[libreoffice-accessibility] Should I switch from our Office ’97 to LibreOffice?

Should I switch from our Office '97 to LibreOffice?

Many years ago, I used to be an avid command line text processor,
specifically a Xywrite user. This may have been before some of you were
born, i.e. 1985 etc. Then I was forced by a company I worked for, to use
MS-Word and I hated it. Specifically, because I had customized XyWrite
to be many times faster than any of today's CAT tools. My keyboard had
up to 9 levels of key assignments. No mousing.

Then a client gave me Office 97, and I managed to customize it with
extensive macros and auto-replace features, and made it jump through
hoops most people never knew existed. This is what I'm using today.
Slower than the XyWrite of 25 years ago, but still faster than any of
its resource guzzling "updates". Still, there are several thing it
doesn't do right.

Now I'm contemplating Linux (Ubuntu 14.04 maybe) as an alternative to
the Microsoft rathole (I do like and respect rats, btw.) Main two
reasons: While I'm using a 32 bit XP Pro (the closest to NT) I am going
to 64bit, and I don't want to work I any system that someone else
controls/own, like Windows10. Also, I'm building a couple of 64-bit
Thinkpad systems on the basis of the T60/T61s I have, with 8GB RAM and
1TB SSD. Not sure yet if a processor upgrade will bring a lot compared
to the SSD gain.

Back to word processing:
What's lacking in my present '97 are a few things: 
A really usable DOC to HTML conversion.
A DOCX target format.
Email and Email/merge integration.

HOWEVER, I cannot afford losing access to the many customized functions
I have stored in my "Normal.dot" in Word'97. This leads me to the
question, how I would/could import that file and its functionalities for
use in LibreOffice. That is very very important. After more than two
decades, my hands sometimes actually type what I think. Occasionally,
they type one language while I'm thinking another. (I have been
translating since 1973 -no computer at the time, of course - and
professionally translated since 1984. 

Bottom line are four questions:
a) Normal.Dot integration - this is the most important one.
b) DOC-HTML conversion
c) DOCXX target format
d) Email and Email/merge integration.
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