LibreOffice 7.2 brings improved but still imperfect Microsoft Office compatibility
- Reference: 1629376446
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/08/19/libreoffce_72_native_for_apple/
- Source link:
The new release is not a big one for features but is nevertheless notable for a couple of reasons.
First, there is now an official Apple Silicon build which can be found [1]here , though the Foundation said that "because of the early stage of development on this specific platform, binaries are provided but should not be used for any critical purpose."
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Second, there has been an effort to further improve compatibility with Microsoft Office document formats, with hundreds of fixes to small details that previously prevented identical rendering.
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Both Microsoft Office and LibreOffice use an XML document format. According to the foundation: "Microsoft files are still based on the proprietary format deprecated by the ISO in April 2008, and not on the ISO approved standard, so they have a large amount of hidden artificial complexity." The native format of LibreOffice is the rival Open Document (ODF) standard.
Behind this comment lurks a large amount of intricacy. The Office XML wars data from the early 2000s when Sun led the open-source community in trying to disrupt the dominance of Microsoft Office by promoting its free OpenOffice alternative (LibreOffice was forked from the OpenOffice code).
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ODF standardisation was part of that effort. Worried about losing market share because of standards mandated by governments and others, Microsoft embarked on its own standardisation effort, Office Open XML (OOXML).
Both are now ISO standards, but the complexity of Microsoft's formats, the huge legacy of existing documents going back to the '80s, and the fact that these formats are designed for Microsoft Office, means that OOXML is far from ideal as a universal document format.
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LibreOffice 7.2 on Windows 10
A further complication is that in theory a variety of OOXML called Strict is the preferred standard, but in practice everyone (including Microsoft) uses OOXML Transitional, and realistically it seems that the period of transition may never end. This is the issue referenced by The Document Foundation above yet LibreOffice itself saves in the Transitional format, and an [7]open issue to support Strict gets little attention. In practice, therefore, the Strict format is less well supported than Transitional – even though Microsoft has offered Strict as an [8]option since 2012 .
The US Library of Congress has some pragmatic notes on these formats. Regarding ODF, it [9]said : "Despite official mandates and recommendations, adoption of ODF formats has been slow, particularly in the US," and reveals that the library has "around 52,000 files" with formats in the ODF family.
As for OOXML, the library [10]said that it has nearly 800,000 files in .docx, which it considers an "acceptable format for textual works," unlike the older binary Microsoft Office formats. The library also notes the interest in converting documents from OOXML to ODF and said: "Although simple documents can be effectively converted, a round-trip to an identical document should never be expected."
[11]LibreOffice 7.2 release candidate reveals effort to be Microsoft-compatible
[12]The Document Foundation updates LibreOffice Community to 7.1.1
[13]'It's where the industry is heading': LibreOffice team working on WebAssembly port
[14]LibreOffice 7.1 Community released with user-interface picker, other bits and bytes
Some Microsoft Office rivals made the decision to use Microsoft's formats as their own native formats. The makers of OnlyOffice [15]claimed that "all the objects present in OnlyOffice are created strictly according to MS Office format specs. So, if you look at a doc as a set of objects, OnlyOffice's object models corresponds to OOXML specifications, while Libre's object model corresponds to ODF's ones."
Similarly, SoftMaker Office [16]said that it "uses the Microsoft Office formats DOCX, XLSX and PPTX natively, obviating the need to convert documents for colleagues or business partners."
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Compatibility hassles: A document with a diagram can get corrupted when saved as .docx from LibreOffice Writer (top is how it looks reopened in Microsoft Word)
Following the work done in LibreOffice 7.2, is its support for Microsoft Office formats now so good that this is no longer a concern? In search of a complex document, we took a 150-page PDF, used Word to convert it to .docx, and opened it in LibreOffice Writer.
The result was impressive: the document looked the same in Word and in Writer. Next, to test round-tripping, we saved the document as Open Document Text (.odt) and then resaved as .docx and opened it in Word. This was not so good: diagrams had gone wrong and were now broken up and overlaying the text, when reopened in Word.
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A further experiment established that even without the intermediate step, just changing one character and saving the document corrupted it when opened in Word. Incidentally, this test also showed that using Microsoft Office support for Open Document formats is challenging: in our test, importing the .odt version to Word made the diagrams disappear completely.
No doubt the many improvements the LibreOffice team has made will make compatibility better and many documents will interoperate smoothly, but our brief experiment shows that sticking to one format and Office suite does still reduce friction in some cases.
There is a good financial and standards-based rationale for making that single suite LibreOffice, but against that, Microsoft Office is so deeply embedded that it remains a challenge. That said, in 2014, the UK Government Digital Service [19]selected PDF/A or HTML for view-only government documents, and Open Document Format (ODF) for editable documents.
LibreOffice 7.2 is not just about document compatibility. Users can also enjoy new features like multiple columns in text boxes, new templates for the Impress presentation graphics application, full background fills in Writer, user interface improvements, and a new object inspector for developers. We covered many of these [20]here .
