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

[sosume]

From the perspective of an expert user, Emacs is the superior tool.

Re:LaTeX

[Oddweb]

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

While I personally prefer LaTeX, it can be a lot more awkward to get into for most people than either of the offices.

Re:LaTeX

[Anonymous Coward]

punch cards rule them all!

Re:LaTeX

[agrif]

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

Re:LaTeX

[dgatwood]

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

Until you find yourself writing your own document classes or other custom macro sets. Then, there are an infinite number of reasons why just about anything is better than LaTeX.

Re:LaTeX

[crazyjj]

You kids with your fancy punch cards. Hand-wiring is the only way to program!

Re:LaTeX

[h4rr4r]

No, a real expert uses VI.

Nice try though.

Re:LaTeX

[Anonymous Coward]

No, REAL experts use $FAVORITE_TOOL_OF_POSTER, clearly. Someday when you're all grown up you'll see the clear advantages of $FAVORITE_TOOL_OF_POSTER.

Re:LaTeX

[Rhodri Mawr]

...and in the darkness bind them?

Re:LaTeX

[Sir_Sri]

We tried that and have a few people who still think like that, but now that journals outside of physics have moved away from LaTeX it's pretty much dead for us. None of our students know it when they come in, they're capable enough MS office users that they can do any of the formatting needed in office, so what does LaTeX get you? Marginally better equation editing, and a lot more work fighting with the document preparation than the actual writing. And then you're asked to submit documents in office format anyway for most internal or government documents because you don't seriously think the secretarial staff have any clue what to do with a latex document.

10 years ago when I was an undergrad it was still a critical part of the experience to know how to use LaTeX. Now it's like forcing people to use IE6, there are some people still clinging to it for various reasons that are hard to change, but for everyone else office tools get the job done. Of course if your office training at the highschool level is bad you probably aren't any better off either way.

Re:LaTeX

[OzPeter]

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

No no no.
 
 

From the perspective of a normal user, the expert is the superior tool.

Re:LaTeX

[ClickOnThis]

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

Until you find yourself writing your own document classes or other custom macro sets. Then, there are an infinite number of reasons why just about anything is better than LaTeX.

Fortunately, you rarely need to do this. Either the generic classes are fine for what you need to do, or someone else has already written a class or macro for you. For example, many journal publishers provide LaTeX style/class files, and there are many custom ones available for PhD dissertations, etc. Just google for it and you'll probably find it.

At the end of the day, I find that LaTeX documents simply look better than those created with word processors of any ilk. LaTeX's ability to control logical design (as opposed to visual design) is a great asset.

Re:LaTeX

[TheRaven64]

From the perspective of a vi user, an emacs user is a superior tool.

Re:LaTeX

[Rosy At Random]

You don't make your own wires and tape?

Re:LaTeX

[Missing.Matter]

but now that journals outside of physics have moved away from LaTeX it's pretty much dead for us.

As the parent said, most computer science related journals and conferences still use LaTeX, especially IEEE conferences.

The biggest benefit of LaTeX I've found is that if your paper gets rejected, you can turn around and download the style from another conference or journal and with very few modifications have a new submission ready. Otherwise, the development time in my experience is very similar, and I'd consider myself highly proficient in both LaTeX and Word. That said, I usually write in LaTeX because version control is more straightforward.

Re:LaTeX

[virgnarus]

Bah. Talk about a Mickey Mouse way of doing it. Rather, you should be able to command the elements to rise from the earth and form into the necessary parts. Then, with a single word spoken from your omnipotent mouth, the beasts should gather and use the parts to construct a PC and program an editor of infinite perfection, using the blessed intelligence you've bestowed on their worthless feeble minds. Finally, with your wonderful gaze, the PC will gain sentience and operate the editor by itself, performing the work you've predestined upon it.

As it uses the editor to expound the details of your immaculate glory, the beasts will simultaneously bow, exclaiming your great and powerful name. Forever and ever, amen.

