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Why ODF and not OOXML - TDF Community Blog
blog.documentfoundation.orgMany interpreted the last article in this series as an attack on Microsoft for using the OOXML format against users’ interests. However, this was only one of my objectives, as I also wanted to raise users’ awareness of fake open-source software, such as OnlyOffice, which partners with Microsoft in a strategy to lock users in. Users are already aware of the advantages of standard, open formats because they access sites every day whose content is accessible thanks to the HTML format. This is a standard, open format that was first developed and then defended by its inventor, Tim Berners-Lee. He prevented Microsoft from transforming it into a proprietary format with Internet Explorer 6. This forced users to have two versions of a site: one in a standard format and one in a proprietary format. Fortunately, Microsoft’s strategy failed in the case of HTML because the W3C – unlike the ISO – never recognised the changes to the format “forced” by Internet Explorer as valid. This was because Internet Explorer did not display sites in the standard format correctly. Ultimately, this forced the company to develop a browser that complies with all standards, thus allowing users to choose their preferred browser
I’ve had a relatively good experience with OnlyOffice, although it has some issues.
Personally I don’t see interoperability as an anti-open issue, but I can appreciate the stance. I think I have to investigate to understand how the Microsoft format diverges from the open standard for office XML files, or in what way the format remains proprietary. I had been under the impression that OnlyOffice follows the open standard.
OnlyOffice does ape Microsoft Office in a lot of ways but I see that as a positive. Users are far more likely in my opinion to switch to something that looks and feels familiar.
LibreOffice is hard to use. The menus and shortcuts are not well organized and the entire suite feels like a relic from the early 2000s. If they invested in a modern UI with less friction for users who are looking for MS alternatives, they wouldn’t be facing competition from projects like OnlyOffice. If they invested in feature parity for mobile users, they wouldn’t be losing potential users to those who offer it.
They have an incredibly powerful backend with far more capability than the more junior OnlyOffice. Yet they fail to recognize why that just doesn’t matter to the majority of users. Most users just want to quickly author and edit files, share them with other users, and get on with the next task. LibreOffice has become overly fixated on niche features and optimizations that are very cool from a technical standpoint but are totally out of touch.
By the way, LibreOffice also supports OOXML, so… do with that what you want.
Most of it is proprietary extensions. There’s a whole wikipedia article over the drama.
Stallman quote:
And FSFE’ stance on it.
Edit: moved it in a separate comment.
Why did FSFE delete this?
No clue. Maybe they got rid of old stuff?
The situation with OOXML didn’t get better at least.
To me, this would be like if VLC made an angry post about the evils of MP3 instead of just making a great player that can handle it (which they have). People still use VLC because we know that it will handle anything. Plus, they’ve kept the interface simple and intuitive, with most needed functions front and center, with lots of specialized features in menus and settings.
LibreOffice is losing ground because they don’t take design seriously and instead of making interoperability a priority, they would rather complain about user preferences.
Simply the fact that, unlike OnlyOffice, LO misses inline equations in presentations (unless you resort to strange hacks and workarounds) makes LO unusable for my use case. I’m not complaining, but that’s what it is.
Yes, from the article:
False information. LibreOffice nowadays has multiple types of interfaces to choose from, including some matching more modern MS office. Give it another try.
It still has idiosyncrasies that create friction. Looking like it’s from early 2000s is much less of a problem imo than confusing buttons and unintuitive workflows. E: It’s also strangely laggy and multimonitor support on wayland is still not fixed
They should default to a more modern interface rather than asking newbies to make the change.
I last ran serious testing a year ago. I ended up going with OnlyOffice. Despite some drawbacks, it was an easier switch that offered less friction and better file compatibility coming from MS.
Do know if Calc has some Power Query equivalent ETL-tool or supports multiple people working a file simultaneously in cloud?
Agreed that there interface looks like the late late 90’s.
I’d recommend Libre more often but it’s a step backwards for most average users in UI. Microsoft has had the ribbon since, what, Office 2007?
I honestly prefer the classic LibreOffice UI. The ribbon thing takes up a lot of screen space and i really didn’t like it when it debuted in Office 2007. Then microsoft made the color a fancy bluish hue so it could be more fancy. LibreOffice is the best
LO also has the ribbon interface. But not by default.
The Ribbon interface is terrible, though. The styles selector doesn’t fit the entire button, and it also doesn’t resize with your window size, remaining super tiny not capable of displaying three full options simultaneously.
Word at least got that right.
My preferred layout is Sidebar, but even there the style is just a regular dropdown. LibreOffice is fantastic, but they need to put some more work into UX.
Good. Those that want it can enable it. I don’t. Takes up too much screen space showing a lot of unnecessary icons
IIRC, the last time I used a new install of LO for the first time, it asked me which interface I preferred instead of defaulting to the old one.
True, but it is a purely aesthetic rearrangement of the menus. It doesn’t make it any more straightforward to navigate. Plus it doesn’t really function correctly on Windows (and it takes up just as much screen space).
It was a good step when they rolled it out about a decade ago, but they still haven’t done the work to make it better organized or show appropriate hierarchy.
And what do you think gui is?
As per my previous comment, it should offer reasonable use of screen space, visual hierarchy, and well-reasoned organization. Moving bad menus to a different arrangement on the screen doesn’t magically make them into good menus.
As a first step, it was a good move, although it was a decade late when it came out. They still haven’t done a major redesign another decade on.
You’re the first account I’ve seen endorse OpenOffice, and I’ve been casually looking for a better alternative to word since the copilot bullshit last year.
Do you have a good example of something they added since LibreOffice forked off that’s worth considering if choosing an alternative?
OpenOffice is not the same as OnlyOffice. The latter is modern software with a decent UI and MS Office file support; the former has had almost no changes since 2014.
OpenOffice ≠ OnlyOffice
OpenOffice is no longer actively maintained to my knowledge, and should be avoided as such