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Re: [OT] Migrating from non-free programs to LibreOffice (was: "More About Unicode in Python 2 and 3")

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  Re: [OT] Migrating from non-free programs to LibreOffice (was: "More About Unicode in Python 2 and 3") Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-01-06 11:23 +1100
    Re: [OT] Migrating from non-free programs to LibreOffice (was: "More About Unicode in Python 2 and 3") Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2014-01-06 15:53 +0000
      Re: [OT] Migrating from non-free programs to LibreOffice (was: "More About Unicode in Python 2 and 3") Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-01-07 03:01 +1100
      Re: [OT] Migrating from non-free programs to LibreOffice Ethan Furman <ethan@stoneleaf.us> - 2014-01-06 08:28 -0800
      Re: [OT] Migrating from non-free programs to LibreOffice Michael Torrie <torriem@gmail.com> - 2014-01-07 09:45 -0700
      Re: [OT] Migrating from non-free programs to LibreOffice Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-01-08 03:58 +1100
      Re: [way OT] Migrating from non-free programs to LibreOffice Michael Torrie <torriem@gmail.com> - 2014-01-07 10:10 -0700
      Re: [way OT] Migrating from non-free programs to LibreOffice Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-01-08 04:14 +1100
      Re: [way OT] Migrating from non-free programs to LibreOffice Michael Torrie <torriem@gmail.com> - 2014-01-07 10:45 -0700

#63247 — Re: [OT] Migrating from non-free programs to LibreOffice (was: "More About Unicode in Python 2 and 3")

On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 10:30 AM, Ben Finney <ben+python@benfinney.id.au> wrote:
> Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Maybe it's the better way, but like trying to get people to switch
>> from MS Word onto an open system, it's far easier to push for Open
>> Office than for LaTeX.
>
> If you're going to be pushing people to a free software system,
> OpenOffice is no longer the one to choose; its owners several years ago
> shunted it to a dead end where very little active development can
> happen, and its development community have moved to more productive
> ground.

Handwave, handwave. The FOSS office suite that comes conveniently in
the Debian repositories. It was OO a while ago, it's now LO, but same
difference. If LO ever renames and becomes FreeOffice or ZOffice or
anything else under the sun, it would still be the easier option for
MS Word users to switch to.

(And actually, I haven't been pushing people off MS Word so much as
off DeScribe Word Processor. But since most people here won't have
heard of that, I went for the more accessible analogy.)

>> Getting your head around a whole new way of thinking about your data
>> is work, and people want to be lazy. (That's not a bad thing, by the
>> way. Laziness means schedules get met.)
>
> Right. I think shifting people to LibreOffice is an excellent and
> realistic step toward imcreasing people's software and data freedom.

Yeah. Which is why I do it. But the other night, my mum was trying to
lay out her book in LO, and was having some problems with the system
of having each chapter in a separate file. (Among other things, styles
weren't shared across them all, so a tweak to a style means opening up
every chapter and either doing a parallel edit or figuring out how to
import styles.) So yes, it's a realistic and worthwhile step, but it's
not a magic solution to all problems. She doesn't have time to learn a
whole new system. Maybe - in the long term - LaTeX would actually save
her time, but it's certainly a much harder 'sell' than LO.

ChrisA

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#63290

On 2014-01-06, Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> wrote:

>> Right. I think shifting people to LibreOffice is an excellent and
>> realistic step toward imcreasing people's software and data freedom.
>
> Yeah. Which is why I do it. But the other night, my mum was trying to
> lay out her book in LO, and was having some problems with the system
> of having each chapter in a separate file. (Among other things, styles
> weren't shared across them all, so a tweak to a style means opening up
> every chapter and either doing a parallel edit or figuring out how to
> import styles.) So yes, it's a realistic and worthwhile step, but it's
> not a magic solution to all problems. She doesn't have time to learn a
> whole new system. Maybe - in the long term - LaTeX would actually save
> her time, but it's certainly a much harder 'sell' than LO.

Yea, I think laying out a book with something like MS Word or
LibreOffice is nuts.   Depending on her formatting needs, a
lighter-weight mark-up language (something like asciidoc) might suite:

  http://asciidoc.org/
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AsciiDoc

I've used it to write a 150 page manual, and was quite happy with the
results.  It produces DocBook XML, PDF, HTML and a few other output
formats (Including, I think, LibreOffice/OpenOffice).  It's _much_
easier to get started with than LaTeX. For printing purposes the
quality of the output is no match for TeX -- but it's better than a
"word processor", and it does a very nice job with HTML output.
  
-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! It's a hole all the
                                  at               way to downtown Burbank!
                              gmail.com            

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#63292

On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 2:53 AM, Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> Yea, I think laying out a book with something like MS Word or
> LibreOffice is nuts.   Depending on her formatting needs, a
> lighter-weight mark-up language (something like asciidoc) might suite:
>
>   http://asciidoc.org/
>   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AsciiDoc
>
> I've used it to write a 150 page manual, and was quite happy with the
> results.  It produces DocBook XML, PDF, HTML and a few other output
> formats (Including, I think, LibreOffice/OpenOffice).  It's _much_
> easier to get started with than LaTeX. For printing purposes the
> quality of the output is no match for TeX -- but it's better than a
> "word processor", and it does a very nice job with HTML output.

Hmm. Might be useful in some other places. I'm currently trying to
push for a web site design that involves docutils/reStructuredText,
but am flexible on the exact markup system used. My main goal, though,
is to separate content from structure and style - and my secondary
goal is to have everything done as plain text files (apart from actual
images), so the source control diffs are useful :)

ChrisA

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#63299 — Re: [OT] Migrating from non-free programs to LibreOffice

On 01/06/2014 07:53 AM, Grant Edwards wrote:
>
> Yea, I think laying out a book with something like MS Word or
> LibreOffice is nuts.   Depending on her formatting needs, a
> lighter-weight mark-up language (something like asciidoc) might suite:
>
>    http://asciidoc.org/
>    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AsciiDoc

Thanks for that!

