I once failed a uni assignment, because the teachers assistant wrote remarks on a pdf in a way that’s only viewable in adobe’s products.
She failed us because “we ignored her remarks”. Had no idea they were there.
Tbh it’s probably less of an Adobe problem and more due to the absolute mess that is PDF annotations.
Despite being a defined open standard, most free PDF viewers either don’t support them (zathura etc), or fuck them up (GNOME evince). Even some of the viewers that do support them like Okular need extra configuration.
Unironically Firefox as a PDF viewer actually has the best support for PDF annotations.
The state of PDF Readers on Linux - Discussion - It’s FOSS Community - https://itsfoss.community/t/the-state-of-pdf-readers-on-linux/12798
Had the same in gymnasium, eventually got it overturned via bitching about it. Notes wouldnt even show up on their webapp : /
Ooh I would fucking LAY into her in the review if she did that, and cause a stink to the dean. That shit would’ve pissed me off so bad. I hate when people expect you to be telepathic like that.
To be honest she probably didn’t even know that the comments were only visible to Adobe product readers, but that’s still infuriating as hell
All pdfs must be flattened! You just never know what people will use so flatten.
Everyone knows the only acceptable formats are .pdf and .tex, everything else should be shunned out of society.
.tex is a source format, not a presentation format, and as such should not be valid in a submission field.
they should take .ps though.
Dvi file then.
Hmmm, a compress folder full of the .tex and the resources.
i’m not sending anything that can be edited. last time i did that as a consultant they stripped our company logo out of the documents.
Wait until you find out that absolutely anything can be edited
not by joe doofus
.pdf can contain malware
But the entire paper in a .jpeg would be hilariousAny format can really contain malware
good ol virus.txt
.tex
Ha, lamers. A true wizard writes their assignments in roff.
I wonder how people actually work with LaTeX.
Do you actually write all the headers and stuff manually through a TeX editor, or do you use tools that do it for you?
Because the former sounds incredibly tedious.
The former, it becomes easy and “natural” fast, as you memorize the stuff, eventually you become so used to being able to specify how the document should be specifically that using WYSIWYG stuff like word is awful, you start to fight with the document editor…
But there is stuff like overleaf if you want something less direct, it is still LaTeX but it has tools and Whatnots to do it easier.
Thanks!
I used LyX when I authored some papers
Will take a look!
I do both, but usually I use markdown to write the texts because it features basic formatting like headers and bold text, but it’s faster and easier to write. Then I use pandoc to convert it into .tex and do the final editing and adjusting directly in Latex.
I believe Zettlr editor uses pandoc to convert MD to LaTeX.
Indeed needs some manual tinkering, as long as I remember, at least since MD is not so feature-rich :D
But thanks for the recommendation!
Wasn’t .docx also supposed to be an open standard but M$ kept fucking with the implementation so it would only work in Office?
So it’s an “open standard”, not in the sense that anybody can contribute to the development, but in the sense that the details of the standard are open and you can learn about them.
The format itself is an XML version of the existing Office document formats, and they grew organically over decades with random bugs, features, and bug compatibilities with other programs. e.g. There will be a random flag on an object that makes no sense but is necessary for interoperating with some Lotus 1-2-3 files that a company had, who then worked with Microsoft to support back it in the 90s. Things you can’t change, nobody really cares about, but get written down because the software already implements it (and will emit sometimes)
Isn’t it open? It works with Dropbox and macOS Numbers opens .docx and saves as .docx.
So does LibreOffice, but they’ve been called out multiple times for purposefully making the format overly complex to make it as hard as possible to reliable read and write to it.
I genuinely think they’re just incompetent lol
You should see the windows xp source code
You should see the windows xp source code
The rapidly dwindling sanity of windows programmers as expressed through code comments
Okay, I just want to say I blame schools for Microsoft’s monopoly on personal computing. School sysadmins are always dazzled by the shiny looking gifts that Microsoft gives them, ensuring the next generation of Microsoft useds is ready.
Yes I really liked the “microsoft excel and spreadsheets” class everyone had to take for 1-2 whole years. The tools designed for us to learn basics within weeks and discover features naturally over time.
I mean imagine how many negative side effects on education there would be if we just spent one or two weeks learning KStars or Geogebra or Kalzium.
Don’t worry tho cause with microsoft backing openai I am sure every student will be given a set of chatgpt premium accounts to “help” them in their learning. Universities are already doing it en masse.
You lose some you lose some.
Schools could have used that time they were “teaching” the Office suite to give an introduction to unix, programming, and the basics of how the internet functions. I had to read and analyze Beowulf, Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Homer and memorize the names and formulas of 33 polyatomic ions. Computing education to the same depth should have been and should be required as it was required for the other subjects.
Knowledge is power.
We understand a very small subset of what we use every day, and that can only be catastrophic.
Really?
They’re almost universally Chromebooks and the Google suite for schools these days…
K-12 use Google, University use Microsoft
yeah but that’s fairly recent.
when i was in school in the late 90s it was all microsoft all the time. we had courses specifically on MicrosoftTM WordTM. that sort of indoctrination isn’t visible in the workplace until the people going through it are old enough to work.
