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Anyone who collaborates with more than five people on articles but doesn’t use automatic reference&citation management is just insane(ly inefficient). I collaborate with lab people who cant use latex and can only use google docs. My absolute requirement was using a citation management extension (like paperpile). Now I also require that we use crossref for figure numbering and referring otherwise I am out.
At this point I’m curious: WTF is Microsoft Word even good for? It’s like the worst-in-class tool for all things word processing, page layout, typesetting, embedding other stuff into the document, and more. Why are people still torturing themselves with this garbage? Just because it’s there? I mean, Wordpad is there too (though maybe not for much longer) but nobody uses that. It’s also garbage but still…
People use what they know. Are there better (free) alternatives?
Yes. LibreOffice is better in every way.
And don’t reply with “but it has problems opening Word files”. That’s cause the Word format doesn’t follow any standards. Nothing but Word can correctly open Word files (and even that only works well if they were made with the same version of Word).
Hmm, I’ll check it out, but my field passes around Word files quite often. Might be a tough sale if the user can’t find a workaround. Still, can’t be mad at free software.
Word is not horrible as a word processor. The issue is that people try to use it to do typesetting, reference management, and all kinds of non word processor shit. And Microsoft encourages this. If you understand what the tool does it’s really a decent tool.
If you understand what the tool does it’s really a decent tool.
But most don’t. Which makes it a bad tool.
A screwdriver doesn’t become a bad screwdirver just because someone is using it to drive nails. There is a lot to hate about Microsoft, but its basic Office tools are really quite good, when used in the manner in which they were designed. There really are no meaningful competitors for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Outlook as an email client is not great, but its strength is calendaring.
LibreOffice FTW!!!
Needs collab features somehow 🥲
