I happen to do a lot in this space so here's what I'd probably say to the Manjaro folks ...thepiney wrote: ↑Sun Sep 15, 2019 9:53 am An update at the end of the article also shows that SoftMaker is adding support for saving in Microsoft Office file formats (PPT, DOC, XLS) to its free version. If this is the result of working with Manjaro, It gives me a good feeling to see open source and closed source companies working together on what will in the end help all users of both.
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At least in terms of Office compatibility, the problem isn't that and some kind of idealism preventing the use of better software, the idea is that we need to get away from an artificial dependence on companies to handle basic computer operations. It's a repeat of what the Linux community has been trying to address for almost 30 years.
FreeOffice has some great tools and is a good office program, I don't dispute that. And while it's true that FreeOffice and it's predecessors have had generally better support for the MS Office file format, it is not perfect, nor will it ever be. It's a format that Microsoft broke so only they would have the keys to fix. You can see some of this for yourself if you unzip any one of your DOCX files and look at the XML source -- it's completely unintelligible. And you better believe that Microsoft's tools to export to other formats are garbage. This means you play exclusively on their turf and nowhere else.
More incompatibilities will continue to stack and FreeOffice will continue to be close-but-not-quite. Frustrated users who will be confused by all the minor issues will have to return to spending $100/year on MS Office. For anything but casual users, playing in this format means that all roads lead back to Microsoft.