PowerPoint is somewhat awesome though, yar.
Everything it does can be done better elsewhere, but it does so much that you can use one thing rather than learn several new tools separately.
You just have to get past and ignore the "Microsoft" part, to see that Office is a legit achievement bc of all the work they put into that.
Ofc it doesn't compare to Latex, but that's like a different class of tool entirely so it's okay:-).
I have started learning LaTeX (about to dive back in actually) as I edit my thesis together into something that resembles something more than a ranting tangent. It is scratching my probable undx autism obsession itch hella hard. Overleaf is actually a really great tool when you have purpose.
Overleaf is the shit, I love that site so goddamned much
I've spend so much time on learning latex instead of writing my thesis haha (in my department no one ever even heard of latex). But yes, same with the autism connection. It's just so nice to have a certain structure and order in everything :)
PowerPoint is ridiculously capable, like to an unnecessary degree.
I HATE Microsoft, it is evil, and moreover it was evil long before Apple and Google etc. became thus (and before Facebook, Twitter/X, etc. existed).
But ngl, Office is solid. I've run Office products on any personal machine I've been on - Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux (Wine) - and every time I have tried to switch to an open-source version I keep going back.
If I had to do heavy math then I would invest the time to learn to use Beamer, but for everything else, PowerPoint does so much with ease.
Powerpoint is what made me originally vow to try to never use word or powerpoint again, about 15 years ago. I was making a mathematically-dense presentation and became so frustrated with it that I wanted to throw my computer out the window. I still was somewhat new to latex at the time but figured there had to be some way to make presentations in latex. Found beamer and have never used pp for a real presentation again.
Yeah, PowerPoint is made for "business presentations", and its auto-alignment makes it useful for layout tasks like e.g. Adobe Illustrator replacement, plus it has some picture editing features though ofc nowhere close to Photoshop (or gimp, or ImageMagic, etc.), plus its presentation mode is good e.g. like Acrobat but far easier to use iirc.
But it's definitely of the WYSIWYG class, whereas for math I believe you want LaTeX, at which point it's probably easier to just do the layout from within that than to take pictures of the formulas and present from within PowerPoint.
PowerPoint can be a nice tool for many, but not for that purpose, agreed.
Yeah I don't like Microsoft but like Office, I just run offline pirated version of their main programs. It's like how I avoid Google for 70% of options but absolutely love Google Maps and Google Translate.
There are different teams that work on different products. Devs != Marketing for one I guess. Anyway those are all legit achievements that we can recognize, and still know that the corporation is evil, or even if it was not that we don't want to rely on a for-profit corp for everything important that we need.:-)
I haven't used Google translate since I discovered Deepl, and it gets better all the time
I mean, it's okay.... I feel like I run into inconveniences in MSO every day. Off the top of my head (solutions welcome):
- Absurd startup times for opening documents. Worse if there isn't an instance of the app already open. Part of the blame goes to my company's antivirus software, but Excel and PowerPoint are easily my slowest-starting apps, and Word is the runner-up. All UI animations are also stupidly slow, though I think that was a design choice.
- A pasted graphic goes to the center of the slide in ppt regardless of the current zoom or view. Annoying for making large posters, exacerbated by delayed rendering of lots of graphics.
- Likewise, zooming occurs relative to slide's center, not the current zoomed view or from the mouse pointer.
- No easily accessibly horizontal scroll outside of using a touchpad (i.e., scrollbar only). Tilting the mouse wheel (if I even have access to such a mouse) either doesn't work or only slightly nudges the view. Also makes posters tedious in combination with pasting issue. Something like shift+mousewheel would be nice.
- Dragging a scroll bar does not update the view until you release it.
- Sometimes the amount of space between a bullet point and text in a PPT text box changes when all others are remain the same. Possibly a skill issue related to styles. Still frustrating.
- Dragging objects autoaligns them to seemingly everything except what I want it to. I now run with snapping turned off.
- Pasting charts between documents changes to destination formatting/styling by default.
- Pasting text from external sources keeps formatting by default. Never have I ever wanted to copy a web page's or email's font, color, and size into my own docs. I could have sworn that there were also circumstances where ctrl+alt+v doesn't work properly, but I can't seem to remember/reproduce that at the moment.
- Dates in Excel. It's a meme, but also true.
- Excel seems to have a "root" window (the doc opened first), and it does not play nice with virtual desktops. If you try to open a spreadsheet from Windows Explorer or some other app (e.g. web browser) on VD B while the root window is on VD A, you are forcibly switched to VD A, where the doc actually opens (after a complimentary delay, of course). Then I have to find the freaking window in Task View and move it back to VD B. There is a reason I wasn't adding more windows to VD A to begin with. Incidentally Word and other MSO apps do not have this issue for some reason.
- If one doc window freezes/stops responding, they all do.
- Aligning things in Word
- A few common color palettes are not colorblind-friendly.
Okay so all true but... genuinely, do you have an alternative to suggest? I have thought about switching to a more LaTeX layout style editing platform even not for mathematical formulas, since part of the issue is simply using WYSIWYG. PowerPoint at least has workarounds for most things - e.g. in the details panel (click click, click click click - it used to be a direct menu item but now it is quite buried, at least in my current version) you can input a numerical value for the x and y position relative to the slide's upper left corner i.e. its absolute position). That requires a significantly lower barrier to entry than editing source code but if the latter offers superior functionality with less hassle...
