Now. Why am I wrong for Libre

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[–] 174 points 11 months ago (5 children)

Whoever stole my MS office, I'll find you. You have my Word.

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  • [–] 36 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    I hate you so much.

    Have my upvote.

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  • [–] 20 points 11 months ago* (3 children)

    PowerPoints at you, enthusiastically.

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  • [–] 82 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (11 children)

    Wanna know something fun about Office?
    The keyboard shortcuts are localized.

    YES, REALLY.

    If you press Ctrl+S when running in Portuguese, it doesn't save, it underlines the word instead (Because the word for it is "Sublinhar").

    Whoever is responsible for this decision won't die, when their time comes they'll be swallowed alive by the earth and welcomed into the 10th circle of hell, created for them exclusively.

    The 11th circle is reserved for he who decided to localize the Excel Formula Functions too.

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  • [–] 9 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    The commands in Excel are localised too, and if you want to change languages you'd have to install some language pack. And I think that due to admin lockdown policies in Windows, if you have to work on a restricted company machine, you won't even be able to do that because you don't have permission to install stuff

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago

    I HATE this. Got absolutely shellshocked by this on a work computer recently.

    Luckily, you can "just" change your locale! This is a process that took me a whole hour to figure out, required admin access as well as a system reboot. And it didn't even work properly.

    The same day I ran into a quirk regarding the filename field. Fun fact: Word pulls this directly from the OS. This almost makes sense, except if you want to decide whether or not the file ending is displayed (ie .word). Then you need to set this IN YOUR OS?! There is no other way to set this, and it is broken. When you finally figure this out and set it back to not display the file ending, word keeps doing it, seemingly forever. Yes also through reboots. This issue was fixed over 10 years ago, and then promptly reintroduced and never addressed again. Libreoffice just has another field, this took me all of 30 seconds to discover. But then you have to save in odf, because the word format is ass apparently.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago* (1 child)

    Oh i fucking hate this one, at least once a week I hit control S and excel goes "no problem I'll underline that cell fo you cause obviously that's the shortcut for 'sublinhar' "

    But that's not the worst part.

    The worst part is the actual save shortcut in portuguese.

    It's ctrl+b. I can't think of any portuguese 'B' word that would translate to save.

    'Save' = 'salvar'.

    But we can't do Ctrl+s BECAUSE THAT SHORTCUT IS ALREADY TAKEN

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    [–] 40 points 11 months ago (38 children)

    I just want to write Markdown. I just want to write Markdown. I just want to write Markdown. I just want to write Markdown.

    The thing I really hate about modern word processors and everyone's obsession with PDFs is that the vast majority of the time things will never be printed, but everything still focuses on paginated formats. Nobody seems to get this but you can literally send someone a .HTML file that they can just open in their browsers. Even when I tell developers about this they say dumb things like a single file will load slower. Buddy, it's loading from the disk, it's not querying shit, it is okay to make it a single HTML file.

    But no, fuck you, just pages and PDFs.

    The silver lining is that at least Google Docs (I don't use other editors often) now has a "pageless" mode. But the amount of times I've run into weird things like accidentally backspacing the last character of something with special formatting only to undo it, add extra characters temporarily, then backspace in front of it... Fucking hell. Just let me write Markdown. Just let me write Markdown! JUST LET ME WRITE MARKDOWN!

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  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago (20 children)

    Paginated formats still have advantages even if they are never printed. It just makes referencing stuff so much easier, if you can say "page 451, second headline, third paragraph".

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (7 children)

    Even easier, for a markdown (text) file, you could just tell someone the line to go to.

    If people used markdown instead, then everyone would have nice text editors installed which would make this easy.

    Not to mention how much faster searching through a text file is compared to a word doc (eg, you could ctrl+f the headings name and have a result instantly).

    If stuff like this was adopted, integrations could be very nice (with easier solutions than saying "go to x page and look for x header", I could even imagine links being a thing assuming this feature is developed).

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago* (4 children)

    Not to mention how much faster searching through a text file is compared to a word doc (eg, you could ctrl+f the headings name and have a result instantly).

    Why don't you just ctrl+f in a word doc/PDF? That's still possible, but it's not exactly of much help in many cases. E.g. if the headline you are looking for is the name of a basic concept that appears all over in the document. Page 512 only appears once.

    All other forms of indexing are content-dependant. Indexing by page works the same on any page-based document.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    You can of course, but I was specifically pointing out how slow word is when doing any search query.

