Who uses OpenOffice? (Also, more thoughts about contests) · 1:55am Sep 7th, 2014
My laptop will be at 100% functionality just as soon as I get a Word-compatible writing program installed on it. (I even got Solitaire and Minesweeper! So much cooler with touch-screen. :D) Whether that's Office 2010 or OpenOffice remains to be seen. I installed OO on my desktop and tried it out a little. A bit of jiggering with the settings, and it looks okay, but it does bother me to convert everything from .doc format at every opportunity. I guess my main question is, if I keep all my documents as docs, am I going to have compatibility issues down the line? Are there going to be wires crossed in terms of formatting or anything?
And now it's time for me to do one of those followup chain blogs.
So, the prize thing seems to be moot. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, and not worry about it. I had an idea for a format for one of them, however, and wanted to get some feedback.
See, the reason OI and MDG kind of destroyed my head was the sheer number of entries. A 15k word count is all well and good, but when you have over 100 stories to read, it doesn't matter how long they are; that's gonna suck balls.
But since one of the prompts I have in mind lends itself to lengthy adventures, I thought, why impose a reasonable word limit that's going to hold the author back? Why not give a time limit -- say, a month -- and take only the first X number of entries. 20, 30, whatever. It's first come, first served. So you're going to have to wonder, as an entrant, do I go for the ambitious entry? Or try something quick so I can get in?
There are probably flaws in this plan, so that's why I bring it to all of you, being so intelligent and logical and stuff. :D
Okay, so that wasn't a good idea. Please see horizon's comment below for an alternative idea, if you're still interested in discussion. :)
I don't know anything about OpenOffice, but if memory serves, Ferret might. Check with her.
Generally no. If you use any of the more exoteric word formatting then you might encounter issues, but for the majority it's ok.
Caveat though: I haven't seen how OO deals with word docs that have annotation comments. Probably should be ok.
Why not just recruit judges to help plow through the fics? It wouldn't be any fun to write your fic for a contest only to see when you try to submit it that the queue is already filled.
I mean, in the extreme case, you could pump out 20 shitty fics in a day to seal up every entry slot.
I recommend LibreOffice over OpenOffice. They're very similar, but Libre has additional features and more active development.
I know that doesn't answer any of your questions, but I'm commenting anyway.
2433563
'Cuz me reviewing them all would be kind of the point.
Of course, I could always say, "Hey, I didn't finish by the deadline, so eat me and wait a week". :V
2433571
What kinds of features? I don't do a whole lot with Word, to be honest, and extra features tend to go over my head.
2433561
I've used Open Office to read Word docs with notes and Track Changes and they came across just fine.
2433581 Bug fixes and significant improvements in terms of loading speed and memory footprint, at least as I remember.
2433581 Well, the only one I care about is that it has a constantly updating word count in the bottom-left corner (so you can just glance at it instead of searching through menus to find the word count). I'm sure it has more than that, but I generally don't care about word processors. Friends who do care recommend Libre to me, so I'm recommending to you.
OO has some issues with image embedding for some reason when pulled from Word docs. Not sure if that's an issue or not, but it can be for me at the office where I handle docs with embedded logos. Customers don't like those cut off.
Anywho... with regards to the contest...
I would say keep the word restriction. It forces the author to apply the scalpel to their work and make the story work with as few words as possible. It's a testament to skill to make a compelling story with a limited word budget and a limited span of time to make that story work.
OO has issues with fonts, especially in slide presentations. Last year it was very, very, very, very slow. It will always have issues with something, because Microsoft will make changes to make their documents incompatible with OO. That's probably why they invented the .docx format.
I don't like word restrictions, and I especially don't like minimum length restrictions.
I'd suggest running a couple of related contests, with the restriction that each author can only enter one of them. Then just read and judge them separately so you can do it in chunks. Or maybe do one contest, but do the x number of entries thing. First 20 is round one, second 20 is round two a month later, and so on.
Align incentives with goals. If you're hoping to see the longer fics you were mentioning, telling people "write as long as you'd like, but your spot might get stolen by 'Twilight Sparkle Writes a Minific' if you do" won't get them.
