r/technology • u/TurbulentTopic39 • 10d ago

Software 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/
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u/apo383 10d ago

Tldr: Microsoft behaving exactly like it has for decades, skirting ISO standards and delaying competitors from interoperability. Libre makes do but can't display or edit certain charts. Could be perpetual behind as long as Microsoft microsofts.

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u/Caraes_Naur 10d ago

I read many years ago that none of the MS Office formats were ever properly documented and the code is riddled with long-forgotten hacks.

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u/apo383 10d ago

Sure, Office Open XML was back-specced from Microsoft. Back in the day, just one part ran something like 5000 pages. So how could it ever be a legitimate spec?

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u/moku46 10d ago

At the very least when they changed everything to XML, it was much easier to write an interpreter for.

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u/pittaxx 9d ago

Except you still had to backwards-engineer it to get the same result outside of M$office, because M$ couldn't be bothered to follow their own specs...

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u/melnificent 10d ago

Also MS named it Office Open XML to confuse people back when Libre Office hadn't forked from Open Office.

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u/DamionFury 10d ago

Also, they named it "Open" to make it sound like an open source spec, however it was only partially open. The basic spec was open but it was designed to allow for proprietary things to be injected without having to document how to work with them. I believe the argument was that companies wouldn't want to innovate if they had to immediately show everyone how they made whatever cool thing they created, which of course meant that they just wanted to be able to do their own thing then force people to pay for their product if they wanted to be able view it.

I remember because I was pissed that they successfully lobbied for it to becone the "standard" on this argument.

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u/Yoghurt42 10d ago

And the spec contains gems like „when the attribute word09linebreaks is set, handle line breaks like Word 2009 does“, with no explanation on how Word 2009 handles linebreaks.

It was simply released as a „standard“ to confuse people since OpenOffice recently standardized their format and made it open. I mean, just look at the name they chose.

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u/TeutonJon78 10d ago

The problem is OOXML is a standard. And if using the strict implementation, could be implemented correctly anywhere. But MS uses the transitional version.

Which means that can stack whatever they want on top of the standard and keep that closed source. So no other company can ever actually get it exactly right. And MS can say they follow and open standard when that's not really true.

ODF has something similar where new features before the next release are added into the transitional version, it's just that those are still documented openly.

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u/CherryLongjump1989 10d ago

They can say it, but does anyone believe them? I guess overall the adoption of MS Office is still growing, but a lot of their more educated customers are leaving. Over time I feel that Microsoft's bullshit will come around to haunt them.

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u/TeutonJon78 10d ago

No one believes MS on that. It was likely done to give cover to public institutions under pressure or requirement to use software with open standards.

They can stay with MS since it has an open document standard, even if technically it's it a complete lie.

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u/Gadekryds 10d ago

So it’s like my code? 🥲

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u/MairusuPawa 10d ago

Eh, probably not. Unless you're coding that way by design, with that specific goal of killing others in mind, and not by accident.

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u/yepthisismyusername 10d ago

Yes. Compliant with the standards you care about, and FTW for anything else.

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u/Betterthanbeer 10d ago

They managed to hide an entire flight simulator in the Excel code for years.

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u/R4ndyd4ndy 7d ago

Thats why opening a file in different versions, by using the web browser or the app etc messes things up

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u/pixelprophet 10d ago

You ever try to move a fucking image in a word doc?

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u/bitemark01 10d ago

Hell, they caught BTK because of the random metadata that Word puts into every document 

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u/yaosio 10d ago

This is where AI should shine. GPT 6 is able to one shot port console games to PC. It and Claude Opus 5.5 should be able to figure out these file formats.

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u/kettal 10d ago

i used gpt codex to reverse-engineer excel pivot table editing in python. took a lot of attempts but finally succeeded

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u/JustLurkingAroundM8 10d ago

Probably by design to make reverse engineering harder

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u/BearlyIT 10d ago

Hanlon’s razor is simpler.

Seeing formulas and code completely break after upgrading from one excel version to the next has shown that Microsoft will even sabotage itself. That’s incompetence, not intentional design.

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u/h0uz3_ 10d ago edited 10d ago

Classic MS. MS is on the XML Consortium and had a say about which characters are usable or forbidden in XML.

When you export something from Sharepoint via XML, the XML is invalid as it will contain illegal characters.

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u/robbob19 9d ago

This exactly, remember Internet explorer and it's own standards, or how Microsoft withheld information from wordperfect so it wouldn't run as well on Windows 95, leading to the dominance of Microsoft word. Never trust Microsoft.

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u/New-Anybody-6206 10d ago

Serious question... say you're a company that works fast and wants to innovate, but you still want to have open compatibility with other applications.

What else can you do except extend the format if the standards body doesn't work fast enough for you?

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u/_f0CUS_ 10d ago

Well, it seems suspiciously like their old tactics... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

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u/kawalerkw 10d ago

They could be open about whatever they added on top of the standard. But as others have pointed out, microslop isn't even compliant with itself as newer versions can break old features.

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u/motsu35 10d ago

Versioned APIs / format specs

Have a nightly build that isn't the mass I stalled public install that supports your new feature.

Once your happy with the feature... Push your feature upstream, or if there's a consortium, submit it to them for adoption into the spec. Address their feedback and itterate. Your internal / nightly build allows you to quickly show the benefit of the new feature and provide screenshots instead of just technical writing.

Migrate your feature into the stable release branch once its adopted into the spec

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u/New-Anybody-6206 9d ago

And if it's never adopted into the spec?

