[Informatics] Adventures in Libre Office

[Roger Sidhom]

Hi Mark,

As I have moved to a MAC school, my hand had been forced to as Apple doesn’t have access. For the MAC Libre Office’s Base program, DOES NOT WORK! So, I’ve used Open Office.

It’s fine but it makes it difficult for me to teach the students how to use the program as there are very few tutorials out there in google land.



From: <informatics-bounces at edulists.com.au> on behalf of Mark <mark at vceit.com>
Reply-To: Year 12 VCE Informatics Teachers' Mailing List <informatics at edulists.com.au>
Date: Wednesday, 22 March 2017 at 2:00 PM
To: Year 12 VCE Informatics Teachers' Mailing List <informatics at edulists.com.au>
Subject: [Informatics] Adventures in Libre Office

Hi, Microsoft fans

Several months ago I said I was weaning myself off MS Office and transitioning to Libre Office (LO), which is free.

Here are some preliminary findings.

Writer - the word processor.

  *   It does not have the MS ribbon (which may or may not be a A Good Thing for you). I actually prefer the old menu/toolbar model.
  *   I have not found any major MS Word features that are missing in Libre.
  *   It has loaded MS docx perfectly and has warned of potential incompatibilities. On only one occasion a table created in Libre turned into an angry red "X" box when loaded into Word. That's all.
  *   More sophisticated tools such as comments and tables of contents seem to be fully implemented.
  *   In summary - after acclimatising, you would rarely notice that you are missing MS Word at all.
Calc - the spreadsheet.

  *   You'd never know you weren't in Excel. In fact, graph creation is superior.
  *   All imported Excel formulas work as expected. I have complex spreadsheets on my home network that I open and save in Excel on one computer and Calc on another computer and there has been no sign of incompatibility after multiple loadings and savings in the two programs.
Impress - the slideshow software

  *   This may be the tool that raises more compatibility issues than Writer or Calc. It does load Powerpoints properly, but you may find that Powerpoint might have occasional problems loading Impress docs without glitches.
  *   It's symptomatic that I instinctively revert to using Powerpoint to edit my vceit.com<http://vceit.com> slideshows, but I don't think twice about using Libre's Writer or Calc.
Draw - drawing tool

  *   It's interesting that Libre has a separate tool for drawing whereas MS doesn't.
  *   I believed the 'Insert Shapes' feature was primitive compared to MS because shapes could not be connected together and stay connected when moved about... until five minutes ago I discovered 'Glue Points' which does exactly that.
  *   Libre tools may sometimes be a bit less intuitive than MS, or use different terminology but the functionality is there. e.g. I was missing the 'Format Painter' on the toolbar, until I found 'Clone Formatting' in the menus.
  *   Libre sometimes surprises and delights with features that MS lacks, such as the lovely 'Clear Direct Formatting' which instantly strips all formatting from text (great for stuff copied and pasted from webpages or other dox). If I spent as much time delving into Libre details as I've spent getting used to MS Office, I bet I'd find many more hidden delights.
Base - database

  *   I must confess that I have not dared delve far into Base yet, since I suspect that merely cracking its shell will require some learning, and I already have Filemaker and Access to fall back upon when in real need.
  *   Base does not seem to be designed for dopy database beginners.
  *   I suspect Base will be at least competent, but will take some getting used to. That is my next excursion into the world of Libre Office.
Summary

If you (or your school) are paying retail rates for MS Office and no longer want to, Libre Office is a serious contender as a near-seamless replacement.
There may be occasional and minor issues when sharing documents with Microsoft users, but these may pale into insignificance compared with the costs of MS licensing.
You will need to unlearn some habits and do some things in new ways or with new words, but Libre Office is a surprisingly-mature replacement for MS Office.

Cheerio

Mark


--

Mark Kelly

mark at vceit.com<mailto:mark at vceit.com>
http://vceit.com

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