A little office rant
Posted by Atomfried_Fallout@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 25 comments
I just decided to make my personal finance spreadsheet a bit prettier as I had a few minutes before bed thinking "Can't be too hard to add a few nice diagrams!" Right? WRONG! Turns out it is very hard, again.
That brought back the memories of the last times I wanted a spreadsheet and just gave up at some point or settled with a worse version because nothing works.
For Context: I used LibreOffice back in the day but having to be compatible with MS Office at school, especially with presentations, drove me towards OnlyOffice, which is nice looking, better compatible with MS Office and it came with the full suite as well. Now I still call OnlyOffice my primary office program (though spreadsheets are all I do by now) but having tried to venture beyond using the data how I typed it in gets rather frustrating. You wanna do something a bit special but don't know how? Well, just google how MS Office does it and hope it works because you're not gonna find anything specific and if it doesn't you can at least narrow down what to search for. Just to find a four year old bug report that turns out to be more of a missing feature request saying they're working on it.
But what options are there? OnlyOffice is missing features and functionality left and right with no sign of improvement, LibreOffice looks as old as I am after finally finding that damn button in some weird menu and MS Office compatibility is nothing I would trust, FreeOffice is neither free as in free software or free product and WPS probably makes my PC explode when I mention Winnie the Pooh.
But I also don't feel particularly well with online software of the likes of Microsoft or Google because I tend to brick my router from time to time and trying to run MS Office on Linux just seems like big pain with complicated workarounds for uncertain results.
I'm using Linux exclusively for about 4 years now and I can't see myself going back to Windows anytime soon and while I got used to having to tinker a bit to get things working as they should but loosing a battle against a spreadsheet every time I want organize something in a little more than functional way just isn't.
jr735@reddit
Who cares if it looks old? It works, and the compatibility absolutely is there. I do government and accounting spreadsheets all the time in LibreOffice, and have with it for years, and with OpenOffice before that.
0riginal-Syn@reddit
Ironically we had to stop using Libre office because of the word documents of our legal and government clients would always get messed up. It sucked because I prefer it. Had to go to Only office.
T8ert0t@reddit
OO is okay. I do like Softmaker's Textmaker for weird processing. I find it's compatibility with MWord is really good, it handles track changes and comments really well, plus it's spell checker was familiar. Last time I used OO it didn't have a spell check auto wizard tool where it ran through the document.
0riginal-Syn@reddit
Yes it works very well. My team preferred OO more and they are the ones using it, so wanted to keep them happy.
jr735@reddit
That problem can be easily overcome buy setting up proper typesetting metrics in LibreOffice. I haven't had that problem for a very long time. Using the Windows typefaces would assist in that even further, but I refuse to do that.
0riginal-Syn@reddit
Yeah not everything unfortunately. Most can. We have people who have been working with it and even contributing to it since the beginning. Most of the issues are pretty extreme formatting. Where as Only Office worked out of the box.
jr735@reddit
I've had pretty good luck with it over the years, and I've been working with it since the OpenOffice days. The problem is, irrespective of a person being a contributor or experienced, is that few know what they're actually looking for. Typesetting conventions matter, and I know them, because I started out with actual typewriters and text based dot matrix printers.
You set up LibreOffice to respect those, and that vast majority of issues will disappear. The problem with contributors and, for that matter, a lot of software, is the lack of compliance with conventions. Instead of chasing MS compatibility, format the document correctly in the first place, and almost invariably, the rest will fall into place.
0riginal-Syn@reddit
Yep I absolutely love Libre Office project and support it fully. It continues to get better so I have hope still for it. Unfortunately I also run a business so have to use what works best for my team.
Appreciate the information.
jr735@reddit
I do use it for business myself, every day. In the end, what I do has to work for me, and I'm not here to cater to Windows users. If I have any concern over how things actually look, I simply export to PDF.
MS has their own proprietary format that they change at a will for a reason. The way some companies and government organizations like official standards, it would be a lot nicer if they actually used a standard here, notably an open standard, to limit MS's games.
0riginal-Syn@reddit
Yep, my employees all use Linux so while we have a few running VMs with Windows just in case, my shop tries to focus on using FOSS as much as possible.
jr735@reddit
Look at it this way, at least it's not the time when there were multiple proprietary word processors competing on multiple incompatible platforms. ;)
0riginal-Syn@reddit
No doubt lived through that era.
jr735@reddit
I think to expand on what I'm saying about typesetting conventions, where I started to get things to work correctly was when I noticed that certain LibreOffice things would be tied to metric measures, and MS for U.S. measures.
My best successes have come when I go into a fresh LibreOffice install and ensure that there aren't any traces of metric laying around, and that typesetting conventions are based upon, say, 10 characters per inch, and choosing appropriate typefaces.
At times, it seems almost as much an art as a science. I honestly think some of the typefaces we use, particularly proportional ones, were based on metric rather than U.S. measure, and that is unhelpful.
0riginal-Syn@reddit
allwomanqueen@reddit
Why is this getting downvoted
jr735@reddit
Read Rule #5. That's why.
allwomanqueen@reddit
Dork
jr735@reddit
You asked why and you don't like the answer. I wonder who the dork is.
Responsible_Newt6213@reddit
if something is better whats the problem in using a non foss software? (not implying wps office is better)
jr735@reddit
I explained why. It's not on topic in this subreddit. Read Rule #5, again.
"Promoting closed source applications over FOSS"
There are other places for it. Whether or not it's good software or a suitable alternative isn't the point, at least not in this sub.
Personally, I never use software that isn't free. This example is proprietary and I would not use it.
allwomanqueen@reddit
LMAO get rekt
Aleix0@reddit
For my personal use case I've settled with the online Google suite as my needs outside of work aren't too demanding and having everything online and easily accessible is nice. I have LibreOffice on my linux installs too and it has seemed to work well enough for viewing local files when I need it.
For work I use Windows, MS Office particularly Excel, and none of the competition even comes close to having parity with Excel unfortunately.
overdoing_it@reddit
Try Gnumeric. I had problems with libreoffice being extremely slow on copy/paste and saving. Literally pushing the thermal limits of my CPU just to copy a row.
Gnumeric works just fine. Doesn't look very nice but it's the only fast spreadsheet program and I just want to get my data entry done quick.
gabriel_3@reddit
Options:
Pragmatic approach: Excel offers by far more tools than LibreOffice, if you benefit from them you are forced to use MS Office on Windows, either virtual or on metal installed. To make a fair comparison, Calc offers almost the same features of Excel 2007. As I ready wrote, if you don't need the Excel recent features LO is good for you.
salgadosp@reddit
you can change LibreOficce's UI to better match that of MS Office, change the menu icons and give it a more modern look.
It also has the most productivity features out of all office alternatives.