This evening I was asked about Microsoft office, my reply was easy don’t buy it use either libre office or open office, they are free, well almost as one asks for a donation. But the client was a Mac user so apple store and it’s a fixed price of 10 euros.
But the client MUST have Microsoft (on apple hmmm) comparability was mentioned. So off I went to look for the price and came across this
Before I thought I understood numbers and pricing… I lost the plot.
In the end I pointed at the apple store and suggested they organise themselves
If windows clients can follow the structures then they deserve to be ripped off
I know companies like Apple and Google refer to downloading binaries and installing them as “sideloading” as if its somehow nefarious and to be avoided…
You can actually download, for free, LibreOffice for both Intel and M1 (Apple Silicon) on MacOS :
Apple does not “FORCE” you to use the App Store on MacOS (they do on iPhone and iPad).
But I see your customer already insisted on “100% Microsoft Office” compatibility…
About 99/100 users could share OpenOffice documents saved as Microsoft format (which is just zipped up xml anyway) and NEVER run into issues - the user at the other end wouldn’t even know!
What does cause issues - and it’s happened me a number of times - is CORPORATE formatted and templated documents are easy enough to destroy inside MS Office - and nearly always invariably Libre Office will trash that formatting - seen it in .docx and .xlsx files…
(BTW - I LOATHE all that corporate formatting bullshit - people get paid 6 figure salaries to do this - and it’s WORTHLESS - NOBODY cares about the f–king header or footer or TEN F–KING pages of pre-amble bullshit! The only thing that’s important is the ACTUAL INFORMATION in the body of the document)
A number of scientific journals use Latex style files for so called formatting. That is far simpler to use.
Those that insist on Microsoft documents are best avoided.
I’d say more a hangover of “hey we spent all this money for this marketing boffin to come in and make all these templates”, so “you absolutely must use them”…
In the past - I’ve done cheatsheets and work instructions in Libre Office - then sent them to someone else to “corporatize” them - I don’t see why me, a UNIX admin, should be tortured by this garbage… See I don’t actually mind doing doco, formatting with monospace fonts, indents, headings, tables of content - what I don’t want to do is spend 500% of that effort again, just to make it look nice for some management wanker to toss himself off to…
Yes, well. Unfortunately in fiction writing everybody uses Word. Things like track changes, comments, and headers including page numbering not starting on page one of the document are expected to behave when they are exchanged. Otherwise the agent/editor/publisher won’t even take a look at it.
I would agree there somewhat…
I’ve worked on projects where there were up to 6 or more of us, working on the same document - I don’t think Libre Office would have cut the mustard…
But 'cause this was “corporate” stuff - we all had licenses to use the online versions of Office 365, so I could still work on MS Word Documents or Excel sheets, using a web browser on Linux (circa 2020 - that was in Google Chrome - and MS Edge, on Linux, is even better at doing “office 365 stuff” than Google Chrome)…
I thought it was still pdf for book submission but it’s some time since I wrote a book to publish but perhaps it depends on publisher or who it’s submitted through
Office 365 does not work that way (it can if you want)…
It fully supports collaboration, so 3 or 4 people can be editing the same document at the SAME time!
Office 365 does version control automatically… I mean things like MS Word have had version control for decades now…
I’m not trying to champion Microsoft, 'cause I detest using Windows, but there are some features that Office 365 (and to some extent earlier versions) offers that “free” stuff cannot…
And as mentioned previously O365 web apps are nearly on a par (if not already) with the big fat client versions of the software…
I think what others are referring to - and I’ve mentioned - is that editors want a Microsoft Word (recent versions) document so they can edit and then send back and the recipient can see the notations and side-bar comments. There are probably Adobe Acrobat workflows that can do this too, but that wouldn’t be free either… I think submitting already edited documents in PDF to go to publishing might be on, but not collaboration with early readers and editors to put notations on…
Anyway - not all writers use MS Office - fantasy author Piers Anthony is a noted Linux and OSS user… I wonder what Neal Stephenson uses (he used to use Linux, until OS X came out)…
You have to combine free apps to get that.
LibreOffice + Git would do it , but not automatic
It depends what you mean by automatic… surely users have to say manually when to save a document? There would be hazards with automatic merges?
not all writers use MS Office
glad to hear it
I wonder what @dbauthor used to write his book?
Thanks for the question. All my recent O’Reilly books were created on Linux, but in different markup languages.
Efficient Linux at the Command Line was written in Asciidoc.
Linux Pocket Guide was written in Docbook XML (but the next edition will be Asciidoc). So was the Macintosh Terminal Pocket Guide.
Mediawiki was written mostly on Mediawiki!
My very earliest books (now out of print) were written in LaTeX.
SSH, the Secure Shell: The Definitive Guide was drafted in plain text and then converted to Framemaker (on Windows). Likewise for Linux Security Cookbook.
All books were written using GNU Emacs, with either Subversion or Git for version control (or for the oldest books, CVS). O’Reilly actually has their own Git server for authors to create their manuscripts. It’s great!
Yes, I really like Asciidoc. I used it (and Docbook XML) because O’Reilly directly supports both languages, rendering them to PDF on demand anytime while I write.
They don’t support LaTeX. It was a bit of a horror show (in the 1990s) when we had to convert the manuscript for publication. I’ll tell you over a beer sometime.
I’ll also mention that my newest book in progress (which I mentioned briefly on the podcast, on the topic of responsible software engineering) is being written in Google Docs. It’s the best format for that book because I need to share the manuscript with Google employees while I write.
I can’t see myself paying for an operating system that way. I get everyone and their mother is pushing monthly subscriptions but it just doesn’t make sense to me. The only use case I can see is if everything is in the cloud like a VM. That would be cool, all your files, and apps from any internet connected device with the ability to buy more processing power, storage, etc.
In theory a Chromecast like device with a bluetooth kb/mouse would be awesome for streaming my desktop to a TV. All you would really need is what amounts to a thin client.
In the Linux world Shells does this with multiple distros. It spins you up a VPS of the Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, etc Desktop editions. I think it’s a really cool idea. The monthly cost is based on how much RAM, storage, and processing cores you want. I just don’t have use for it.
