Shipping LibreOffice (Was: Re: Feature request)

[James Freer]

On 1/8/14, Lutz Andersohn <landersohn at gmail.com> wrote:
> My 2 cts:
> I understand lightness, which is why I like Xubuntu. Having said that, in
> order to get more users on Xubuntu (or all Ubuntu flavors for that matter) I
> think we need to take into account that a lot of computer work involves
> interoperability with other people/computers. For example my kid's school
> sends announcements often in DOCX file format.
> So, I think interoperability is really important and as such I think we need
> to embrace it. Abiword has no way of reading DOC or DOCX (neither has
> gnumeric for XLS or XLSX) so it is unsuitable in many cases. I really do not
> understand how one can use Xubuntu in a normal daily life interacting with
> people who don't have a strong philosophy about open software or open file
> formats without LibreOffice.
>
> Lutz Andersohn

I do think interoperability is important - however.

Abiword has had development problems on deb based linux and LO-writer
still has although the Calc and Draw I have used without fault.
Perhaps another year and problems will be sorted. I like using Abiword
for most documents simply because it is lighter and simpler than
LO-writer and can do 90% of word processing requirements. Abiword does
read .doc files (office97 but the later .doc it may struggle with).

For the last year I have used gedit to draft documents and then
formatted them in google Docs. Google Docs is lighter than Zoho -
which you will find does all that LO-writer does including .docx. I
haven't yet found glitches/bugs etc in google or Zoho. I have now made
the "confession" - I am a cloud user! I don't like the concept but I
think that is the way things are going.

At present Abiword and LO might as well be left off the release -
Abiword and gnumeric are the first things I remove. There in the repo
for installation but perhaps other apps could be considered in their
place whilst promoting 'cloud'. Zoho I think can be linked to the
ubuntu cloud and that is the future direction for development as i see
it.

james