Hi All,
I just installed LibreOffice-7.0.0-Linux_x86-64_rpm.tar.gz. It is is even worse than 6.4 !!!
<Editorial comment> AAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!</editorial comment>
I really, really want to like LibreOffice, but ...
Please tell me there is an alternative to Libre office that actually works right!!!
How do I switch back and forth from portrait to landscape in 7.0? https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/259593/how-do-i-switch-back-and-fort...
Page Breaks are greyed out in 7.0!!!! https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/259594/page-breaks-are-greyed-out-in...
Many thanks, -T
You might want to try out the notebookbar https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/NotebookBar. It wouldn't solve all your problems, but might prove to be more familiar.
On 11.08.20 07:11, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
Hi All,
I just installed LibreOffice-7.0.0-Linux_x86-64_rpm.tar.gz. It is is even worse than 6.4 !!!
<Editorial comment> AAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!</editorial comment>
I really, really want to like LibreOffice, but ...
Please tell me there is an alternative to Libre office that actually works right!!!
How do I switch back and forth from portrait to landscape in 7.0? https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/259593/how-do-i-switch-back-and-fort...
Page Breaks are greyed out in 7.0!!!! https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/259594/page-breaks-are-greyed-out-in...
Many thanks, -T _______________________________________________ users mailing list -- users@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/users@lists.fedoraproject.org
On 8/11/20 7:07 AM, jtagcat via users wrote:
You might want to try out the notebookbar https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/NotebookBar. It wouldn't solve all your problems, but might prove to be more familiar.
On 11.08.20 07:11, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
Hi All,
I just installed LibreOffice-7.0.0-Linux_x86-64_rpm.tar.gz. It is is even worse than 6.4 !!!
<Editorial comment> AAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!</editorial comment>
I really, really want to like LibreOffice, but ...
Please tell me there is an alternative to Libre office that actually works right!!!
How do I switch back and forth from portrait to landscape in 7.0? https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/259593/how-do-i-switch-back-and-fort...
Page Breaks are greyed out in 7.0!!!! https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/259594/page-breaks-are-greyed-out-in...
Many thanks, -T
I like Softmaker Office. There's a paid version and a free version. It's proprietary, but I don't have any problem with that. It works well, and if you have the paid version--unfortunately now an annual subscription--free assistance. It has a word processor, a spread-sheet app, and a presentation app. I forget what the fourth one is that MS-Word has, but I don't need it. (I don't need the presentation app either.) You can turn off the superscripting in the word processor. And you can save in MS-Word formats if you wish--usually a good idea if you are ever going to share your documents. --doug
On 2020-08-11 13:53, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 12:31, Doug McGarrett wrote:
I like Softmaker Office
I am seeing a 30 day trial (.rpm's, yippee) but no free version
Found it:
On 2020-08-11 14:42, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 13:53, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 12:31, Doug McGarrett wrote:
I like Softmaker Office
I am seeing a 30 day trial (.rpm's, yippee) but no free version
Found it:
Hmmmm. Not sure that is the same folks
On Tue, 11 Aug 2020 at 18:56, ToddAndMargo via users < users@lists.fedoraproject.org> wrote:
On 2020-08-11 14:42, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 13:53, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 12:31, Doug McGarrett wrote:
I like Softmaker Office
I am seeing a 30 day trial (.rpm's, yippee) but no free version
Found it:
Hmmmm. Not sure that is the same folks
It is. https://linuxinsider.com/story/freeoffice-suite-is-almost-blue-ribbon-worthy... https://www.pcworld.com/article/3305332/freeoffice-2018-review.html https://www.lifewire.com/softmaker-freeoffice-review-1356328
users mailing list -- users@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/users@lists.fedoraproject.org
On 2020-08-11 15:10, George N. White III wrote:
On Tue, 11 Aug 2020 at 18:56, ToddAndMargo via users <users@lists.fedoraproject.org mailto:users@lists.fedoraproject.org> wrote:
On 2020-08-11 14:42, ToddAndMargo via users wrote: > On 2020-08-11 13:53, ToddAndMargo via users wrote: >> On 2020-08-11 12:31, Doug McGarrett wrote: >>> I like Softmaker Office >> >> I am seeing a 30 day trial (.rpm's, yippee) but no free version > > Found it: > > https://www.freeoffice.com/en/download/applications Hmmmm. Not sure that is the same folksIt is. https://linuxinsider.com/story/freeoffice-suite-is-almost-blue-ribbon-worthy...
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3305332/freeoffice-2018-review.html https://www.lifewire.com/softmaker-freeoffice-review-1356328
It looks like a simple package. Ideal for low end users. I may install it in place of Libre Office (LO) on customer's Windows machine that do not have M$ Office (M$O) installed.
The inability to mix portrait and landscape pages in Free Office is a deal killer for me though
LO is just obscure, full of bugs, and difficulty use. I have a customer that has never used either M$0 or LO. So no "I can't learn anything new": an ideal test. So I put him on LO. He is writing up a book or something. He called me three times a week over three months with LO issues. Finally out of frustration, he had me install M$O. He has called me two in the last two months. One was a Windows issue and not M$O. One as how to adjust the page view.
This all goes to the economic model for open source: give away the software for free and charge for maintenance. Now if you are not endowed with enough money to put LO on your payroll, you don't get your bugs fixed. LO does come out with new feature, but the leaves the bugs alone until paid to fix them as that is how they make their living. And they deserve to get paid for what they do. Wine is the same way.
My two cents
On 8/11/20 3:39 PM, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
LO is just obscure, full of bugs, and difficulty use. I have a customer that has never used either M$0 or LO. So no "I can't learn anything new": an ideal test. So I put him on LO. He is writing up a book or something. He called me three times a week over three months with LO issues. Finally out of frustration, he had me install M$O. He has called me two in the last two months. One was a Windows issue and not M$O. One as how to adjust the page view.
I don't have any problems with it and the many users I've installed Fedora for haven't had any serious issues with it. I've had a few questions from them about how to do things, but generally easily resolved. One found an actual bug with inserted graphics, but we were able to work around it and it got fixed quickly.
On 8/11/20 7:26 PM, Samuel Sieb wrote:
On 8/11/20 3:39 PM, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
LO is just obscure, full of bugs, and difficulty use. I have a customer that has never used either M$0 or LO. So no "I can't learn anything new": an ideal test. So I put him on LO. He is writing up a book or something. He called me three times a week over three months with LO issues. Finally out of frustration, he had me install M$O. He has called me two in the last two months. One was a Windows issue and not M$O. One as how to adjust the page view.
I don't have any problems with it and the many users I've installed Fedora for haven't had any serious issues with it. I've had a few questions from them about how to do things, but generally easily resolved. One found an actual bug with inserted graphics, but we were able to work around it and it got fixed quickly.
I have tried to copy and paste some received printed copy into Libre Office and it seems like I always get some big black rectangular objects in the copied file. One reason I don't use it. --doug
On 8/11/20 4:59 PM, Doug McGarrett wrote:
I have tried to copy and paste some received printed copy into Libre Office and it seems like I always get some big black rectangular objects in the copied file. One reason I don't use it.
What does that even mean? How can you copy from something that's printed? Do you mean pdf?
On 8/11/20 8:23 PM, Samuel Sieb wrote:
On 8/11/20 4:59 PM, Doug McGarrett wrote:
I have tried to copy and paste some received printed copy into Libre Office and it seems like I always get some big black rectangular objects in the copied file. One reason I don't use it.
What does that even mean? How can you copy from something that's printed? Do you mean pdf?
