What's the best free version of word?

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Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨LadyButterfly@piefed.blahaj.zone⁩ to ⁨nostupidquestions@lemmy.world⁩

I need it for doing CVs and job applications and that’s literally it.

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dominiquec@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Google Docs, if a cloud-based service is not out of the question and if you can live within Google’s parameters of “free”.

LibreOffice, otherwise.

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hanrahan@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
If that’s it, Libre Office.

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- Smoogs@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Also if you’re using windows and avoiding acrobat try Sumatra for reading pdfs. FOSS is the way. Libre draw also does document signing for pdfs
  
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- LadyButterfly@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Thanks mate! I’ve downloaded it but I’m really struggling with the layout any tips? it’s so different looking to word
  
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  - Ephera@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    You can switch to the “Tabbed” interface for something more similar MS Office: …libreoffice.org/…/WG2521-UserInterfaceVariants.h…
    
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  - corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I find it’s exactly identical to MSWord, but from the mso97 days before the Ribbon bollocks. I used o97 Word because it was like win3.1 Word … word-perfect? It’s been a while.
    
    But, TL/DR, LOWord is like Classic MSOffice from when it didn’t suck. This will not help you adjust, but hopefully the knowledge that you’re going back to a better era of UX could help blunt the pain.
    
    Go carefully, and have your favourite vice handy to goose the positive reinforcement loop.
    
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ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I’ve been using LibreOffice’s Writer for several years. And I’ve been happy with it.

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swordgeek@lemmy.ca ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Libre Office. I’ve been using it for decades.

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Fokeu@lemmy.zip ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Libreoffice

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jeffw@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
LibreOffice

Or if you can spare $10-20 you can get a gray market Office key

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- LadyButterfly@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  What’s a grey market office key
  
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  - Vegan_Joe@piefed.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    If I understand it correctly, Microsoft sells discounted keys to organizations as part of their Volume Licensing for businesses.
    
    Some places on the internet take advantage of that, and sell the keys individually.
    
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14th_cylon@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
all words are free. i just used thirteen of them and paid nothing.

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- Darkenfolk@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  You are paying with time and you are DYING. Hell, i am typing right now! That means that I’m also DYING RIGHT NOW!
  
  proceeds to crash out
  
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- ThrowawayPermanente@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I used fourteen of them and got arrested for hate speech, so I think your theory has a flaw and I blame minorities
  
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  - LadyButterfly@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    No it’s not minorities it’s trans people they somehow caused it by sneakily sneaking in a bathroom
    
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nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

I am composing documents in markdown format and then using a python script to produce a PDF:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""Convert Markdown files to PDF."""

import argparse
import sys
from pathlib import Path

try:
    import markdown
    from weasyprint import HTML, CSS
except ImportError:
    print("Missing dependencies. Install with:")
    print("  pip install markdown weasyprint")
    sys.exit(1)


CSS_STYLES = """
@page {
    margin: 0.5in 0.6in;
    size: letter;
}
body {
    font-family: "Courier New", Courier, "Liberation Mono", monospace;
    font-size: 10pt;
    line-height: 1.4;
    color: #222;
    max-width: 100%;
}
h1, h2, h3 {
    margin-top: 1em;
    margin-bottom: 0.3em;
    padding-bottom: 0.2em;
}
h1 { font-size: 16pt; }
h2 { font-size: 13pt; }
h3 { font-size: 11pt; }
h4 { font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.5em;}
ul {
    margin: 0.3em 0;
    padding-left: 1.2em;
}
li {
    margin-bottom: 0.2em;
}
p {
    margin: 0.4em 0;
}
p + p {
    margin-top: 0.2em;
}
strong {
    font-weight: bold;
}
"""


PAGE_BREAK_MARKER = "<!-- pagebreak -->"
PAGE_BREAK_HTML = '<div style="page-break-before: always;"></div>'


def process_page_breaks(html_content: str) -> str:
    """Replace page break markers with actual page break HTML."""
    return html_content.replace(PAGE_BREAK_MARKER, PAGE_BREAK_HTML)


def md_to_html(input_path: Path) -> str:
    """Convert a Markdown file to HTML content."""
    md_content = input_path.read_text(encoding="utf-8")
    html_content = markdown.markdown(md_content)
    return process_page_breaks(html_content)


def convert_md_to_pdf(input_paths: list[Path], output_path: Path) -> None:
    """Convert one or more Markdown files to a single PDF."""
    html_parts = []
    for i, input_path in enumerate(input_paths):
        if i > 0:
            html_parts.append(PAGE_BREAK_HTML)
        html_parts.append(md_to_html(input_path))

    full_html = f"""
    <!DOCTYPE html>
    <html>
    <head><meta charset="utf-8"></head>
    <body>{"".join(html_parts)}</body>
    </html>
    """

