this post was submitted on 26 May 2024
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I know it sounds crazy, but a better free alternative exists.
What do you recommend? I love LibreOffice on Windows and Linux, and it still works well on macOS but the GUI seems weird on it, the buttons are really large. I still use it but my partner is put off by it.
LaTeX, code and compile your documents instead of fighting with word.
While I agree with you that LaTeX is an impressive tool, I would not choose it for an exam whith a short duration. It is great, but for short documents that should be written quickly, I don’t think it’s the best tool.
I (almost) only use LaTeX now, I find it easier than having to manually set headings etc. I find it great even for just one page notes.
The few times I do not use it is when I have to colab on a document with someone else.
I’ve used it a lot for reports when I went to university, but for short notes I would prefer markdown and for a few pages or documents where formatting is trivial I still find it easier to use LibreOffice or word. I find it likely that most high schoolers would find it easier to use word for any document than LaTeX which they probably have never heard of and would be unable to get support for unlike word which is commonly provided by the school. So while understand where you are coming from, I don’t think the students are in a situation where that would be a plausible solution. Especially due to the many pitfalls and the learning curve you have to get through for using LaTeX as efficiently and for as complex formatting as they already know how to do in word. LaTeX has a way higher ceiling of quality, but the floor is also much lower for those new to it and without the drive to learn it.
This is actually what I did when I was in school, and overall it was quite pleasant. There was some WYSIWYG LaTeX program too that I shared with some colleagues when we were working on a document together, I remember it working okay.
But I don't see the average student, especially studying non technical stuff, to pick up LaTeX just for normal sort of essays. Even I am fairly rusty now. And honestly I don't even know if I could have managed it during high school, where I had to write English essays and stuff with specific formatting for references. (I am grateful that my engineering education was less strict about that sort of thing).
I was hoping that someone would suggest a self hosted web document suite, I think "Nextcloud" is a popular one. Then it should work on any OS, and you don't have to worry about syncing files. Even if you can pay to have someone else host an instance (not sure if this exists), and ideally a program that can keep a local backup synced to your PCs would be a big step in the right direction. Syncthing seems pretty great, though I haven't used it much, and on iOS it doesn't seem to be able to run in the background.
edit: I just read another comment that recommended OnlyOffice, this seems like another good option (source: this reply: https://lemmy.ca/comment/9415293). Aside: is there a proper way to link to a comment on lemmy that will go through your own homeserver?
Honestly Markdown is perfectly fine 99% of the time. It also has many advantages by just being much simpler
This is what I do for my own notes now, but could it work for students writing essays and that sort of thing? I suppose there must be some markdown to HTML/PDF/etc converters (also probably ODT or DOCX or whatever).
OnlyOffice is nice, but a tad controversial. It's UI is much much closer to how 365 looks.
What's controversial about OnlyOffice?
I only recently discovered it, and I've been happy with it so far. I've found the interface a little more snappy and easy to use than LibreOffice.
I don't remember exactly, but something about it's license maybe.
Cool, thanks! This is what I was looking for. I've briefly tried playing with Nextcloud before, but this seems like another good option.
Nextcloud is a lot of things. A bit overkill for just it's office offering tbh. But, if it fits your workflow, and you like other things it offers go for it. The snap package actually makes it very easy to tinker with (despite the deserved hate of snaps in general).
Obviously you need to replace your macOS with something better.