Paste from something scanned or excerpted from an on-line article, for instance, that can be printed out by itself, rearranged into a coherent package, not as part of a mixed bag of magazine pages or like that. It's been a while since I wanted to do that, but I ran into this situation a number of times. Libre Office Writer is self-censoring! --doug
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On Tue, 2020-08-11 at 19:59 -0400, Doug McGarrett wrote:
I have tried to copy and paste some received printed copy into Libre Office and it seems like I always get some big black rectangular objects in the copied file. One reason I don't use it.
Never seen it do that.
On 8/11/20 10:02 PM, Tim via users wrote:
On Tue, 2020-08-11 at 19:59 -0400, Doug McGarrett wrote:
I have tried to copy and paste some received printed copy into Libre Office and it seems like I always get some big black rectangular objects in the copied file. One reason I don't use it.
Never seen it do that.
I've seen it, and when I do I use edit->paste special->past unformatted text. It takes out the formatting which removes the black objects. Of course, then it has to be reformatted.
I've used openoffice and eventually libreoffice for a long time. About 10-12 years ago I wrote my PhD with openoffice. Soon after, I wrote my book with it. It was a steep learning curve at first, because I'd had no training in the kind of formatting expected by publishers. But I really learned to love how style sheets work, how easy it was to just change the stylesheet and have the text ready for another publisher to look at and so on. I use stylesheets all the time now, even though I rarely change them unless submitting an article for publication, or whatever.
Rikke
On 2020-08-11 16:26, Samuel Sieb wrote:
On 8/11/20 3:39 PM, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
LO is just obscure, full of bugs, and difficulty use. I have a customer that has never used either M$0 or LO. So no "I can't learn anything new": an ideal test. So I put him on LO. He is writing up a book or something. He called me three times a week over three months with LO issues. Finally out of frustration, he had me install M$O. He has called me two in the last two months. One was a Windows issue and not M$O. One as how to adjust the page view.
I don't have any problems with it and the many users I've installed Fedora for haven't had any serious issues with it. I've had a few questions from them about how to do things, but generally easily resolved. One found an actual bug with inserted graphics, but we were able to work around it and it got fixed quickly.
Hi Sam,
I really do want to like Libre Office, but...
I have installed it over the years across two counties and I hae yet to have a SINGLE customer that has stayed with it. It is just too counter intuitive and buggy.
I personally use it myself, but it drives me nuts. When I need to mix portrait and landscape I have to jump through Flaming hoops. I con't pay them to fix it, so they don't:
Writer: Looks as if switch Page to Portrait is impossible - Cause: "Format > Page" is not clear because it starts formatting the page Style
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=126608 The bug report says it is fixed. It isn't. And look at the ARGUING I had to go through
It can't print an envelope in Landscape center position:
Envelope center position landscape prints portrait https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42327
It will not print envelopes landscape, but not in the middle. About 1/3 the way to the middle. (I use Word Pro under Wine for envelopes.)
And Rots-u-ruck printing multiple copies with calc.
And on and on and so forth.
This is what you get when you don't pay the ransom. And they do deserve to get paided for what they do.
-T
On 2020-08-12 10:14, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
It can't print an envelope in Landscape center position:
I've not had any problems to print envelops with text in any position I want in landscape mode and my HP printer.
The only "issue" I've had is that some envelops here in Taiwan don't adhere to international standards. In much the same way that Big-5 encoding isn't handled well outside of Taiwan. So, a bit of tweaking was needed.
On 2020-08-11 20:01, Ed Greshko wrote:
On 2020-08-12 10:14, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
It can't print an envelope in Landscape center position:
I've not had any problems to print envelops with text in any position I want in landscape mode and my HP printer.
The only "issue" I've had is that some envelops here in Taiwan don't adhere to international standards. In much the same way that Big-5 encoding isn't handled well outside of Taiwan. So, a bit of tweaking was needed.
This is good. But it does ot help me with my OkiData B4350 printer. And envelopes print perfectly from Word Pro under buggy old Wine
On 2020-08-12 11:06, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 20:01, Ed Greshko wrote:
On 2020-08-12 10:14, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
It can't print an envelope in Landscape center position:
I've not had any problems to print envelops with text in any position I want in landscape mode and my HP printer.
The only "issue" I've had is that some envelops here in Taiwan don't adhere to international standards. In much the same way that Big-5 encoding isn't handled well outside of Taiwan. So, a bit of tweaking was needed.
This is good. But it does ot help me with my OkiData B4350 printer. And envelopes print perfectly from Word Pro under buggy old Wine
Do you use frames and positioning them on the page as needed?
On 2020-08-11 20:38, Ed Greshko wrote:
On 2020-08-12 11:06, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 20:01, Ed Greshko wrote:
On 2020-08-12 10:14, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
It can't print an envelope in Landscape center position:
I've not had any problems to print envelops with text in any position I want in landscape mode and my HP printer.
The only "issue" I've had is that some envelops here in Taiwan don't adhere to international standards. In much the same way that Big-5 encoding isn't handled well outside of Taiwan. So, a bit of tweaking was needed.
This is good. But it does ot help me with my OkiData B4350 printer. And envelopes print perfectly from Word Pro under buggy old Wine
Do you use frames and positioning them on the page as needed?
Don't know what you mean. How does a frame help an envelope?
And the last thing I want is to have to jump through flaming hoops when I want to write. It ruins my thought train and I have to start over.
On 2020-08-12 12:18, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 20:38, Ed Greshko wrote:
On 2020-08-12 11:06, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 20:01, Ed Greshko wrote:
On 2020-08-12 10:14, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
It can't print an envelope in Landscape center position:
I've not had any problems to print envelops with text in any position I want in landscape mode and my HP printer.
The only "issue" I've had is that some envelops here in Taiwan don't adhere to international standards. In much the same way that Big-5 encoding isn't handled well outside of Taiwan. So, a bit of tweaking was needed.
This is good. But it does ot help me with my OkiData B4350 printer. And envelopes print perfectly from Word Pro under buggy old Wine
Do you use frames and positioning them on the page as needed?
Don't know what you mean. How does a frame help an envelope?
Simple.
Create a new text document. Pick Landscape. Insert frame. One for the Sender one for the recipient. Enter the text in each area as you desire. Move the frame to where you want on the page.
Use the View of Grid helplines while moving if it helps to position text. Also, Snap to Grid if appropriate. You may have to adjust the type/spacing of the grid to suit your needs.
All quite simple.
You can even create a template. I did do that for the non-standard envelops here. Saves lots of time.
On 2020-08-12 12:30, Ed Greshko wrote:
You can even create a template.
Coming up with a template for these pre-printed envelops was a challenge.
https://zhongruige.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/envelope_taiwan.jpg
On 2020-08-11 21:38, Ed Greshko wrote:
On 2020-08-12 12:30, Ed Greshko wrote:
You can even create a template.
Coming up with a template for these pre-printed envelops was a challenge.
https://zhongruige.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/envelope_taiwan.jpg
Thank you! If I am forced to use LO for envelopes I will do that. I use frames all the time in Word Pro, but forgot what they were called.
In the mean time, I will stick with much easier to use Word Pro.
I wonder how Free Office handles envelopes?
On 2020-08-11 15:39, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
The inability to mix portrait and landscape pages
Figured it out. he use "page break" adn "chapter break in reverse.
1) Layout, Page Orientation --> Portrait
2) Layout Insert Page --> Chapter break
3) Layout, Page Orientation --> Landscape
On 8/11/20 9:35 PM, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 15:39, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
The inability to mix portrait and landscape pages
Figured it out. he use "page break" adn "chapter break in reverse.
Layout, Page Orientation --> Portrait
Layout Insert Page --> Chapter break
Layout, Page Orientation --> Landscape
I suppose that will work, but why do it the complicated way?
On 2020-08-11 22:58, Samuel Sieb wrote:
On 8/11/20 9:35 PM, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 15:39, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
The inability to mix portrait and landscape pages
Figured it out. he use "page break" adn "chapter break in reverse.
