FOSS office suites and MS Word

[bunburya]

I have a feeling this might go to Recurring Discussions, but even so.

There has been a lot of talk here about the potential impact on OOo if Oracle were to stop maintaining it. While I don't believe that is happening any time soon (and in either case this is not a thread about that), it got me thinking to alternative office suites and how suitable they are for my needs.

Now there are plenty of projects out there like Abiword, KOffice etc that have great features and usability. But there is one feature that is fundamentally important to me and, I imagine, most people looking for an Office suite and that is compatibility with .doc and .docx documents. I don't just mean compatibility in terms of being able to read and edit such files, I mean being able to do so with format preserved. Most office programs have the technical ability to read and write .doc files, but the format is very often screwed up along the way. Often this won't be a problem as it just requires a bit of tinkering when you open up the document in the other application. But for those who rely heavily on word processing for work purposes, it can be quite inconvenient because it means that any work you prepare to send to a third party must first be sent to a machine with MS Word and tinkered with there.

I dunno if such flawless compatibility is easily possible but to my mind that is what is required to make an office suite complete. OOo is nearly there, the only issue I have is with footnotes. If you save them in MS Word and open in OOo, the footnotes are eally spaced out and take up half the page. I haven't tried the other way round with any recent version of either application.

TL;DR: What programs, other than OOo, have near perfect interoperability with MS Word, and how close are we to perfect interoperability?

[blueturtl]

The big guns in their day like WordPerfect could not get interoperability to a 100%. We have people who are able to write the best web browser (a document reader for web standards formats like HTML, CSS, etc.) and somehow office documents are impossible?

Come now and don't be gullible. The reason it will never work is because that is precisely how Microsoft wants it. Even if not completely closed they have managed to keep the documentation of their work in such a state that only they can make succesful implementations (and not even they, apparently since there are interoperability problems with different versions of Office).

The only way to solve the document interoperability problem is to completely transition away from Microsoft dominated document formats to public, open and well documented ones.

[ajgreeny]

The big guns in their day like WordPerfect could not get interoperability to a 100%. We have people who are able to write the best web browser (a document reader for web standards formats like HTML, CSS, etc.) and somehow office documents are impossible?

Come now and don't be gullible. The reason it will never work is because that is precisely how Microsoft wants it. Even if not completely closed they have managed to keep the documentation of their work in such a state that only they can make succesful implementations (and not even they, apparently since there are interoperability problems with different versions of Office).

The only way to solve the document interoperability problem is to completely transition away from Microsoft dominated document formats to public, open and well documented ones.
+1

I even remember a time when I used MS Works on a work computer, a complete waste of time at that point, as it produced files that could only be opened by others who had Works. For some reason MS Office could not even get the files to open in Word.

How's that for interoperability?

[bunburya]

So is that to say that if I saved a .odt in one office suite and opened it in a different one, format etc would be completely preserved?

[blueturtl]

So is that to say that if I saved a .odt in one office suite and opened it in a different one, format etc would be completely preserved?

It is to say if one wanted to include flawless support for .odt in a word processor it would be royalty free and much less complicated to do than to try and include .doc compatibility.

edit: You can't really blame Microsoft for their strategy, they are a business after all. The day interoperability between Word and the rest of the world is fixed is the day they start to lose major sales to free and other commercial alternatives.

I remember my mother complaining about having to move to Word because she felt that WordPerfect was a better program. Her workplace however had had enough trouble with trying to maintain compatibility with the rest of the world.

[Austin25]

I say use .odt; if you are emailing a document, always send it out as .odt, then people will eventually convert. :D:lolflag:

[forrestcupp]

The only way to solve the document interoperability problem is to completely transition away from Microsoft dominated document formats to public, open and well documented ones.

That's fine if I'm the only one who is ever going to use my documents. But since I'm not ...

[bunburya]

I say use .odt; if you are emailing a document, always send it out as .odt, then people will eventually convert. :D:lolflag:
If only!

[rjbl]

I have used Star / Open Office into MS Office systems for about a dozen years, can't actually recall ever having to tinker with formatting etc of MS Office documents sent to me, nor has anyone ever complained that they couldn't read my stuff in their MS Office. Mind you, I have often received unreadable (by my versions of MS Office) documents from systems using later versions of MS Office. Twas ever thus. D'you know what? BizWorld is getting pretty hacked off with having to buy new OA software every couple of years. It ain't necessary.

rjbl

[smellyman]

MS can't get sharing .doc's between Word users let alone another program trying to do it.

When Docs are shared across different companies they easily become corrupted. It is a big problem.

[Grenage]

That's one of the reasons PDFs are so popular.