Re:LaTeX

[rmcd]

"More work fighting with the document preparation than the actual writing"

My experience is exactly the opposite: With LaTeX you write your document and let LaTeX handle the formatting. Word is much more oriented towards ad hoc formatting. It's true that beginning LaTeX users usually don't understand this, but it's because they're trying to use LaTeX the same way they used Word.

Re:LaTeX

[nschubach]

I suppose there's an xkcd comic for the obligatory posting of xkcd comics...

Re:LaTeX

[Iron Condor]

When amateur photographers gather, they talk about cameras. They all have their favorite tools, they all have the "best" gizmos with all the buttons and functions and they know exactly what they all do.

When professional photographers come together, they talk about light. Composition. Art. The tool is uninteresting - a mere means to an end. And any one of a large number of them will do.

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.

Re:LaTeX

[Anonymous Coward]

And my wife who seems to have an incredible knack for the artistic side of photography has made me nearly die on so many occasions when she took a potentially award winning photograph--only to have it be severely out of focus or motion blurred because she isn't also a virtuoso at the tool. The two go hand in hand.

Re:LaTeX

[hairyfeet]

Exactly. I had a customer who knew Xres like the back of his hand and it took him ages to switch over to Photoshop simply because he knew where everything was and had custom plugins for Xres and trying to switch his workflow over damned near put him at square one.

And who cares about writer? writer for the most part has NEVER been the problem with OO.o and now LO, because Writer always got the lion's share of attention. it'll still turn heavily formatted Word docs into Word salad which is why i give it to home users and not businesses, but it does that less and less and HAS come a long way.

What sucks is the rest of the suite. hand any Excel jockey a copy of Calc and he'll laugh you right out of the room, there are too many things the Excel Jockeys use that just isn't there, likewise with Access and love it or hate it Access is used a LOT in SMBs.

So quit focusing on the only thing that works and instead focus on the things that don't. To use a /. car analogy it'd be like trying to sell a car with half the side caved in with "But it has a REALLY great set of tires"...what good is that if the rest of it is crunched? maybe instead you should just give up completely on businesses since compatibility will always be a problem, and instead focus on making more user friendly designs for the home users? after all both Apple and MSFT are focusing on home users, why not LO? Makes sense, they have less worry about backwards compatibility or compatibility with MS Office for that matter.

Anyway we should probably give the LO guys another year and a half before we say anything anyway, having to clean up a codebase that goes back to the mid 90s can't be easy and I'm sure once they have made it more modular and easy to maintain the improvements will come fast, so lets just let them do their job and see what comes out the other side.

Re:LaTeX

[BlackPignouf]

Not exactly :
Amateur photographers talk about gear.
Pro photographers talk about money.
Masters talk about light.

Re:LaTeX

[Anonymous Coward]

As a professional advertising photographer for over 30 years, I'd have to respectfully disagree. With the quality of lenses today, any brand would work. Notice I said 'lenses'. Bodies are even more irrelevant. What we are spending the most money on recently is software and studio lighting...especially since there's been advances in led light panels for product photos. Light. That would be the 'photos' part of 'photography', or 'light painting'.
Now posers pretending to be professionals...well you can read all their posts at dpreview.com. And yes, they're all gearheads.
Having an expensive camera system doesn't make you any more a photographer than a nice set of slippers and a tutu makes you a ballerina.

No, I think Iron Condor got it right the first time.

In defense of Word headers/footers

[crazyjj]

For at least the last three versions of Word, you can do pretty much anything you want in Word headers/footers. You can put in text boxes, graphics anywhere on the page, etc. I used to use Word headers to put in background graphics for the whole page.

I think a lot of people mistakenly think that Word headers are limited to the little box at the top of the page and don't realize that you can use them to put pretty much put anything, anywhere on the page. It will automatically take anything you do while in header/footer edit mode and put it in the background and replicate it on every page. Not sure if LibreOffice does that too or not, but I think the article makes it sound like Word's header and footer are a lot more restricted than they actually are.

Re:In defense of Word headers/footers

[crazyjj]

It's a very quick and easy way to lock down a complex background layout that replicates on every page and isn't easily changed or screwed-up by a clueless user.

