LibreOffice Flat XML Files

Committing my work to a git repository is an important step for me. Like a mountain climber who who attaches a carabiner hook every now and then to make sure that the next misstep is not fatal.

Besides having a fallback state, it's nice to take a moment and describe the last changes and review them.

That's why I love plaintext files like markdown or LaTeX. The changes get highlighted in a nice client like fork

But sometimes you need office files for spreadsheets. LibreOffice uses the .ods extension for "ODF spreadsheets", which are compressed xml-files. Git clients see them as binary files and can't really show a proper diff.

If you don't want them compressed, you can chose the filetype "Flat XML ODF spreadsheets" with the .fods extension. With all the xml-bloat, it's not exactly human readable, but when you check in your file into git, you can see a diff.

Don't worry about the file size too much. Git is very efficient in compressing your files. In the long run, you will even save disk space because git will only save the differences between the commits.