Layout, Page Orientation --> Portrait
Layout Insert Page --> Chapter break
Layout, Page Orientation --> Landscape
I suppose that will work, but why do it the complicated way?
That was for free office and yes, I find it complicated
On Tue, 2020-08-11 at 15:39 -0700, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
LO is just obscure, full of bugs, and difficulty use.
I've always said the same about Word, and you can add: full of security flaws that affect your entire computer.
For someone who's come from using an actual typewriter, word is weird to use. And most people just end up using it like a typewriter, crudely formatting their document as they go along.
And from someone who's used desktop publishing software (something that's meant to let you do page layout, not just word processing), Word is also a bloody nightmare to use.
The real reasons people stick with it are not that it's good, but because it's expected of them. It comes with Windows, it's been ingrained on people that you use Word. There's (paid) courses on it that you go to again and again, because they keep changing the program. You end up using to deal with other people's barely compatible word documents.
I've found users really pissed off with word, the oddball unexpected things it does, the unintuitive features that just cannot be used without deep explanation (that don't make sense when explained, either), the features that refuse to work as advertised. And the users that decided they'd use word at home, because they did at work, and found out that their version was nothing like the version they had at work, nor the version they took a course on, and the knowledge wasn't transferable because it was so different (different looking, differently arranged, behaved different).
On 2020-08-11 22:01, Tim via users wrote:
I've found users really pissed off with word, the oddball unexpected things it does, the unintuitive features that just cannot be used without deep explanation (that don't make sense when explained, either), the features that refuse to work as advertised. And the users that decided they'd use word at home, because they did at work, and found out that their version was nothing like the version they had at work, nor the version they took a course on, and the knowledge wasn't transferable because it was so different (different looking, differently arranged, behaved different).
Ya, no debate there. Problem is that my customers still choose all the problems above over Libre Office (LO). Which makes LO worse. I do believe the users find the problems far sooner with LO that they do with M$O. M$ does not publish quality software. M$O 2003 was their last nice, pre-bloatware suite. I have customers still using it
On Tue, 2020-08-11 at 15:39 -0700, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
So I put him on LO. He is writing up a book or something.
A word processor, any word processor, is not a particularly good choice for writing a book. They've long since gone from being a "word processor" to being a secretary's all-purpose convoluted typing tool.
They're not particularly conducive to writing paragraphs and pages as just paragraphs and pages, often horrible at very long documents, and not really good for doing page layout. Probably not a very useful format if you were going to take a book to a printing house, either.
Latex is the usual suggestion for real authors, but will be even more of a bastard to use if you're not into that kind of thing.
On Wed, 2020-08-12 at 14:41 +0930, Tim via users wrote:
On Tue, 2020-08-11 at 15:39 -0700, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
So I put him on LO. He is writing up a book or something.
A word processor, any word processor, is not a particularly good choice for writing a book. They've long since gone from being a "word processor" to being a secretary's all-purpose convoluted typing tool.
They're not particularly conducive to writing paragraphs and pages as just paragraphs and pages, often horrible at very long documents, and not really good for doing page layout. Probably not a very useful format if you were going to take a book to a printing house, either.
Latex is the usual suggestion for real authors, but will be even more of a bastard to use if you're not into that kind of thing.
Agreed, though https://www.overleaf.com/ might be worth a look.
poc
On Wed, 12 Aug 2020 at 02:12, Tim via users users@lists.fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Tue, 2020-08-11 at 15:39 -0700, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
So I put him on LO. He is writing up a book or something.
A word processor, any word processor, is not a particularly good choice for writing a book. They've long since gone from being a "word processor" to being a secretary's all-purpose convoluted typing tool.
They're not particularly conducive to writing paragraphs and pages as just paragraphs and pages, often horrible at very long documents, and not really good for doing page layout. Probably not a very useful format if you were going to take a book to a printing house, either.
Many print shops want standards compliant PDF's, some will accept Word. My wife once needed a fanfold handout, so I created a PDF using LaTeX. The printer remarked that it had been years since he had seen formatting of comparable quality. Now Word has a TeX engine.
Latex is the usual suggestion for real authors, but will be even more of a bastard to use if you're not into that kind of thing.
LaTeX doesn't have to be difficult if you are working with an academic publisher that supports it. Many of the people who found it difficult were following bad advice that is all too easy to find on the internet.
LaTeX is designed to allow authors to focus on the logical structure of a document. Details of formatting are handled by a "document class", and scientific publishers usually provide a document class that conforms to the style of a particular book series. Authors need to learn some LaTeX markup commands, usually by imitating a sample document from the publisher or a colleague's previous published LaTeX file. At my former work dozens of students and postdocs who had been using Word were able to switch to LaTeX with minimal effort. There are sometimes glitches that need help from an experienced user. In academia such help is readily available, but there are also many online sources of help. Unfortunately, the internet also has many sites offering really bad advice for LaTeX users.
Many non-science publishers contract out the final tweaking/editing and rarely contractors who use anything other than Word.
It is worth noting that LaTeX originated on systems with ASCII character sets. There has been a big effort to support Unicode fonts, including work by a consortium of academic publishers and societies to develop high quality free Unicode fonts (STIX2) with comprehensive coverage of scientific symbols. Microsoft developed Cambria Math. These efforts also led to a new "TeX engine", LuaTeX, so those who need Unicode support are well advised to use LuaLaTeX. For linux, LuaLaTeX is provided by TeX Live, which is packaged by linux distros and also available from the TeX User Group (tug.org).
Wow. I didn't know people still used TeX/LaTeX a lot any more. I remember having to use it all the time for stuff I wrote when in graduate school in the 1980s, but I thought it had pretty much fallen out of favor except for die-hard users. I haven't used it in years. But what do I know. I still remember (and pine for) the keystroke commands for WordStar.
From reading this discussion, it seems that the primary complaints against LibreOffice are larger scale layout issues. I may have missed it, and if someone has mentioned it earlier, I apologize. What about just importing into a publishing/layout program like Scribus? It seems that this would make it trivial to do various orientations, etc. Of course, just as word processing programs are not the best desktop publshing systems, the desktop publishing apps tend to make poor word processors...
Another possibility might be to import the odt file into Libreoffice Draw and use that for layout changes.
billo
On Wed, 2020-08-12 at 08:44 -0300, George N. White III wrote:
On Wed, 12 Aug 2020 at 02:12, Tim via users < users@lists.fedoraproject.org> wrote:
On Tue, 2020-08-11 at 15:39 -0700, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
So I put him on LO. He is writing up a book or something.
A word processor, any word processor, is not a particularly good choice for writing a book. They've long since gone from being a "word processor" to being a secretary's all-purpose convoluted typing tool.
They're not particularly conducive to writing paragraphs and pages as just paragraphs and pages, often horrible at very long documents, and not really good for doing page layout. Probably not a very useful format if you were going to take a book to a printing house, either.
Many print shops want standards compliant PDF's, some will accept Word. My wife once needed a fanfold handout, so I created a PDF using LaTeX. The printer remarked that it had been years since he had seen formatting of comparable quality. Now Word has a TeX engine.
Latex is the usual suggestion for real authors, but will be even more of a bastard to use if you're not into that kind of thing.
LaTeX doesn't have to be difficult if you are working with an academic publisher that supports it. Many of the people who found it difficult were following bad advice that is all too easy to find on the internet.
LaTeX is designed to allow authors to focus on the logical structure of a document. Details of formatting are handled by a "document class", and scientific publishers usually provide a document class that conforms to the style of a particular book series. Authors need to learn some LaTeX markup commands, usually by imitating a sample document from the publisher or a colleague's previous published LaTeX file. At my former work dozens of students and postdocs who had been using Word were able to switch to LaTeX with minimal effort. There are sometimes glitches that need help from an experienced user. In academia such help is readily available, but there are also many online sources of help. Unfortunately, the internet also has many sites offering really bad advice for LaTeX users.