Re:In defense of Word headers/footers

[narcc]

why on earth would you want to put a header anywhere other than the page header? Are there not other functions that do the job better?

No way, man! When I need a bunch of copies of the same thing, I just type out everything in the header and then just hold down the "Enter" key until I've got all the pages I need. Before I found that out, I had to retype my document over and over. I save hours of work!

Re:In defense of Word headers/footers

[slack_justyb]

Except for the bazillion times the user wants to remove my name from the header and put theirs and suddenly there isn't a background.

But boy you hit the nail on the head on this technique, by all means it's hackish at best, and goes to show some of the quirkiness that one has to learn to use the Microsoft Office suite like a pro. I'd dare say that combine the quirks one must learn and the constant tossing of every feature in every single spot drowning you out, MS Office is the PHP of productivity software.

Number One!

[Kagato]

It doesn't have that stupid Ribbon UI interface!

Re:Number One!

[TheNinjaroach]

It doesn't have that stupid Ribbon UI interface!

Is Ribbon really that stupid? I kind of like that part of Office.

What I hate is text formatting and the way that Outlook will randomly change my font color between words. That is a UI that's broken as hell but most people don't even seem to care...

Re:Number One!

[Anonymous Coward]

No because someone else in the org upgraded and will now hand out only 2010 files... It spreads like a virus.

Or companies have an agreement with MS to buy the latest version so they can get a discount on something else.

2 inches of wasted space for functions I only use once and awhile. It is a toolbar within a toolbar, with the menu burred so you can not get at all the cool things it does...

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.

Re:Number One!

[Kagato]

Office 2010 sold licenses because Office XP went EoL.

Sit someone down who's been using office since the 90's with Office 2010 while still being saddled with Windows XP (extremely common in the corporate environment even today). Tell them to find Save As. Watch even the most mild mannered person get physically angry because it's not in an obvious place. The UI components when first released assumed that people would be using Vista (which obviously didn't happen for most companies).

Oddly enough I don't mind the ribbon UI on Office 2011 Mac, but that's because it still have a standard menu bar up top that gives me a choice between ribbon or traditional menu UI. Though I would be hard pressed to actually buy Office Mac on my own because LibreOffice really does 99.9999% of what I do and is free.

Re:Number One!

[geekoid]

That's a bad comparison.
I like the ribbon, but those numbers ar ebusiness that just buy whatever the version is, and computers that come with it; regardless if anyone uses it.

If I buy a new computer for my home, it's likely to come with a version of word. A home version, or a trail version. Those get counted as sales even though I will never use it in the home. I prefer google docs.

If MS didn't have the ribbon, they would have 'sold' just as many.

Re:Number One!

[DiegoBravo]

I'm sure Microsoft can point to millions of users in lots of statistics and hundreds of focus groups about people liking clippy.

Re:Number One!

[Rude Turnip]

Where to start, where to start...
I've been using Office since Office 95 (and Slashdot since 1998) and the ribbon is the greatest improvement to the suite. The ribbon can be hidden by pressing control-F1 if you're worried about screen space. It completely exposes the functionality of Office, where as menus hid it. In other words, the ribbon makes the Office interface more inviting and makes it easier to explore new functionality. This also means co-workers no longer ask you how to do things with Office because it's easy to figure it out themselves. Shortcut keys only have material value when commands are hidden in a menu system. You can right-click any button in Office and add it to a quick access toolbar. You can also customize the ribbon if you like.
There is one computer in our office using Office 2003, the last version before the ribbon. It's now considered a pain to use because it's stuck with the menu instead of the ribbon.

Re:Number One!

[CubicleZombie]

What I'm trying to say is, 200 million sold doesn't equal 200 million who prefer the new look and feel. If we generously say that half of those actually like it, then there's the other half who are using it because it was forced on them. No other company and no other product could get away with that.

But it's moved a lot of people to Open Office because they find it easier to use. And that's a good thing.

Re:Number One!

