Free Office Software article discussion

mksysb

polymaff wrote: »

Thanks for the quick response. Customise - as in change the nature of the X-axis, particularly the scale parameters

Here's the query sitting with LibreOffice - which starts with an (italicised) quote from Libre's own help system:

Quote:

" For some types of axes, you can select to format an axis as text or date, or to detect the type automatically"

The scale options are "automatic", which, as expected, has no options, "text" which, surprisingly, has no options and "date" which has excel-like options - for dates.

Surely there should be a numbers category with the sort of options I get in Excel for formatting max, min, major, minor etc - for numbers?

It's a stacked bargraph, accordimg to Excel, by the way, with each bar accumulating about a dozen values. Looks absolutely right in Excel, just a mess in LibreOffice Calc 6.3.2.2

End of Quote.

The Libre "help" stuff I quote seems to confirm that you can only alter numeric data when it is meant to represent a date - which is true.

What "automatic" delivers is just a mess of overlapping digit characters. Y-axis is OK, btw, which leaves me wondering what other fundamental gaffes I'd come across if I tried to migrate from Excel to Libre (or, come to that, Apache - which has the same fundamental limitations).

Looks like the only Excel alternative - is Excel.

So if that one little feature is vital for you, stick to excel, for the other 99.99% of users, libre office would be a great alternative to excel.

polymaff

mksysb wrote: »

So if that one little feature is vital for you, stick to excel, for the other 99.99% of users, libre office would be a great alternative to excel.

Hardly a little feature - being able to deliver a readable x-axis scale.

orrery

polymaff wrote: »

Hardly a little feature - being able to deliver a readable x-axis scale.

The majority of queries I see on forums are for people asking for a cheap copy of Office (e.g. "can I get a student version?" etc). When I ask what they are planning to use it for they respond with "Oh, I sometimes need to write a letter".


I tend to use the words like "Unless you are a power user then LibreOffice will do you just fine" and I think that is a good summary. Note that LibreOffice isn't particularly good at converting over from Office, particularly for spreadsheets with charts, but the same is true in the other direction. Interestingly, LibreOffice is better than MS Office at fixing broken .docx files.



The MS Office offering has changed significantly over the last couple of years - you can get Onedrive, with 6TB for £79.99 p.a. and that gets you 6 copies of MS Office, which are kept updated.


So, even though I have the latest Office 365, I still use LibreOffice as my default as it now has a better user interface than MS Office.

polymaff

All read, understood and appreciated. For some times I've been encouraged to try alternatives to MS Office software, and it has never been attempted without serious issues arising.

I suppose that almost all spreadsheet users would regard themselves as, if not a "Power User" then, at least, a serious one - and so are likely to be more let down by Calc than the other bits of Libre. As you put it, the casual letter writer. I was just so surprised that a fundamental issue - a horizontal numeric axis which wasn't a time axis - was not provided for.

It strikes me that these free packages are driven by enthusiasm rather than responsibility. Excel has a new function is the starting flag for a race to catch up, whilst the more mundane aspects are just pushed out of sight. And you don't have to remind me that these are take it or leave it packages !

Life is certainly a process of diminishing deception...:)

orrery

polymaff wrote: »

All read, understood and appreciated. For some times I've been encouraged to try alternatives to MS Office software, and it has never been attempted without serious issues arising...

Do you have the latest version of LibreOffice? As I said, I created a simple chart with a numeric X axis, and all the usual options seem to be there for me.

polymaff

orrery wrote: »

Do you have the latest version of LibreOffice? As I said, I created a simple chart with a numeric X axis, and all the usual options seem to be there for me.

LibreOffice Calc 6.3.2.2 - downloaded a few days ago.


I'm not arguing that you can't create a simple chart with a numeric x-axis - but that you can't change the scale of a numeric x-axis.


Which the Libre help, including that bit I quoted previously, seems to confirm.


I'll reinstall Libre and see if I can - create a simple chart with a numeric X axis, and all the usual options - whatever they will end up as...:)

polymaff

And here is a simple chart and the X axis dialogue - with no options to set the sorts of parameters offered when you chose "date" from the pull-down.


https://imgur.com/J07JjlE