ Office to other platforms for around 15 years back when they shipped MS Office for DEC Alpha around the same time Windows NT ran on MIPS. But that was all stopped and Microsoft seemingly never looked back. Linux users wanting to run MS Office can run the Windows version using CrossOver or Wine, or use Office Web Apps (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Web_Apps).
OpenOffice is pretty bad, but the god damned bastards haven't ported MS Office to Linux yet. So I use LaTeX
Which version of Word are you talking about? What you're saying doesn't apply to Word 2007. I wrote my masters thesis in Word 2007 and it was quite easy to make styles consistent across the entire 100+ page document. Took very little effort and it was quite intuitive. More so than LyX I would say.
Quote where I mentioned LaTeX then. If I had, you wouldn't have had to insert it into your quote of me.
Fail.
Maybe you should get it working first before you decide you don't like it :)
OO Writer still crashes and chokes sometimes, and doesn't display formats as they were intended to be viewed. For example: Most of my digital books in .rtf or .doc format. It makes these look ugly or just puts out letter salad. OO Calc so far has been fine, maybe because I never tried opening anything foreign with it. Just making stuff with it.
I really wanna like OO. It's sleek and looks good. Still, MS Office just works better.
Maybe I've been lucky, but since the 3.x series of OOo, I haven't had any issues. And I use it on a fairly regular basis. No crashing, no formatting issues. It works very well with Office 2007 (haven't tested against 2010). While I do tend to use MS Office on my desktop, since it's what I am more familiar with, I'll use OOo if it's easier to get to. And I only use OOo on my laptop/work machines (UNIX Admin, I run all *nix boxes :P).
Basic in many ways though and many folks who take advantage of some of the fancier features of word just can't roll the OO way.
Such as? Personally I don't know anyone that relies or regularly uses any of the bloat, err sorry I mean advanced features, of Word.