If you want to limit entries, maybe you can say, "to reserve your spot, post the first 250 words of your story's first draft in this thread"? That way, if someone gets inspiration and wants in, they have to actually get going on it; but if they write 250 words and then discover that their spot's been sniped, they're only out half an hour. Then, after someone's reserved a spot, they have plenty of time to make their story as long as it needs to be, and more importantly, to get an editing pass or two. You get to read finished works (and there will be no more than X of them, where X is how many spots you opened).
I bought my laptop second-hand (Lenovo ThinkPad T60), and it has OO. I've used it a couple of times, but I prefer Gdocs for the fact that it's inherently easier to transfer completed documents to Fimfiction.
2433581 Libreoffice also, along with the near-constant development, has a much improved compatibility with .doc files over OO
That, and the sidebar interface works out pretty damn well compared to toolbars.
Don't know how much my opinion's worth, but to be honest I wouldn't even bother with a contest like that. If the first X number of fics were all that would be counted as submissions, there'd be no incentive to do anything but quick 1k pieces just to make sure my effort was even recognized as valid.
I use OpenDocument and OpenOffice.Org too.
You do not have to convert old files, but for future-proofing, I recommend that you save all new files in OpenDocument:
The idea of OpenDocument is that it is an open fully documented family of file-formats. Later versions subsume never versions, so that if your computer in 2020 dies, but you have the files on a memory-stick and you have your old unupdated 2014-laptop, OpenDocumentCompatibleSoftWare on the old laptop can open the files, with loss of formatting from features added to the file-format in the intervening 6 years. This brings up an interesting point:
¿Why does not MicroSoft have its new MicroSoftOfficeFileFormats subsume earlier versions so of the file-formats?
If they did, files created with newer versions of MicroSoftOffice would be largely (with some formatting loss) compatible with older versions of MicroSoftOffice and older versions of competing OfficeSoftware where the programmers successfully reverse-engineered the file-format. MicroSoftOffice defaults to making new files in the latest file-format, thus forcing ponies receiving the files to upgrade to the latest version of MicroSoftOffice for opening the files.
If you save new work in OpenDocument, you will always be able to open and edit the files in the future with any OpenDocumentCompliant OfficeSoftWare:
Because OpenDocument is open and completely documented, anypony can create software to read and write it. MicroSoft refuses to support OpenDocument, but ponies have created Inport/Export-Filters which allow MicroSoftOffice to read and write OpenDocument. MicroSoft has it head buried in the sand (see 2 paragraphs above as to why).
If you ever used GoogleDocuments, you already used OpenDocument because GoogleDocuments uses OpenDocument internally and can export in it too.
OpenDocument
Long Partial List Of SoftWare Which Can Read And Write OpenDocument
2434116 <<This.
'First X' is an awful idea. If you want to make the wordcount count, make it part of the scoring.
For example: Rank the stories in order and assign 10pts per position, then add (or subtract, depending how which way you ordered it) a point of every full 100 words used above the minimum, and use wordcount as a tie-breaker .
As they've said, only accepting the first 20 fics or so is not a good idea. If you want the contest to succeed, I would actually suggest going for the simple word limit thing, and if the number of entries is too big, you can always try to get some help (even if the main point of the thing is for you to review all of them).
Alternatively, 2434370 's idea sounds very interesting.
Echoing what everybody else and their dog have already probably said, open office (or preferably libreoffice) should not only fully serve your needs for now but also in the future. It can read and write various versions of m$ office files mostly without issue and the open format files it prefers are understood by gdocs and several other suites. With some finagling I believe even m$ can read them...
I'm at the point where I also care about the look of the result, which so far renders just about every word processor more or less useless, but that's just me. Word processors do a good job of making things too easy, so figuring out the layout behind the document is almost impossible, sadly. To be honest though, for 99% of what I need, it's fine.
2433693
Minimum length is generally for purposes of Fimfic/EQD publication.
2433963
Now there's an idea!