[flukeairwalker]

Emailing .doc works in progress? That's so yesterday. If you're collaboratively working on a document, use Google Docs, and if you're sending someone a finished document, email a PDF. No need to use MS Office at all.

[blueturtl]

That's fine if I'm the only one who is ever going to use my documents. But since I'm not ...

Well Microsoft managed to do this when battling WordPerfect, and WordPerfect was (and still is in some ways at least) superior to Word. How did they ever get people to switch? Can't be price since OpenOffice has a lower price too. Can't be features or commercial support because WordPerfect owned both of those two categories. Oh I know. Maybe people using Word just started sending others these .doc files which organizations using WP couldn't deal with and then would transition to Word because it was cheaper... oh wait, I'm back to price.

That would mean if people just sent enought .odt files around slowly but surely MS Office would weaken.

--
Why is it that when someone get's a .doc as an attachment it is considered rude to not own Word whereas receiving a .odt the sender is the one being a nuisance?

If I send someone a .odt they can get OpenOffice for free. For any platform! If someone sends me a .doc I have to buy a Windows retail licence, an Office/Word retail licence and install a completely new operating system (maybe even upgrade my hardware) because Microsoft won't port to Linux.

I'm sick of being the one having to deal with format issues. So I'm with Austin on this one. Send everyone .odt files and have them deal with the arising issues for a change. If they respond with how arrogant it is to assume they have a compatible viewer, well then duhhh. :D

/rant

[smellyman]

Emailing .doc works in progress? That's so yesterday. If you're collaboratively working on a document, use Google Docs, and if you're sending someone a finished document, email a PDF. No need to use MS Office at all.


doesn't it work too well in Law firms

[handy]

I have a sneaking suspicion that there is another thread that this one should probably be merged with, but I'm not going to make the button press as I'm otherwise engaged at the mo' so I'm not going to check to validate my very poor memory.

[forrestcupp]

Well Microsoft managed to do this when battling WordPerfect, and WordPerfect was (and still is in some ways at least) superior to Word. How did they ever get people to switch?

You're comparing Microsoft Office vs Wordperfect to OpenOffice.org vs MS Office?

How did they get people to switch? They didn't get people to switch by having a few people use Word and Excel and having them send their files out so that other people would want to be compatible. They are a big business with an interest in making a lot of money. To make money, you have to invest money. They majorly pushed their brand with a lot of publicity, advertising, and business deals. That's how they got people to switch, and that's something that no one is going to do with OOo ever.

There are a lot more people in the world who have heard of MS Office than there are who have heard of OpenOffice.org.

The only group that would even come close to doing that would be Oracle. Oracle isn't going to make that investment in OOo; they would invest in StarOffice (OpenOffice) which will make them money.

It's not about quality, it's about how good you are with business. So OOo doesn't have a chance.

[blueturtl]

You're comparing Microsoft Office vs Wordperfect to OpenOffice.org vs MS Office?

How did they get people to switch? They didn't get people to switch by having a few people use Word and Excel and having them send their files out so that other people would want to be compatible. They are a big business with an interest in making a lot of money. To make money, you have to invest money. They majorly pushed their brand with a lot of publicity, advertising, and business deals. That's how they got people to switch, and that's something that no one is going to do with OOo ever.

There are a lot more people in the world who have heard of MS Office than there are who have heard of OpenOffice.org.

The only group that would even come close to doing that would be Oracle. Oracle isn't going to make that investment in OOo; they would invest in StarOffice (OpenOffice) which will make them money.

It's not about quality, it's about how good you are with business. So OOo doesn't have a chance.

Your reasoning is sound.

It makes me a little sad no major Office suite maker (of the few that are left any way) has decided to go against MS by working the interoperability angle. If OpenOffice.org, WordPerfect, AbiSuite, etc. all supported .odt and only Microsoft didn't, it could in the end bite them.

As long as it's Microsoft vs. any one competitor, it doesn't seem possible to unseat .doc as the dominant exchange file format.

[beew]

I heard that MS 2010 can open .odt (never use it, they still use 2003 or 2007 at work and I won't pay MS for Office) So there is no more excuse to use MS only formats.

[pookiebear]

If you have a word doc that the formatting gets screwed up on. Try this.
go to hotmail.com
setup a free account.

click the "office" menu at the top. bingo .. free MS Word. You can view, print, edit and save the files. Excel and powerpoint too. Hopefully it is not just a beta that I got into by accident. But so far it works decent enough to reformat docs for me.

