this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2025
1073 points (99.0% liked)

People Twitter

8553 readers
2618 users here now

People tweeting stuff. We allow tweets from anyone.

RULES:

  1. Mark NSFW content.
  2. No doxxing people.
  3. Must be a pic of the tweet or similar. No direct links to the tweet.
  4. No bullying or international politcs
  5. Be excellent to each other.
  6. Provide an archived link to the tweet (or similar) being shown if it's a major figure or a politician. Archive.is the best way.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Now. Why am I wrong for Libre

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 4 points 36 minutes ago

I just want to write Markdown. I just want to write Markdown. I just want to write Markdown. I just want to write Markdown.

The thing I really hate about modern word processors and everyone's obsession with PDFs is that the vast majority of the time things will never be printed, but everything still focuses on paginated formats. Nobody seems to get this but you can literally send someone a .HTML file that they can just open in their browsers. Even when I tell developers about this they say dumb things like a single file will load slower. Buddy, it's loading from the disk, it's not querying shit, it is okay to make it a single HTML file.

But no, fuck you, just pages and PDFs.

The silver lining is that at least Google Docs (I don't use other editors often) now has a "pageless" mode. But the amount of times I've run into weird things like accidentally backspacing the last character of something with special formatting only to undo it, add extra characters temporarily, then backspace in front of it... Fucking hell. Just let me write Markdown. Just let me write Markdown! JUST LET ME WRITE MARKDOWN!

[–] julianwgs@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 41 minutes ago

There is LaTex which I would recommend for any kind of longer document.

[–] Matriks404@lemmy.world 4 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Yeah, sure, but Microsoft Word web app scrolls smoother than native LibreOffice Writer on my laptop (on Linux), and there are also other bits of LibreOffice that sucks and have sucked for years.

[–] LiveLM@lemmy.zip 44 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (6 children)

Wanna know something fun about Office?
The keyboard shortcuts are localized.

YES, REALLY.

If you press Ctrl+S when running in Portuguese, it doesn't save, it underlines the word instead (Because the word for it is "Sublinhar").

Whoever is responsible for this decision won't die, when their time comes they'll be swallowed alive by the earth and welcomed into the 10th circle of hell, created for them exclusively.

The 11th circle is reserved for he who decided to localize the Excel Formula Functions too.

[–] FalschgeldFurkan@lemmy.world 1 points 5 minutes ago

The commands in Excel are localised too, and if you want to change languages you'd have to install some language pack. And I think that due to admin lockdown policies in Windows, if you have to work on a restricted company machine, you won't even be able to do that because you don't have permission to install stuff

[–] wieson@feddit.org 2 points 1 hour ago

Well, Ctrl+S is def what I would expect my programme to do for saving. But for Italics I want nothing else but Strg+Umschalt+K. English hegemony can get bent.

[–] ulterno@programming.dev 0 points 58 minutes ago

So the Japanese version would require Ctrl+ほ?

[–] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 9 points 8 hours ago

I sure am glad I just use English on all my devices despite it not being my native language.

[–] nialv7@lemmy.world 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Many such wacky cases in Windows. Like where you install your software ("Program Files") is localized too.

[–] uniquethrowagay@feddit.org 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

It's only half localized though, the actual path is still called program files. It just displays the localized name. Which is somehow even worse.

[–] nialv7@lemmy.world 1 points 23 minutes ago* (last edited 22 minutes ago)

I haven't used a localized version of Windows so I don't know for sure, but sources I can find says it's actually different in different languages: https://www.samlogic.net/articles/program-files-folder-different-languages.htm

[–] yermaw@sh.itjust.works 6 points 9 hours ago

I thought my respect for Word had troughed.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 33 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

Microsoft has had a monopoly on office software since the 90s. They illegally leveraged this monopoly to try to destroy competition in other areas. Most infamously, they destroyed Netscape to try to kill competition in the early Internet space. That resulted in a trial for illegally abusing their monopoly which they lost. Then George W. Bush was elected president, and somehow Microsoft effectively got off with essentially no punishment. Admittedly though, part of that was that the judge in the case was so outraged at some of the stuff Microsoft pulled (submitting falsified evidence, having Bill Gates lie under oath repeatedly) that he talked about it in public when he shouldn't, which opened a door for Microsoft to try to weasel out of the loss.

The "evil" in Google's motto "Don't be evil" was widely viewed as being Microsoft. Google was an Internet company in an age where Microsoft was on trial for using their power to make everything about the Internet shitty so that they could control it. In the early days of Google, people weren't even allowed to use Microsoft software, including Windows, without a special dispensation from the higher-ups. Microsoft effectively avoided any kind of punishment for their abuse of their monopoly, but it distracted them and made them cautious, so they weren't able to crush Google before it could get going. Before anybody chimes in about how Google is evil, first read up in what Microsoft did. Google might be a bit shady, but where Google got its monopoly by spending hundreds of billions to make its search engine the default, Microsoft used tactics to destroy potential competitors and drive them out of business.

If the US (and the world) had effective enforcement of the anti-monopoly laws, Word would actually have to compete on its own merits. But, because it's a monopoly, Microsoft can just sit back and keep collecting rent.