[Missing.Matter]

here 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.

The AC mentioned these points but I want to reiterate them so more can see, since you're modded +4 insightful yet you're completely uniformed:

1) I've done the calculation: From the top of the screen to the top of the page, the default ribbon layout in Word uses THE SAME vertical space than the default menu+toolbars in open office writer. Further, you can minimize the ribbon by double clicking on it. Can't do that with toolbars. Further still, the ribbon scales better to the screen size; whereas the ribbon adjusts the size of buttons, keeping them visible on the screen, the menu system will hide them in a drop down list.

2) There are keyboard shortcuts to every feature in the ribbon. Press Alt and follow the letters. This is more discoverable and provides more functionality.

3) You can put any shortcuts you want in the quick access toolbar at the top of the screen, or you're free to customize the tabs in any way you wish including adding your own tabs.

Re:Number One!

[Missing.Matter]

There is no File menu

Thanks for commenting on a product you haven't used. You have not used Office 2010, because if you had, you would see the big colored tab with the word "File" in it.

Re:Number One!

[JonathanCombe]

I think there is an awful lot to dislike about the ribbon interface. For example in Excel in 2003 if I wanted to insert a row, I'd go "Insert -> Row". In the ribbon I have an insert tab which allows me to insert lots of things but none of them are a row. No if I want to insert a row I have to press the Insert button on the Home tab and select the option from the drop down on there. How is it any easier when I have two Insert options and there is no way to know which one I need to use to insert something without clicking through both of them of and hunting for the option.

There are similar problems with Word. For example if I want to insert an object, I use the Insert tab then select object on the drop down. But if I make the window a little narrower it becomes just an icon and it's not exactly obvious until I click on it what that might do. If I make the window narrower still, to the width of the document, it puts the object button under another drop down labelled Text. So I have to click a box marked "Text" to insert something that is NOT text? This is better how?

Then there other features like the fact the "File" menu now takes over the entire window of the program.

Now with the old system I had drop down menus which makes it much quicker to go through and find all the options then go through the ribbon, click each button and navigate through all the various drop downs off those buttons. The pull down menus also made it very easy for me to find the keyboard shortcuts for an option, so I can quickly learn to use the program more efficiently. All this is now hidden in the help system - it is not obvious what the keyboard shortcuts are and I suspect users new to the system will keep reaching between the mouse and keyboard for even simple things because the keyboard shortcuts are hidden away.

However for me the worst of all is the inconsistency. In years gone buy these things were defined in a style guide so if I used one program I could quickly get familiar with others as many of the options would be called the same and in the same menus (e.g. Edit for the clipboard functions, file to save, open, close, print and so on). Once I'd learnt one program it made it much easier to find my way around other programs. Yes the menus may be illogical in places (e.g. Find, a read only option, on and Edit menu) but at least once the user has learnt these oddities they can easily navigate around other programs. The toolbar was a useful addition to this, making common options a single click away, and the user could customise them to their hearts content. Now we're stuck with a horrible interface (in my opinion) that has very few possible customisations. Worse as Microsoft has patented it, it stops other application writes from using the same interface - thereby making Microsoft programs have different interfaces from other vendors and increasing the learning curve of non-Microsoft applications.

Sorry but I'm just NOT going to be convinced the ribbon is a good idea.

Re:Number One!

[phoenix_rizzen]

Our school district stopped buying Office at 2003 because of the ribbon interface. Since you can't buy licenses for Office 2003 anymore, we use the "downgrade license" in 2007 and 2010 to install 2003.

We have a few staff members that have laptops that came with 2007/2010 pre-installed, and after trying to use it for a month or so, they all come crawling back asking for 2003 to be installed.

We also use OpenOffice.org on our Linux stations, and make OO.o available to our Windows users.

So my anecdotal evidence includes just under 3500 co-workers, and just under 14,000 students.

My personal beef with the ribbon is that there's no organisation to it. It's just a mishmash of large icons, small icons, text, jumbled together.

A toolbar has every icon the same size, and organised according to a grid.

