How do the online suites handle word documents?

IMO one of the problems with the LibreOffice/OpenOffice projects is that they took on an impossible challenge, working with Microsoft’s semi-documented mess of a file format. An office suite might not be hard, but Word is made of hacks and kludges, matching them is nearly impossible.

How about we start writing actual content and stop fiddling with fonts and margins.

The amount of useful information being buried in “word” documents is mind boggling. Let’s start treating data as data and style as style. When you type your friggin notes on the meeting with the CFO we don’t need “Calibri” at 12px. This dumb shit is a nightmare to index and it’s all around stupid from just about every angle I can look at it. The amount of resources wasted on giving the illusion of a fancy typewriter is visible from space & multiple libraries of Congress.

It’s like designing websites in photoshop. Oh, wait..

I’ll let myself out.

> Word is made of hacks and kludges, matching them is nearly impossible.

The newer OOXML formats are fine. They’re only hard to implement because the feature set of word is gigantic. PDF is much worse.

sort of? Nobody uses OOXML Strict, including Microsoft themselves. Office defaults to its own dialect of OOXML Transitional, i.e. standard plus vendor extensions. This dialect also subtly differs between MSO versions.

i.e. Microsoft is still playing silly buggers with file formats, same as it ever was.

How is Libre Office bad exactly?

It has always seemed like an excellent alternative to Microsoft Office to me.

What don't you like about it?

Writing macros or whatever they are called is painful.

Writing an application or macro in VBA is much simpler.

Excel has raced ahead with LET()/LAMBDA() functionality and a JavaScript api. It seems that Libreoffice Calc has stood still in comparison (although to be fair it does feel more stable and responsive).

It's the exact opposite of what you describe:

* LibreOffice is "good", not "bad". Writer is really good, Calc is pretty good, Impress is meh/not-so-good, Draw is ok, Base I haven't used.

* There is no alternative online to office productivity suites. What you might think of as alternatives only offer some of the functionality.

* bugs.documentfoundation.org - if something bugs you, file it :-)

It's not impossible but extremely difficult to make an office suite, it's also probably one of the most boring things to do. Libre office is one massive incomprehensible pile of ancient rotting c++ and java code dragged along over 38 years (staroffice). You can imagine how nobody with any sense of UI/UX or people who write for a living would ever touch it let alone dedicate their free time working on this mess. The self selected people left to work on it are very apparent in it's esthetics and everything, or lack thereof. What's left are FLOSS enthusiast's, but that doesn't make a competitive office suite.

Blender on the other hand has a massive community and dedicated leadership who pour every last bit of love and soul crafting this software, that gets significantly and noticeably better every few months.

What makes it bad?