Many non-science publishers contract out the final tweaking/editing and rarely contractors who use anything other than Word.
It is worth noting that LaTeX originated on systems with ASCII character sets. There has been a big effort to support Unicode fonts, including work by a consortium of academic publishers and societies to develop high quality free Unicode fonts (STIX2) with comprehensive coverage of scientific symbols. Microsoft developed Cambria Math. These efforts also led to a new "TeX engine", LuaTeX, so those who need Unicode support are well advised to use LuaLaTeX. For linux, LuaLaTeX is provided by TeX Live, which is packaged by linux distros and also available from the TeX User Group (tug.org).
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On Wed, 12 Aug 2020 at 11:51, William Oliver vendor@billoblog.com wrote:
Wow. I didn't know people still used TeX/LaTeX a lot any more. I remember having to use it all the time for stuff I wrote when in graduate school in the 1980s, but I thought it had pretty much fallen out of favor except for die-hard users. I haven't used it in years. But what do I know. I still remember (and pine for) the keystroke commands for WordStar.
I installed an old copy of Wordstar in the 1990's for use by visitors from Japan who came with Wordstar documents. We added TeX or LaTeX markup (LaTeX was a bit much for 8086 MSDOS systems).
From reading this discussion, it seems that the primary complaints against LibreOffice are larger scale layout issues. I may have missed it, and if someone has mentioned it earlier, I apologize. What about just importing into a publishing/layout program like Scribus? It seems that this would make it trivial to do various orientations, etc. Of course, just as word processing programs are not the best desktop publshing systems, the desktop publishing apps tend to make poor word processors...
Another possibility might be to import the odt file into Libreoffice Draw and use that for layout changes.
Document creation has many use cases, with the result that there are many good specialized tools. Problems can be expected when you try to abuse an application to handle a use case that is outside the app's wheelhouse,. One reason a use case is fails on a given app is that people who have the same use case are working with a different app. If you can find examples from a similar use case, you may be able to ask the authors which app they like.
On Wed, 2020-08-12 at 12:14 -0300, George N. White III wrote:
Document creation has many use cases, with the result that there are many good specialized tools. Problems can be expected when you try to abuse an application to handle a use case that is outside the app's wheelhouse,. One reason a use case is fails on a given app is that people who have the same use case are working with a different app. If you can find examples from a similar use case, you may be able to ask the authors which app they like.
Something I've always kept in mind is that word processors are generally an application you use on *your* computer to edit something that you were going to print on *your* printer.
If you tried to give someone else your document, the page layout suited your printer, which mayn't suit theirs. Likewise, regarding fonts and images. They mightn't have your fonts, but documents usually do embed images in their file. Though what most people think looks like a good- enough image on their screen, is actually a lousy low-resolution picture to give to a print house.
Then if no one you know uses LaTeX anymore, how does one render mathematical equations other than by drawing the image of math and embedding such images directly?
Temlakos
On 8/12/20 10:50 AM, William Oliver wrote:
Wow. I didn't know people still used TeX/LaTeX a lot any more. I remember having to use it all the time for stuff I wrote when in graduate school in the 1980s, but I thought it had pretty much fallen out of favor except for die-hard users. I haven't used it in years. But what do I know. I still remember (and pine for) the keystroke commands for WordStar.
From reading this discussion, it seems that the primary complaints against LibreOffice are larger scale layout issues. I may have missed it, and if someone has mentioned it earlier, I apologize. What about just importing into a publishing/layout program like Scribus? It seems that this would make it trivial to do various orientations, etc. Of course, just as word processing programs are not the best desktop publshing systems, the desktop publishing apps tend to make poor word processors...
Another possibility might be to import the odt file into Libreoffice Draw and use that for layout changes.
billo
On Wed, 2020-08-12 at 08:44 -0300, George N. White III wrote:
On Wed, 12 Aug 2020 at 02:12, Tim via users < users@lists.fedoraproject.org> wrote:
On Tue, 2020-08-11 at 15:39 -0700, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
So I put him on LO. He is writing up a book or something.
A word processor, any word processor, is not a particularly good choice for writing a book. They've long since gone from being a "word processor" to being a secretary's all-purpose convoluted typing tool.
They're not particularly conducive to writing paragraphs and pages as just paragraphs and pages, often horrible at very long documents, and not really good for doing page layout. Probably not a very useful format if you were going to take a book to a printing house, either.
Many print shops want standards compliant PDF's, some will accept Word. My wife once needed a fanfold handout, so I created a PDF using LaTeX. The printer remarked that it had been years since he had seen formatting of comparable quality. Now Word has a TeX engine.
Latex is the usual suggestion for real authors, but will be even more of a bastard to use if you're not into that kind of thing.
LaTeX doesn't have to be difficult if you are working with an academic publisher that supports it. Many of the people who found it difficult were following bad advice that is all too easy to find on the internet.
LaTeX is designed to allow authors to focus on the logical structure of a document. Details of formatting are handled by a "document class", and scientific publishers usually provide a document class that conforms to the style of a particular book series. Authors need to learn some LaTeX markup commands, usually by imitating a sample document from the publisher or a colleague's previous published LaTeX file. At my former work dozens of students and postdocs who had been using Word were able to switch to LaTeX with minimal effort. There are sometimes glitches that need help from an experienced user. In academia such help is readily available, but there are also many online sources of help. Unfortunately, the internet also has many sites offering really bad advice for LaTeX users.
Many non-science publishers contract out the final tweaking/editing and rarely contractors who use anything other than Word.
It is worth noting that LaTeX originated on systems with ASCII character sets. There has been a big effort to support Unicode fonts, including work by a consortium of academic publishers and societies to develop high quality free Unicode fonts (STIX2) with comprehensive coverage of scientific symbols. Microsoft developed Cambria Math. These efforts also led to a new "TeX engine", LuaTeX, so those who need Unicode support are well advised to use LuaLaTeX. For linux, LuaLaTeX is provided by TeX Live, which is packaged by linux distros and also available from the TeX User Group (tug.org).
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On 8/12/20 11:39 AM, Temlakos wrote:
Then if no one you know uses LaTeX anymore, how does one render mathematical equations other than by drawing the image of math and embedding such images directly?
LibreOffice has a decent equation editor. I'm guessing Word probably has one too.
On 8/12/20 2:49 PM, Samuel Sieb wrote:
On 8/12/20 11:39 AM, Temlakos wrote:
Then if no one you know uses LaTeX anymore, how does one render mathematical equations other than by drawing the image of math and embedding such images directly?
LibreOffice has a decent equation editor. I'm guessing Word probably has one too. _______________________________________________
And MediaWiki?
Temlakos
On 08/12/2020 12:39 PM, Temlakos wrote:
Then if no one you know uses LaTeX anymore, how does one render mathematical equations other than by drawing the image of math and embedding such images directly?
You can create and insert formulas in LO as you need. All you need is to go to the Help section and look it up. It's not exactly rocket surgery.
On Wed, 12 Aug 2020 at 15:40, Temlakos temlakos@gmail.com wrote:
Then if no one you know uses LaTeX anymore, how does one render mathematical equations other than by drawing the image of math and embedding such images directly?
The internet has people who use LaTeX. You don't have to know them. LaTeX is used by R and other systems to format documentation, so many linux systems have texlive packages installed
One of the contributions of TeX is a machine friendly way to encode maths. Many "word processors" and markup languages have menus of math symbols, but also allow you to enter equations using TeX markup.
See: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Math/Help:Formula for examples LaTeX and others (ConTeXt) support sections, chapters, bibliographies, indexes, etc. that are handled differently if at all by other processors and markups.
