12 Ways LibreOffice Writer Tops MS Word

Open source office software is has gotten pretty good over the past decade or so; I got through grad school with OpenOffice (now known as LibreOfifice), and in my estimation was no worse off when it came to exchanging files with classmates than were friends with different versions of Word. Now, reader dgharmon writes "Writer has at least twelve major advantages over Word. Together, these advantages not only suggest a very different design philosophy from Word, but also demonstrate that, from the perspective of an expert user, Writer is the superior tool."

Comments

LaTeX

[Anonymous Coward]

And there are an infinite number of reasons why LaTeX is better than both.

Re:LaTeX

[agrif]

From the perspective of an expert user, {thing the user is expert with} is the superior tool.

Re:LaTeX

[reub2000]

Professional photographers talk about equipment all the damn time. They have preferences for one brand or another. After all if their equipment is inadequate for the job or fails, then that's money they lost.

The only real difference is that a professional is less focused on how new their equipment is. If that body had good weather seals when it was new and an exterior made of a tough alloy, then it's probably going to stand up to tomorrows job even if it isn't the latest model. If the lens is sharp and has big aperture, then it's still good.

Journalist telling me how product he uses

[postmortem]

is better than one he does not use.

Not defending Word here, but MS PR can also write article '12 ways word tops writer'.

It's free.

[cpu6502]

I made a big mistake when I bought MS Office. I spent ~$150 and used it to update my resume. Have done very little else with it.

For us casual users the free version of Open/Libre Office can save a lot of money. PLUS writer doesn't come with the stupid ribbon interface. (Where's the find menu option? Where's spellcheck? I don't want to play Where's Waldo? with my software.)

Formatting features are not the killer app anymore

[DeadDecoy]

If I wanted superior formatting control, I'd use LaTeX. The primary reason I'm stuck with MS Word, and sometimes google docs, is due to superior collaboration tools: change tracking, multiple views for revision and final draft; identifiers for whose made changes where (provided the userid has been setup properly); notes/comments in the margins.

For the record, I haven't taken the recent version LibreOffice for a spin. But from what I remember of OpenOffice, these features were not that functional. I thought OpenOffice was a decent piece of software, but it's still based on prior definitions of what a documenting software has been, rather than what it could be.

Re:Number One!

[TheRaven64]

There are a few reasons to dislike the ribbon. If you're on a small screen, it uses a lot more real estate than the menus. They don't have the shortcut keys next to all of the options, which means that you don't learn the shortcuts for commonly used things as easily as you do with the menu. Finally, unlike the old toolbars, the ribbon does not allow you to put commonly used but unrelated things on the screen at the same time.

There are several reasons to like the ribbon. It does better on Fitts' Law metrics than a traditional menu, due to significantly larger targets. This is especially true on large screens. The larger display for each menu also means that you don't need as many submenus or even pop-up panels.

The real problem with it is that it has a different set of advantages and disadvantages to the old menu plus toolbar. For any given workflow and screen size, it may be better or worse, but you can't toggle back to the old UI if it's worse.