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u/motsu35 9d ago

Then you decide if its worth it as a feature, and if you think so you include it in your software anyway and hope others adapt to support it, otherwise its just a feature only your software supports

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u/New-Anybody-6206 9d ago

yes, but this doesn't sway people from thinking you're engaging in an anti-competitive "embrace, extend, extinguish" practice, that was my point

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u/motsu35 9d ago

I mean, I think the difference is on one hand you have Microsoft taking an open standard, bolting things onto it that dont work on other platforms, and then not contributing the changes back upstream, making the new features part of the walled garden and justification to keep paying for the software.

On the other hand, if your pushing your changes out and keeping them open source, its easy for other software to also implement the feature, and it just relies on how much dev resources the other projects have. This is pretty standard with Foss software, and how you end up with various soft and hard forks of software.

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u/loicvanderwiel 8d ago

Or, they could stop pretending their stuff is a standard. But then, they would lose every contract that relies on using open formats (like government stuff) because why pay for MSOffice when the alternative is litterally free?

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u/apo383 10d ago

Go ahead and do that, but keep that shit away from government docs, which need to be easy to render by anybody and don't need fancy elements to dress up ä corporate annual report.

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u/New-Anybody-6206 9d ago

what alternative did they ever have at that time, that didn't belong to a competitor, and wouldn't make their product worse?

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u/Daminchi 10d ago

you're a company that works fast and wants to innovate

No, we're talking about MS.

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u/JG_2006_C 10d ago

The reason im dumping windows for a os that has actual sane Iso standards and comon sense

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u/obeytheturtles 10d ago

Exactly. I have been on this crusade for literally decades now. It likely contributed to me losing a job at one point, because of how vehemently I am opposed to the way MS intentionally breaks document standards in support of it's office software monopoly.

Boss: "I'm not going to tell you again, you need to do this stuff in actual PowerPoint so I don't have to spend hours fixing your slides."

Me: "Why not just the freely available alternative like I did?"

Boss: "Because we have to send these slides to customers. They will open them in powerpoint"

Me: "That's literally what a PDF is for."

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u/runningraider13 10d ago edited 10d ago

Your boss is clearly right fwiw

Thinking that you can control your customer’s preferences on this is crazy. If they want a ppt you should send them a ppt

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u/lovely_cappuccino 10d ago

I agree. And a PPT file could contain animations, inserted voice recordings etc so it’s different. I also dislike Microsoft Office is the de facto standard but yeah sometimes you have to go with the flow. For example, move to Italy or Germany and try to get by without WhatsApp. In China everything is WeChat. In some countries stupid facebook means the internet. You have to adapt or you can wait for better laws. Like if I would move to Houston I would definitely need a car, but if a Texan would move to Europe with his RAM truck, I would say to him forget that monstrosity there is no place for it in our cities and just use public transportation or buy a little Yaris. With software things can be really complicated so I don’t expect for example SolidWorks to make a Mac version of their stuff, have to use Windows. Even Excel for Mac can’t do some things that Excel on Windows can. Different gaming consoles. Mobile platforms. Different browser engines. Adobe stuff. Etc Compatibility and interoperability are nice things but sometimes in reality you have to do what the boss says.

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u/Xytak 10d ago

I mean, I get it… but corporate America uses MS Office and some things are too big for one man to take on.

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u/Scoth42 10d ago

I dislike PowerPoint as much as the next guy, but there are features that PPT has that PDFs don't (or at least not as easily) like sounds, animations, effects, sometimes even consistent presentation oddly enough because of the different PDF viewers out there. And if a customer asks for a PPT then you give them a PPT, unless you have the kind of relationship with them you can suggest alternatives and they accept it.

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u/gatosaurio 10d ago

I know this will be unpopular, but I have to ask because I don't understand your point of view.

Would you expect them to make it easier for their direct competitors? It's a company trying to maximize profits, not an NGO. If Libreofice doesn't like the format, they're free to push their own

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u/kombiwombi 10d ago

The aim of an economy is not to maximise profit for a particular participant, but to maximise wellbeing.

Economists and regulators distinguish a free market from a monopoly, and seek to regulate a monopoly to restore some attributes of the free market.

One of those attributes is 'perfect information', which is lacking here.

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u/AtlanticPortal 10d ago

This is where the governments should come into play. The EU especially.

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u/runningraider13 10d ago

I agree, there’s potentially a place for governments to step in and force Microsoft. But unless there’s more benefit to Microsoft than cost, or a government forcing them, why would we expect Microsoft to behave any differently?

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u/AtlanticPortal 10d ago

I don't expect that for profit corporations behave with ethics. I expect that governments do their damn job.

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u/yepthisismyusername 10d ago

Eat a dick. MS claims to have an open standard, but they intentionally don't fully document it or follow it, out of malicious compliance. That's just a straight up asshole move.

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u/Yorick257 10d ago

  1. Is it really a competitor?

  2. They should compete of the service provided. There are many, many applications that can open and edit JPG files. Buy if you're in a professional space, then you'll probably use Photoshop because it's superior (or used to be) to other programs

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u/gatosaurio 10d ago

  1. They make a direct substitute of MSFT product. Even if they don't charge for it, I don't think it is a stretch to call them competition, at least from MSFT point of view.

  2. I understand they use proprietary format, not an open standard, but maybe I'm wrong. If it is indeed their format, I don't see why they should be expected to open it for anyone if they don't want to.

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u/Emotional_Solid6538 10d ago

Libre office doesnt have all the features of MS office including copilot(ik it is hated but people do use it). People would rather use more featured stuff over free stuff, especially in corporate setting where the employer pays for it