On Wed, 2020-08-12 at 14:39 -0400, Temlakos wrote:
Then if no one you know uses LaTeX anymore, how does one render mathematical equations other than by drawing the image of math and embedding such images directly?
Temlakos
I sort of changed careers. I'm trained in medicine as a forensic pathologist and in computer science. Early in my career, I wrote visualization algorithms for 3D reconstruction of confocal microscopy images, ran a military scientific computer network, and did image analysis/image processing of images of forensic interest for the federal government. When I left the miltary, I transitioned into doing more conventional medicolegal death investigation and autopsy pathology. So, mostly I do death investigation now. Most of my later research had to do with the latter, and didn't require formatting equations. And now, I'm 16 months from retirement -- but who's counting?
billo
On August 12, 2020 1:11:51 AM EDT, Tim via users users@lists.fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Tue, 2020-08-11 at 15:39 -0700, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
So I put him on LO. He is writing up a book or something.
A word processor, any word processor, is not a particularly good choice for writing a book.
...
Latex is the usual suggestion for real authors, but will be even more of a bastard to use if you're not into that kind of thing.
Lyx.
On Wednesday, 12 August 2020 13.15.43 WEST Tony Nelson wrote:
Lyx.
The list of user of LyX is quite varied.
Quite surprising to me was that there were people from law, linguists and also for Hollywood and Broadway scripts.
Regards,
Am 12.08.2020 um 00:39 schrieb ToddAndMargo via users users@lists.fedoraproject.org:
So I put him on LO. He is writing up a book or something.
If he is really writing a book (i.e. more than 100 pages) he should really use LO. Much better support e.g. for a consistent page construction, consistent formatting using templates and other features extremely relevant for the composition of a book (at least if at a minimum semi-professional layout and typographic quality criteria should be fulfilled).
On 2020-08-12 01:53, Peter Boy wrote:
Am 12.08.2020 um 00:39 schrieb ToddAndMargo via users users@lists.fedoraproject.org:
So I put him on LO. He is writing up a book or something.
If he is really writing a book (i.e. more than 100 pages) he should really use LO. Much better support e.g. for a consistent page construction, consistent formatting using templates and other features extremely relevant for the composition of a book (at least if at a minimum semi-professional layout and typographic quality criteria should be fulfilled).
I can only judge o how many times he calls me for help. Three times a week with LO; twice in two months with Word. One was not even a Word issue.
I can't get anyone to adopt LO: too weird; too buggy. I use it, but am constantly pissed (American for angry, not drunk) at all the bugs and weird ways of doing things. I have to constantly stop my train of thought and look up how to do things and work around bugs
I really do want to like LO, but ...
On 8/11/20 5:55 PM, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 14:42, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 13:53, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 12:31, Doug McGarrett wrote:
I like Softmaker Office
I am seeing a 30 day trial (.rpm's, yippee) but no free version
Found it:
Hmmmm. Not sure that is the same folks
Comes from Softmaker. How could it not be? Anyway, I'll find out in a day or so--I'm downloading it as I write. --doug
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On 8/11/20 4:53 PM, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 12:31, Doug McGarrett wrote:
I like Softmaker Office
I am seeing a 30 day trial (.rpm's, yippee) but no free version _______________________________________________
It's been a while since I looked at the website. It turns out that there is now "FreeOffice" with a reasonably full text processor, that can write PDFs as well as text, and fairly limited spreadsheet and slide maker.
As I'm going to have to put a word processor and spread-sheet reader (not writer) on this new machine, I will probably install Free Office. That's what i basically need. I occasionally get emailed a schedule for something I participate in, in spread-sheet format, and as long as I can read that and print it, it's enough for me. YMMV (If it turns out I have no choice for some reason, I'll pay the $49.95 per year. To me it would be worth it.) --doug
On 2020-08-11 16:13, Doug McGarrett wrote:
On 8/11/20 4:53 PM, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 12:31, Doug McGarrett wrote:
I like Softmaker Office
I am seeing a 30 day trial (.rpm's, yippee) but no free version _______________________________________________
It's been a while since I looked at the website. It turns out that there is now "FreeOffice" with a reasonably full text processor, that can write PDFs as well as text, and fairly limited spreadsheet and slide maker.
As I'm going to have to put a word processor and spread-sheet reader (not writer) on this new machine, I will probably install Free Office. That's what i basically need. I occasionally get emailed a schedule for something I participate in, in spread-sheet format, and as long as I can read that and print it, it's enough for me. YMMV (If it turns out I have no choice for some reason, I'll pay the $49.95 per year. To me it would be worth it.) --doug
The spread sheet is loading my odx files a good 10 tines faster that LO Calc
On 2020-08-12 12:28, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 16:13, Doug McGarrett wrote:
On 8/11/20 4:53 PM, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 12:31, Doug McGarrett wrote:
I like Softmaker Office
I am seeing a 30 day trial (.rpm's, yippee) but no free version _______________________________________________
It's been a while since I looked at the website. It turns out that there is now "FreeOffice" with a reasonably full text processor, that can write PDFs as well as text, and fairly limited spreadsheet and slide maker.
As I'm going to have to put a word processor and spread-sheet reader (not writer) on this new machine, I will probably install Free Office. That's what i basically need. I occasionally get emailed a schedule for something I participate in, in spread-sheet format, and as long as I can read that and print it, it's enough for me. YMMV (If it turns out I have no choice for some reason, I'll pay the $49.95 per year. To me it would be worth it.) --doug
The spread sheet is loading my odx files a good 10 tines faster that LO Calc
The word processor will not open password protected Libre Office odt's. Dang !!!!
On 2020-08-11 16:13, Doug McGarrett wrote:
On 8/11/20 4:53 PM, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 12:31, Doug McGarrett wrote:
I like Softmaker Office
I am seeing a 30 day trial (.rpm's, yippee) but no free version _______________________________________________
It's been a while since I looked at the website. It turns out that there is now "FreeOffice" with a reasonably full text processor, that can write PDFs as well as text, and fairly limited spreadsheet and slide maker.
As I'm going to have to put a word processor and spread-sheet reader (not writer) on this new machine, I will probably install Free Office. That's what i basically need. I occasionally get emailed a schedule for something I participate in, in spread-sheet format, and as long as I can read that and print it, it's enough for me. YMMV (If it turns out I have no choice for some reason, I'll pay the $49.95 per year. To me it would be worth it.) --doug
Dear customer,
SoftMaker Office has two types of licensing policies, SoftMaker Office NX (subscription) and SoftMaker Office 2021 Professional or Standard (lifetime licenses).
Best regards, SoftMaker Team
On 8/12/20 4:13 PM, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 16:13, Doug McGarrett wrote:
On 8/11/20 4:53 PM, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 12:31, Doug McGarrett wrote:
I like Softmaker Office
I am seeing a 30 day trial (.rpm's, yippee) but no free version _______________________________________________
It's been a while since I looked at the website. It turns out that there is now "FreeOffice" with a reasonably full text processor, that can write PDFs as well as text, and fairly limited spreadsheet and slide maker.
As I'm going to have to put a word processor and spread-sheet reader (not writer) on this new machine, I will probably install Free Office. That's what i basically need. I occasionally get emailed a schedule for something I participate in, in spread-sheet format, and as long as I can read that and print it, it's enough for me. YMMV (If it turns out I have no choice for some reason, I'll pay the $49.95 per year. To me it would be worth it.) --doug
Dear customer,
SoftMaker Office has two types of licensing policies, SoftMaker Office NX (subscription) and SoftMaker Office 2021 Professional or Standard (lifetime licenses).
