LibreOffice slams Microsoft for locking in Office users w/ complex file formats
neowin.net
neowin.net
It's so impressively underhandedly sneaky that Microsoft named their ODF-competitor format “Office Open” just as OpenOffice.org's (LibreOffice's direct ancestor) hype peaked with OO.o 2.0 having ODF as its native format, when MS Office finally had a viable and popular competitor for like the first time ever.
https://www.openoffice.org/press/2.0/press_release.html (2005-10-20)
https://news.microsoft.com/2005/11/21/qa-microsoft-co-sponso... (2005-11-21)
microsoft made a total piece of steaming turd, and its users dont care.
They might care, but they just only care a tiny tiny tiny tiny bit, and certainly not enough to inconvenience themselves in any way for it.
At one point during standardization there was a proposal to add several attributes with names like that although most of them referred to non-Microsoft products like WordPerfect, but it didn't make it into the final standard. That's what you are probably thinking of.
Their purpose was to allow someone writing say a WordPerfect to OOXML converter to mark in the OOXML places that were using some specific WordPerfect formatting that couldn't be replicated in OOXML.
OOXML word processors were supposed to preserve those markings if they encountered them but never add them.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/documentformat....
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/documentformat....
I wonder if there is a complete list readily available?
Unlike say an IDE or generic text editor where developers are excited to work on and dogfood the product via self-hosting, word processors are kind of boring and require separate testing/QA.
MSFT has the deep pockets to fund that development and testing/QA. LibreOffice doesn't.
The business model is just screaming that GPL'd LibreOffice is toast.
[1] Plug: https://tritium.legal
Lawyers also tend to pore a lot, so it's worth getting the word right! ;-)
> The bottom line is that there are thousands of developer years of work that went into the current versions of Word and Excel, and if you really want to clone those applications completely, you’re going to have to do thousands of years of work.
This is blatantly not true. Only a small portion of all those "thousands of developer-years" is going to be actively present in these products at whatever point in time, as a lot of those developer-years are spent on replacing the output of other developer-years.
It's the difference between 117 billion humans ever having lived, and 8 billion humans currently living (and just some number of millions at any point in time before the industrial revolution - we've been around for a while, supposedly).
And this is still ignoring that someone looking to reimplement Office would be racing towards something pre-existing, rather than trying to come up with it in the first place. A lot of those developer-hours were spent on design and research, rather than rote implementation.
(It would be nice to make a study about the number of LOCs in Chrome or other big open source project. LOC is not a perfect metric, but it's better than just guesing.)
Word has a compatibility configuration window with a lot of weird features, like (totally made up) add 3 pixels if a bullet list starts a new page because it was the default in WinWord 1.7. And there are like 10 of to mimic 10 versions and perhaps even other editors.
Also, a log time ago Word has a "feature" that converted automatically every acronym into a "Mini Card" or "Smart Card" or something with a dotted underline and a rectangle that appeared when you put the mouse over it. It was annoying. There is still code to show them, and perhaps even code to create them.
Only if Word formats remain dominant. There might be hope with the EU moving off Word that an alternative, real standard might take root.
Maybe IBM was informed and understood the risk, but from what I've read about it Gates was less than forthcoming about what Microsoft actually had.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-rise-of-dos-how-microsoft-got...
https://thisdayintechhistory.com/11/06/ibm-signs-a-deal-with...
From the second link:
However, Microsoft knew that a small company named Seattle Computer Products had developed an operating system similar to CP/M called QDOS, for Quick-and-Dirty Operating System. Microsoft suggested to IBM that QDOS could work as the IBM PC’s operating system. IBM asked Microsoft to license and further develop the operating system, which led to the formal contract on November 6, 1980. After the contract was signed, in December 1980 Microsoft would license the QDOS operating system to begin development of the IBM PC version.
Microsoft is never looking for normal, boring ways to build products. A software company does't get much ahead thinking like this. They're using their old and successful strategy of embracing, extending, and extinguishing.
