FREE OFFICE SOFTWARE QUESTION

PeteDutcher · Apr 18, 2012

I know that Open Office adds a bunch of junk to documents, but has anyone tried Libre Office or Lotus Symphony?

Both are free, and I have them listed on my new website for downloads, but in regard to writing novels, how do they fare?

My new Website: The Dutcher Journal.

(my site doesn't officially launch until May 1...but it's live. Just going through adding of content and tweaks atm; doing it myself)

Thank for responses!

benbradley · Apr 18, 2012

What kind of junk do you mean?

Libre Office is the new Open Office, so it almost certainly adds the same "junk," whatever that is. I've used both with no problem.

I haven't heard of Lotus Symphony in decades. I presume it's been updated (to run on, like, Microsoft Windows instead of MS-DOS - at least that's what Lotus 1-2-3 ran on).

Jamesaritchie · Apr 18, 2012

It doesn't add any junk at all that you don't want added.

Cyia · Apr 18, 2012

The only problem I ever had with OO was in opening Track Changes on a document saved with true Word. Mine always screwed up the changes, running them all together, or skipping lines so they pointed to the wrong one.

kuwisdelu · Apr 18, 2012

PeteDutcher said:
I know that Open Office adds a bunch of junk to documents,

No it doesn't. But it's not being maintained anymore, so don't bother using it anyway.

ETA: Well, it looks like Apache is taking over maintenance now...

but has anyone tried Libre Office or Lotus Symphony?

Both are free, and I have them listed on my new website for downloads, but in regard to writing novels, how do they fare?

Probably about the same. They're both based on the same OpenOffice.org code. However, Lotus Symphony is discontinued and being replaced with Apache OpenOffice IBM Edition.

I'd just go ahead and use LibreOffice if you need free.

benbradley said:
I haven't heard of Lotus Symphony in decades. I presume it's been updated (to run on, like, Microsoft Windows instead of MS-DOS - at least that's what Lotus 1-2-3 ran on).

The new one is another fork of OpenOffice.org code by IBM, but according to the Wikipedia, they're already given up on it.

L.Blake · Apr 18, 2012

Apache took over OO? Wow, I'm out of the loop. Thanks for the heads up. Do you use LibreOffice, Kuwisdelu? If you do use it, can use save files in all the different formats? I have stuff saved in doc and rtf.

Thanks
L.

Little Ming · Apr 18, 2012

L.Blake said:
Apache took over OO? Wow, I'm out of the loop. Thanks for the heads up. Do you use LibreOffice, Kuwisdelu? If you do use it, can use save files in all the different formats? I have stuff saved in doc and rtf.

Thanks
L.

I use LO, and yes, you can open and save doc and rtf files.

I am curious to know what all this "junk" is though.

I've never used Lotus Symphony, but for a simple word processor (really simple

) I like RoughDraft and Atlantis Nova.

FOTSGreg · Apr 18, 2012

The OP likely had MS Office and Word confused with OpenOffice. MS Word is horrible for the amount of extraneous coding that gets embedded in documents. While OpenOffice can save in MS Word format it doesn't embed hardly anything in the document that I've seen so far.

L.Blake · Apr 18, 2012

Thank you Little Ming, I will probably download it later this week.

L.

Jamesaritchie · Apr 18, 2012

FOTSGreg said:
The OP likely had MS Office and Word confused with OpenOffice. MS Word is horrible for the amount of extraneous coding that gets embedded in documents. While OpenOffice can save in MS Word format it doesn't embed hardly anything in the document that I've seen so far.

Again, Word embeds only what you let it embed.

FalconMage · Apr 18, 2012

Hi, Folks.

For "free" office software, look into Microsoft's SkyDrive. It's an online storage space, but it also lets you edit .doc files right in place. The Web interface is not a full instance of MS Word. Just putting it out there as an option.

ComicBent · Apr 18, 2012

The LibreOffice suite is great. I used the old Open Office.org suite until LibreOffice "forked" into its own version.

LibreOffice produces a fairly small file. It does not load any junk into the file that I am aware of.

I just downloaded the most recent update tonight.

Google *libreoffice download*

and then choose the cnet.download site for the program itself. It downloaded twenty times faster from there than from libreoffice.org tonight for some reason. I finally just gave up on the libreoffice.org site.

However, you will need to go to libreoffice.org to download the help file. I did not see it on the cnet.download site.

Install the main program first; then the help file.

I recently had to buy Microsoft Office 2010. Sigh, what can I say? For anyone who has learned earlier versions well (Office 97, Office 2003), 2010 is an insulting joke. If Microsoft had not enjoyed a twenty-year monopoly in computing, Office 2007 and 2010 would have wrecked the company, and rightly so.

PeteDutcher · Apr 20, 2012

FOTSGreg said:
The OP likely had MS Office and Word confused with OpenOffice. MS Word is horrible for the amount of extraneous coding that gets embedded in documents. While OpenOffice can save in MS Word format it doesn't embed hardly anything in the document that I've seen so far.

No confusion at all. The junk I mentioned is explained in the Smashwords manual.

Microsoft Word is actually pretty clean. If you make coding visible you'll see that. The only fault I've found in it is in regard to bookmarks...you have to clean them up after you are done. Word tends to add extras to the bookmark listings.

PeteDutcher · Apr 20, 2012

ComicBent said:
The LibreOffice suite is great. I used the old Open Office.org suite until LibreOffice "forked" into its own version.