--
~Ethan~

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#63436 — Re: [OT] Migrating from non-free programs to LibreOffice

On 01/06/2014 08:53 AM, Grant Edwards wrote:
> Yea, I think laying out a book with something like MS Word or
> LibreOffice is nuts.   Depending on her formatting needs, a
> lighter-weight mark-up language (something like asciidoc) might suite:

I've laid out a book with LibreOffice and it actually is quite capable.
 In fact when used correctly, LibreOffice can function much like a
markup language.  Instead of markup, you use styles (page, paragraph,
character).  The styles form the structure of the book (H1, H2, H3,
etc).  In fact the default styles mirror html to a degree.  I tend to
add my own for quotes, captions, etc.  After composing the document,
then you modify the styles to set the spacings, fonts, indentations,
border lines, etc.  The workflow is very similar to using LyX, or even a
plain markup language for that matter.

The weakest part of LibreOffice is embedding images.

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#63437 — Re: [OT] Migrating from non-free programs to LibreOffice

On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 3:45 AM, Michael Torrie <torriem@gmail.com> wrote:
> I tend to add my own [styles]
> for quotes, captions, etc.  After composing the document,
> then you modify the styles to set the spacings, fonts, indentations,
> border lines, etc.  The workflow is very similar to using LyX, or even a
> plain markup language for that matter.

That's all very well when you put everything into a single file, but
how do you manage those styles across a multi-file book? Mum's project
was partially rescued by the discovery that you can import styles from
another document, but that's still unworkable for repeated edits.

> The weakest part of LibreOffice is embedding images.

And that's why this particular book is being divided up: it's full of
images. Putting the whole thing into a single file makes that file way
way too big to work with (at least on the computer Mum's using - it's
X times larger than her installed RAM, so Writer is constantly
hammering the page file), and there's no convenient way to read in
only part of the file. Hence my recommendation of a markup system like
LaTeX that simply *references* images, and which deliberately isn't
WYSIWYG; plus, having the concept of content, structure, and style all
separate means it's not difficult to build just one file - maybe not
even a whole chapter - while still being confident that all pages
reference the same styles.

ChrisA

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#63440 — Re: [way OT] Migrating from non-free programs to LibreOffice

On 01/07/2014 09:58 AM, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 3:45 AM, Michael Torrie <torriem@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I tend to add my own [styles]
>> for quotes, captions, etc.  After composing the document,
>> then you modify the styles to set the spacings, fonts, indentations,
>> border lines, etc.  The workflow is very similar to using LyX, or even a
>> plain markup language for that matter.
> 
> That's all very well when you put everything into a single file, but
> how do you manage those styles across a multi-file book? Mum's project
> was partially rescued by the discovery that you can import styles from
> another document, but that's still unworkable for repeated edits.

Sorry should have been clearer on this. I do use multiple documents with
LO with a master document.  The table of contents can even be generated
across documents.  I believe my TOC is in my master document, along with
the front matter.

As for styles, basically you create a master template style that you use
as a basis for each of your files (master document as well as the
subdocuments).  I make all my changes to the master template style and
then when I open the various documents LO will update the templates.
They aren't linked templates per se; they are copied. But the mechanism
works okay, if a bit clunky.

> 
>> The weakest part of LibreOffice is embedding images.
> 
> And that's why this particular book is being divided up: it's full of
> images. Putting the whole thing into a single file makes that file way
> way too big to work with (at least on the computer Mum's using - it's
> X times larger than her installed RAM, so Writer is constantly
> hammering the page file), and there's no convenient way to read in
> only part of the file. Hence my recommendation of a markup system like
> LaTeX that simply *references* images, and which deliberately isn't
> WYSIWYG; plus, having the concept of content, structure, and style all
> separate means it's not difficult to build just one file - maybe not
> even a whole chapter - while still being confident that all pages
> reference the same styles.

LO does reference images if you would like.  But I find embedding the
whole works is just more self-contained.  And with multiple file
documents the chances of losing data or messing with pagination are
contained to individual sections.

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#63441 — Re: [way OT] Migrating from non-free programs to LibreOffice

On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 4:10 AM, Michael Torrie <torriem@gmail.com> wrote:
> LO does reference images if you would like.  But I find embedding the
> whole works is just more self-contained.  And with multiple file
> documents the chances of losing data or messing with pagination are
> contained to individual sections.

Referencing isn't sufficient to prevent the massive memory use,
though. Whatever's in the document will need to be loaded into RAM in
order to edit the file. It's a fundamental limitation of big files and
WYSIWYG editors.

ChrisA

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#63442 — Re: [way OT] Migrating from non-free programs to LibreOffice

On 01/07/2014 10:14 AM, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 4:10 AM, Michael Torrie <torriem@gmail.com> wrote:
>> LO does reference images if you would like.  But I find embedding the
>> whole works is just more self-contained.  And with multiple file
>> documents the chances of losing data or messing with pagination are
>> contained to individual sections.
> 
> Referencing isn't sufficient to prevent the massive memory use,
> though. Whatever's in the document will need to be loaded into RAM in
> order to edit the file. It's a fundamental limitation of big files and
> WYSIWYG editors.

I suppose.  Working with multiple-part documents mitigates this issue to
a large extent.  Granted my sections are only about 30 pages or so, and
only about 20 mb of imagery per section.

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