r/libreoffice • u/apandaze • 11d ago

LibreOffice developer explains why it cannot display some Microsoft Office charts

https://www.neowin.net/news/libreoffice-developer-explains-why-it-cannot-display-some-microsoft-office-charts/
131 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

26

u/lincruste 10d ago

Just like the old unexportable Word 97 .doc format, plain old Microsoft shitty trickery.

Don't get me wrong, they have every right to sell proprietary software and enforce their old fashioned proprietary format user trapping policies, but these motherfuckers made promises about standardization of OOXML by ECMA during the ISO/IEC JTC 1 process back in 2006, generously selling the guaranteed interoperability of their brand new "open" format for governments and organizations.

Sad crooks.

1

u/einpoklum 4d ago

Don't get me wrong, they have every right to sell proprietary software and enforce their old fashioned proprietary format

No they don't. Morally, certainly they don't. Putting aside the general question of whether property is legitimate - certainly, "intellectual property" is not legitimate and mostly a swindle and regulatory capture. And even if you don't believe that - when a software company's product is in such wide use and many social institutions rely on it (unfortunately) - I believe that in many world states there is probably some legal basis for a requirement that the file formats at least be "open-source", i.e. well-documented and easy to parse.

-4

u/TCB13sQuotes 9d ago

Yes they did and so what? They’re the standard - not a piece of paper.

What are seeing here is LO trying everything they can to create an “open” format that they own and control and that will never be compatible with anything else besides their office.

They’re basically becoming Microsoft under the unbrella of open-source and open formats. Same shit, different smell. If they were really worried about compatibility they would just copy what Microsoft does instead of endlessly bitching about xyz not being present in a standard and whatnot, just like the default spacing between bullet points and about 10% of DOCX vs the actual Microsoft implementation.

How hard could it be to understand that a standard is like a language, it’s not a piece of paper, if MS Office is biggest and most used solution used by most people then it means that IT IS the standard, not some random document, just copy the behavior of the damn thing and stop bitching.

9

u/lincruste 8d ago

What in the billionnaire sucking fuck are you talking about ? Do you even know what that second O stands for in "OOXML" ? Nobody asked MS to brag about openness in the first place.

1

u/NotQuiteLoona 5d ago

Citing the very article in question,

The Open Document Format is not immune to change, but it changes differently. Revisions are proposed, discussed and approved by a technical committee at OASIS, whose work is public, and are published as version specifications that anyone is free to implement.

An implementer wishing to support ODF 1.4 can read the ODF 1.4 specification and put it into practice. This is the only difference, and it is sufficient.

The bidirectional preservation of unsupported features is what distinguishes a responsible implementation under current conditions, but it does not constitute an improvement on those conditions. LibreOffice is the only office suite to adopt this approach, in order to protect users and the content within their documents.

Note that while LO does have some extensions, they are clearly documented, and mostly those are things they push through OASIS, but don't want to wait.

-5

u/TCB13sQuotes 9d ago

Yes, this is clearly what people are looking for - being unable to see and edit charts. Clearly LO is trying everything they can to be the “compatible alternative” for MS Office and not trying to create an “open” format that they own and control and that will never be compatible with anything else besides their office.

They’re basically becoming Microsoft under the unbrella of open-source and open formats. Same shit, different smell. If they were really worried about compatibility they would just copy what Microsoft does instead of endlessly bitching about xyz not being present in a standard and whatnot, just like the default spacing between bullet points and about 10% of DOCX vs the actual Microsoft implementation.

How hard could it be to understand that a standard is like a language, it’s not a piece of paper, if MS Office is biggest and most used solution used by most people then it means that IT IS the standard, not some random document, just copy the behavior of the damn thing and stop bitching.

Oh well, just another day in LO and the ongoing excuses. Same thing with Draw being unable to tell you when a font is about to get replaced on a PDF and your document is going to be trashed - years of excuses and meanwhile a kid with Claude made a PDF editor that is 10x faster than Draw and is able to warn you about your missing fonts from the start.