Thought this article was interesting. Originally, Manjaro was going to add FreeOffice (from Softmaker) to their upcoming release instead of LibreOffice, but now it looks like they'll give users a choice on installation. They were wanting to go with FreeOffice because they said that it seems to more compatible with MS Office formats. What do you guys think?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2019/08/03/manjaro-linux-team-responds-to-libreoffice-versus-freeoffice-in-upcoming-version-18-1/#3214821fbf46
This is very timely for me, as I have been testing out SoftMaker Office 2018 for the last month. (Office is the paid version of FreeOffice, except I get it free by affiliation with a university.) FreeOffice might lack a few features that Office provides, but it has close to the same feature set. The issue for me is always Microsoft Office compatibility, as I am constantly working on draft manuscripts with colleagues that are produced in MS Word. I have also looked at WPS Office with the same set of criteria, although the latter won't save files in LibreOffice odt format.
Bearing in mind that my files will have more complicated elements in them than most people's (mainly because of tables and figures), I have found that all of these programs make a few docx translation errors, and which is better depends on the particular file. LibreOffice does a lousy job with line numbering, placing the numbers literally right next to the text. It also won't track changes in the margins; it embeds them in the text, making it hard to read and follow. Finally, it has occasional vertical spacing problems when there is an embedded figure, making the last text line on one page show up on the next. SoftMaker Office handles all of these things better than LibreOffice. However, it makes other errors that LibreOffice doesn't. An embedded graphic in WMF (Windows Metafile) format won't show in SoftMaker Office, whereas it will in LibreOffice. And long tables that are set to fit on a page in MS Office show up the same way in LibreOffice, but are broken up in SoftMaker Office.
So at the moment, I can't depend on any Linux word processing program to do a good enough translation of MS Word files for me to work in that program. However, they are getting better, and I'm still hoping that one or the other will solve these little translation problems, allowing me to not have to use MS Word in Wine/Crossover.
Back to the philosophical question for Manjaro. With LibreOffice being the open source program, I would hate to see them not include it. On the other hand, FreeOffice is a very good program, and there is no good reason in my book to not promote it in a partnership-type relationship. I like the proposed solution: give the user a choice.
Thanks for your comment, Fox. I was wondering whether you thought it's better than LibreOffice with handling MS file formats. Good to have your input.
The article mentions that SoftMaker tweeted (https://twitter.com/softmaker_com/status/1157672676615499776) that they are also making changes to FreeOffice that will benefit all users, including the ability to save to ODT format, which you mentioned. Also will be the ability to save to MS Office formats. Previously, you could only open these formats in FreeOffice but not save to them in the same formats.
I’m expecting that SoftMaker is going to solve the remaining translation problems sooner than LibreOffice will. In the case of WMF file translation, their PC version can already handle that, so it shouldn’t be hard for them to port it to the Linux version. For table translation, it already can be fixed with one setting, but not with a default setting, so that shouldn’t be difficult to rectify. The same is true of LibreOffice in the case of line numbering, but the problem has been there since I started using Linux. With track changes in the margins, people have been complaining about it for years, but the devs don’t seem inclined to add this feature. I consider that a translation problem because it’s not just that you can’t create it that way in LibreOffice, you also can’t see it that way from the MS file.