Best regards, SoftMaker Team
Please tell me the difference between Free Office and SoftMaker Standard. I am going to install one or the other on my new computer running Linux, and I would prefer whcihever is most nearly like the old SoftMaker Office that was free up to maybe 3 or 4 years ago, which I still have on another machine. Thanx! --doug PS--Didn't know that you two folks are reps for SoftMaker Office; are you in the US?
On 2020-08-13 07:16, Doug McGarrett wrote:
Please tell me the difference between Free Office and SoftMaker Standard. I am going to install one or the other on my new computer running Linux
You could use a google search to find....
https://www.softmaker.com/en/comparison-freeoffice-softmaker-office
On 8/12/20 7:23 PM, Ed Greshko wrote:
On 2020-08-13 07:16, Doug McGarrett wrote:
Please tell me the difference between Free Office and SoftMaker Standard. I am going to install one or the other on my new computer running Linux
You could use a google search to find....
https://www.softmaker.com/en/comparison-freeoffice-softmaker-office
I quote Todd and Margo:
"SoftMaker Office has two types of licensing policies, SoftMaker Office NX (subscription) and _SoftMaker Office 2021 Professional or Standard (lifetime licenses_)."
When I read "lifetime licenses" I do NOT read an annual fee for using the software. Perhaps I'm wrong. I hope Todd and Margo will clarify this for me and the other interested parties who have been commenting on this subject. I would actually rather just _buy_ the Professional version, one time, and have full capabilities (and the authorization to use it on two or three machines at my house, if possible) rather than settle for a watered-down version like Free Office. The old policy of offering free answers to simple questions for what was (I thought) good for the life of the purchased software--i.e., at least until a new version was issued, was very attractive to me, and would still be. I am unhappy with what amounts to a rental agreement, subject to eviction if you don't cough up a renewal fee every year.
--doug
On 2020-08-13 10:10, Doug McGarrett wrote:
On 8/12/20 7:23 PM, Ed Greshko wrote:
On 2020-08-13 07:16, Doug McGarrett wrote:
Please tell me the difference between Free Office and SoftMaker Standard. I am going to install one or the other on my new computer running Linux
You could use a google search to find....
https://www.softmaker.com/en/comparison-freeoffice-softmaker-office
I quote Todd and Margo:
"SoftMaker Office has two types of licensing policies, SoftMaker Office NX (subscription) and _SoftMaker Office 2021 Professional or Standard (lifetime licenses_)."
When I read "lifetime licenses" I do NOT read an annual fee for using the software. Perhaps I'm wrong. I hope Todd and Margo will clarify this for me and the other interested parties who have been commenting on this subject. I would actually rather just _buy_ the Professional version, one time, and have full capabilities (and the authorization to use it on two or three machines at my house, if possible) rather than settle for a watered-down version like Free Office. The old policy of offering free answers to simple questions for what was (I thought) good for the life of the purchased software--i.e., at least until a new version was issued, was very attractive to me, and would still be. I am unhappy with what amounts to a rental agreement, subject to eviction if you don't cough up a renewal fee every year.
If you look at that page you will see (at least I see) 2 large boxes. One labeled "Subscribe" the other "Purchase".
If you want to "Purchase", that is the one-time fee option.
I can't quote you in your currency since my location gives it to me in NT$ and I don't think you're in Taiwan.
Standard is NT$2,599 and Professional NT$3,299 for a one time purchase.
On 8/12/20 7:16 PM, Doug McGarrett wrote:
On 8/12/20 4:13 PM, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 16:13, Doug McGarrett wrote:
On 8/11/20 4:53 PM, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 12:31, Doug McGarrett wrote:
I like Softmaker Office
I am seeing a 30 day trial (.rpm's, yippee) but no free version _______________________________________________
It's been a while since I looked at the website. It turns out that there is now "FreeOffice" with a reasonably full text processor, that can write PDFs as well as text, and fairly limited spreadsheet and slide maker.
As I'm going to have to put a word processor and spread-sheet reader (not writer) on this new machine, I will probably install Free Office. That's what i basically need. I occasionally get emailed a schedule for something I participate in, in spread-sheet format, and as long as I can read that and print it, it's enough for me. YMMV (If it turns out I have no choice for some reason, I'll pay the $49.95 per year. To me it would be worth it.) --doug
Dear customer,
SoftMaker Office has two types of licensing policies, SoftMaker Office NX (subscription) and SoftMaker Office 2021 Professional or Standard (lifetime licenses).
Best regards, SoftMaker Team
Please tell me the difference between Free Office and SoftMaker Standard. I am going to install one or the other on my new computer running Linux, and I would prefer whichever is most nearly like the old SoftMaker Office that was free up to maybe 3 or 4 years ago, which I still have on another machine. Thanx! --doug
I didn't read the whole thing! What's the difference between Professional, Standard, and Free Office? I won't mind a one-time charge, but I don't like the idea of being held hostage to something that expires every year. --doug
On 8/13/20 1:48 AM, Todd Chester via users wrote:
On 2020-08-12 16:16, Doug McGarrett wrote:
Please tell me the difference between Free Office and SoftMaker Standard.
std is version 2021
Free is version 2018
I have decided to install the Free version on the new computer. It all looks familiar, but I cannot remember how to defeat superscripting once and for all. Please let me know how to do this. (You might tell the publishers in Germany that superscripting is not a normal way of writing in the US. A short perusal of US newspaper styles will show you that nothing is ever superscripted, nor is it in books for general reading, rather than, say, textbooks.) Thanx, --doug
On 2020-08-13 15:43, Doug McGarrett wrote:
On 8/13/20 1:48 AM, Todd Chester via users wrote:
On 2020-08-12 16:16, Doug McGarrett wrote:
Please tell me the difference between Free Office and SoftMaker Standard.
std is version 2021
Free is version 2018
I have decided to install the Free version on the new computer. It all looks familiar, but I cannot remember how to defeat superscripting once and for all. Please let me know how to do this. (You might tell the publishers in Germany that superscripting is not a normal way of writing in the US. A short perusal of US newspaper styles will show you that nothing is ever superscripted, nor is it in books for general reading, rather than, say, textbooks.) Thanx, --doug
First thing I noticed was that it loaded my long documents 10 times faster. I won't read a password encrypted odt and the free version won't mix portrait and landscape. I have yet to test envelopes and tables. And their support is extremely responsive!
Here is the table one, if y want to get a jump on me:
Deleting columns in a table can delete several columns if any cells in that column are merged with other cells:
On 8/13/20 6:43 PM, Doug McGarrett wrote:
On 8/13/20 1:48 AM, Todd Chester via users wrote:
On 2020-08-12 16:16, Doug McGarrett wrote:
Please tell me the difference between Free Office and SoftMaker Standard.
std is version 2021
Free is version 2018
I have decided to install the Free version on the new computer. It all looks familiar, but I cannot remember how to defeat superscripting once and for all. Please let me know how to do this. (You might tell the publishers in Germany that superscripting is not a normal way of writing in the US. A short perusal of US newspaper styles will show you that nothing is ever superscripted, nor is it in books for general reading, rather than, say, textbooks.)
Followup:
I had previously asked for assistance in suppressing superscripting in FreeOffice 2018 Textmaker, and got no reply. Probably because free softwarecomes with no assistance.
So after much searching and futzing around, I found out how to do it:
With a document open, go to Tools>Options>Edit. There are a bunch of check-boxes, one says "Superscript ordinal numbers" --uncheck that box and then click OK.
That seems to have done it for all documents. To be on the safe side, you may save the opened document, but I don't think that's necessary. If you find any gotcha in this procedure--something I forgot or left out--please write a line or two here and correct me.
Reminder: If you are going to use the document in another word processor, or send it to someone who does not have Textmaker, save it in Microsoft Word format!
