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Andy Wolber Explores Online Word Processors' ODF Support
TechCurmudgeon writes with a look at how well Google Docs and Microsoft Word Online are at dealing with documents that start (or are exported) in Open Document Format. Does using proprietary document formats make any more sense than buying a coffee maker that uses only one type of coffee, or an ebook you can only read on one device, or a nail that you can only hit with one type of hammer? Why do we use document formats that lock us into only one specific piece of software? Why are we limiting ourselves to only one type of tool? "Control of a format or distribution channel can make it harder to use a competitive solution. That's one problem of proprietary formats: a switch costs you time and/or money. You don't want to buy a new coffee maker to try different coffee, a new e-reader to read a different book, or new software to edit a new document. Open formats or distribution channels make it easier for people to choose a different solution. ... Fortunately, Google re-enabled support for ODF in December 2014. That means you can leverage the collaborative capabilities of Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, then export your completed work to a file in an open, non-proprietary format." Spoiler alert: On balance, both Google Docs and Word Online handle ODT files reasonably well.
How many of you own Keurig machines?
Regardless of whether .doc is proprietary or not, it's widely used enough in certain locals that using .docx, or other other formats, creates problems. Namely, when someone using MS Office or whatnot cannot open it.
Honestly, I don't know if Word can open ODF. I know I couldn't open .docx once when it was sent to me, and I had to have them resend it as a .doc file.
any more sense than buying a coffee maker that uses only one type of coffee
For most of 2014 Keurig was the #1 stock in the S&P 500, kicking Apple's and Google's butts, based wholly on people making a choice to buy a coffee maker that uses only one type (K cups) of coffee. http://alphanow.thomsonreuters.com/2014/11/keurigs-little-coffee-k-cups-brew-big-profits/
Slashdot has searched for years for the identity of Bad Analogy Guy and it seems Mr. Wolber has finally unmasked himself.
Sorry, kind of tired.
When I said, "Namely, when someone using MS Office or whatnot cannot open it." .docx and other ones might not easily be opened by MS Office and others.
I meant that
a coffee maker that uses only one type of coffee
Those exist.
The Office Open XML format (ending in .docx for word documents) is supported by Microsoft Office 2007 (released in 2006) and newer, as well as OpenOffice. In order to find a release of Office that doesn't support it, you'd have to go back to Office 2003.
Unfortunately, as of a little over a year ago, Office 2003 was still in use by ~28% of businesses. Of course, there's overlap, so 85% also used Office 2010.
Notably, OpenOffice's marketshare has crashed. The same statistics show that it was at 13% usage in 2011, and 5% usage in 2013. It seems to have been largely replaced by cloud solutions, since things like Google Docs has the primary feature that most people used OpenOffice for: the price.
I don't know if this is still the case but I switched from Excel when Excel wouldn't open ODF but Open Office *would* open Excel. I was getting ODF sheets in from people, and it simply made no sense at that point having Excel. Seeing the ribbon interface that came later, I'm very happy with my decision.
I actually wonder why anyone pays for the Office Suite now. It isn't often that we actually use a wordprocessor now, its all done online, the spreadsheet in OO is excellent, and the salesmen are trying AndrOpen on their tablets with a view to ditching the laptops altogether.
Even without the locking that is the Microsoft file formats, I don't see the advantage of their product.
Do you mean PDF?
Yippppeeeeee!
The spoiler alter tells us both Google docs and MS Word Online "handle ODT files reasonably well".
Unfortunately the test is done in very simple files, and we all know that as document grow bigger and more complex, the ability to reasonably well transfer them from one software to another vanishes. But this should not be a surprise considering MS Word itself is unable to cope with big .doc files and will corrupt them at some time.
I stopped using Microsoft Office in 1998 and never looked back. Glad to see an open format becoming a real contender. Would it be crazy to wish that everyone could just use .txt files for most everything and end this word processor madness? I wonder what percentage of documents were written with unnecessary markup that could have just been a plain text / markdown had there been an accessible and widely recognized WYSIWYG word processor that wrote natively to markdown?
What if you add up the numbers of libre-office to this? (didn't check myself, but openoffice got forked and most distro's now use libre-office, so I think you really need to add those two numbers)
I notice that it's been a while since I've worried about document formats. I'm not so vain as to need features not supported in Rich Text Format, so for 20 years I've been sending people .rtf files out of compatibility politeness. Once, when I explained all this to someone, the response I got was something like "Dude, these days, everyone can open basically everything." And there's something right about that. In the old days I worried about formats forcing MS Office lock-in, but nowadays it's hard to get me too worked up about it. It's kind of like video files, where you barely notice whether you downloaded a .mpg, .avi, .wmv, mkv, or mp4. You double-click and it all plays.