On top of that, Office supports OpenDocument formats, just like LibreOffice supports Office formats.
Also, IME the Office XML file format is far better supported by third parties - countless apps read/write them. I have multiple apps installed that can read/write an Office file, but MS Office is the only app on my machine that opens OpenDocument.
I was annoyed about the Chrome/FF thing recently (well, annoyed by Chrome, and annoyed as a casual user by Firefox's relative inabilities), so thought about what it'd take to make a new web browser. It's FAR too complicated; there is way too much to implement. HTML/JS/CSS are excessively complex, made for use cases ~nobody will run into, and you pretty much are required to implement everything Chrome does for compatibility. It's crazy Firefox even exists.
I decided instead, as an exercise, to implement an entirely new Internet built on CrypticWeb running the Mystic Beaver Protocol (MBP); surely you've heard of these, they are very big in my household. It's very simple; instead of forking the Internet to add even more garbage, we start from scratch. Instead of JS, we use waterwheel (.ww) files which patch the python script running on the stateful lodge server. I even ported the server to Micropython and can run it on a tiny ESP32C6 that fits on my pinky. The client's written in Python and interprets the simple JSON payloads the server sends over, to render it and interact with the server as needed.
It all works fine, but people are locked into this overcomplicated Bad/Legacy/Corporate/Devil Internet. big smh; wake up, sheeple!
It’s an entire ecosystem
Also, I have tried to use LibreOffice and you have to learn an entirely new tool. The user interfaces are different. Word has its own issues of course but LibreOffice does not feel as polished
There are things in Word that are legacy and carry overs from another time that carry various nuance. It’s not all documented set of features either
Trying to replicate the entire look and feel is incredibly difficult
Most people are going to encounter Word in a corporate setting and to have them switch to another tool is going to a big hill to climb
Maybe they could even release the source under a copyleft license, so the students can learn from it and maybe contribute.
But MS has built this giant moat of integrated proprietary services around these systems that make it difficult to switch away once you are sucked into the environment.
It takes a pretty sizable expense to switch to anything else, while satisfying all of a companies different workflows for various roles and levels of experience.
If not MS Office + it's M365 Eco system, what then? Google Workspace? That's kinda the same problem in a different color?
We had a lot of marketing and sales people who wanted to use Google Sheets instead of Excel to load sales reports from a shared PG database. This is of course a built-in feature (loading a PG table as a sheet) in Excel. Google Sheets obviously doesn't support any imports. They are all paid plugins, and they all make you pay per row or cell or column.
You can write a plugin to do it, except their funky AppScript (which is a custom synchronous Javascript/V8 environment where there is no async or callbacks, and promises block.
Except, the plugin can only connect to MySQL. PG support ask has been open since 2011. They decided in 2014 that they don't plan to support PG. Then in 2018 they thought maybe they can only support GCP Postgres.[1]
Ok, fine. You make your own API to call and load data. No, you can't return more than 50 MBs. So better split your query.
Oh, you want to load a 50MB CSV? There are 3 different APIs for that:
- "Import from GDrive". This is the one you want. Import 50MB in a couple of seconds. But it also requires the most permissions to full access the user's GDrive
- "Basic Import API". This imports at ~100kbps but not always. gets slower for large data
- "Advanced Import API". This imports at ~250kbps but not always. gets slower for small data
and you need to run your own benchmarks[2][3] to understand which API to use in which context, then keep reruning them as things change.
[1]: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/36752790?pli=1
[2]: https://gist.github.com/tanaikech/d102c9600ba12a162c667287d2...
[3]: https://gist.github.com/tanaikech/030203c695b308606041587e6d...
This doesn't mean anything.
The only question is wether they want to learn doing things differently.
But to be more specific - pick their concern, describe the replacement workflow with Sheets, then explain how it's a good replacement
> The only question is wether they want to learn doing things differently.
