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What file formats, technologies, techniques do you think would benefit most people by being more common? Or that people would benefit by being more aware of? (lemmy.sdf.org)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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.7z seems to be good and I do recommend it to people, saying that it's better than regular zip. Have recently started using opus n webm files more.

I've also heard about jxl recently. Would be very nice to see it become popular, as it could reduce the size of my memes n screenshots folders. Faster webpage loading too.

Are there any other file formats that'll be useful to people, but isn't getting enough attention?

In the case of apps, Trebleshot seems to be good for android file sharing. I like it's web sharing option having an upload form. Helps me where I don't have to ask others to install an app to send me a file locally. Not sure about its encryption n security aspects, but I only have used it for local file sharing.

And what about other stuff similar to that, other than file formats or apps?

Recently have started exercising my neck. Not neck bridges and loaded things tho. Only safe n simple movements. Seems to be good, especially after using a monitor for some time. I think it's not much talked about, maybe because of the fear that people will overdo it?

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (10 children)

I just think Microsoft Word is actively making the entire world less efficient. It's not made to produce documents that are easy to read. Don't have an obvious contender though. LibreOffice Writer just tries to be the same shitty product but free, LaTeX is way too technical and has horrible error handling. Markdown usability and quality breaks down if you make any serious use of tables and figures.

Since I'm not a US citizen I also think it's a threat to our country that our entire administration and every company is dependent on storing documents in an effectively proprietary format controlled by a US company, on cloud servers controlled by a US company. If compelled by the US government, Microsoft could put all of EU to a halt with the flick of a switch. National security calls for formats as central as this to be open standards supported by multiple competing products.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Couldn't agree more. Tried OnlyOffice? Lovely suite . Markdown is amazing, I am writing a web book & PDF version with the same source. Did LaTeX, but it was just so cumbersome.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Sorry, I can see from the first screenshot on their web site that OnlyOffice is not conducive to legibility. A user interface that promotes direct control of the typeface (instead of styling rules based on semantic tags) is going to produce inconsistent documents.

User interfaces should be designed to make it easy to do things right, and difficult to do things wrong. This UI encourages people to produce crap.

Their other screenshots further show that they do not care about things like appropriate margin size or inter-word spacing, leaving me with little trust in the product.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

Agreed. This UI is very much inherited from ancient word processing applications. The shift that Microsoft made in the Vista era to the tabbed menu buttons only added extra mouse clicks to get to the same set of functions. Word and LibreOffice both allow you to do the kind of thing you're talking about, but those features are nestled way down into menus and trays that are ugly and hard to use and promote the use of the wrong tool since the wrong tool is made more accessible.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

Onlyoffice works with microsoft ooxml standards by default, in other words, promoting them and encouraging its use. OOXML is everything but efficient. OpenDocument, instead, which is used by LibreOffice by default, is the open and efficient standard.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Give LyX a try. It's like writing TeX in a much more friendly way.

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