2433602
I'm used to digging for word count, from using Office 2000. :B I tended to write minifics on my laptop, since it had a newer version.
2434062
I honestly didn't like OO's sidebar. <.< Hmm, maybe I'll give Libre a shot, it can't hurt.
2434116
Yeah, this is what I was afraid of. I think horizon might have a solution.
I generally compose with Open Office, ever since gDocs went kind of squirrely (based mostly on my cell phone provider's theory that with the influx of smartphones, the thing to do would be remove a tower, thus making my internet access even more iffy).
What I like about it is that I can just cut and paste into gDocs when it's time to send things out to my editors, and I haven't lost any formatting yet.
Embedded images don't seem to upload right (it just puts the URL in, IIRC), but I usually add those later, directly in FimFic, so that's not a problem.
I haven't experimented with reading older Word docs, saving them in whatever format OO wants, and then trying to re-open them with Word, 'cause I don't have Word on any of my computers anymore. Not since the XP machine finally went to meet its maker.
Where can I read all the entries?
2435887
Why right here, good sir!
(Well, technically here, since quite a few weren't published on Fimfiction. But you can find all the previous PR Battles in that group.)
Answering a bit late, didn't get to the Internet yesterday at all.
Personally, with limited spots — be it through your original idea, or Horizon's — I would likely not take part in the contest (or, rather, I would likely get a story ready, but only submit it to the contest close to the end, if there were spots still open). I have something hardwired in my brain that makes me really uncomfortable with depriving other people of a spot through anything except fair competition, and I don't see how a pre-screening system can be fair without every entry being read, which would kinda defeat why you want pre-screening in the first place.
As for OpenOffice/LibreOffice, I would also recommend LibreOffice. Seems like, when Oracle pulled a bad stunt with how it led OpenOffice's development, most of the developers jumped ship and created LibreOffice, so that one is seeing more active development. Which, for the most part, means more features and less bugs.
Regarding being future-proof, in the past LibreOffice/OpenOffice has actually been more future-proof than Office itself, given the way Microsoft handled file formats; changing the file format to prevent competing software from opening new files does wreck havoc with backwards compatibility, and for much of its history Office was often worse at opening old .doc files than OpenOffice. That should be over now, though; Microsoft is making an ongoing effort to have its .docx format accepted as a national standard in countries around the world, and doing anything to break compatibility — including competitor's compatibility — would greatly hamper those efforts.
I still trust the Open Document Format (used by LibreOffice and OpenOffice) better than Microsoft's .docx for being future-proof, mind you. I find a format created by leveraging the open formats used in the Internet, one that is backed by about every standards body and big company that has a heavy interest in document formats except Microsoft, more trustworthy than a format based on the internal workings of a specific proprietary software and backed almost exclusively by one big company plus its commercial partners. But, with the way Microsoft is fighting what some call the document format wars, .docx should also be safe for the foreseeable future.
BTW, you likely don't need to bother converting documents from .doc anytime soon. OpenOffice and LibreOffice will likely keep opening those documents for the foreseeable future, and they treat any loss of fidelity in opening those documents as a bug to be fixed. I would just make sure any document that gets changed or updated is saved in a newer format.
2437843
The one thing I hate, and this is just me, is changing formats. All of my writing -- since seventh grade -- is saved as .docs, and you'd better believe I don't ever want to change that. :| I will go so far as to open an existing story and save it under a new title just to make sure I have everything as .docs. I don't even use .docx because fuck that.
2437892
Well, you don't really need to. Not for the foreseeable future, at least. All of the big document editors nowadays — including OpenOffice, LibreOffice, and Microsoft Office — should have very good support for both reading and writing .doc files, and given the format's popularity I don't foresee support for reading it being dropped from any of those programs in the next few decades at least (though I do believe support for writing might become scarce a decade from now, though that prediction delves into futurology; the devs of all those programs do want to move people away from the old binary formats and into better supported XML-based formats).
2433963 But surely that just means you throw out any old 250 words to reserve a place and then change whatever you need to later, and in no way means you need to finish it.