Occasional compatibility hassles aside, LibreOffice remains among the most useful and widely used open-source desktop applications and, unlike Microsoft Office, is available for Linux as well as Mac and Windows. ®
Get our [21]Tech Resources
[1] https://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/stable/7.2.0/mac/aarch64/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YR6APKNPwYYeeG8pI@MFAQAAAII&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YR6APKNPwYYeeG8pI@MFAQAAAII&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YR6APKNPwYYeeG8pI@MFAQAAAII&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YR6APKNPwYYeeG8pI@MFAQAAAII&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://regmedia.co.uk/2021/08/19/libre.jpg
[7] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Support_OOXML_strict_export
[8] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2012/08/13/new-file-format-options-in-the-new-office/
[9] https://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/formats/fdd/fdd000247.shtml
[10] https://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/formats/fdd/fdd000397.shtml
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/15/libreoffice_72_release_candidate/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/05/libreoffice_7_1_1/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/16/libreoffice_team_working_on_port/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/04/libreoffice_71_released_user_inteface_picker/
[15] https://www.onlyoffice.com/blog/2018/08/onlyoffice-vs-libreoffice-what-to-choose-when-you-decide-to-ditch-microsoft
[16] https://www.softmaker.com/en/softmaker-office-features
[17] https://regmedia.co.uk/2021/08/19/diagrams.jpg
[18] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YR6APKNPwYYeeG8pI@MFAQAAAII&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[19] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/open-document-formats-selected-to-meet-user-needs
[20] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/15/libreoffice_72_release_candidate/
[21] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Does "compatibility" mean having the same issues?
"LibreOffice 7.2 brings improved but still imperfect Microsoft Office compatibility"
Fair enough, but has nobody ever used Microsoft Office and found incompatibility issues with their previous version of Microsoft Office. Does perfect compatibility just mean that it would have the same issues that Microsoft is working to fix?
Re: Does "compatibility" mean having the same issues?
Or rather, Microsoft Office has compatibility issues with LibreOffice.
Re: Does "compatibility" mean having the same issues?
Microsoft Office has compatibility issues with the ODF format - do not confuse the software with the file format.
Microsoft does not want complete working with ODF. If it were to get there then people could exchange ODF files rather than OOXML ones, this would mean that it would sell fewer MS Word licenses. A good bit of non compatibility helps with the FUD to worry people about switching to LibreOffice.
Microsoft makes money by pushing obscure, non standardised document formats.
Re: Does "compatibility" mean having the same issues?
I have compatibility issues with Microsoft Office, does that count?
Choices
There is a good financial and standards-based rationale for making that single suite LibreOffice
Possibly, but stability and UX are also a problem. For CFOs the licence costs are less of a problem than potential retraining costs. And LibreOffice's UI has been the victim of some very poor decisions. The ribbon in MS Office is a real nightmare but much of the reworked UI was well done. At least on my Mac, LibreOffice is not particularly stable. And there, for Excel at least, there is the add-in ecosystem in which some companies have invested heavily. All this makes switching more difficult
When it comes to the differences betweem transitional and strict versions of the OOXML specification, these are generally minimal. A bigger problem is that they use completely separate namespaces making handling qualified element names a royal PITA. And the undocumented requirements for MS Office. These are, fortunately, generally documented in the implementers notes but it's not possible to automate their enforcement.
But it's good to see the LibreOffice team engaging more meaningfully with the specification. Many long-standing compability bugs seem to derive from simply not reading the OOXML specification. Again, when trying to persuade companies to migrate, having poor compatibility makes you, and not Microsoft, look bad.
Standards?
If you have 90%+ of the market share, you have the standard. No point arguing beyond that.
Re: Standards?
"If you have 90%+ of the market share, you have the standard. No point arguing beyond that."
That's fine as long as you don't intentionally obfuscate it, specifically to stop rivals implementing it. Which Microsoft (allegedly) did, and continue to do with the never-ending "transitional" version.
MS Office Compatibility?
Which MS office and which application in it?
Also long standing bugs in MS Office
It's only an issue if you are sending documents back and forwards between people that use different versions. Also there is the issue of incorrect column or cell types on Excel and lack of use of Styles in Word and stupid VBA or macros.
See also https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/19/64_bit_microsoft_vba_bug/
It's not been a real issue for 10 years or more for most people.
I just wish it were more compatible with itself. I've been banging my head on the wall with OOo7, where copying lines from one sheet to another in the same spreadsheet (native .ods), text objects won't appear - except they still will print - and then later reappear - except with a different shape and position - and copy-pasting again, then they are not copied.
And saving then reopening the document after a lot of tinkering to get it right, the content of the cells is different too, with new lines disappearing.
It can be exceedingly frustrating.
Let me rephrase that for you.
Microsoft Office is not 100% compatible with LibreOffice 7.2.
I've used LibreOffice for years. When I send people files, I offer the option of .odt or .pdf.
If someone sends me an Office file, it is usually fine. If it is garbage, I request an alternate format or a printed copy. Even the British government accepts .odt files.
Users establish standards, not Microsoft. Grow a pair and switch to .odt.
How compatible does it have to be?
We should be asking the question, "Does it do what we need it to do?" My answer is a resounding, yes!
LaTeX
+ open standards
+ well documented
+ effectively 'bug free'
+ ergonomically sound
+ cross platform
+ excellent printed output
+ easy collaboration
+ (I could go on)
Keeps gettin better
I've used LibreOffice for years and have rarely run into compatibility problems. While I have not done testing on each release, my sense is that the number of problems goes down with new releases. I heartily recommend it to avoid the Office 365 trap.