A menu has every entry the same size, and organised according to a grid.

And, the biggest thing, is that if you turn off the annoying "personalised menus" feature, everything is in the same place, everytime. Nothing moves, nothing jumps around.

The ribbon may have it's uses. But I've yet to find one.

Re:Number One!

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Yes, everyone hates the ribbon interface! That's why Office 2010 has sold over 200 million copies. You'd think if it was so universally reviled and killed productivity (as slashdot claims with no proof), people would have stopped buying Office at 2007.

Your underlying point has merit, but your logic is also flawed.

For one thing, Slashdot, like the Office user base, is not a single person with a single mind. Different people have different preferences. In particular, most users of most software products are not so-called power users. The Ribbon interface works well for people who are not power users, and most such people do seem to prefer it once they get used to it, as Microsoft's usage data suggested they should.

However, that does not mean that the significant subset of Office users who really do intimately understand their way around a tried and tested combination of keyboard shortcuts, toolbar icons, menu commands, dialog tricks and so on will appreciate having the new UI and the underlying models forced on them as well. The Ribbon caters very much to cosmetic hacks and a quick-and-dirty approach. Don't bother defining styles, structuring your document systematically, or understanding how to present your data effectively! Just slap the format with the most "clever" borders on every table, format paint your headings so they're all the same colour that is a bit like your corporate standard, and use some random combination of bold, italic, faked small caps, underlining, colours, background colours and all-caps if you want to emphasize something. Oh, and if the spacing's not quite right, just hit enter a couple more times. Of course, MS Office has been going down this path for a long time and has never been shy about who it was aiming at, but the emphasis on the Ribbon pretty much seals its fate as any sort of productive tool for power users.

As for your 200 million sold copies statistic: the overwhelming majority of people who use MS Office do so because it came with their computer, it's their corporate standard at work, or it's the only thing they ever heard of so they pirated it. Microsoft sells about three individual licences a decade for Office applications and about a bazillion copies through mass licensing or preinstallation deals every year. The number of sales really doesn't tell us anything meaningful about what the people using Office actually think of the new ribbon.

Re:Number One!

[RubberMallet]

Apparently you've never tried to round trip an ODF file from LibreOffice to MS Office and back to LibreOffice have you. Microsoft CLAIMS to support ODF, but the hard reality is.. MS Office does not support Open Office files... it appears to, but they've intentionally broke it so that it looks like ODf files are crap... when the reality is MS is playing dirty games.

Try this... create a Calc spreadsheet with a formula... something simple like =LEN(B1) and type a short text string in B1, open it in MS Office and take a look at your formula field. Nice eh? MS Office strips off the formulas. Surprise, now your spreadsheet is useless.

Open a docx file in LibreOffice and chances are something will fall off... because Microsoft's "documented" Office Open XML format is NOT actually what they use for docx. Surprise... again.

The list goes on. The file formats are not portable.. they give the appearance of working and being portable, but they are not. If the document is simple, it will mostly work, but if it has any mid-level content, it'll fail... either way (LIbreOffice to MSO, or MSO to LibreOffice).

How do I know? I actively participated in the development of OpenOffice from 1.5 through to 3.3, and then LibreOffice from 3.3 to now.

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'.

Re:Journalist telling me how product he uses

[Derekloffin]

Indeed. Personally, I find all 12 of those points meaningless. I'd rather have some simple things, like a working web view, or having the ability to search and replace across paragraphs, or how about just letting me access all the F'ing auto format options (although as I recall Word had that issue too, just with slightly less annoying hidden untouchable options).

Am I the only one in the world that likes Ribbon?

[sandytaru]

I like the Ribbon layout. Go figure. After an initial "what the hell?" week I got used to it, and now I don't even notice it or think about it.

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.)

Re:Am I the only one in the world that likes Ribbo

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you like Microsoft Bob as well? How long have you been a member of the communist party?