Of course it's not the only question, among many other questions could be whether they can afford to spend a lot of time/money after learning (though this investment also shouldn't be ignored) to do the same thing, and whether they can do the same for all the people depending on the current workflow
The most egregious are the apple fanboys who try to pretend that the iWork suite is even close to being a replacement for Microsoft office. Like sure, if you only need to write letters and resumes it will do but at this point any free office suite will do...
I collaborate with others, a lot, though. Google is simply better at that
Most people below the age of 30 can switch between Google Docs or Word without blinking. They don't use more than a few of the features of either.
This "big hill" you mention is a fantasy.
The licensing/support is cheaper carries some weight. But Windows to Linux mostly didn't win a lot of fights on the desktop. But Google Docs for collaboration and general simplicity does win over a lot of companies.
I use word processors so rarely that every time it's like learning a new tool. Whether it's Word, Google Doc, LibreOffice, or anything else.
I will say that Google Docs and Word both feel a bit more "polished" than LibreOffice which still feels very distinctly like a 1990's era desktop program. I guess because it is.
I mean… sure? When I saw this headline I was imagining that Microsoft added a brand-new ultracomplicated format. But no, the article is solely about OOXML. Why is the blog post re-litigating a fight that LibreOffice already fought almost 20 years ago?
[0] https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-so...
The truth is, no one needs to be compatible these days. Everyone is either:
- using the same software company-wide, whether it's LO, Google Docs or MS Office
- exporting to PDF when sharing docs with someone outside the organization
The real thing that LO is missing is server side hosting and easy syncing... Until they get that, it's just going to be something used by individuals and small orgs.
I still remember, at my university we had LO installed on lab computers, MS Office was a "requirement" for students to purchase, but most profs simply insisted we simply hand in assignments as Google Docs links because there was incompatibilities between .doc, .docx, the formats made by LO, etc... Google Docs were the only ones that could be shared and be 100% identical on every computer with the link.
If LO had a web hosted solution and provided easy to install server code for organizations, they'd dominate. But they don't...
For those who don't know: it renders the whole LibreOffice interface on server and passes it to you. Lots of issues with hotkeys on non-standard layouts (I use Dvorak), with language switching, with mouse behavior, with clipboard, ugh. Of course it is hungry for resources. No. This isn't the way.
I wouldn't be too surprised if their web version was like that (given how long ago the first version came out), except Nextcloud uses a Collabora-based system for its online editing, and I doubt they'd go with something like that.
There are online ODT editors (e.g. https://webodf.org/demo/ci/wodotexteditor-0.5.9/localeditor....), so even if Collabora's is bad, it wouldn't be too hard to make a better one.
Microsoft isn't intentionally obfuscating the docx. Docx is a shit-show because hundreds upon hundreds of Microsoft business initiatives, executive pet projects, and ancient compatibility rules have all collided to make a giant pile of dung.
If LibreOffice is worried about what docx does to their productivity ... you should see the fucking engineers lamenting INSIDE Microsoft about what it does to their friggin productivity.
This horseshit isn't anyone's plan. This horseshit is an emergent phenomenon like a fucking termite hill in your back yard ... where no single termite is responsible or knoweldgeable, but all of them together made a pile that breaks your lawnmower.
Perhaps Microsoft is at the point where it doesn't feel all that threatened by ODF and is reducing the value of their standard with complexity. Does Microsoft even bother to produce documents that conform to either standard any more?
Granted, when you need formatting, like for a formal letter, you use a template someone made but this is not what most people use Word for.
And don't get me started on "people wouldn't understand how to put things in bold or italics"; they can barely use Word anyway. Might as well use something much simpler. Office "productivity" suites are over to me.
* https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB-WIt1cZYLm1MMx2FBG9...
Here are some of my Markdown documents:
* https://impacts.to/downloads/lowres/impacts.pdf (99% pure)
* https://pdfhost.io/v/4FeAGGasj_SepiSolar_Highlevel_Software_...
* https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2020/04/28/typesetting-markdow...
A lot is possible with Markdown, especially with pandoc extensions.