    HTML(string=full_html).write_pdf(output_path, stylesheets=[CSS(string=CSS_STYLES)])
    print(f"Created: {output_path}")


def main():
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description="Convert Markdown files to PDF")
    parser.add_argument("files", nargs="*", type=Path, help="Markdown files to convert")
    parser.add_argument("-o", "--output", type=Path, help="Output PDF path")
    parser.add_argument("-m", "--merge", action="store_true", help="Merge all input files into a single PDF")
    args = parser.parse_args()

    # Default to all .md files in current directory
    files = args.files if args.files else list(Path(".").glob("*.md"))

    if not files:
        print("No Markdown files found")
        sys.exit(1)

    if args.merge:
        if not args.output:
            print("Error: --output is required when using --merge")
            sys.exit(1)
        for md_file in files:
            if not md_file.exists():
                print(f"File not found: {md_file}")
                sys.exit(1)
        convert_md_to_pdf(files, args.output)
    else:
        if args.output and len(files) > 1:
            print("Error: --output can only be used with a single input file (or use --merge)")
            sys.exit(1)

        for md_file in files:
            if not md_file.exists():
                print(f"File not found: {md_file}")
                continue
            output_path = args.output if args.output else md_file.with_suffix(".pdf")
            convert_md_to_pdf([md_file], output_path)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

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ripcord@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
OnlyOffice

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Strider@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I recommend the data approach since you can just change layout on the fly and not have classic word processing mess up:

rxresu.me

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- TheButtonJustSpins@infosec.pub ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  This looks great; will play with it. I wonder if it’s got versioning.
  
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- Knoxvomica@lemmy.ca ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Cool, thanks for linking this, I was just looking for something like this!
  
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Apytele@sh.itjust.works ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Libre office was too clunky for my usage. Only office is FOSS, lightweight, and cross-platform.

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solrize@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Hardcore nerds use TeX but if I understand your question, you probably want LibreOffice. I’m unfamiliar with OnlyOffice so ok, maybe that’s good too.

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msokiovt@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Your best bet is either LibreOffice Writer, or OnlyOffice’s word processor. Another one I tried was Abiword, which is an old word processor.

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sbeak@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Both OnlyOffice and LibreOffice (Writer) would work. The main differences are that OnlyOffice has all the tools (documents, presentations, and spreadsheets) while LibreOffice separates them. LibreOffice also has an additional two tools: Draw (kind of like Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape) and Base (database stuff).

Generally documents that are exported to and from MS Office will be better when working with OnlyOffice. If you aren’t doing a bunch of formatting that is absolutely critical (or no formatting at all), I wouldn’t worry about using LibreOffice. LibreOffice, for me, works well, but sometimes page break can happen a line or two earlier/later depending on how images, tables, headings, etc. are rendered, which is slightly annoying. In “Impress” (presentations), whenever I made one object transparent, ALL objects became transparent when viewing from MS Office, which was strange. That’s my experience, and it seems that other people have had similar formatting problems with LibreOffice too.

Another thing that’s different is that, on Windows, LibreOffice doesn’t look very nice. On Linux, it looks fine (I selected “Tabbed”), but on Windows, I’m not sure if they’re using some other graphical package or something, but the top toolbar is all squished together with no wiggle room, even if you select “Tabbed”. One other thing, LibreOffice uses Qt so it will work with those themes in Linux (e.g. In KDE Plasma, which is what I run, LibreOffice will match with the system theme!)

For a Linux-specific thing, it seems that LibreOffice doesn’t really like Wayland much, and was chugging and running at a jogging snail’s pace (certainly not a fast snail, this one), so I had to manually set the shortcut to run LibreOffice in XWayland or something like that anyways.

