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acomjean

Ugg..

I have macOS 10.12, and office from work. I get prompts to update word, which then tell me to update the OS...

Good times.

I probably should shift to libre office exclusively...

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Ha! You are me, 24 hours ago, you poor unfortunate soul. Let me save you an hour of your life.

* Be me, 24 hours ago.

* Have the desire to find alternate word processor

* Find out that macOS support in LibreOffice, and another alternative OpenOffice, is an elaborate hoax similar to this function:

    func libreOpenOfficeForMacUsers(time:3600s, bandwidth:500MB) { while (time) { time -= 1; sleep } return poop }

Basically, running the apps on macs using retina displays (intr. 2012) results in 100% CPU usage when scrolling even on a blank page, presumably due to a bug or an extremely inefficient update/drawing method. This has been an issue for 8 years.

Bug link for LibreOffice https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=113104

I downloaded and tried out both LibreOffice, OpenOffice. The result was 4fps while scrolling or resizing windows, and of course there was the expected extreme heat generation and 100.0 energy usage in activity monitor due to max CPU usage. [My mac is MBP2020 w 5600m, and yes I love it A LOT!]

* Back to the drawing board. Markdown, perhaps?

Have you tried iWork?

I use Pages as my go-to word-processor and Numbers (on account of its table-in-sheet paradigm) is my favourite spreadsheet by far. I wish they’d beef the latter up a bit with ODBC access and support for iterated solution (very useful for balancing projected cashflow where interest-on-short-term-debt & amount-of-short-term-debt depend on each other) and something more akin to pivot tables.

Pity, it could really be a thermonuclear option, instead they just add useless stuff like collaboration features and smart annotations....

I’ve never really used Keynote because that simply isn’t in my line of work.

I really think Apple has a winner on their hands and are handicapping it deliberately either out of neglect or because they didn’t want to scare Microsoft off back in the day and have some kind of gentleman’s agreement going...

Pretty much any time there’s a viable alternative to a Microsoft product, I find the alternative to be a breath of fresh air. There’s something about Windows software in general that makes me feel like I’m in a prison camp relative to good macOS applications.

OmniGraffle vs Visio. Keynote vs PowerPoint. Numbers vs Excel.

I know precisely what you’re referring to. I used to call it the “Cocoa Smell” when I’d come across an application designed for OS X’s native APIs and not some port of something more or less haphazard.

I suppose now they’re more varied (SwiftUI or whatever the technology of the day may be), but there’s a distinct “this is native” vibe from certain alternative applications that doesn’t emanate from others.

Your comment boils down to "whenever there's a better alternative, I like the better alternative better."

Then again, Google Apps is a viable alternative to MS Office, and fresh air it is not.

Doesn't Excel have a similar table system?

I've had good experiences with OnlyOffice on macOS.

I found it more tolerable running it at 50% resolution.

Still horrible though.

As a non-retina display user, LibreOffice works fine, and it is multiple gigabytes smaller than even a single Microsoft Office application.

What are you using word processing for? Of all the todo list apps I've tried or bought, Emacs' org-mode is my favorite.

Mainly I use it when people send me documents to proof/ comment on.

Learning org mode is on my todo list. (Ironic?)

I believe that if you do "Get Info" on an individual application, you can disable Retina rendering for it. The OS will render it with the full non-retina code path into a non-Retina-sized buffer and then upscale it to fit on your screen at normal size (but with terrible resolution, of course). May help.

We have an old iMac running 10.11. I use an old version of Numbers on it, and it regularly prompts me to say there is a new version of Numbers available. If I search for Numbers in the App Store, it says it requires 10.13 or higher. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I wonder if you tried to download it though if it would give you the latest version for your os.

If I click "Update", I get a spinner in the upper left of the App Store window, but nothing appears to happen otherwise.

Lucky guy, 10.11 is the last to decently display PDFs. I am still on 10.11 only because of that (I am an academic, reading and writing papers).

I'm unaware, what is the issue with later versions?

Likewise. On 10.14 here - what are the issues?

I suspect GP was referring to anti-aliasing for low-res displays, but I’m not sure. I’ve certainly heard that complaint about Preview specifically.

https://www.howtogeek.com/358596/how-to-fix-blurry-fonts-on-...

The issue is that subpixel antialiasing is removed, which affects both retina displays and, more heavily, the non-retina display.

In 10.12, Apple reimplemented its PDF renderer. With that, the subpixel antialiasing was removed. This affects all apps that use it (Preview, Safari, Quicklook, etc.).

In 10.14, Apple turned of subpixel antialiasing in the rest of the operating system (dialogs, buttons, etc.). However, this can be re-enabled by running:

  defaults write -g CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled -bool NO

In 10.15 and 11.0, subpixel antialiasing is completely gone, and can't be re-enabled.

And there isn't a way to use the 10.11's PDF renderer in 10.12 onwards. However, at least a little bit of luck (until 10.13, maybe 10.14): with above setting you find subpixel antialiasing in some a third party PDF apps that were compiled using the 10.11 frameworks, like PDFpen 9 or PDF Expert 2.4.15.

Libre Office, or just see how you get on with Pages, Numbers, Keynote. I like them

My only problem with Pages is that I can’t figure out how to replace the text in templates without obliterating it completely. Otherwise it’s a good Word replacement.

Pages is not a suitable Word replacement at all!

Send a Word attachment to _anyone_ to collaborate. They can open, read and edit the file (cross platform: Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS)

Send a pages attachment. Receiving party won't know what it is and won't be able to open or read it let alone edit it.

Pages is available on iCloud.com. The web version seems pretty close to parity with the native applications.

Can you use that if you are offline, or otherwise have no contact with the Apple ecosystem?

> Send a Word attachment to _anyone_ to collaborate. They can open, read and edit the file

If they hate themselves. Because no other app renders Word documents quite correctly, you end up with pagination problems, missing fonts, etc. PDF would be a better choice, or Rich Text if they have to edit it. I pretty much refuse Word documents because of how awful they are to work with if you're not running Word on Windows.

If only there was an 'Export as Word' function. There is! and it works fine for documents that aren't too fancy schmancy in terms of formatting.

If you’re running 10.12 you are missing enough other security improvements that this is unlikely to be the greatest risk.

Is is not possible to update the OS? isnt 10.12 quite old?

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