    Page 512 or line 10054, more or less the same thing right?

    Didn't think about duplicate header names, in those cases I guess you would need to be given a line number to go to if someone's sharing a section for you to see.

    I don't use word collaboratively that heavily so maybe people telling you to "see page 512" is common and I can see how saying "go to line 100512" is harder. I'm sure nothing would stop editors from introducing a feature for fake page numbers.

    There will always be certain drawbacks though, most may be fixed by editors having nice UX, others maybe not.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (2 children)

    A good example for what I mean with the header names is e.g. the datasheet of a microcontroller. For e.g. the Atmega328p, that's a PDF with a few hundred pages.

    If you search for a section explaining a feature, and you CTRL+F for the name of the feature, which is the headline of the corresponding section, you will get matches for the same exact string of characters all over the document: first in the feature list in the beginning of the document, then on the pinout, then in the text of any other feature that references the feature you are looking for, then in the appendices and lastly in the glossary. Somewhere in the middle of these potentially 100s of matches will be the correct one.

    After a while of using that document, you will have the most important page numbers memorized.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    But how are you going to package it as part of a subscription and make billions off that idea? You need to go back to capitalism school!

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (11 children)

    Nahhhh, you gotta think outside the box. You can tell people section 3, subsection 2, etc. even without pages. I'm addition, check this out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_element#Anchor Click that. See the little but at the end? #Anchor? We can already use URI fragments to link to specific sections.

    "But JackbyDev, I'm not linking to a specific section of something in an outline, I need to link to a specific part of long form content, like a novel. I can only do that with pages."

    That's a good point, but modern browsers have a way to deal with that too. This is where text fragments help: they allow the link author to have full control over what text to link to, without requiring any special markup in the target document. You can use #:~:text= to link to specific blocks of text.

    Edit: Lemmy is reformatting that for some reason and makes it not work. Try copying and pasting the below for a working example.

    https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/URI/Reference/Fragment/Text_fragments#%3A%7E%3Atext=This+is+where+text+fragments+help%3A+they+allow+the+link+author+to+have+full+control+over+what+text+to+link+to%2C+without+requiring+any+special+markup+in+the+target+document.

    Edit 2: Apparently Lemmy reformats links in preformat snips. Amazing. 🫩 Maybe slap this into the URL bar en-US/docs/Web/URI/Reference/Fragment/Text_fragments#:~:text=This%20is%20where%20text%20fragments%20help%3A%20they%20allow%20the%20link%20author%20to%20have%20full%20control%20over%20what%20text%20to%20link%20to%2C%20without%20requiring%20any%20special%20markup%20in%20the%20target%20document. after pasting https://developer.mozilla.org/ Nothing more frustrating that trying to show people a very cool and useful feature of browsers only for a different tool to just ruin it.

    Edit 3: Fuck me for suggesting something cool and interesting, I guess.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago* (10 children)

    I think you just proved my point.

    None of that is nearly as simple and accessible to non-techy people as page numbers. A page number would also not have been scrabled by Lemmy.

    (I of course do know about link anchors and all that, but it's just a hassle to use.)

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (9 children)

    No, that's a Lemmy bug. If it's screwing up URLs like that it could affect other URLs too. Not a bug of text fragments. Text fragments are still relatively new. Firefox only began supporting them last year. Annoyingly, to create then in Firefox you still need to go into about:config or use an extension. But still, the idea that we should favor paginated format just because you can say "page blah" when we have better ways is foolish. Saying "Search for the phrase 'blah blah blah'" works equally well without text fragments.

    And yes, it's annoying that anchor links are too difficult to link to. But again, the idea that we should accept all the baggage of paginated formats just because anchors tend to be done incorrectly is foolish as well.

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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago (8 children)

    The point was that text fragments, link fragments and even "search for the phrase X" are things that are brittle and require software support that's not necessarily a given. Having to enable experimental features of adding extensions are far too much hassle for the average user.

    I honestly don't see what "baggage" paginated formats have. If you don't like pagination, turn it off in your PDF viewer. That's much easier to do than to get all software in your tool chain to work correctly with text fragments.

    Not a bug of text fragments.

    This is a pretty foolish statement. It's totally immaterial "who" is at fault if the feature doesn't work. You did not manage to send a working text fragment over Lemmy. Doesn't matter what in the chain screwed up.

