MS Word deserves DEATH says Brit SciFi author

MS Word deserves DEATH says Brit SciFi author Charles Stross

Blimey! Hasn't he heard of OpenOffice?

 

Hype is the best way of garnering attention.
Mrk

 

As every author knows ...

 

Speaking of which - now that OpenOffice has made a surprise comeback, apparently at the expense of LibreOffice in terms of numbers of downloads - are there any new compelling arguments for choosing one over the other?

 

so he's a linux user who has to use MS Word because that's what his editors and everyone else uses. I know LibreOffice/OpenOffice let you save files in doc format but often they don't look quite right when the person at the other end opens the doc file with MS Word. Sometimes I wonder if Microsoft deliberately designed its doc/x and other file formats in an obtusely complex way for this very reason, more likely though it's just a biproduct of a lazy file format design. (i ran into similar problems on a smaller scale back in the day when I tried to switch from MS Office to OpenOffice).

 

Probably the author forgot that MS has meanwhile (since several years already) moved to open standard docx...

http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2013/04/docx-vs-doc/

 

The author is right: MS Word is a proprietary garbage which you can't really avoid.
Read this:
http://brattahlid.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/is-docx-really-an-open-standard/

 

Many of the classical authors created their masterpieces long before MS word was even conceived.

Maybe charles needs to dump MS word altogether and just write the old fashioned way.

 

You mean using LyX/LaTeX ?

 

A bit out-of-date reference, Office 2013 has adressed those issues.
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...ng-in-ms/2b23c37a-3566-41ca-819e-a883823e59b5

 

Is the WordPerfect file format a good alternative, or is it just as bad?

 

I like WordPerfect a lot more. But I think their format is as closed as it gets.

 

Are you using it on Ubuntu?

 

No I don't. I used to use it in Windows 8 few months ago. Ever since Mr. Snowden enlightened me about NSA I try to no longer buy/use proprietary software due to possibility of backdoor.
I use Libre Office now as my main word processor. For every now and then when I edit my resume I have Microsoft Office XP with Windows XP running in virtual machine. And after Wine fully supports Microsoft Office XP, I will probably drop the virtual machine and run it directly on Linux.

 

Apparently not...

http://brattahlid.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/is-docx-really-an-open-standard/

 

OpenOffice actually works properly?

 

Are you saying it actually doesn't?

 

Well for me, out of the two (OO & LibO), OpenOffice is the only one that actually does work properly.

 

That's good to know, thanks It's a more reasonable download too. What's up with the LibO installer being over 200megs?

 

With a typewriter.

I still have my old Royal, circa 1940. I have to think before I type, rather than just tap out words on a keyboard.

 

Nah, they don't need technology like that. You can do the same with good ol' cave paintings.

 

For all I know The Document Foundation have fixed all the bugs I had with LibO. I can't ever see me using it again however. I've been using OpenOffice for over five years as an office suite & my default word processor. I need it for work anyway as I don't actually have Microsoft Office installed on any computer I own. I have AbiWord as a back-up. I even had a lot of trouble with PortableApps LibreOffice. LibreOffice has more bugs than a rain forest IMO. I just can't find a fault in OpenOffice.

 

I don't know about death but there sure are better alternatives out there for the average person. Personally, I found Kingsoft Office and haven't looked back. Don't need the bloat of Microsoft Office.

 

That's helpful, thanks. Do you know if the ISO/IEC 29500 strict format is the default for new Word DOCX documents? Does ISO/IEC 29500 strict format achieve better compatibility with OpenOffice, etc?

 

Default on Office 2013.... I don't know about office 2007/2010. Sorry.