another funny one from ZdNet

users
#1

Hi :slight_smile:
The article is very pro-LibreOffice but so many of the comments have a hilarious amount of FUD in them.  One wonders if they have ever even tried either MSO or LO.
http://www.zdnet.com/how-to-affordably-own-your-office-software-7000011449/?s_cid=e539
Regards from

Tom :slight_smile:

#2

​ commentaries, Tom ; Mr Vaughan-Nichols can always expect a deluge of
opprobrium whenever he suggests, as is his wont, an open-source alternative
to «legacy» programmes....

Henri

#3

Just the other nite I received a docx file to edit. I opened it in LibreOffice and edited it, then saved it in docx--or that's what it said it was.
Now even LO can't open the file, and neither can WordPerfect. It's in never-never land. YMMV.

--doug

#4

The article is very pro-LibreOffice but so many of the comments have a hilarious amount of FUD in them. One wonders if they have ever even tried either MSO or LO.

Most people who "own" StarOffice or many of its forks don't use it. They just open and print documents with it. If someone tried to actually use it as a word processor, he would find some of 5+ years old bugs and lack of features much earlier.
Nowadays there is no free alternative to MS Office suite and costly third-party utilities: spellchecker, bibliography/formula editors and so on.

#5

​Perhaps, Urmas, you could be more specific about the putative «​5+ years
old bugs and lack of features» in such StarOffice forks as LibreOffice ?
Otherwise, your comment must be regarded as a prime example of that FUD Tom
mentioned above....

Henri

#6

That's a hilarious statement from someone posting to a list dedicated to
a free alternative to MS Office.

#7

When was the last version released?

#8

Are you talking about release of "StarOffice" or LO?

No free alternative to MSO? No spell checkers, etc.? Something is not right somewhere.

LO is touted as THE best alternative to MSO. How many spell checking dictionaries do you want? 200+ is my last count, with about 20 localized Spanish ones. My own American English one has over 797,000 words in it. Grammar checkers are the problem, though. No one makes one that works well for all its users.

#9

"webmaster-Kracked_P_P":

THE best alternative to MSO. How many spell checking dictionaries do you want?

The built-in spellchecker is absolutely useless. First, it does not support options. Second, it doesn't have thematic and user dictionaries available. Third, the checking method itself is primitive.
No multiword checking, no complex and compound words checker, no morphology support. The only language it can fit in its present condition is English.

#10

Erm... It does have user dictionaries, you just click the "Add" button!
Simples! (meerkat noise)

#11

"Kieran Peckett":

Erm... It does have user dictionaries, you just click the "Add" button!

Those are wordlists, not dictionaries. Generally useless for languages other than English.

#12

If you want a dictionary you can look things up in, I recommend Artha. Try it.
As far as foreign languages go, you'd need to visit a mailing list in the language
and ask there.

--doug

#13

Oh, I see, I thought by custom / user dictionaries you meant like in MSO.
Note that you can get pre-built dictionaries for other languages, either
through the LO website or (I'm guessing) in the LO Download page, when you
download a non-English build