• GreyBeard
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      1371 year ago

      Not everyone has the money for a copy of Word. There once was a time when free rich text editors were valuable. But at this point I agree it isn’t needed anymore. There are plenty of FOSS alternatives to word that hit that market. Microsoft has probably kept it around this long to prevent people from looking, but now they’ve put their bet on cloud services.

      • TheEntity
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        1 year ago

        There are plenty of FOSS alternatives to word that hit that market.

        Plenty? I know one and its fork. That’s about one and a half.

        EDIT: Oh, you probably meant the rich text editors like Wordpad, not text processors like Word. My bad for misunderstanding.

        • sebinspace
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          31 year ago

          ScintillaTE is an old-ass one. Most people have never heard of it, and those that have have only heard of its variant, UniSciTE, which came bundled as the default text editor for Unity, something like 15 years ago.

        • @Muehe@lemmy.ml
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          21 year ago

          Assuming you are talking about OpenOffice and LibreOffice, there’s also CollaboraOffice (although this may be counted as another half one, since it’s a online fork of LO) and OnlyOffice in the FOSS sphere. Probably more out there I’m not aware off.

        • @thehatfox@lemmy.world
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          11 year ago

          I think AbiWord is still around, which used to be the FOSS simple, WordPad-like word processor of choice.

        • @Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          41 year ago

          Except it will nuke .docx formatting. Same in reverse.
          I make templates for my clients and I always tell them not to open and save in any other client other than OpenOffice.
          Even Libre does nuke some parts to some extend…

          • @ebits21@lemmy.ca
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            11 year ago

            It’s not that bad and always improving. I inter operate the two every day.

            OpenOffice is a dead project.

            • @Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              11 year ago

              Every time I open anything open office in Word everything is scattered as is usally with the Word meme when moving a picture 2mm.

              Libre aint much better. Also I prefer the OpenOffice design. Libre might be more modern and that’s usually what I prefer but I feel like OO is more efficient with it’s menu.

              Can’t beat the menu ribbon from Word/Office though.

                • @Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  11 year ago

                  No as my work is using open office and Ihad some issues creating them with libre and then using it in OO.
                  Outaide of that we have M365 and have no need to go Libre as I can’t see me spending time to relearn it at work.

                  Sounds good though. If I am ever switching to FOSS in that department, I am willing to take a look.
                  I really like the form options and export to pdf of OO/Libre.

        • @DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          You’re assuming everyone is a power user. There will be thousands of people who won’t have an alternative and think that paying for word is the only option.

          This is to fuck over the casual computer user who doesn’t know better or alternatives. Microsoft already knows that more informed users like us are a lost cause to upsell.

          This is also why they tried that “malware” pop up to get people to go back to Edge. To once again, fuck over uninformed users.

    • dantheclammanOP
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      321 year ago

      Honestly I’m not too bummed, especially with open-source solutions like Notepad++, but it’s the end of an era! Also, Word is paid, and so Windows not having a built in free RTF editor is notable

      • Y|yukichigai
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        1 year ago

        Windows not having a built in free RTF editor is notable

        Yeah, that is a bit odd, but then again when’s the last time you’ve seen something other than a cut-rate eBook in RTF? Everything is either some variant of plain text or a DOC file these days.

        Plus, it’s rare that you ever need to edit RTF files. Read, sure, but that could be handled by Word Viewer, which is free.

        EDIT: Right, they’re discontinuing the viewers, but apparently they have a cloud-based online thing that’s free? Sucks if you live somewhere with crap internet I guess.

        • @T156@lemmy.world
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          41 year ago

          A lot of ebooks seem to be more epub or pdf these days. RTF isn’t used quite so much.

          • Y|yukichigai
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            31 year ago

            RTF is a rarity these days since basically every phone, tablet, and other handheld device can handle either PDFs or HTML (and ePub is basically just a ZIP file with HTML in a specific naming scheme and structure). Back in the day though you’d find RTFs more often for use in budget/jury-rigged eReader options. It’s much easier to parse, if nothing else.

    • @Firipu@startrek.website
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      91 year ago

      WordPad (or at least uses to) opens much faster than word, but still has rich text. Perfect for some short notes.

      Or eg to edit an ini file. They display as readable text in WordPad and not just a massive long string like in notepad.

    • Y|yukichigai
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      81 year ago

      It’s nowhere near as bloated as Word but you have many more options than Notepad when it comes to formatting and presentation. It’s actually impressive how much you can do within the limits of RTF.

    • @dan1101@lemm.ee
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      11 year ago

      Easy way to distribute rich text documents to users without them having to install anything.