Linked by lemur2 on Wed 22nd Jun 2011 22:30 UTC
The Calligra Office Suite has announced its second snapshot release. The project, which is a fork of KOffice, is building a suite of productivity and creativity applications and is working towards its first formal end-user release due in October. The project is seeking feedback from end users particularly in the area of usability of the GUI. With this snapshot Calligra Office Words is claiming better compatibility with .docx than LibreOffice, and also claims to be approaching the best compatibility with legacy .doc formats.
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RE[10]: holding things back
by lemur2 on Mon 27th Jun 2011 01:47
in reply to "RE[9]: holding things back"
Member since:2007-02-17
The idea that people are struggling to interoperate due to MS Office is nonsense in my experience.
You MS apologists sure have a lot of trouble between you getting your story straight.
http://www.osnews.com/thread?478716
"People every day struggle to open even the most basic .doc files. For any business, this is completely unacceptable."
Too right it is unacceptable. Too right that these people who are using MS Office are struggling to interoperate. Every day.
In fact, this whole sub-thread started on the FUD allegations that schools were downgrading papers, submitted in .doc format, which LibreOffice, OpenOffice et al had no trouble re-opening, but the teachers at the school (using MS Office) could not open. Such files were "word salad" when opened in MS Office was the claim.
So which is it, MS apologists? Do people using MS Office have endless trouble opening files sent to them from elsewhere, or don't they?
Hmmmmmm? Enquiring minds want to know.
Do try to get your story straight.
Edited 2011-06-27 01:51 UTC
RE[11]: holding things back
by Dave_K on Mon 27th Jun 2011 06:19
in reply to "RE[10]: holding things back"
Member since:2005-11-16
You MS apologists sure have a lot of trouble between you getting your story straight.
http://www.osnews.com/thread?478716
"People every day struggle to open even the most basic .doc files. For any business, this is completely unacceptable."
Too right it is unacceptable. Too right that these people who are using MS Office are struggling to interoperate. Every day.
http://www.osnews.com/thread?478716
"People every day struggle to open even the most basic .doc files. For any business, this is completely unacceptable."
Too right it is unacceptable. Too right that these people who are using MS Office are struggling to interoperate. Every day.
There's no inconsistency here, you're just misunderstanding.
I'll clarify: Documents created in MS Office will usually open without a problem in another copy of MS Office. However, documents created in alternative applications like LibreOffice will often fail to open correctly in MS Office.
When everyone else is using MS Office, the only problems with interoperation are faced by the few who use an alternative. They'll be the ones considered incompetent or downgraded because (in the eyes of the person opening their messed up .doc file) they can't format a document correctly.
You can argue that this is an MS Office problem and I'll agree with you about that. But who's to blame doesn't change the fact that in the real world of schools, charities, governments and businesses, MS Office is dominant, and being able to deal with their files is a necessity for many people.
So which is it, MS apologists? Do people using MS Office have endless trouble opening files sent to them from elsewhere, or don't they?
If MS Office users are sent files created in other applications then they'll have problems, that's true. The reason why it isn't such an issue is that most other people are also using MS Office. Like I said, out of the thousands of office documents I've been sent, I've never encountered one created in anything other than MS Office.
Open source idealism is all very well, but it doesn't deal with the real world issues that are keeping people using MS Office rather than a free alternative. Do you actually have any practical recommendations for how people can deal with the compatibility problems they'll face if they switch?
Member since:
2005-11-16
This isn't my experience at all, or the experience of anyone else I know. MS Office may stink when it comes to compatibility with other software, but it's pretty reliable when dealing with its own file formats. It certainly does a much better job than any alternative software.
Not when every office document received is created with MS Office. When that's the case alternatives like Open/LibreOffice are completely unnecessary.
I'd install LibreOffice in a second if I ever needed it, but the reality is that out of many thousands of documents I've dealt with (from dozens of different organisations), exactly 0 of them were saved in a different office suite's format.
If the government ever changed to an alternative then I think things might be different. That might happen eventually (I remember when they switched from Lotus Smartsuite), but as it stands every 3rd sector/charitable organisation in the country needs to communicate with them using MS Office formats.
In my experience it isn't much different in the private sector (in the UK at least), with big companies (those with the power to dictate what's used) almost all using MS Office. You just have to look at the .doc job applications they provide to applicants for evidence of that.
I'm not sure I see the competitive edge in having software installed that's unneeded and never used. The idea that people are struggling to interoperate due to MS Office is nonsense in my experience.