(2) Hoping you might be able to point me in the right direction. I often take notes with clients in Markdown, and then after the call, do some cleanup. At that point, I would love to export it as a slick-looking PDF, and also HTML which I could paste into Apple Mail. I've done a few experiments with Markdown --> Pandoc --> HTML, but I started to realize I would need to dig deeper into Pandoc, figure out its HTML templates, create CSS. And wasn't sure if I ought to be doing Markdown-->HTML-->PDF. My ideal "flow" would be something like...
pandoc 2025-07-18_Client1_Topic.md --style "Client1.css" ---output 2025-07-18_Client1_topic.pdf --output 2025-08.18_Client1_Topic.html
When digging around in Pandoc, I also got the impression I would need to learn Tex formatting. I haven't figured out a "stack" on this topic, so thought you might have ideas.
Currently, I am using Obsidian for taking notes. Then I use the "Copy as HTML" 3rd party plugin to copy my Markdown notes as basically themed HTML. I then open up MacOS TextEdit, on Rich Text mode, and paste that in. I might do a bit of text formatting here, clean out [ ] markdown links, etc. Next, I copy & paste from TextEdit to Apple Mail. I sometimes color the headings manually, and other basic formatting. Here I'll add the "Hello, " and "Sincerely" wrap around the notes, and send. I'll then check my iPhone Mail to make sure the mail looks OK on Dark Mode.
Seems like a huge gap in the "note taking" tooling, but I'm hoping that I'm just ignorant of a few solid tools that can handle this workflow: "Take notes on a call, send them nicely formatted to client in email / PDF"
Thanks for any ideas / suggestions you can share!
// JRO
https://github.com/microsoft/markitdown
I was amazed when I realised that Word docs were just zip files and you could poke around in the xml files embedded inside of them.
I almost implemented a working React -> Word document renderer back in 2017, but it didn't have support for creating the xml tags with : inside of them (which OOXML documents use).
[0] Open Package Convention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Packaging_Conventions
[0]https://github.com/microsoft/markitdown/blob/da7bcea527ed04c... [1]https://github.com/microsoft/markitdown/blob/da7bcea527ed04c...
What we need today is a web-first suite of apps that does everything Google Docs/Spreadsheets/Slides do, but uses OpenDocument family of standards as their native file format.
Mostly I use LyX and pyspread which are close/open enough.
It is called pandoc and a text editor.
But the complexity is not some kind of conspiracy - it’s inherent - it comes from the fact that Office is ancient and very, very complex with a huge number of features. Many features are implemented in backwards compatible way on top of the old version of similar features and then the whole thing has been back ported from a bunch of C structure to XML which has the most woeful and underpowered schema language imaginable.
IIRC one of the many unfortunate decisions made by MS with OOXML (whether intentionally, or not, or both) is to codify a lot of display and formatting quirks directly in the schema with very little explanation or docs. Instead of making it s different namespace or layer.
So, to implement OOXML, you also needed to reverse engineer, say, behavior of Word97 etc.
It's absolutely horrible to try and edit.
That's because the structure of a PDF is essentially a bunch of media "streams". It's very easy to say "render a jpeg at this location on the page" but that's about it. It doesn't store, for example, the fact that you might need to wrap words around a page. Instead, it's "Here's a box with text in it".
The only thing that really could make PDF rendering hard is adobe put a whole bunch of garbage into the spec. For example, the full spec had the ability to run javascript and flash at one point (not sure if it does anymore).
People lock in people.
What good do you think this does? I'm genuinely curious.
ChromeOS another 2.7% and macOS around 24%.
edit: If I were to guess, Valve/Steam is solely responsible for at least 1 of those 5%.
Because it doesn't necessarily affect anyone. Using Windows ipso facto doesn't mean you will send someone a file they can't read without a Microsoft program.
I have two Windows machines in my home; they have LibreOffice on them, as well as Firefox.
People send me Outlook messages all the time that I can't read at all, and many Excel spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations with features that aren't supported in anything on Linux. I literally have to use a Windows VM with proper Office to read this stuff. And not only work documents, but documents from my children's school/teachers as well.