--doug
On 2020-08-12 22:48, Todd Chester wrote:
On 2020-08-12 16:16, Doug McGarrett wrote:
Please tell me the difference between Free Office and SoftMaker Standard.
std is version 2021
Free is version 2018
SoftMaker: Disaster!
It will only save back in M$O or it own format. It will not save back in Open Document format.
POOP! (Not my actual word.)
On 8/10/20 9:11 PM, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
Hi All, Please tell me there is an alternative to Libre office that actually works right!!!
How about LibreOffice? It works just fine.
How do I switch back and forth from portrait to landscape in 7.0? https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/259593/how-do-i-switch-back-and-fort...
Easy. Did you look in the help? You make a page break that applies the "Landscape" style. Thanks for making me look though, it's something I've wondered about.
Page Breaks are greyed out in 7.0!!!! https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/259594/page-breaks-are-greyed-out-in...
I don't know what you're doing, but they aren't greyed out for me.
I tried to install 7 from koji, but that will only work for F33, so I used the flatpak version.
On 2020-08-11 18:28, Samuel Sieb wrote:
On 8/10/20 9:11 PM, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
Hi All, Please tell me there is an alternative to Libre office that actually works right!!!
How about LibreOffice? It works just fine.
Hi Sam,
Unless you really, really try to use it. I have installed it over two counties and NO ONE has kept it. It is too counter intuitive and buggy
How do I switch back and forth from portrait to landscape in 7.0? https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/259593/how-do-i-switch-back-and-fort...
Easy. Did you look in the help? You make a page break that applies the "Landscape" style. Thanks for making me look though, it's something I've wondered about.
I actually have a keeper documents on it. It is counter intuitive. I don't appreciate having to jump through flaming hops when all I want to do is write. It makes me lose my train of conscience and just pisses me off.
In Word pro (Wine), you select page format and it sets the current page and all subsequent pages. It is intuitive.
Page Breaks are greyed out in 7.0!!!! https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/259594/page-breaks-are-greyed-out-in...
I don't know what you're doing, but they aren't greyed out for me.
I tried to install 7 from koji, but that will only work for F33, so I used the flatpak version.
I download the RPM's from their web site.
And they greyed out things have decided to work, except on new documents. AAAAAAHHHH!!!!
Do you use tables in LibreOffice?
Deleting a column in a tables with a merged row deletes entire table:
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=96171
I MUST HAVE WORKING TABLES!
It is like they gave you free car that pulls to the right. You complain about it, but you can't afford to pay to put them on your payroll to fix it. Then they come out with a new version of the new car. Oh Goody! Maybe the fixed the ... But no, they just added a cool new stereo. You did not pay the ransom. (And they do deserve to get paid for their work.)
And LibreOffice WILL NOT TAKE INPUT FROM USERS. Look at the overwhelming pleading for writer division tabs:
Division/section-per-tab (similar to Lotus WordPro):
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33173
And the kicker is they already have the code base for division tabs under calc!
Libre Office frustrates me to no end. They only thing I can think of that your experience differs from mine and my customers is that you must not be much of a power LibreOffice user.
Fedora is a wonderful example of Kaisen and open source achieving wonderful things. LibreOffice and Wine have the antidote. I can barely keep food on my table. I can't afford to put developers on my payroll.
-T
On 8/11/20 7:48 PM, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 18:28, Samuel Sieb wrote:
On 8/10/20 9:11 PM, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
How do I switch back and forth from portrait to landscape in 7.0? https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/259593/how-do-i-switch-back-and-fort...
Easy. Did you look in the help? You make a page break that applies the "Landscape" style. Thanks for making me look though, it's something I've wondered about.
I actually have a keeper documents on it. It is counter intuitive. I don't appreciate having to jump through flaming hops when all I want to do is write. It makes me lose my train of conscience and just pisses me off.
No flaming hoops, it makes complete sense to me. You want to use a different page format, you insert a page break that switches to the new format. Totally "intuitive".
In Word pro (Wine), you select page format and it sets the current page and all subsequent pages. It is intuitive.
"Intuitive" is almost completely dependent on your previous experience.
On 2020-08-11 21:07, Samuel Sieb wrote:
On 8/11/20 7:48 PM, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 18:28, Samuel Sieb wrote:
On 8/10/20 9:11 PM, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
How do I switch back and forth from portrait to landscape in 7.0? https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/259593/how-do-i-switch-back-and-fort...
Easy. Did you look in the help? You make a page break that applies the "Landscape" style. Thanks for making me look though, it's something I've wondered about.
I actually have a keeper documents on it. It is counter intuitive. I don't appreciate having to jump through flaming hops when all I want to do is write. It makes me lose my train of conscience and just pisses me off.
No flaming hoops, it makes complete sense to me. You want to use a different page format, you insert a page break that switches to the new format. Totally "intuitive".
In Word pro (Wine), you select page format and it sets the current page and all subsequent pages. It is intuitive.
"Intuitive" is almost completely dependent on your previous experience.
You are very forgiving. It belongs in Format-> page.
NOT Insert->page breaks->More Breaks->manual breaks->Page Style.
Oh and you'd better have a style for Landscape and realize the portrait is "Default page style".
And changing the format is page need to only change the current page and subsequent pages, not the entire document.
Have use used xsane and simple-scan? One is a nightmare GUI and one is wonderfully done.
On Tue, 2020-08-11 at 21:24 -0700, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
You are very forgiving. It belongs in Format-> page.
That I can agree on. It's logical to have a format - page option format the current page. And it's logical for there to be a separate format - document option for the whole document.
On 2020-08-11 21:54, Tim via users wrote:
On Tue, 2020-08-11 at 21:24 -0700, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
You are very forgiving. It belongs in Format-> page.
That I can agree on. It's logical to have a format - page option format the current page. And it's logical for there to be a separate format - document option for the whole document.
You should not have to be a programming genius to use a word processor. And on what planet is page orientation a "paragraph" feature? Test Maker suffers from this too.
I wonder if "paragraph" means something different in British English that it does in American English. Sort of like in American English "college" is a university and in British English it is a trade school.
On Wed, 2020-08-12 at 12:19 -0700, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 21:54, Tim via users wrote:
On Tue, 2020-08-11 at 21:24 -0700, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
You are very forgiving. It belongs in Format-> page.
That I can agree on. It's logical to have a format - page option format the current page. And it's logical for there to be a separate format - document option for the whole document.
You should not have to be a programming genius to use a word processor. And on what planet is page orientation a "paragraph" feature? Test Maker suffers from this too.
It's a mistake to think of a book as if it were simply a very long memo. Fully developed document formatting is much more than "word processing". Publishers have a "house style" which can be supplied to authors in the form of LaTeX files, or maybe even as Word files. What the author has to do is follow the style. Unfortunately, the word processor mentality acts against this and everybody becomes their own designer.
I wonder if "paragraph" means something different in British English that it does in American English. Sort of like in American English "college" is a university and in British English it is a trade school.
Eton College is not a trade school. All Souls College, Oxford is not a trade school. The Royal College of Surgeons is not a trade school. I could go on ...
Paragraph means the same on both sides, despite the two countries being divided by a common language.
poc
(Systems analyst, Cambridge University Press, 1973, working on one of the first computerised book preparation systems on Data General minis programmed in BCPL :-)
On 8/11/20 9:24 PM, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 21:07, Samuel Sieb wrote:
"Intuitive" is almost completely dependent on your previous experience.
You are very forgiving. It belongs in Format-> page.
NOT Insert->page breaks->More Breaks->manual breaks->Page Style.
The reason it's there is because in order to change the page format you have to start a new page. And it's not really there anyway. The actual landscape setting is part of the style. Format->Page modifies the page settings for the currently active style. If you switch to the "Landscape" style, then Format->Page will show that you are in landscape. I guess you have to understand that LO operates at a higher level than just basic typing. You can do that, but you shouldn't, at least if you're writing something more than just a really basic memo. If you use styles properly, then you can make global layout and formatting changes easily.