    I can tell you the page to turn to via a phone call or even in person. Try sending a text fragment by telling it to someone. Text fragments are a nice little feature but far too technical to adequately replace pagination in all circumstances.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (7 children)

    How often are you in the scenario that you you're on a phone call and need to tell someone where something is in a document versus communicating with them online where you can send a link though? Every work meeting I've been in for the past nearly a decade now has been through something like Teams, Slack, Zoom, etc. where I can send text.

    Also PDF viewers are the baggage in the scenario. Everyone uses web browsers everyday. PDF viewers are the odd one out in the majority of people's "tool chains".

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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago (6 children)

    Which browser do you use that doesn't have an integrated PDF viewer?

    PDF is just another file format, and compared to websites it's a really light format without active scripting. No tracking, no intrusive ads, no malware, no fishing, just a plain format that displays content and does nothing else.

    Web browsers are baggage in that scenario.

    And yes, I do talk to people. We do do in-person meetings.

    And it's a little weird that you have to downvote every post just because you can't stand that people might have other opinions than you.

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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    compared to websites

    When did this become about websites? I was always suggesting HTML files over PDF files.

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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

    What is another name for HTML files?

    Or to put it differently: When was the last time you sent a HTML file over eMail or some other way except sending the URL to a website?

    Also, to use text fragment links you need to have the page hosted on a webserver. Can't send links to local files since you don't know the full path it will end up under on the local file system.

    So if you just want to send a file and a reference to which part of the file you are talking about, you now need to either host the file on a webserver or have the recipient rewrite the link to include the path where they ended up putting the HTML file. Talk about baggage here.

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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    And it's a little weird that you have to downvote every post just because you can't stand that people might have other opinions than you.

    Because I just wanted to show you a cool feature and due to a bug totally out of my control you use that as a chance to be condescending.

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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    No, I took the bug as an example to show why the feature is a nice addition but not a replacement of older, easier and more resilient forms of sharing a location in a document.

    You apparently can't handle talking to someone who has a different opinion, and now I am going to be condescending, because that's a sign of a very brittle personality.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    I must be the odd one. I find PDFs easy to use, convenient, easy to edit, and manageable. The business world relies quite a bit on PDF. The whole point of PDFs is that they can easily be printed, signed, be fillable forms, or stored as a single file where the size can be adjusted to fit storage requirements. The only issue I have with them is so many editors all want money for the ability to edit them whereas other document formats have software like LibreOffice that are free. I get you’re probably good at markdown, but the rest of the business world that relies on PDFs and can barely handle them or open a web browser. Their brains would melt if they couldn’t simply open or print a single file.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    Alternatively, if the business world can already handle PDF, then they can surely handle markdown. They're already easy to open, and just like a PDF is easy (???) to edit as long as you have the right software, Markdown's easy to get predictable printing out of even with the right* software. I think the PDFs are probably slightly easier for forms, but that's about it. Everything else is just a matter of familiarity, and imo, it's easier to get familiar with Markdown.

    *If this somehow doesn't work out, they could surely make do with a standard print preview.

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  • [+] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 child)
  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    No. I simply find them easy to use. Maybe it’s because familiarity, but I see nothing inherently difficult with saving a document as PDF, and making them form-fills with the right software isn’t too hard. When someone is sent a contract or something they tend to be used to looking at what they would see on paper, PDFs tend to be what they’re used to and very basic WYSIWYG, so people don’t have to think too hard about it.

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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 child)

    You find PDFs easy to edit? Also, there's no reason why you can't make a single HTML file the way you make a single PDF file. It's not done in the web for organization and optimization reasons, but it's still possible.

    Also, what do you mean about resizable? Open a web browser, adjust the width. Look at the text. Watch as it moves. Do that with a PDF, absolutely not the same. PDFs have a static size.

    Form filling with HTML is easy too. https://www.w3schools.com/html/html_forms.asp

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  • [–] [S] 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (8 children)

    Obsidian. Great notes app with a ton of features and is free. Open source too, I think, but could be wrong on that. I usually am. But it's all in markdown baby! I use it for my dnd world and notes.

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Unless they've open-sourced it in the last year or so, Obsidian isn't open source. That being said, it does have big vibes of open source. Like, there's more to open source than simply the source code being available — it's also about the general ethos of openness. When I was using Obsidian, I felt reassured that my notes were my own, and they would still function mostly the same if Obsidian went under. It's a big part of why I switched to it from Notion

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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Obsidian is an org-mode/org-roam wannabe

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    Yeah, but getting into org-mode low key feels like the tinkering equivalent of starting a heroin habit. I say this as someone who basically lives in org-mode nowadays. I am the weird kind of person who relishes the learning curve, and for me, getting to tinker with my tools helps keep me motivated to actually use my note taking systems. I think that people like me are outliers though.