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:Am I the only one in the world that likes Ribbo

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't get the hate for Ribbon either...till I realized that it was mainly all the people who had memorized all their shortcuts and exactly which obscure menu had the function/tools they needed to use. They were the power users of old, and suddenly they were castrated, and they were back to being on the same level as MS noobs. To make matters worse, the ribbon interface actually made the MS Office suite of software easier to use for noobs and probably made these same power users feel threatened.

I was never a power user of Excel/Word/Power Point 2003, but I always found them to be exceedingly frustrating to work with. Sure, if your work requires you to master those tools, I'm sure you'd get really good after months/years of use, but to a new user, the tons of nested menus with features hidden away made MS Office use an exercise in frustration.

Then I used Office 2007, and once I realized the orb was the file menu (that, I agree was a terrible decision), I found myself using tons of new features that I could never have known about or discovered in Office 2003. The quality of my Word documents, Powerpoint presentations and Excel files greatly improved. I actually find the interface extremely useful because everything is arranged in a logical manner and it is fairly easy to find the tools you need to use without having to spend tens of minutes trying to find the feature in some hidden menu.

Not to say that Word and Office doesn't have its fair share of issues (formatting documents consistently in Word is just a nightmare. I had to write my doctoral thesis in Word because my adviser did not know to use or care about LaTeX), but as far as the new ribbon interface goes, it certainly seems a big improvement over the old Office interface.

Re:Am I the only one in the world that likes Ribbo

[UnknowingFool]

The problem with ribbon I have is that it assumes what I need and don't need. It works fine until I have to do something that isn't easily found. Then it is hidden two or three menus deep that I have to use MS help or the Internet to find. I could customize the ribbon but that requires precognition that what I want is not obvious.

Beemer

[getto man d]

When I need to make a presentation, I use Powerpoint. I should figure out how to use LaTeX instead.

Check out the Beemer class; it's handy but not exactly pretty. However, you can find some decent templates floating around the net.

About half of those ways were just . . .

[InvisibleClergy]

. . . "Guys, we have a styles system! And it's better than Word's!"

From the title of the article, I was expecting 12 distinct and separate features, not 6 features and a treatise on how awesome Styles are in LibreOffice.

I am counting hyphens as another point in styles, because the hyphens point is essentially "You can specify this with styles too!"

Forbidden features!

[metrometro]

You don't have permission to access /applications/how-libreoffice-writer-tops-ms-word-12-features-1.html on this server.

Google Cache

[codemachine]

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3Ltr4XFiuzEJ:www.datamation.com/applications/how-libreoffice-writer-tops-ms-word-12-features-1.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca

Print page and Google's cached copy!

[antdude]

I got that too.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?oe=utf-8&client=mozilla&hl=en&q=cache:3Ltr4XFiuzEJ:http://www.datamation.com/applications/how-libreoffice-writer-tops-ms-word-12-features-1.html+http%3A//www.datamation.com/applications/how-libreoffice-writer-tops-ms-word-12-features-1.html&ct=clnk OR http://preview.tinyurl.com/7u9z3j4 for Google's cached copy.

Weird that the non-cached copy worked fine and home page's link to the first page is broken too.

Print pages worked too:
http://www.datamation.com/print/http://www.datamation.com/applications/how-libreoffice-writer-tops-ms-word-12-features-1.html
http://www.datamation.com/print/http://www.datamation.com/applications/how-libreoffice-writer-tops-ms-word-12-features-2.html
http://www.datamation.com/print/http://www.datamation.com/applications/how-libreoffice-writer-tops-ms-word-12-features-3.html

Re:Am I the only one in the world that likes Ribbo

[Missing.Matter]

Isn't that the problem with any interface? Due to limited screen space, they can't make every option available in a menu system or the ribbon system (which is really still a hierarchical menu, just a different layout). So they have to make obvious the most common features, and hide some of the more esoteric ones. The benefit of the ribbon is that 90% of the functionality of Word is available in 3 clicks or less. With the old system, many more options were hidden in multiple layers deep. So much so, that people started requesting functionality to be added that has been there the whole time, because they couldn't find those features in the menu layout.

