Hi :) The short answer is yes. You can trust the OU in this! :) Alex Thergood is more expert with Macs than most of us here. He is one of many people on this mailing list whose advice i trust and take a lot of notice of.
You do need a separate emailer. Many people seem to use Thunderbird but i am not sure what people tend to prefer on Macs. In more and more detail ... LibreOffice has all the functionality you or anyone else are ever likely to need. Almost invariably when people or magazine articles attempts to claim otherwise it's because they haven't tried, haven't even googled "how to", nor read any documentation (available free), nor asked any of our or other user support systems. https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications LibreOffice is free and easy to install on all the various systems currently in common usage for such work. It is also highly compatible with a wide range of other programs - to an extent that even different versions of MS Office are not quite compatible with each other! So if there is anyone who still can't use 'our' format it's quite easy for them to use Google-docs or even download and install OpenOffice/LibreOffice for free and with little effort. It's a bit like if a system can't read a Pdf! :) LibreOffice does have features that MS Office lacks - and along with OpenOffice (and many others) has, by it's very nature, many capabilities that MS Office either lacks completely or that would cost a lot to add to a standard MS Office bundle. There are many add-ons/plugins, we still call them "Extensions" rather than use those new-fangled terms! ;) One feature is that you can use an iPhone or Android phone as the remote control device for presentations. Also it is easy to change all the menus, dialogues and pop-ups to one or more of over a hundred human languages. The OpenSource ethos is quite different so occasionally things are called by a different name and/or appear in a different place in the menus. We share that ethos with many other programs and it's similar to the ethos of OpenOffice. The ethos is a bit different from Google-docs but not hugely so. So, once you get used to such a non-MS program then you'll find you are much more able to change to others or swap around using different ones to suit different circumstances. Macros can sometimes be a problem but since the OU has said that LibreOffice is suitable they will have taken that into account. Many places manage to totally avoid using macros anyway. MS macros have so often been used to infect machines with malware that many places block all macros. Again MS macros often seem a bit incompatible between different versions of MS Office. I've worked in offices for over 30 years and never used or needed macros. Compatibility issues are often talked about in the Microsoft world because MS seems to constantly create problems around this issue. Each version of MS Office uses a different "transitional" version of their OOXML format and this forces people to keep buying different versions of MS Office in order to remain compatible with each other. It could even be seen as a marketing ploy. This seems to be true of macros too, as well as formats. You wont have to worry about this though because the OU has stated that it's Ok to use LibreOffice and our format stays the same throughout all the various versions. So you should be able to easily share documents with other people, and if anyone struggles then they can download and install it for free anyway. It is not really accurate to call it "our" format because it is an ISO format that is developed by a world-wide organisation that is comprised of a vast number of different companies (and individuals). So unlike Microsoft's ever-changing formats it doesn't keep changing at the drop of a hat. So the "LibreOffice" format is also the "OpenOffice" format, is also the "Calligra" format, is also the "KOffice" format, is also the "Abiword and Gnumeric" format, is also the IBM Lotus Symphony format, and on and on. The documentation describing the format is freely available to anyone = so even far off into the future almost "any Tom, Dick or Harry" could throw together something to read and use the format. The MS formats (including their old Rtf format) is not future-proof in this way because even their own implementations of their own formats is a bit different from the way they defined it - and inconsistent between any 2 versions of their programs. While almost everyone else has been happily using 'our' OpenDocument Format 1.2 for many years Microsoft decided to try implementing the older ODF 1.1 instead in their 2007 and 2010 versions. Although everyone else seemed to find it very easy to write code to use that format for some reason MS couldn't quite manage it and botched their reading of ODF spreadsheets really horribly. They have promised to have ODF 1.2 in their 2013 and their "365". However MS have made similar promises about "interoperability" for decades and they somehow don't even seem to manage compatibility between their own programs very well. Almost everyone else manages a much greater level of compatibility without making such a big fuss about it. Apple apparently removed ability to use ODF in Pages in January of this year, just as people seem to be freely using the format much more widely when sharing documents. If they reinstate it then Pages might become much more popular but being unable to handle both the main formats seems a bit arrogant/dumb, especially since Pages is such an extremely low priority for Apple. Everyone (even Apple) can use the old MS formats originally used natively in MS Office 2003 and earlier; .doc rather than .docX - for Word processors .xls rather than .xlsX - for Spreadsheets .ppt rather than .pptX - for Presentations (at least for ones done using an office suite rather than some dedicated program) These currently seem to be the best formats to use when sharing between almost anyone, even between people using different recent versions of MS Office. For most programs, certainly for LibreOffice, just go to the "File" menu and down to "Save As ..." and then choose the "Microsoft Word (or whatever) 2003/Xp/2000". Those numbers at the end occasionally change but as long as it's 2003. This is all far tooo difficult for most MS Office users to understand and that is why people keep going on about "compatibility issues". I have had a lot of success sharing documents in ODF as the format is becoming MUCH more popular quite rapidly nowadays but if i know someone is limited to only some old version of MS Office (or Pages or some-such) then i use the old MS formats and sometimes i use it just to be certain. Blimey!! MUCH more than you needed to know! Regards from Tom :) On 17 September 2015 at 17:26, Ken Springer <[email protected]> wrote: > Ah, the universal question... What do you NEED it to do... That's a > question only you and your professors and course requirements in the > future can answer. > > Overall, I don't think you'll have a problem. IMO, your biggest hurdle > may be a professor who insists on submittals in either .doc or .docx > format. I've yet to stumble on to a word processor that is 100% compatible > with MS Word in this respect. The same probably applies to Excel > spreadsheets, and I know it happens with PowerPoint. A friend just tried > to open a PowerPoint doc using both the latest version of Impress from > Libre Office and Open Office, and it was a royal pain. > > But as someone mentioned, try to stay away from complex documents as they > will be more problematic. > > My suggestion would be to submit your papers in PDF format. While LO, OO, > MS Office, and lots of programs offer PDF file export, not all programs > have that export feature. But on the Mac Mini you say you will be using, > it doesn't matter. When you are ready to create the final document for > submission to your professors, from ANY program, select Print. In the > lower left corner of the dialog box is a PDF button. Click on it, and > you'll be able to create and store a PDF on your hard drive, and anyone > with a PDF reader can read and annotate (mark it up electronically) the > file and return it to you. Then, on the Mini, simply open the file in > Preview and you should be off to the races. > > FYI, the iWorks apps are not a "default". They are not included with Macs > when you buy the computer, they are purchased through the App Store. If > you were to save and submit a file in Pages file format, your professor > would also need to have Pages in order to read it . However, all three > programs will save a document in MS Office file formats. Be aware that you > will need to know what features are supported between the programs. > Keynote has features that are unsupported in PowerPoint, and I'm sure the > reverse is true. > > Pages 09 does have comments, I don't know about the current version. I've > read in the past in a Mac magazine that Apple removed some features from > the current iWorks offerings. > > The fact that OU has the software installed implies their professors (at > least a portion of them) have no problems with files created with the > Mini. Ask your professor. :-) > > > > -- > Ken > Mac OS X 10.8.5 > Firefox 36.0.4 > Thunderbird 31.5 > "My brain is like lightning, a quick flash > and it's gone!" > > > > -- > To unsubscribe e-mail to: [email protected] > Problems? > http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ > Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette > List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ > All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be > deleted > -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
