I have really tried to use LibreOffice any number of times ever since I first heard about it. At first, I thought it was pretty good. However, the more formatting features I try to use, the more functional differences I find between LiberOffice and EVERY other office suite I have ever used. LibreWriter document formatting is COMPLETELY counter-intuitive and drives me crazy every time it mangles one of my documents. Bullet points are completely useless and I have to use them a lot in my technical documents. So, the question remains. Who decided that LibreOffice had to be different just for the sake of being different???
I find the similarities far closer than the differences.
There isn’t a specific problem described so maybe describe the immediate issue, how it is apparent, and any steps taken to fix it already.
I would recommend downloading the Getting Started Guide and the Writer Guide from English documentation | LibreOffice Documentation - LibreOffice User Guides
Consider also Designing with LibreOffice, it explains a lot about why you should use styles and how to.
Perhaps LibreOffice is so different from other office suites because it has a very distinctive concept to support users in formatting as much as possible. LibreOffice is prepared for all kinds of documents, from simple letters to complex technical descriptions and books.
To be honest, it takes a little more time to get used to and prepare Formatting Styles. In return, however, you can concentrate fully on your project afterwards and assign the Format Styles, such as headings, Paragraph and Character Styles, etc. in no time at all.
Familiarise yourself with the documentation of LibreOffice, as @EarnestAl has offered you.
If you are interested in switching to LibreOffice, also read here:
My Transition from MS-Office to LibreOffice
Professional text composition with Writer
If you have further questions, you can of course also ask them here on this page. A large number of users, like you, will be able to help you.
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Who decided to do claims without even checking these claims? Who told that the decision to be different was “just for the sake of being different”?
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On the contrary I find other suites counter-intuitive. LO Writer is founded on very sound principles and these principles are made explicit in the documentation, whereas you frequently have to “discover” them in other suites.
There are first basic objects, the most important of which is paragraph because a paragraph is the fundamental bit in the act of writing. It is made of characters. Together, paragraphs contitute a text flow.
Another important object is frame, a rectangular area of aside data, be it an image, drawing or text. It creates a secondary flow independent from the main flow.
A secondary object is page. Pages don’t exist per se but are there to host the main flow. They represent the paper sheet paradigm, a contingent necessity because we humans can’t handle infinite medium. Pages are allocated on demand to accommodate text flow size and split it.
Geometric and typographical properties of these objects are described by styles. Styles for text are organised in a layered manner, paralleling object structure: paragraph styles at bottom, overlaid by character styles, themselves overlaid by direct formatting (which is a forced inclusion from other suites due to the difficulty for newcomers to accept to read the doc and reconsider habits).
Once you have understood this model, everything in Writer is “intuitive”.
Regarding “bullet points” or, more generally, list items, once again Writer clearly separates text from its “decoration” (bullet or number) in an orderly manner. What is used for list item is the same engine as chapter numbering: same possibilities, same versatility. But you must also accept this fact: a style, called list style, will describe all the properties of the “decoration”. Then, this style can be reused on any paragraph, guaranteeing consistency and uniformity all over the document.
As mentioned by @Hrbrgr, the range of Writer is tremendously large. And when it comes to complex technical documents, its advantages become obvious. With styles, you completely separate (when used correctly) contents from appearance. This means once tha author has completed the task of writing the book, formatting may be handed over to a graphist to tune layout and look. Correct styling ensures that whatever the “artist” does, the contents remains the same and can’t be damaged. This implies, contrary to other suites, no “direct formatting” has been applied to text because this manual operation can be wiped out by the enlightenment while style application can’t. The artist is only allowed to change the style properties without ever doing any modification to text.
PS: you tagged base which means you have problems with the database interface component Base while you’re complaining about Writer. This alas shows at the same time you didn’t take the time to read the basic rules on this site.
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Could you properly explain why?
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EarnestAI, my main issue is that I have been using Microsoft Word AND Word Perfect for a LONG time. I’ve always found, that at least for me, the functions used for formatting a document were logical and made sense. I’ve never had to read a manual to have it explained to me. Generally speaking, if a piece of general purpose software, as opposed to a specialized program like Photoshop, requires reading a manual before even basic operations may be done, IT IS NOT INTUITIVE. I have NEVER had to read a manual for any other word processor that I have used. They all had certain operational properties that worked in an expected and consistent manner. Libre Writer does not adhere to these principles. Since everyone here on this site seems to take offense at my observations, please have a nice life and I will continue to use other software that works like I expect it to.
Sorry, I still don’t know what the problem is that you are facing other than something to do with bullets.
Back in the 1990s I bought quite a few books to help me understand how to get the best out of MS Office, Lotus Smartsuite and other programs.
Happily, the manuals for LO are freely available and sites like this exist to help people with specific issues
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I remember Microsoft asking a buch of newbees to try MS-Office and inventing tabbed-UI to make them happy. And I remember swearing Excel users in the following year(s) as I didn’t enforce LibreOffice in my company.
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So you are trained and some things are not at the place, where you expect it. To me it is fine to have choice. The world does not need identical Excel from 3 different developers.
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It is ok to use and like Excel, but please allow also another software for people who read manuals. I know we should perhaps create a gated community and rename to rtfm-Office on rtfm-Linux but in a free world this will not change the use of LibreOffice elsewhere.
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- As @EarnestAl mentioned, there are lots of people out there who needed some guidance (reading manuals, guides, or simply some mentored training) to master those other office suites.
- Even if you weren’t among them, this doesn’t make the situation “I am a young person without any prior bias, facing a new class of software called Office Suite, and finding my way through a specific sample of it” equal to “I am a seasoned user of one kind of Office Suites, having some strict expectations created by my prior experience, and am facing another kind of Office Suite and trying to find familiar things in familiar places”.
- Even ignoring
#2, the mere existence of people who would find software A “intuitive” without a prior exposure to this class of software at all, and at the same time who would find software B not intuitive in the same case, does not mean there are no people having exactly opposite kind of mindset. - Even ignoring all the above, anyone finding something not intuitive (consider some people being surprised that “increase X by 5%; then decrease the result by 5%; see that the end result is not X”) does not mean you should not put some effort at learning - just because the more correct thing could happen to be not intuitive to some. Sometimes the most “natural” way is the most destructive and increasing the chaos.
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