    That is to say that I don't think "wannabe" is the right word, because Obsidian isn't trying to be org-mode. I'd maybe call it "org-mode lite", because of how it takes some of those features and repackages them to be more accessible to a wider audience. I don't think that's a bad thing though — indeed, Obsidian was my gateway drug to where I am now

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    Obsidian is nearly perfect. My biggest gripe is the link format it uses, even when using Markdown style, doesn't use the full relative path to files, just the name of the file. So you can't click them in say, VS Codium and have them work.

    My perfect tool would be something like Obsidian but uses the GitHub Pages approach while not being tied to GitHub. (The GitHub Pages gem fails in a few ways if the repository doesn't have a GitHub remote.)

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    I just wish that obsidian would let me self host a server with their software.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago* (1 child)

    What do you mean by this, an obsidian web client that access a local store? They don't make that. That's not "their software". You could set up a vm to remote into, with obsidian installed/running.

    Synchronization can be achieved via many other mechanisms also.

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  • [+] 93 points 11 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 25 points 11 months ago

    lol "edit your expectations" got me :D

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  • [–] 23 points 11 months ago

    I have made so many thousands of dollars in consulting fees because people don't know about the "align object: over text" option. I would even show them, and they'd still call me back the next week offering money.

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  • [–] 45 points 11 months ago (22 children)

    Microsoft has had a monopoly on office software since the 90s. They illegally leveraged this monopoly to try to destroy competition in other areas. Most infamously, they destroyed Netscape to try to kill competition in the early Internet space. That resulted in a trial for illegally abusing their monopoly which they lost. Then George W. Bush was elected president, and somehow Microsoft effectively got off with essentially no punishment. Admittedly though, part of that was that the judge in the case was so outraged at some of the stuff Microsoft pulled (submitting falsified evidence, having Bill Gates lie under oath repeatedly) that he talked about it in public when he shouldn't, which opened a door for Microsoft to try to weasel out of the loss.

    The "evil" in Google's motto "Don't be evil" was widely viewed as being Microsoft. Google was an Internet company in an age where Microsoft was on trial for using their power to make everything about the Internet shitty so that they could control it. In the early days of Google, people weren't even allowed to use Microsoft software, including Windows, without a special dispensation from the higher-ups. Microsoft effectively avoided any kind of punishment for their abuse of their monopoly, but it distracted them and made them cautious, so they weren't able to crush Google before it could get going. Before anybody chimes in about how Google is evil, first read up in what Microsoft did. Google might be a bit shady, but where Google got its monopoly by spending hundreds of billions to make its search engine the default, Microsoft used tactics to destroy potential competitors and drive them out of business.

    If the US (and the world) had effective enforcement of the anti-monopoly laws, Word would actually have to compete on its own merits. But, because it's a monopoly, Microsoft can just sit back and keep collecting rent.

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  • [–] 9 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    Microsoft hurt Netscape, but it was AOL that killed it. At the height of the dotcom bubble, Wall street handed AOL more money than they knew what to do with so AOL bought Netscape. Of course they didn't have any idea what to do with it (they still kept putting IE on the discs they mailed out to people even when they owned Netscape) and it eventually withered away and died.

    The people that ran Netscape correctly predicted it would go this way, but it was a ridiculous amount of money AOL was offering. Luckily they made releasing the code as open source as part of the deal.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

    No, your revisionist history is wrong. By the time AOL acquired it, Microsoft's damage had already been done. Its stock price had fallen 50% from its peak value.

    The reason AOL didn't know what to do with Netscape is that it was no longer a viable business due to the interference from Microsoft. Up until Microsoft started giving away Internet Explorer for free as part of the OS, the plan for Netscape was to charge for the browser. That was perfectly normal. People charged for every piece of software up until then. But, when they had to compete with Microsoft's price of free, they had no real business model anymore.

    That's the whole reason that Microsoft was charged with violating antitrust law. They leveraged their operating system monopoly to enter a new business and destroy their main competitor. Even with their falsifying evidence and Bill Gates lying on the stand, it was an open and shut case.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    Eh, I was around in that time. Netscape communicator was bloated as fuck and people used IE not only because it was pre-installed, but also because it didn't take ~20 seconds to start up which is what using Netscape Communicator was like.

