Re: """Standard""" software (was: Re: Early-2014 Macbook Air and Linux Mint Cinnamon)

On 2026-06-27 18:22:31 +0000, Charlie Gibbs said:

> On 2026-06-26, Your Name <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
>> Microsloth Windoze and Orifice have unfortunately been basically
>> business standards for multiple decades now. Word was first released in
>> 1983 and "Office" (with Excel, etc.) in 1989.
> 
> Don't forget Outlook - which is more correctly pronounced "Look out!"
> It is the biggest disease vector for top-posting.
> 
>> Even if people don't use Orifice themselves, almost every document you
>> come across (other than PDFs) is in .doc format because that gives the
>> widest potential compatibility ... as long as it's a simple document.
>> If it's a complex document, then compatibility tends to go out the
>> window. (For example, TextEdit and QuickLook on the Mac can read and
>> write .doc / .docx format files, but even mildly complicated formatting
>> will end up looking a mess, especially in QuickLook.)
> 
> I've had pretty good results with LibreOffice, although I don't spend 
> much time in spreadsheet land.  LO doesn't seem to be as fanatical 
> about meddling with your data - I've spent a lot of time designing my 
> software to write CSV files that are
> "Excel-proof".  I'm tired of bringing up a file to view, and upon 
> quitting having Excel say, "Would you like to save the changes you've 
> just made?"  Dammit - I didn't make _any_ changes!  At the very least, 
> the message should read: "Would
> you like to save the changes _I've_ made?"  Yes, that includes Excel's 
> edict that all dates shall be in month/day/year format, and that 
> anything looking vaguely like a year/month/day date shall be 
> reformatted.  And, of course, lines with trailing fields omitted shall 
> be padded with commas, quotes, etc.
> 
> In fact, I prefer LibreOffice's spreadsheet to Excel, primarily because 
> when I pull in a CSV file it automatically sets the column widths to 
> something reasonable, rather than requiring you to manually select the 
> hilariously-misnamed "Auto format".

Column widths are easily fixed quickly in Excel. Just click in the 
corner "cell" above the row numbers and left of the column letters to 
select the entire spreadsheet, then double-click the divider between 
any column.

Similarly for row heights, although you may need to turn on the 
text-wrapping for all the cells first.

The biggest issue with Excel is that it is simply not accurate, and 
therefore untrustworthy. Because Microsoft stubbornly chose to do 
decimal arithmatic in stupid way, that they claim is a "feature", it 
means miniscule errors creep in, which can then get bigger when using 
those error cells in other calculations. No other spreadsheet (or 
database) that I've used has had this problem because they do decimal 
arithmatic properly.