Hacker News Reader

Comment by derefr | Hacker News Reader

Maybe in terms of being a word processor (i.e. supporting all the layout and editing/proofing features that Word has.)

But if, as the GP says, you want a program to “just let you write” (with some "writing-phase" accoutrements like change-tracking, word count, a dynamic Table of Contents, and so forth) — and you want a pleasant experience while writing, that takes advantage of the acceleration of native OS UI elements to keep that writing as smooth and jank-free as possible... then I’d assume Pages would be the clear winner, no?

(That, or just TextEdit. Though I’m not sure if TextEdit is optimized for novel-length texts the way word processors would tend to be.)

View on HN

You can just write with LibreOffice. Your example of special acceleration for Apple made software is unfounded.

I happily used LibreOffice for years, and got a small businesses off Word in favor of it (well, OOo at the time). I’m a fan.

But Pages is much more ergonomic, lightweight, and native on a Mac. There’s not a likely scenario where I’d use LibreOffice over Pages.

The issue with nearly all of these software suites is compatibility.

It is ironic, that libreoffice solves this the best, by being truly cross platform and not requiring special software to be purchased on the receiving end: yet it is the momentum of Microsoft Word that would instead hamper adoption of other word processors.

I am thinking about this, because the reason I would choose not to use Pages, is so that I can share my documents to other companies or even people in my company who may not have a Mac.

That's an excellent reason, to be sure. But here we're talking about an app to "just write", like opening a file and start pounding out an article or something. For someone who wants to do that, on a Mac, and who wants basic formatting and word-processory WYSIWYG-edness, I'd recommend Pages.

For someone who wants that I’d recommend LibreOffice as it does all of that as well.

Just not as natively, quickly, or ergonomically.

No idea how that’s true, there is nothing Pages does differently when it comes to opening a file and “just writing” that LibreOffice doesn’t do. If you honestly get hung up that LibreOffice doesn’t look like it was developed by Apple within the last 5 years then you are always being disingenuous when comparing the software in the first place.

This uh... "discussion".. would make an excellent blog post, comparing Pages/Word and LibreOffice on a mac, based on merits such as:

* Install UX (how difficult, what pop-ups).

* First time user experience.

* Launch speed.

* Consistency with OS (such as using native file dialogs, hotkeys).

* Export Options (perhaps compatibility too).

* Spellchecker (especially if the OS is configured in another language than US english and the processor can detect it).

* Input latency.

I wonder if there would be more, though of this list I think LibreOffice would do very fairly compared to Pages.app and MS Word for Mac.

> If you honestly get hung up that LibreOffice doesn’t look like it was developed by Apple within the last 5 years then you are ultimately being disingenuous

Disingenuous? More like realistic.

I mean this ultimately boils down to “is inconsistent with the design of the rest of the computing experience.” People who care about good, consistent design and can afford to pay for it are Apple’s core market.

Well LibreOffice has at its core the ability to deliver me a text editor that starts in 25 seconds versus the 5 of Pages. I’ll stick to the one that saves me time every time I open it.

Really? It starts in 1 second for me. Must be a Mac thing. I thought they were supposed to be fast?

Well, I didn't count before giving you those numbers. I gave you my feelings, which were way high. It's 1 second for Pages. Libre is too inconsistent to give a number.

It's the story of open-source on Mac. Projects will have an anemic userbase. After all, most Mac users wouldn't be caught dead with Temu MS Word. This means the apps have very poor performance on Mac. No one is filling bug reports.

I think it depends if you preload libreoffice at boot time or not. It makes sense if you are using it daily, not so much if you are using it once every other full moon.

That is because you are starting up word processors instead of a text editor. My text editor starts in less than one second.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com