    After a long time Mozilla finally got to 1.0 and it was basically as bloated as Netscape Communicator. It wasn't until Phoenix Firebird Firefox project that pulled out a browser (and they later pulled out the email client and other things from that monolith) that IE had real competition.

    But don't you think a well managed Netscape could have recognized the problem with Communicator and did the same thing as happened with Firefox, just a decade earlier? Netscape kinda just did nothing after the AOL takeover and there really wasn't a real answer for IE until Firefox. Yeah we all know IE sucks, but Netscape Communicator was worse than IE if you didn't want a browser that took more than 20 seconds to start up and use up all your memory just in case you might want to use an HTML editor.

    Sure MS stopped improving IE and over time it became the outdated garbage we know it as today, but before that it was Netscape that wasn't improving their product with similar results.

    With technology, people tend to do revisionist history by preferring the better story without regards to the actual quality of the tech. But the reality was IE was actually better than Netscape Communicator (says a lot about how bad Communicator was) just like VHS was actually better than Betamax. Just doesn't make as good a story when it's about people using a tech that was better instead of the story being about people using inferior tech because of shenanigans.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

    Eh, I was around in that time.

    So was I.

    Netscape communicator was bloated as fuck and people used IE not only because it was pre-installed, but also because it didn't take ~20 seconds to start up which is what using Netscape Communicator was like.

    Netscape Communicator came out in mid 1997. By that time, Netscape was already doomed because of Microsoft's illegal bundling.

    Netscape's IPO was in early August of 1995. It opened at $28 per share, and closed at $75 per share on that first day. The browser they were selling at that point was Netscape Navigator, and it was by far the best one available. 2 weeks later Microsoft introduced the first version of Internet Explorer. It was terrible, but it was free. Microsoft kept shoving IE in people's faces for years, making it the default, bundling it with Windows, and doing everything it could to sabotage Netscape's business.

    Microsoft was able to do this because they were able to subsidize the massive losses for R&D on Internet Explorer and IIS by taking money from their monopoly on operating systems. Netscape didn't have another business, and it's very difficult to compete with "free", so they were doomed.

    If you look at a graph of Netscape's share price, it peaked in late 1995 and by 1997 when it released Communicator it was already dying because of Microsoft's illegal tactics. 6 months after Communicator was released Netscape had to undergo a big round of layoffs. 1 year after that it was bought by AOL.

    There's no way that this is a story of Netscape failing. It's quite obviously a story of Microsoft using its monopoly illegally to force a competitor in another area out of business. That was proven in the trial.

    After a long time Mozilla finally got to 1.0

    Netscape Communicator was the 4.0 version of the company's browser. 1.0 came out in December 1994. 2.0 came out in March 1996. 3.0 Came out in August 1996. This supposedly bloated version you're talking about was the 4.0 release and came out in June 1997. As evidence they were dying by the time they released communicator, they only managed one more release before they were acquired by AOL.

    It wasn't until Phoenix Firebird Firefox project

    You do understand the purpose of the Mozilla Corporation and the Firefox project right? They knew that the company was doomed because of what Microsoft had done, and created the Mozilla non-profit as a kind of life-raft so that the browser didn't simply die when the company was crushed.

    In fact those names you crossed out just support what I'm saying: "Firefox was originally named "Phoenix", a name which implied that it would rise like a Phoenix after Netscape was killed off by Microsoft."

    that IE had real competition.

    You have that completely backwards. At first Netscape was the dominant browser, but as Microsoft used its illegal tactics the usage of Netscape declined until it disappeared. But, as they hoped, Firefox did rise from the ashes of the Netscape company and come to compete with Microsoft. But it was really Chrome that killed off Internet Explorer years after Netscape was driven out of business.

    But don't you think a well managed Netscape could have recognized the problem with Communicator

    The Mozilla organization was created before the release of Communicator. They already knew their company was doomed by the time Communicator was released.

    and did the same thing as happened with Firefox, just a decade earlier?

    A decade earlier? In the 1980s? Tim Berners-Lee didn't even describe the web until 1990, so I don't think selling a web browser was a viable business before that.

    Netscape kinda just did nothing after the AOL takeover

    Yes, because they were driven out of business by Microsoft. We covered that already. Most of the talented people just left. jwz bought a bar and left the technology business entirely.

    Yeah we all know IE sucks, but Netscape Communicator

    Why are you so focused on Communicator instead of Navigator?