[forrestcupp]

If you have a word doc that the formatting gets screwed up on. Try this.
go to hotmail.com
setup a free account.

click the "office" menu at the top. bingo .. free MS Word. You can view, print, edit and save the files. Excel and powerpoint too. Hopefully it is not just a beta that I got into by accident. But so far it works decent enough to reformat docs for me.

That's the online version of Office. It's their competition to Google Apps.

[bunburya]

Emailing .doc works in progress? That's so yesterday. If you're collaboratively working on a document, use Google Docs, and if you're sending someone a finished document, email a PDF. No need to use MS Office at all.
It's not "so yesterday", as pretty much all businesses are still doing it today. As someone said, doesn't work so well in law firms, where editing docs in progress is a BIG deal.

[Zzl1xndd]

I heard that MS 2010 can open .odt (never use it, they still use 2003 or 2007 at work and I won't pay MS for Office) So there is no more excuse to use MS only formats.

I believe there is a plug in for Office 2003/07 that will allow you to open .odt .

At the very least I know I am able to open .odt at work using office 2007.

[Tibuda]

I heard that MS 2010 can open .odt (never use it, they still use 2003 or 2007 at work and I won't pay MS for Office) So there is no more excuse to use MS only formats.

There is an excuse. There are people still using Office XP, 2003 and 2007.

[LiquidMeson]

google doc's supports both, saves your files online.

[smellyman]

If you have a word doc that the formatting gets screwed up on. Try this.
go to hotmail.com
setup a free account.

click the "office" menu at the top. bingo .. free MS Word. You can view, print, edit and save the files. Excel and powerpoint too. Hopefully it is not just a beta that I got into by accident. But so far it works decent enough to reformat docs for me.


Seems to not work for me. I get this error when trying to create a new word doc.
This item might not exist or is no longer available

This item might have been deleted, expired, or you might not have permission to view it. Contact the owner of this item for more information.

Saw something about perhaps being related to International(Hong Kong) regoinal settings. Can't be bothered to find the answer though.

[Austin25]

I say use .odt; if you are emailing a document, always send it out as .odt, then people will eventually convert. :D:lolflag:
After reading the more pages of this thread, hoping to be inspired to say something else, all I can say is that I stand by my previous statement.

[juancarlospaco]

ed and LaTeX or ReStructuredText

[Oxwivi]

So is that to say that if I saved a .odt in one office suite and opened it in a different one, format etc would be completely preserved?
Yes, even MS Office 2007 supports it. I can't confirm about previous versions, however.

[rjbl]

@forrestcupp

How did they get people to switch? They didn't get people to switch by having a few people use Word and Excel and having them send their files out so that other people would want to be compatible. They are a big business with an interest in making a lot of money. To make money, you have to invest money. They majorly pushed their brand with a lot of publicity, advertising, and business deals. That's how they got people to switch, and that's something that no one is going to do with OOo ever.

MS Word supplanted Wordperfect in the UK govt in c1994, largely on comparative costs grounds + availabilty of Excel as part of the same package {in replaced the venerable Supercalc}. A big player in the UK Govt was developing a large business network for one of its major bits. The decision had been made to move to Windows as its platform (rather than UNIX on DRS6000's). The choice of Microsofts OA toolset was inevitable.

rjbl

[forrestcupp]

I believe there is a plug in for Office 2003/07 that will allow you to open .odt .

At the very least I know I am able to open .odt at work using office 2007.


There is an excuse. There are people still using Office XP, 2003 and 2007.

Office 2007 can open .odt files without having to install a plugin. The plugin is for older versions. Office XP isn't supported anymore, so it might only be for 2003. But it's possible to open .odt files even in 2003. Since XP isn't supported anymore, it's their own fault for not upgrading.

Nevertheless, most people in the world don't know or care what .odt is, and they probably wouldn't know they could open it even if they could.

[Ctrl-Alt-F1]

Who cares what formats a program can open, if the tools for making those documents are weak?

OpenOffice Write(or whatever it's called) and GoogleDocs pail in comparison to Microsoft Word. Styles, for one thing are so much easier to manage.

OpenOffice does make good spreadsheet and presentation software though.

[forrestcupp]

Who cares what formats a program can open, if the tools for making those documents are weak?

OpenOffice Write(or whatever it's called) and GoogleDocs pail in comparison to Microsoft Word. Styles, for one thing are so much easier to manage.

OpenOffice does make good spreadsheet and presentation software though.

I agree that Google Docs is crap, and the fact that it's on the "cloud" doesn't sell it for me.

But I actually think OOo's Writer is better than their presentation software. I recently made a very simple presentation in PowerPoint without a lot of bells and whistles. OOo couldn't even run it right, and I ended up having to use my computer with PowerPoint to show the presentation.