At any rate, if you really need to, you can customize the ribbon layout in Office 2010 in pretty much any way you choose.

Re:Am I the only one in the world that likes Ribbo

[Yewbert]

I don't mind the ribbon much one way or the other - but I still find myself getting more use out of an extensively customized Quick Access Toolbar than out of the ribbon itself.

Re:Am I the only one in the world that likes Ribbo

[crazyjj]

I can top it. It miss Clippy. I thought the Ewoks and Jar Jar were cute. And I liked disco.

Re:Formatting features are not the killer app anym

[Anonymous Coward]

Revision control is only a collaboration tool to those who haven't used real collaboration tools.

Re:No way

[TheRaven64]

Because the standard MS uses is now public.

If you're referring to OOXML, then perhaps you should take a look at how Word does in the OOXML conformance test suite. Last time I checked, there were about 10,000 test failures.

Re:Am I the only one in the world that likes Ribbo

[CaseCrash]

I can top it. It miss Clippy. I thought the Ewoks and Jar Jar were cute. And I liked disco.

You like things that everyone else hates, so...... you're a hipster?

Re:They have one huge disadvantage: Landscape mode

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you joking? Menu : Format / Page. Then check "orientation : landscape" in the Page tab.
(translated from the French menus, may be slightly different on your computer)

Org-mode!

[gwolf]

I was recently introduced to Emacs' org-mode. It is really GREAT. I never looked into it before, as I thought it was basically a to-do list manager â" But no. I am currently using it mostly as a word processor (well, for semi-complex documents, as it makes little sense if your documents have no structure at all) and for presentations. And I'm still only beginning to love it (and am sure I'm truly underutilizing it).
True to the WYSIWYM mode, you work with a regular plain text file. There is a good deal of markup, but quite easy to learn (i.e. /italics/, *boldface*, =code=, nested/itemized lists with hyphens, etc.), and with three keystrokes, you export to your favorite format. C-c C-e b shows the document as a (inter-linked) HTML page, C-c C-e d compiles it with LaTeX into a PDF, etc.

Re:Am I the only one in the world that likes Ribbo

[crazyjj]

so...... you're a hipster?

I have a MacBook and iPad to prove it.

01001110 01101111 00100001

[uncqual]

01010010 01100101 01100001 01101100 00100000 01101101 01100101 01101110 00100000 01110000 01110010 01101111 01100111 01110010 01100001 01101101 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01100010 01101001 01101110 01100001 01110010 01111001 00101110

Re:01001110 01101111 00100001

[parkinglot777]

01010010 01100101 01100001 01101100 00100000 01101101 01100101 01101110 00100000 01110000 01110010 01101111 01100111 01110010 01100001 01101101 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100010 01101001 01101110 01100001 01101110 01111001 00101110

Fixed...

Some details (like facts) wrong...

[chiark]

I'm all for bigging up the best solution, however something really isn't right with this article. Yes, this is slashdot and I'm about to commit Karmacide by defending a Microsoft solution... The author of this article seems at best uninformed at worst out to mislead when it comes to some of these points. Let's pick one.

Advantage: Hierarchical Paragraph Styles.. "since every style is based on Normal"

Let's examine that. The first four properties of a style in Word 2010, sitting open next to me.

-Name
-Style type
-Style based on
-Style for following paragraph

So a Style can be based on any other style, or (no style) should you want to start from blank. Does that sound like a hierarchy? It does to me, and I use it as one. Set up what you want. Knock yourself out. It works, and allows you to create a hierarchy.

His piece on list styles/bullets seems slightly ill informed too, as is the tirade on headers and footers, tables of contents... Word can do what is described.

Custom properties, linked to fields, are extensively used by many organisations and what he's describing sounds more like Word than Writer to me. That one has me really confused as metadata management is really quite good in word.

In short, I know Word quite well and I think the 'advantages' that are being proposed as Writer advantages are simply down to the author's lack of knowledge.

I fully expect flamebait moderation for this, but it would be nice if someone could point out where I'm wrong!