One thing I like about LibreOffice is that there’s a few more plugins available than OnlyOffice. For example, LanguageTool has a LibreOffice plugin but don’t think there’s one for OnlyOffice. LibreOffice also has like a bazillion different settings to change how everything is rendered, you can change the order of the items in every toolbar and menu, I think Writer has a basic Java IDE built in too? Basically, LibreOffice is more customisable and configurable than OnlyOffice, and by a lot. OnlyOffice tries to be a little simpler than LibreOffice and I guess is more “dumbed down” with fewer buttons and settings?

TLDR: LibreOffice has five separate programs, OnlyOffice has three in one. Files exported from OnlyOffice generally render with correct formatting on MS Office (and vice versa), the same may not be true for LibreOffice depending on the content of your documents. LibreOffice Windows isn’t nice (but looks better on Linux), LibreOffice doesn’t play nice with Wayland, LibreOffice has more plugins, options, etc.

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- LadyButterfly@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Ahhhh I really struggled with Libre earlier I’m old and neurodiverse and can’t handle the layout. Does only office have a similar layout to word?
  
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  - sbeak@sopuli.xyz ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    If you use Windows, yeah, LibreOffice doesn’t look all that nice. Setting it to “tabbed” view mode makes it a bit better (try that first) Image
    
    but the icons are still pretty small with little padding (on Windows at least. On Linux it is perfectly fine, so I use LibreOffice!). OnlyOffice will be more padded and has bigger icons than LibreOffice in Windows, yeah. I think it would work.
    
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mapleseedfall@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Maybe not the exact answer: for CV and job applications I used latex with some template I found on the interwebs. Overleaf is a good latex provider

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- Paranoidfactoid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Is Overleaf an Interleaf clone? My lord that’s ancient.
  
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GriffinClaw@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
+1 for Onlyoffice. I tried both it and Libreoffice. Onlyoffice UI is both closer to how MS word looks, and supports word documents better. (Eg text format remains the same in onlyoffice, while in liberoffice it’s flying off the edges. At least in my experience)

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- LadyButterfly@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  That’s great thanks
  
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- Saapas@piefed.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  OnlyOffice is a bit less featureful and doesn’t support some languages that Word and Writer do
  
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Uffiz@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
There is FreeOffice which is germany based and WPS office which is asutralia based i think, they have a premium plan and a free plan,the free plan is pretty feature rich, for urself its plenty enough.

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garth@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
If you have a Google account, Google Sheets is free and probably does everything you need.

MS Office is also really easy to pirate.

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- i_am_not_a_robot@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  ITYM Google Docs.
  
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- LadyButterfly@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Great thanks how user friendly is it?
  
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  - garth@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    It’s basically Word lite: very similar interface, with a stripped-down feature set that covers most basic needs. You should have no problem diving right in and writing CVs and cover letters.
    
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lunarcat@lemmy.ca ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Are we anti google docs here? I feel like it has everything word does and you can easily save/download files onto your computer as a PDF.

If that doesn’t work, you can use word online! It’s basically MS word, you just can’t access it offline. It’s on the web.

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- EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Given that many here are anti google in general, that would mean anti google docs by extension.
  
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- LadyButterfly@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Thanks when I save docs from online and try to open them on my laptop it comes up with the “give me money” pop up.
  
  Does Google docs layout look anything like word?
  
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michaelalf@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
massgrave.dev

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affenlehrer@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
If you’re brave you could also use someone like this: typst.app

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ComfortableRaspberry@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I did that stuff online with canva since it already comes with a bunch of CV templates and the layout is easier done than in a regular text editor.

If you look for a word like experience, I agree with what others stay recommended: libre office

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Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
The student version.

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DebatableRaccoon@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
The best free version is the one provided by MASS. Any other word processor typically has some kind of downside.

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Saapas@piefed.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
For CV I think Canva has been great

https://www.canva.com

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Melobol@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I still have open office on my pc. But I believe it isn’t as well known as it was 15+ years ago.

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- MurrayL@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  OpenOffice isn’t as well known now because it was replaced, for all intents and purposes, by LibreOffice in ~2010.
  
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  - Melobol@lemmy.ml ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    It shows how much I use it :D
    
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Corporal_Punishment@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
You can probably get it cheaper, but I’ve used this site a few times and it’s never failed me

www.cjs-cdkeys.com/…/Windows-and-Office-Keys/

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Brkdncr@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Word online is free

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Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
i have a cracked version, i forgot how i got it though. you can use google sheets, or libre office. if you still have access to a university computers, authorized, or unauthorized.

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