Back when they were quarreling over the standardization of OOXML, instead of pushing their own proprietary** desktop format, they should have instead been pushing hard for something that could be shared with and opened by anyone who has a Web browser (in other words: "anyone")—something that uses HTML as a container format and can degrade gracefully even if you don't have any kind of office suite installed and the only reader software you have for it is Chrome/Safari/Firefox/Edge. There was no chance of beating Microsoft's incumbency with Office when being libre+gratis was the _only_ distinguishing feature. It required doing something different at a fundamental level. Even Microsoft beat them to getting halfway to the place they should have been when they bought the company that wrote what became Windows Live Writer app (which is now itself open source, though neglected, and still mired in visions of desktop software from the 90s: <https://github.com/OpenLiveWriter/OpenLiveWriter>).
> The LibreOffice project's imprimatur should be to stop existing[…] The editing paradigm perpetuated by the legacy of MS Office is a dead end[…] A standardized "Markdown for the Web" (or AsciiDoc) with native browser support would be a good 80/20 start and would move things out of weird proprietary office formats and towards plain text[…]
> Right now LibreOffice is aligned against this goal as a result of perverse incentives to continue perpetuating the MS Office model of document creation, editing, and (let's face it: email-based) distribution.
ODF was developed by a committee and predates OOXML by years and it was standardized by ISO before OOXML was even announced.
That's not pushing their own proprietary format. That's just using the existing ISO standard and not switching to a different, far more complex standard that served little purpose.
Hell even IBM threatened to leave ISO wholesale over Microsoft ramming OOXML through the standards body.
And if you expect Word's current user base to get by with Emacs or Vim or Zed and git, you really are programmer-brained and need to develop more empathy for ordinary people.
I'm old, these are notes for me only, I don't care that they arent 'web publishing' ready.
AbiWord looked like it might be similar on Linux, but never kept up.
There is a very light weight, free program called "The Guide" which is also good for notes
https://portableapps.com/apps/office/the_guide_portable
https://theguide.sourceforge.net/
It hasn't been updated for about 8 years, but it doesn't require installation and we have found it very useful.
... who said that? Are they in the room now?
I'm baffled when these kinds of responses show up in these threads—every time I've brought this up. Like, it's pure hallucination. And the readiness to go from what is _my_ very clear call for "empathy for ordinary people" to an explicit suggestion that I might be programmer-brained is inexplicable.
Ordinary people don't want to do any of the things uttered someone who's telling them to stop using Google Docs and to go "download" something called "LibreOffice".
I think a lot of people “need” Word the same way they “need” a pickup truck. It feels better to buy it up front than to worry about needing it on short notice and not having it.
Unfortunately, from the article:
> Markdown import and export features.
How would that look in a single-pane, edit-in-place, wysiwyg editor? Where would you type the input, and where and when would it show the output?
Doesn't seem like that much of a stretch from a UI perspective to do something similar with a Markdown preview.
Link to the extension for anyone curious: https://extensions.libreoffice.org/en/extensions/show/99471
I see this latest development as an admission that their time is up, but I don't see that same awareness from the people who actually use the software.
Oh, sure, office suites aren't the only cause, nor the main one, but they are a contributing factor. The model of giving a computer to secretarial staff without any training, which is why this software was created in the first place, has now been extended to almost all "office" workers, and well, it's among the causes of our decline.
We haven't worked with sheets of paper, pages, suspended folders (as directories are rendered in file managers on average), and so on for a long time now; it's high time, then, that the modern General Magic, the Office model, stop screwing everyone over. This won't be understood anytime soon, and the result will be a state of affairs even worse than the present.
Everything else should never interact with a crap like Excel. Ever. Use dedicated, scientific journals for it if you are a self-called professional. Reusing a ledger sheet for serious stuff will just make companies lose billions with faulty research and papers.
Access? Nice toy, but even Sqlite3 as a damn engine can be more powerful and straightforward once you stick any RAD UI, from Lazarus to something small in C#, which is possible in AOT. Heck, even if you have Java, by decoupling the backend you are safe to put even a TCL/Tk GUI, even it if's looks 'horrible' by default, but for serious use, you would love the default "industrial" design. Or just use the Win32 TTK lookalike which would look well on almost any PC.
Ah, yes, reports and the like. Use a damn library to print to PDF, there are zillions. Or, just better: once you get the result in text, just paste the results back to Ted/Writer/Word and then you are free to compose the document in any style you like. Then, well, 'print' to PDF, or PS->PDF.
It might be more complex, yes. But your data won't be mangled in the process. The results would be in a separate text file, outside of any faulty spreadsheet or wannabe database. That output should be pristine and backed up ASAP. As it's text, it's parseable from nearly every machine from 2002. Even more if it's plain ASCII, for sure a thing with science done in English and plain numbers. No localized MSOffice bullshit for formulae, no more numbers parsed as dates, ever.
Anything that can run locally instead of uploading potentially sensitive stuff to random websites. Would be handy on work PCs.
I am asking about alternatives to LibreOffice for a reason (stated)
Pandoc library and Microsoft Markitdown -- that other helpful comments suggested -- seem like two options that might actually work in my case and I will give them a try. My asking here was fruitful.
Running python and using python libraries is allowed on our work pcs but not running arbitrary software and EXEs with or without an installer. I cannot override company security policy, and cannot simply "talk to" our infosec team and get them to allow me to install stuff. Hope this clarifies.
"Unauthorized software" is a thing where you work? OMFG.
LibreOffice also allows to convert documents via command line, so there's one more bonus.
Alternatively, use pandoc, and save the command in a .sh or .ps1 to remember.
This might be useful on a personal PC -- licence seems expensive, though I like it being a one time purchase and not monthly subscription.
Will look to do the free trial to evaluate. (Hope we see more such tooling, and also push the likes of Microsoft to add native support)
My main usecase is on work PC though where I wont be able to install additional software or plugins. So was exploring python scripts and the like.
Thanks for the pointer.
So no tables, footnotes, table of content, math formulas, citations, …
So the better way to create markdown is still to use pandoc and convert your libre office documents into the much more powerful pandoc markdown dialect:
https://garrettgman.github.io/rmarkdown/authoring_pandoc_mar...