That or the 250 words is fixed, which is pretty much anathema to a good system of writing. That would be something to run away from like the black death itself. Also, if it was fixed, then people would be more likely not to finish if they screwed up the start.
2438257
> surely that just means you throw out any old 250 words to reserve a place and then change whatever you need to later, and in no way means you need to finish it.
That's exactly how I envision it, yes. The point isn't to lock anyone into anything, it's to introduce the tiniest possible speed bump to claiming a slot so that people aren't just grabbing them on the future expectation that they might want to enter.
It's a pony fanfic competition, not The Beatles' final concert. I don't think we'll see anyone copy-and-pasting from existing stories just to cheat and claim themselves a slot.
Thus, once someone actually starts writing, they're making a good-faith effort toward the competition; even if they lock up and don't finish, it wasn't for lack of trying. (And if someone realizes they're not going to be able to finish, they can always withdraw their entry and free the slot back up.)
2437843
I have something hardwired in my brain that makes me really uncomfortable with depriving other people of a spot through anything except fair competition …
That's a legitimate argument against entry limits, but I can't imagine there's any way to meet PP's goals without running into it. Other limitation methods (lottery, first-come first-serve submission, etc) would lead to equal guilt.
I suppose the idea could be extended to include a "waiting list" of stories that will be added if one or more of the competitors fails to finish? That seems like it's starting to overengineer the problem.
2438579
Which is why I prefaced my answer with "personally". PP's concern is perfectly valid, but acting on that concern will likely put contestants in a situation I would find uncomfortable. And I can't imagine a better proposal that that is not either exceedingly complex or requires reading all entries anyway.
BTW, take this more as a brainstorm than a proposal — I don't fully like it, though I would find it better than the current ideas — but my current idea for a fairer contest without having PP read more complete fics than he wants would involve picking elements of your own idea to turn it into a two-stage contest. First stage would involve submitting something short, but with a purpose — perhaps the expected description, or an outline, with a very small word limit. PP (or a volunteer he trusts[1]) would then choose from among those the ones that would go to the next step, which would be the full fics. A fair bit more complex than I think one such contest should be, but it might work.
[1] Why a volunteer? So PP can read and judge the fics without having basically read spoilers for them in the previous contest stage.
2438579
One other problem I'm concerned with, that a waiting list would exacerbate, is making people put in a lot of work only to have it count for nothing.
Honestly, at this point, I think my best chance would be to hope that what word limit can't crunch down to a reasonable reading time, my lack of immense popularity and the prompts (I guarantee one isn't gonna attract a lot of attention) will suffice for.
2439688
In that case, maybe you could do semifinals if you get more stories than you expect? Assign stories randomly to small brackets, say groups of five, and have each author read all the stories in their bracket and vote for two OTHER people's stories to advance, out of their four competitors. Top two in each bracket (modulo ties) go to the finals, which cuts your reading list to a little less than half.
It adds a lot of logistics and some extra failure points, and it does put some more burden on the competitors to be engaged beyond simply writing their story (but in general, in a community like this, I think that's a good thing). But it's worth considering.
Edit: I should also note, when Everfree NW got 3x the entries we were expecting for our own competition, we did a different form of bracketing: the three of us on writing track staff each split the competitors up into "brackets" of our own, basically reading 1/3 of the stories each, and nominating our bracket's top five scorers plus one judge's choice (which we liked regardless of its scoring) into a finalist bracket. That way, each judge was only on the hook for reading 1/3 of the stories plus all ~18 finalists. Every story got at least one score/mini-review, and the top ones got scores from everyone to dodge the "different scores from different judges" issue. If you get some volunteers, something like that could be imperfect but workable.
2439762
I think the main issue is that if I'm running a contest, I will feel compelled to read and review all entries regardless of how many there are.
Solution: treat it like Outside Insight, where I have judges help me file out the chaff for purposes of swift ranking, and read the rest at my leisure.
2439781
**nods**
(I updated my suggestion while you were typing this. Reread it.)