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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.
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?
The compatibility patch from Microsoft has been out since forever. Office 2003 reads and writes .docx files without any trouble.
I do not have Java on my machine and I use OpenOffice.
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)
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.
A lack of DRM or other stupid platform restrictions is overall a good thing, albeit with some side effects.
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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.
USB is CPU intensive because it makes devices cheap to make, as they dont need any processing power themselves - which is why it undercut FireWire, even tho FW was arguably the better of the two.
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 had a Keurig but got tired of buying expensive coffee that was ground and packaged months (years?) earlier... especially once they started raising the prices of the pods. I gave the machine away and replaced it with a good coffee grinder, an AeroPress (and a nice pump espresso machine)... much better coffee and much cheaper. The AeroPress is just as fast (if somewhat messier) than the pod machine.
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