Why LibreOffice over Calligra?

[Goddard]

Just curious why you don't stick to the Qt stack and actually show case what Qt/KDE has to offer to people that may not know?

[claydoh]

Calligra cannot save documents in anything but odf format. Many people need better interoperability with MS Office and the like. That's basically it, really.

[Goddard]

Is that by choice? Are they opposed to adding additional saving formats? Can't all modern word processors read odt though? It can import other version though right?

Just curious as I would of guessed this is trivial to add.

[claydoh]

Yup it is by choice as far as I recall. It opens many formats, but it does not save them back.


Sure, most any office program can read odf, but have you tried sending your boss a report saved as one?

[Goddard]

No can't say that I have. How about a plugin maintained by a third party? Would that do the trick? Or a patch?

[elijathegold]

I prefer Calligra over LibreOffice because it integrates so well with KDE and seems to be quite a bit a lighter. I also like the additional tools that Calligra provides, but it's inability to save documents in Microsoft formats is occasionally inconvenient. As a work around I keep LibreOffice installed so that when I need to share a document is doc(x) format I can simply run

libreoffice --headless --convert-to doc the-document.odt

Overkill? Maybe, but it works for me. Note that the "the-document.odt can also use wild cards.

[Goddard]

Good bit of information with that command. I am going to look into this a bit further.

[woodsmoke]

I do the same thing as elijathegold and for the same reasons.
woodsmoke

[Goddard]

Looking at Calligra Words it saves in multiple formats. Is this not what you are referring to?

[elijathegold]

Looking at Calligra Words it saves in multiple formats. Is this not what you are referring to?

Yeah it does a e-book formats, templates and html at least in 14.04. Not really much use in a MS centred world, but the additional tools I refer to are Author, Brain Dump and Plan.

[Goddard]

In 16.04 calligra can save to word in words, author. Sheets can't yet though. From what I can see Brain Dump doesn't save at all. Plan still needs saving functionality for word.

[elijathegold]

I guess they're making progress with interoperation then. It can only get better.

[claydoh]

Yeah it does a e-book formats, templates and html at least in 14.04. Not really much use in a MS centred world, but the additional tools I refer to are Author, Brain Dump and Plan.

Oooh I forget about Author -- I'll have to check out how that has progressed. Last I looked it was barely different from Words as it had just been forked from it.

[woodsmoke]

Surprisingly, if one does Calligra Stage presentation, and does the following:

a) uses the provided "boxes" to hold text, no "manually inserted text box".
b) uses Arial font with very few words in the sentences so that there is NO way that they will "run off the slide".
c) RESIZES all pictures to a very standard and SMALLER size, so as to not go 'out of" the "picture box"
d) PROTECTS the position of the pictures
e) CHANGES PERMISSIONS for the whole file to READ ONLY for all users.

Then, Microsith will actually show the thing!! :0

My personal opinion is that this is part of an under the table, buried in the judgement, outcome of the decades ago settlement about Microsith, QT, Apple etc. desktop icons thing. probably not, just my thought.

woodsmoke

[jglen490]

The integration aspect may be useful, but Libre Office does just fine. It starts quickly on my modest system and has never been a problem with any other application. Like it or not, Windoze and Office are major players in this world. Not only do we need to be sure the boss gets a report/product that will not fail, but sometimes it is necessary to send docs/presentations/etc to others who are not necessarily in the Linux universe. The ability to just "make it work" with Libre Office is very important. So, while considering the world in which I live, and considering the options I choose to exercise, the flexibility of Libre Office far outweighs any other considerations.