{"id":3524,"date":"2015-03-25T15:26:11","date_gmt":"2015-03-25T14:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/t-machine.org\/?p=3524"},"modified":"2015-03-25T15:26:11","modified_gmt":"2015-03-25T14:26:11","slug":"giving-openoffice-a-not-disgusting-new-word-document","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/2015\/03\/25\/giving-openoffice-a-not-disgusting-new-word-document\/","title":{"rendered":"Giving OpenOffice a “not disgusting” New Word Document"},"content":{"rendered":"

OpenOffice is great. It has flaws. One of the most insidious is that the “new document” settings for Word\/Letter documents is vile. It has truly awful formatting – ARGH! MY EYES!<\/p>\n

Today I was writing a doc to put down some thoughts for colleagues, and I realised that the formating is so unbearable it was actively blocking me from thinking or expressing myself clearly. Every glance at the words in front of me was corrupted.<\/p>\n

So, I’m going to do some experiments in replacing it with something … “not s**t”.<\/p>\n

Download a template<\/h2>\n

Not possible. The OpenOffice.org website has never worked<\/strong> – I’ve been using it for 10 years, and the Template Search is still 100% broken. “Sort by rating, Descending” and the top-rating is often … 0\/5 stars. Um. No. Guys – can you please learn how to count to 1?<\/p>\n

Screencap from today:<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/p>\n

Make a template<\/h2>\n

Here’s the steps, if you want to do one yourself: How can I change the defaults for a new Writer document?<\/a><\/p>\n

Attempt 1: Verdana, indents<\/h3>\n

Arial – especially using Arial Bold for every-other-heading – is painful on the eyes when a document has more than about ten words. Let’s dump that and – sticking with a common font everyone has installed, but is similar in look – go with Verdana.<\/p>\n

\nI do not enjoy using Arial, Verdana, Helvetica etc in docs; but I have no idea how funky you can get today and still get 100% coverage of “this font is installed on everyone else’s computer, no download\/import\/conversion needed”\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Looks like this:<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/p>\n

DOWNLOAD LINK:<\/strong> Default Text (Verdana)<\/a><\/p>\n

Aside<\/h2>\n

There’s a circle of hell set aside for the muppet working at WordPress who decided to block all files that he\/she couldn’t be bothered to type into a pointless – BUT NOT UPDATEABLE – whitelist of filetypes.<\/p>\n

That’s not what a filename extension is. It’s not what a filetype is for. Great example of “a little knowledge” (or in this case: no knowledge at all, just foolish assumptions) being a dangerous thing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OpenOffice is great. It has flaws. One of the most insidious is that the “new document” settings for Word\/Letter documents is vile. It has truly awful formatting – ARGH! MY EYES! Today I was writing a doc to put down some thoughts for colleagues, and I realised that the formating is so unbearable it was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3524"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3524"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3528,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3524\/revisions\/3528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}