[–] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 5 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Microsoft hurt Netscape, but it was AOL that killed it. At the height of the dotcom bubble, Wall street handed AOL more money than they knew what to do with so AOL bought Netscape. Of course they didn't have any idea what to do with it (they still kept putting IE on the discs they mailed out to people even when they owned Netscape) and it eventually withered away and died.

The people that ran Netscape correctly predicted it would go this way, but it was a ridiculous amount of money AOL was offering. Luckily they made releasing the code as open source as part of the deal.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 35 minutes ago* (last edited 29 minutes ago)

No, your revisionist history is wrong. By the time AOL acquired it, Microsoft's damage had already been done. Its stock price had fallen 50% from its peak value.

The reason AOL didn't know what to do with Netscape is that it was no longer a viable business due to the interference from Microsoft. Up until Microsoft started giving away Internet Explorer for free as part of the OS, the plan for Netscape was to charge for the browser. That was perfectly normal. People charged for every piece of software up until then. But, when they had to compete with Microsoft's price of free, they had no real business model anymore.

That's the whole reason that Microsoft was charged with violating antitrust law. They leveraged their operating system monopoly to enter a new business and destroy their main competitor. Even with their falsifying evidence and Bill Gates lying on the stand, it was an open and shut case.

[–] Samskara@sh.itjust.works 4 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

Microsoft did lots of shady shit to leverage their quasi monopoly on PC operating systems. However Microsoft Office was actually better than the competition in many aspects. The main competition for Microsoft Office was IBM's Smart Suite. Excel left industry leader Lotus 1-2-3 in the dust pretty quickly in the early 1990s. MS Word was also better than market leader WordPerfect. Then in the late 1990s Outlook became leading and is still unmatched by anything else. Softmaker Office is the only office suite that still exists from back then.

[–] tangonov@lemmy.ca 4 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

There is currently* nothing Microsoft Office does that I can't happily do in LibreOffice

[–] ohlaph@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

The only thing I miss is Excel. Nothing even compares. I use other stuff now, but man my spreadsheets used to be beautiful. Lol

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 5 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

WordPerfect was the leading word processing program under DOS. When Windows was released Microsoft screwed with them by not giving them full access to all the Windows APIs (something Microsoft was notorious for). Surprise, surprise, at the same time Microsoft was not giving WordPerfect the API info they needed, they were releasing their own competitive word processor in Word.

But, once WordPerfect got access to the APIs, they produced a word processor that was superior to Word. The only reason that Word took off is that Microsoft aggressively bundled it with everything.

As for Outlook, I've never met anybody who actually likes it. The only thing it has going for it is that it's available by default and it's the only thing compatible with emails from other Outlook users. There's a reason its nickname is "outhouse". Outlook did the same things that Microsoft did with HTML and HTTP: embrace, extend, extinguish. They took de-facto and de-jure email standards and modified them so that only other Outlook users could use the email properly. They made sure that if you tried to use anything other than Outlook with Microsoft Exchange, that it wouldn't quite work right.

With Microsoft it's always about taking their monopoly in one area and squeezing another area, driving their competitors away. It's what they're now doing with developer tools, like github and visual studio code.

[–] OsmerusMordax@sh.itjust.works 4 points 6 hours ago

MS Word is significantly worse than WordPerfect. Reveal codes FTW.

[–] cassandrafatigue@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

Capitalism? Or nice things? Your decision.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 42 minutes ago

You prefer feudalism?

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Plenty of nice things in capitalism

[–] cassandrafatigue@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 48 minutes ago

In its gut, being digested, sure

[–] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 23 points 10 hours ago

lol "edit your expectations" got me :D

[–] muse@piefed.blahaj.zone 20 points 11 hours ago

Want to automate your office document? Enjoy making your business dependent on a language

  • that will be a dead end for your developer career
  • where arrays can start at 0 or 1
  • where checking for an array involves ignoring an error and resuming
  • that is guaranteed to be broken a future patch
  • that has to be given permission to run in a security center
[–] BanMe@lemmy.world 18 points 11 hours ago

I have made so many thousands of dollars in consulting fees because people don't know about the "align object: over text" option. I would even show them, and they'd still call me back the next week offering money.

[–] Diddlydee@feddit.uk 134 points 16 hours ago (6 children)

Whoever stole my MS office, I'll find you. You have my Word.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] BenLeMan@lemmy.world 48 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (14 children)

Everyone complaining here about not being able to have unique footers or moving images or ignoring spelling errors just doesn't know what they're doing. You're literally the bad workman blaming the tool. I can do all of those things in Word.

If you prefer another tool, fine. But please stop shitting on things just because you don't understand them.

And PDF was never meant to be edited. Its sole purpose is to give you a document file which comes out exactly the same on computer screens and printers everywhere. Compact, reliable, compatible. If you need to replace parts of a PDF document post publication, it should be prepared using the Forms tools that are readily available in all good PDF suites.

By the way: I paid 30 Euros for an Office 2019 lifetime license. If ever that should not receive further updates then I'm ready to fork over another 30.

[–] AXLplosion@lemmy.zip 39 points 13 hours ago (8 children)

I was working on my thesis a couple days ago using Word, and it permanently deleted a whole line of text when I pressed ctrl+Z to undo a mistake.

That happened with every line on the page until i copied everything to a different text editor and then copied it back to Word.

I respect your take but I will never respect Word.

load more comments (8 replies)
load more comments (13 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›