LibreOffice produces a fairly small file. It does not load any junk into the file that I am aware of.

I just downloaded the most recent update tonight.

Google *libreoffice download*

and then choose the cnet.download site for the program itself. It downloaded twenty times faster from there than from libreoffice.org tonight for some reason. I finally just gave up on the libreoffice.org site.

However, you will need to go to libreoffice.org to download the help file. I did not see it on the cnet.download site.

Install the main program first; then the help file.

I recently had to buy Microsoft Office 2010. Sigh, what can I say? For anyone who has learned earlier versions well (Office 97, Office 2003), 2010 is an insulting joke. If Microsoft had not enjoyed a twenty-year monopoly in computing, Office 2007 and 2010 would have wrecked the company, and rightly so.

Actually, I have the entire 2010 office suite for Microsoft. I was taken aback by the changes as well, but once you get use to them it is better than the old ones.

But I see your point, because learning how things are done in 2010 was confusing. I finally got it customized the way I like it.

I was asking about the others because of an article I'm working on for my new website at www.thedutcherjournal.com

(I'm putting together a "Prose Anatomy" column)

PeteDutcher · Apr 20, 2012

Thanks for the input, everyone

Al Stevens · Apr 20, 2012

You might want to look at AbiWord. http://www.abisource.com/ It compares well with Open Office, LibreOffice Writer and Word.

ETA: It's missing a few features (e.g. tracked changes, PDF export), but they're working on it.

Alexys · Apr 23, 2012

About AbiWord: it has minor display glitches (kerning not applied to variable-width fonts, text cursor hard-coded to black rather than allowed to take the platform colour, some others). How much of an annoyance things like that are depends on the user. It does have an equivalent of Word's old "normal" mode (the one that isn't paginated or tuned for Weblike display), which Open/Libre Office didn't, the last time I checked.

Calligra ( http://www.calligra.org ) is another alternative, now that it's finally hitting the release stage, but I haven't bothered to try it yet.

Al Stevens · Apr 23, 2012

Abiword also has smooth scrolling with the arrow keys. Open and Libre both jump the display a half page when the cursor hits the margin. Drives me nuts.

thothguard51 · Apr 23, 2012

PeteDutcher said:
Actually, I have the entire 2010 office suite for Microsoft. I was taken aback by the changes as well, but once you get use to them it is better than the old ones.

But I see your point, because learning how things are done in 2010 was confusing. I finally got it customized the way I like it.

I was asking about the others because of an article I'm working on for my new website at www.thedutcherjournal.com

(I'm putting together a "Prose Anatomy" column)

I have been using Office for years, full suite, and I have to agree that 2010 is better than previous versions.

The reason I stay with MS Office is because most agents, editors, and publishers use MS on their computers. I just feel its easier when you don't force the agents, editors, and publishers to convert your document into something they can read easily...

Maybe I am just overly cautious, or too old to learn new systems... :Shrug:

Williebee · Apr 23, 2012

The reason I stay with MS Office is because most agents, editors, and publishers use MS on their computers. I just feel its easier when you don't force the agents, editors, and publishers to convert your document into something they can read easily...

I can agree with your reasoning -- wanting to use software that is compatible with the people you are pitching to, so I should probably point out that both Libre Office and Open Office will do a "one click - Save As" to the formats the agents desire. (MSOffice, pdf, Word Perfect... pretty much whatever.)

Maryn · Apr 23, 2012

Open Office can also be set so the default Save is in .doc form. That's what I did.

Maryn, technophobe

Al Stevens · Apr 23, 2012

When an editor or beta reader tracks changes in Word to post corrections and comments (and expects the same in return), the other programs don't always process them properly if at all. In which case you need Word. I use 2002 for that feature alone.

Williebee · Apr 23, 2012

Al Stevens said:
When an editor or beta reader tracks changes in Word to post corrections and comments (and expects the same in return), the other programs don't always process them properly if at all. In which case you need Word. I use 2002 for that feature alone.

I've seen this, as well. Not enough (for me) at beta reading stage, to justify spending the money. At editor stage? Oh, heck yes.

Calliopenjo · Apr 23, 2012

This reply isn't in direct response to the question but if you are looking for an alternative to MSWord, whatever version you have, there are alternatives to that.

If you have Chrome, they have a long list of writing apps that you could use. All free but one.

I use Write Space. It's a black screen with white print. It's nothing fancy. It's plain text.

The other I use is Zoho Writer. It's a basic word processing program. It has bold, underline, and italics capabilities. If there's a story you need to write this is a possibility. There are file exporting options: HTML, PDF, DOCX, DOC, etc.

Both of these are free and easy to use. At least it was for me after using MSWord for years.

Just an option.

benbradley · Apr 23, 2012

There's also Google Docs, which is out there in Teh Cloud along with your document, you just go to the site with a web browser. I've not actually used it, except that one time Nov. 1st when someone was going for a 50k day for NaNoWriMo (NaNoWriDa?), and had a Google Doc set up for public viewing. It was fascinating, a readable fantasy novel was being written right in front of my eyes - it almost kept me from writing enough myself (oh, looky here). She only got to maybe 30k, because she stopped for a short midday nap but misset her alarm clock. Another Atlanta ML DID write 50k that day.

But I think Google Docs is also "supposably" MS Word compatible.

FREE OFFICE SOFTWARE QUESTION

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