The compatibility patch from Microsoft has been out since forever. Office 2003 reads and writes .docx files without any trouble.
WTF is the point of an online word processor?
Every smartphone has enough CPU power and memory to run a WP onboard, the only thing they haven't got is a big enough display and a keyboard, and having thte program online isn't going to fix that.
Maybe there is a point in having your document stored in 'the cloud' (unless you want privacy)
But as is typical for MS, there are multiple different versions of "docx", none of which are entirely compatible with each other...
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I wouldn't put SENSITIVE documents in the cloud. That said:
>Every smartphone has enough CPU power and memory to run a WP in Chrome
FTFY
or:
>Every smartphone has enough CPU power and memory to run an extremely basic WP, without change tracking or any other post-189 features
> Maybe there is a point in having your document stored in 'the cloud'
I first used Google Docs for collaborative editing. Another person and I were both making little edits to the document, sometimes I'd edit it one day and he'd edit it the next, sometimes we were both editing it simultaneously while we were on the phone. When we were taking turns, having it online in Google docs made it easier. When we were collaborating in real-time, having it online was a requirement.
After becoming familiar with Google Docs for collaboration, later I needed to do schoolwork, which I do on my work desktop, my work laptop, my personal laptop, my phone, and occasionally on my tablet. Working on that collection of documents on five different devices, it sure makes sense to have it in the cloud rather than copy it around from device to device whenever I have ten minutes free to work on it.
Again, not so much for sensitive documents, and I like having a local copy (or three) of documents of long-term importance. For school work, personal notes, or anything else that wouldn't be catastrophic if it leaked, Google Docs or similar systems make a lot of sense sometimes.
Why load a document only to have it mangled by converting it to the internal format of some online text editor?
When loading a document, any document, that you want to edit and then save back, there should be no conversion whatsoever. The question of how good support for ODF is, should not be 'how badly does it mangle my documents?'. It should be a given that the document is *not* mangled. The question on how good the support for ODF, or any file format, is, should be: 'what types of edits can this program make on this file format.'
For decades, we're accepting that documents editors save back a file that, on the binary level, is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the original file. How weird this leniency towards document editors is, becomes apparent when looking at at how computer programmers work with documents. Computer programmers always use plain text files for everything. When the text editors they use saves their documents with tabs instead of spaces, or utf16 instead of utf8, they get quite irate and will abandon that text editor forever. Why do normal users not get angry at document editors that mangle their documents?
So instead of choosing these horrible black box online text editors, I advise you to use something like WebODF. This ODF editor, which is purely client-side javascript, can run on your private site and saves your ODF back as it found it with changes only in the places where you edited the document.
DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
I can't speak to docx compatibility, but I know xlsx compatibility has some sharp limitations where newer features in later versions of Excel are present.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Unfortunately, proprietary fasteners aren't uncommon.
The 5% was including both OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice. Their marketshare has tanked in the recent past, and it's likely that people were only using them because they were free. Once free alternatives like Google Docs came around that better integrated with other stuff users were doing, the free desktop office suites took a big hit.
You jest, but I seem to remember that some jurisdictions in the United States actually do have restrictions on which names they will count for a write-in ballot.
The PC platform also lacked any form of DRM, and is flooded with all manner of software much of which is either low quality or in many cases downright malicious, and yet the platform is very successful.
How many households in USA and Canada have a game console near the TV (or a TV-sized monitor)? How many have a gaming PC near the TV (or a TV-sized monitor)? I'm under the impression that gaming PCs tend to be confined to desks, with the differences in genre selection that that entails.
Thanks for the response. That is a big drop indeed and you are probably right that online office suits are the biggest reason for that. In all honesty, I do use libre-office for when people send me documents or spreadsheets, but most of my files and text editing needs are done in pure text in vim. Only if I need something with a nicer layout I use a richer text standard and wordprocessor. If I have a choice, I use abiword before writer. I find libre-office and alternatives (even kde-office) much too resource hungry.
"LyX is for people who want their writing to look great, right out of the box. No more endless tinkering with formatting details, “finger painting” font attributes or futzing around with page boundaries." ref
I had been using Google docs for school papers because it let me edit them both on school computers and at home and was good enough. I stopped using it when I started using Libre Office for most things and found I apparently could not load documents created in in Libre Office into Google, no matter what format I saved them into. They would load and allow viewing, but would not allow editing. I assumed this was just Google's way of avoiding problems with MIcrosoft that it didn't see any point in fighting over. Because of this, I just switched to saving everything onto dropbox, and avoided Google completely.