    Sure MS stopped improving IE and over time

    The problems with IE were never that it "wasn't improved over time", it was that it trampled all over standards and intentionally broke things as part of Microsoft's Embrace, Extend, Extinguish strategy.

    people tend to do revisionist history

    You seem to be a revisionist historian who doesn't know the basics of what they're talking about.

    P.S. As an experiment, take a look at that graph of browser share and see if you can spot when the US government sued Microsoft for abusing its monopoly.

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  • [+] 9 points 11 months ago (10 children)
  • [–] 12 points 11 months ago* (2 children)

    WordPerfect was the leading word processing program under DOS. When Windows was released Microsoft screwed with them by not giving them full access to all the Windows APIs (something Microsoft was notorious for). Surprise, surprise, at the same time Microsoft was not giving WordPerfect the API info they needed, they were releasing their own competitive word processor in Word.

    But, once WordPerfect got access to the APIs, they produced a word processor that was superior to Word. The only reason that Word took off is that Microsoft aggressively bundled it with everything.

    As for Outlook, I've never met anybody who actually likes it. The only thing it has going for it is that it's available by default and it's the only thing compatible with emails from other Outlook users. There's a reason its nickname is "outhouse". Outlook did the same things that Microsoft did with HTML and HTTP: embrace, extend, extinguish. They took de-facto and de-jure email standards and modified them so that only other Outlook users could use the email properly. They made sure that if you tried to use anything other than Outlook with Microsoft Exchange, that it wouldn't quite work right.

    With Microsoft it's always about taking their monopoly in one area and squeezing another area, driving their competitors away. It's what they're now doing with developer tools, like github and visual studio code.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago* (2 children)

    There is currently* nothing Microsoft Office does that I can't happily do in LibreOffice

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    The only thing I miss is Excel. Nothing even compares. I use other stuff now, but man my spreadsheets used to be beautiful. Lol

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    Funnily enough for my needs Google Sheets comes the closest to Excel, but for my personal documents I really want to move to one of those fancy pants python based spreadsheets but I just need to wrap my head around some of the syntax specifics

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago* (2 children)

    Outlook is unmatched by anything else? What do you mean? Any email client you take is as good in my experience.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (6 children)

    Capitalism? Or nice things? Your decision.

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  • [–] -2 points 11 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    That is literally the only other way to organize things, yes. Absolutely. One can only be capitalist or feudalist. God you're smart for catching my bullshit there.

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  • [–] 20 points 11 months ago

    Want to automate your office document? Enjoy making your business dependent on a language

    • that will be a dead end for your developer career
    • where arrays can start at 0 or 1
    • where checking for an array involves ignoring an error and resuming
    • that is guaranteed to be broken a future patch
    • that has to be given permission to run in a security center
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  • [–] 17 points 11 months ago (6 children)

    edit a pdf? Edit your expectations.

    I feel seen. The number of times I've actually needed to do this is too damn high. Sure, I feel entitled to not have to pay for the privilege, as the task was usually thrust upon me by some bank, HR department, or legal firm. But the number of scummy websites online that will happily play with your doc's confidential info for free, is too damn high. I can't imagine anyone with average computer skills navigating this particular turing tarpit unscathed.

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  • [–] 9 points 11 months ago* (1 child)

    Inkscape is a free vector editor that handles pdf edits relatively well. Always my goto.
    * Assuming you're making minor changes.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    I (average user) was given a case of sensitive information and told to edit it/update it/reupload it. Using my work device was the expectation…but I had not been granted any paid software to do so.

    The IT guy was like “you can use this website” which was almost certainly a violation given the nature of the data. It was maddening because I knew (I also did not use one of those websites).

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  • [–] 15 points 11 months ago (6 children)

    Be Australian. Set language to English: Australian

    Write word: color. Does not underline spelling error.

    Don't even mention PowerPoint language.

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  • [+] -10 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    That's because you spelled it correctly. What color tire have you got on your SUV

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    If it helps, I thought it was funny. Silly-ass British (Australians are just desert British) spellings. You'd think the group that seems to cut half the letters out of the pronunciation of any given place name wouldn't also be the group adding fucktons of unnecessary letters to words since they won't say them anyways.

    Then again, French exists.

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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    The extra u's don't bother me but spelling check as cheque to distinguish between a bank check and other senses of check is ridiculous. Especially considering a bank check has the same etymological roots as the rest

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  • [–] 49 points 11 months ago

    Want to make the header or footer on this page unique? Eat a bag of dicks.

    Want to add a letter to an item in a table without fucking up the formatting of every document ever created across known time and space? Guck you.

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