this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2024
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Excel is okay as long as it stays in its lane.
It is not okay if you’ve ever worked in a printshop or do graphic design and people send in newsletters or brochures or some shit done within Excel.
Excel is many things; it is not fit to layout documents. Blegh.
To be fair word isn't good at it either.
I've found setting a PowerPoint slide to standard paper size is the best for quick page layout and "graphic design" for things like a poster or sign.
Word being a word processor also sucks at document layout. Most software that isn't made for laying out documents suck at it, but people all try. My god do they try...
What software is good for document layout anyway? Something with PDFs?
There's so-called desktop publishing software.
In the open-source world, I typically see Scribus recommended.
I'm probably dead wrong somehow, but I don't see why these aren't the standard text document software. Is there some part of just a solid wall of text that can't be done with DPS? Is the limitations of word processors somehow good for office use to the exclusion of slightly interesting formatting?
Yeah, I find the similarity most striking with LibreOffice Draw vs. LibreOffice Writer. It very much feels like Draw is just a superset of the features of Writer.
There is certainly some differences, though, e.g. text doesn't automatically overflow onto new pages, text boxes don't automatically increase in size, things like that.
Everything is a lot more static, which is great for layout, and less great, if you just need to type out some text.
Automatic formatting. Try to have an automatic table of content with and automatic index of tables in draw, it's not available. When I write a lab report, I don't want to check every page to make sure the title 3 is still on page 4.
Formatting software are good at manual formatting. Word processors are good at convenience. Once you know your way around, you can be fairly good at formatting with them, and you get the advantages of having some automatic features.
Adobe sucks but InDesign is still pretty much the standard; it begrudgingly does a pretty good job.
Affinity Publisher is coming along nicely though. And yeah Scribus is not too bad either.
Add one small image to word and the whole page goes nuts:
[🖼️] h
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L
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*Cries in vector