I graduated in 2011, and same. My high school had a pretty janky mix of various Dell Inspiron towers, running mostly Windows XP but with a handful of Windows 2000 and ME machines that for some reason (prolly hardware too old) escaped their upgrades. We went through impressively comprehensive MS Office training and even Computer Tech classes (essentially an intro to an intro to computer science where we learned data concepts and built a PC).
A few years later, 90% of those machines had been scrapped, the mandatory courses were all gone and the kids all had cheap crappy Chromebooks. Now any tech courses are just electives and the students are expected to magically know how to use the software they’re required to use. (Because “they’re young, of course they know it!” Nevermind that they’ve only used iPads since birth).
Consequently, any class involving a computer, even if it’s just word processing for English essays and such, has the teacher taking time out of instruction to show the students how to use the stuff. Otherwise there are problems. It’s a sorry state of affairs and a lot more kids are getting left behind when it comes to tech. Google might be the worst thing happening to education now if it weren’t for the GOP.
To be fair, that’s about all there was… Corels (?) WordPerfect was ass, for sure. Office 97 was freaking amazing.
Although, I was a product of the time as well.
A couple years ago I interned for computer support at an elementary school in NYC. Most students had Chromebooks and Gsuite, K-2nd grade had iPads. Teachers had Lenovo laptops with Windows 10 and Office365.
Best thing I ever saw was an Italian cooking class that sent recipes as an ODT, and then 20 minutes later as a DOCX as an afterthought for the Americans.
Why not pdf?
Because the chef didn’t know how to do that? I dunno.
Mine accepted both. The professor read it from a web app anyway.
🤮
agreed
Could we perhaps not drag RMS out of whatever dark place we’re blessed not to hear about him from now?
We have enough pedo shit going on with the POTUS at the moment.
Also, LibreOffice saves in .docx format, if you want to be pragmatic rather than dogmatic.
For anyone who’s not aware:
https://stallman-report.org/Wow, he’s quite passionate. I just kept scrolling through the quotes and it never ends
For anyone who is not aware: https://stallmansupport.org/
To our collective social woe, disinformation succeeds because so many people care deeply about injustice but do not take the time to study the facts before passing along or acting on disinformation.
Something many of us should learn from, even more appropriate on lemmy.
Does using the computer just turn people into this?
Thanks. Sorry I should have linked to it. I kind of assumed it was common knowledge.
I had no idea. With all of the things I have to follow on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis some things are just going to fall through the cracks. “Minor public figure holds reprehensible views” won’t generally hit my radar. “Major public figure did something reprehensible” may not hit my radar depending on how busy or drunk I am in a given week, which will leave me wondering why people hate them years later.
I’m not saying this as a criticism of you. You brought it up which is super valuable. There’s just so much shit to keep up with that I always appreciate context because I have other things going on and rarely have any idea what reprehensible thing a particular person has said or done.
Hey no sweat 🙂 I just happen to be old enough to have known / read about / heard about RMS for decades. Given enough time, if you’re at all interested in the free software movement, his less-than-savory traits naturally end up coming to your attention.
I’ve been using free software (both free as in freedom and free as in beer) off and on since I discovered slackware in the 90s, but I’ll be the first to admit I’m not plugged into the scene. I’m not plugged into most scenes except possibly rock and Americana music, and I know all the gross shit that happened there. Rock music especially. And that may actually be why I tend to avoid getting plugged in.
But I went through the whole report. I’m sad to find out someone with such lofty ideals in one area is so scummy. A lot of that just sounds like typical neckbeard idiocy dialed up to maximum. And if he were just any neckbeard or incel on the street everyone could just dismiss him. But he’s a prominent figure that represents a movement spouting gross and harmful shit. It has nothing to do with the validity of the movement, nor does it remove the value of free software, but him being a keynote speaker everywhere and being so involved makes things feel dirty.
I don’t know. I didn’t take my medication today so I’m scattered. I just hate when people doing important or influential work are gross people, especially if they have harmful attitudes towards minors.
I agree, I fixed it.
I kinda like using Doctorow for this:
- Similar facial expression
- Works with the EFF
- Cool shades
- is an all-around cool, intelligent person and unquestionably punk
Most of my professors prefer pdf
Do you remember when radicals were trying to cancel RMS because of him merely defending some accused person.
The whole feud was very sad to unfold.
Ok, he is not perfect, but we need him, now more than ever. Even if only as a symbol.
Personally complain to the it crew and you get that look.
Can’t OpenOffice export to .docx?
please do not use openoffice in 2025
Honestly I keep mixing up Openoffice and Libreoffice.
I use RTF because it works on most systems out of the box.
I write my papers in markdown. Simple to write, easy to paste into Discord or Lemmy, and you can use pandoc to instantly turn it into any format you like.
Haven’t used word in over 20 years and have no intention of ever using it again.
OpenOffice baby!
OpenOffice 💀 Dude that thing doesn’t get a proper update since 2014, the most they do today is code style changes!
Indeed the libreoffice team wrote them a letter in 2020 about this: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2020/10/12/open-letter-to-apache-openoffice/
Libreoffice is so nice. I also use onlyoffice on my phone, and have liked it so far.
*libre office
Yes. I know, it’s more popular than open office but I’ve used open office for so long now I don’t want to switch.
Do you my guy but running an office suite that hasn’t been patched in 11 years is a major security risk. (This is assuming you aren’t exclusively creating and saving documents, but are also opening documents you recieve or download).