As for Word and Excel, the same thought applies: what else even comes close? I spent quite some time learning R and therefore hate it with a burning passion - especially the existing libraries like ggplot (granted I am several years out of date there so there's a slim possibility that literally everything about it has changed and it is awesome now?). There I believe a solid alternative would be Python libraries e.g. MatPlotLib (+SciPy + NumPy), but even that I would guess depends on what you want to do, like it would replace the plotting part, but if you still wanted that more visual exploration, or a "view" of the data to send to someone, the visual spreadsheet is kinda neat?
More than a decade of effort went into making MSO, and unfortunately even more would need to be done still in order to improve further as you pointed out, but at this point even if FOSS catches up to all of that, I am still going to respect MSO for having done it first to blaze the trail (even while I switch to the FOSS alternative for daily use:-).
I mean, it's okay.... I feel like I run into inconveniences in MSO every day. Off the top of my head (solutions welcome):
- Absurd startup times for opening documents. Worse if there isn't an instance of the app already open. Part of the blame goes to my company's antivirus software, but Excel and PowerPoint are easily my slowest-starting apps, and Word is the runner-up. All UI animations are also stupidly slow, though I think that was a design choice.
- A pasted graphic goes to the center of the slide in ppt regardless of the current zoom or view. Annoying for making large posters, exacerbated by delayed rendering of lots of graphics.
- Likewise, zooming occurs relative to slide's center, not the current zoomed view or from the mouse pointer.
- No easily accessibly horizontal scroll outside of using a touchpad (i.e., scrollbar only). Tilting the mouse wheel (if I even have access to such a mouse) either doesn't work or only slightly nudges the view. Also makes posters tedious in combination with pasting issue. Something like shift+mousewheel would be nice.
- Dragging a scroll bar does not update the view until you release it.
- Sometimes the amount of space between a bullet point and text in a PPT text box changes when all others are remain the same. Possibly a skill issue related to styles. Still frustrating.
- Dragging objects autoaligns them to seemingly everything except what I want it to. I now run with snapping turned off.
- Pasting charts between documents changes to destination formatting/styling by default.
- Pasting text from external sources keeps formatting by default. Never have I ever wanted to copy a web page's or email's font, color, and size into my own docs. I could have sworn that there were also circumstances where ctrl+alt+v doesn't work properly, but I can't seem to remember/reproduce that at the moment.
- Dates in Excel. It's a meme, but also true.
- Excel seems to have a "root" window (the doc opened first), and it does not play nice with virtual desktops. If you try to open a spreadsheet from Windows Explorer or some other app (e.g. web browser) on VD B while the root window is on VD A, you are forcibly switched to VD A, where the doc actually opens (after a complimentary delay, of course). Then I have to find the freaking window in Task View and move it back to VD B. There is a reason I wasn't adding more windows to VD A to begin with. Incidentally Word and other MSO apps do not have this issue for some reason.
- If one doc window freezes/stops responding, they all do.
- Aligning things in Word
- A few common color palettes are not colorblind-friendly.
I mean, it's okay.... I feel like I run into inconveniences in MSO every day. Off the top of my head (solutions welcome):
- Absurd startup times for opening documents. Worse if there isn't an instance of the app already open. Part of the blame goes to my company's antivirus software, but Excel and PowerPoint are easily my slowest-starting apps, and Word is the runner-up. All UI animations are also stupidly slow, though I think that was a design choice.
- A pasted graphic goes to the center of the slide in ppt regardless of the current zoom or view. Annoying for making large posters, exacerbated by delayed rendering of lots of graphics.
- Likewise, zooming occurs relative to slide's center, not the current zoomed view or from the mouse pointer.
- No easily accessibly horizontal scroll outside of using a touchpad (i.e., scrollbar only). Tilting the mouse wheel (if I even have access to such a mouse) either doesn't work or only slightly nudges the view. Also makes posters tedious in combination with pasting issue. Something like shift+mousewheel would be nice.
- Dragging a scroll bar does not update the view until you release it.
- Sometimes the amount of space between a bullet point and text in a PPT text box changes when all others are remain the same. Possibly a skill issue related to styles. Still frustrating.
- Dragging objects autoaligns them to seemingly everything except what I want it to. I now run with snapping turned off.
- Pasting charts between documents changes to destination formatting/styling by default.
- Pasting text from external sources keeps formatting by default. Never have I ever wanted to copy a web page's or email's font, color, and size into my own docs. I could have sworn that there were also circumstances where ctrl+alt+v doesn't work properly, but I can't seem to remember/reproduce that at the moment.
- Dates in Excel. It's a meme, but also true.
- Excel seems to have a "root" window (the doc opened first), and it does not play nice with virtual desktops. If you try to open a spreadsheet from Windows Explorer or some other app (e.g. web browser) on VD B while the root window is on VD A, you are forcibly switched to VD A, where the doc actually opens (after a complimentary delay, of course). Then I have to find the freaking window in Task View and move it back to VD B. There is a reason I wasn't adding more windows to VD A to begin with. Incidentally Word and other MSO apps do not have this issue for some reason.
- If one doc window freezes/stops responding, they all do.
- Aligning things in Word
- A few common color palettes are not colorblind-friendly.
Try Typst with Polylux
Does it support BoVeX?
If you don't get it. YouTube link warning
Try latex-beamer through pandoc. That's the way.
All I need is Marp.