On 2020-08-11 23:13, Samuel Sieb wrote:
On 8/11/20 9:24 PM, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 21:07, Samuel Sieb wrote:
"Intuitive" is almost completely dependent on your previous experience.
You are very forgiving. It belongs in Format-> page.
NOT Insert->page breaks->More Breaks->manual breaks->Page Style.
The reason it's there is because in order to change the page format you have to start a new page. And it's not really there anyway. The actual landscape setting is part of the style. Format->Page modifies the page settings for the currently active style. If you switch to the "Landscape" style, then Format->Page will show that you are in landscape. I guess you have to understand that LO operates at a higher level than just basic typing. You can do that, but you shouldn't, at least if you're writing something more than just a really basic memo. If you use styles properly, then you can make global layout and formatting changes easily.
True. And since when do I need to be a rocket scientist to figure out. That is the issue. It should be in page format, period. I should not have to learn" what is under the hood to be able to use the thing.
Oh and on what planet is the orientation of the page a "paragraph" format?
On 8/12/20 12:15 PM, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 23:13, Samuel Sieb wrote:
On 8/11/20 9:24 PM, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 21:07, Samuel Sieb wrote:
"Intuitive" is almost completely dependent on your previous experience.
You are very forgiving. It belongs in Format-> page.
NOT Insert->page breaks->More Breaks->manual breaks->Page Style.
The reason it's there is because in order to change the page format you have to start a new page. And it's not really there anyway. The actual landscape setting is part of the style. Format->Page modifies the page settings for the currently active style. If you switch to the "Landscape" style, then Format->Page will show that you are in landscape. I guess you have to understand that LO operates at a higher level than just basic typing. You can do that, but you shouldn't, at least if you're writing something more than just a really basic memo. If you use styles properly, then you can make global layout and formatting changes easily.
True. And since when do I need to be a rocket scientist to figure out. That is the issue. It should be in page format, period. I should not have to learn" what is under the hood to be able to use the thing.
It's very clear in the documentation. A quick search for "landscape" gave me: https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/swriter/guide/pageorientation...
Oh and on what planet is the orientation of the page a "paragraph" format?
Are you referring to LO or something else? In LO, the page orientation is in the page format right where it should be.
On 2020-08-12 15:48, Samuel Sieb wrote:
On 8/12/20 12:15 PM, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 23:13, Samuel Sieb wrote:
On 8/11/20 9:24 PM, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
On 2020-08-11 21:07, Samuel Sieb wrote:
"Intuitive" is almost completely dependent on your previous experience.
You are very forgiving. It belongs in Format-> page.
NOT Insert->page breaks->More Breaks->manual breaks->Page Style.
The reason it's there is because in order to change the page format you have to start a new page. And it's not really there anyway. The actual landscape setting is part of the style. Format->Page modifies the page settings for the currently active style. If you switch to the "Landscape" style, then Format->Page will show that you are in landscape. I guess you have to understand that LO operates at a higher level than just basic typing. You can do that, but you shouldn't, at least if you're writing something more than just a really basic memo. If you use styles properly, then you can make global layout and formatting changes easily.
True. And since when do I need to be a rocket scientist to figure out. That is the issue. It should be in page format, period. I should not have to learn" what is under the hood to be able to use the thing.
It's very clear in the documentation. A quick search for "landscape" gave me: https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/swriter/guide/pageorientation...
Oh and on what planet is the orientation of the page a "paragraph" format?
Are you referring to LO or something else? In LO, the page orientation is in the page format right where it should be.
Sam,
Do you have any idea how much arguing I had to do to get LO to move that out of paragraph?
-T
On 2020-08-13 13:56, Samuel Sieb wrote:
On 8/12/20 10:50 PM, Todd Chester via users wrote:
Do you have any idea how much arguing I had to do to get LO to move that out of paragraph?
I didn't know it was ever in there, but I agree that it shouldn't be.
I don't ever recall it being there either.
I just happen to have a very old VM running libreoffice 3.3.1 from 2011.
In that old version the page orientation is in....
Format--->Page--->Page Tab of the "Page Style"
https://imgur.com/gallery/8XUjtfQ
The Paragraph has no settings for Portrait/Landscape.
On 2020-08-13 15:05, Ed Greshko wrote:
On 2020-08-13 13:56, Samuel Sieb wrote:
On 8/12/20 10:50 PM, Todd Chester via users wrote:
Do you have any idea how much arguing I had to do to get LO to move that out of paragraph?
I didn't know it was ever in there, but I agree that it shouldn't be.
I don't ever recall it being there either.
I just happen to have a very old VM running libreoffice 3.3.1 from 2011.
In that old version the page orientation is in....
Format--->Page--->Page Tab of the "Page Style"
https://imgur.com/gallery/8XUjtfQ
The Paragraph has no settings for Portrait/Landscape.
Oh, I also have an OpenOffice 3.0 install from 2008. It also has the orientation in Page Style. Nothing of the sort in Paragraph.
Am 13.08.2020 um 09:05 schrieb Ed Greshko ed.greshko@greshko.com:
On 2020-08-13 13:56, Samuel Sieb wrote:
On 8/12/20 10:50 PM, Todd Chester via users wrote:
Do you have any idea how much arguing I had to do to get LO to move that out of paragraph?
I didn't know it was ever in there, but I agree that it shouldn't be.
I don't ever recall it being there either.
I just happen to have a very old VM running libreoffice 3.3.1 from 2011.
In that old version the page orientation is in....
Format--->Page--->Page Tab of the "Page Style"
Don’t understand the issue either. As I recall, this has always been there and still is (6.3.6.2). And a page break can be reached directly under Insert and of course also with a paragraph, because you often want to start paragraphs like Heading 1 on a new page.
It is probably more a question of work style than a problem with LibreOffice / OpenOffice
On 2020-08-13 00:44, Peter Boy wrote:
Am 13.08.2020 um 09:05 schrieb Ed Greshko ed.greshko@greshko.com:
On 2020-08-13 13:56, Samuel Sieb wrote:
On 8/12/20 10:50 PM, Todd Chester via users wrote:
Do you have any idea how much arguing I had to do to get LO to move that out of paragraph?
I didn't know it was ever in there, but I agree that it shouldn't be.
I don't ever recall it being there either.
I just happen to have a very old VM running libreoffice 3.3.1 from 2011.
In that old version the page orientation is in....
Format--->Page--->Page Tab of the "Page Style"
Don’t understand the issue either. As I recall, this has always been there and still is (6.3.6.2). And a page break can be reached directly under Insert and of course also with a paragraph, because you often want to start paragraphs like Heading 1 on a new page.
It is probably more a question of work style than a problem with LibreOffice / OpenOffice
Writer: Looks as if switch Page to Portrait is impossible - Cause: "Format > Page" is not clear because it starts formatting the page Style
Deleting columns in a table can delete several columns if any cells in that column are merged with other cells:
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=126608
There are sample test documents to try
On 2020-08-13 00:05, Ed Greshko wrote:
On 2020-08-13 13:56, Samuel Sieb wrote:
On 8/12/20 10:50 PM, Todd Chester via users wrote:
Do you have any idea how much arguing I had to do to get LO to move that out of paragraph?
I didn't know it was ever in there, but I agree that it shouldn't be.
I don't ever recall it being there either.
I just happen to have a very old VM running libreoffice 3.3.1 from 2011.
In that old version the page orientation is in....
Format--->Page--->Page Tab of the "Page Style"
https://imgur.com/gallery/8XUjtfQ
The Paragraph has no settings for Portrait/Landscape.
Writer: Looks as if switch Page to Portrait is impossible - Cause: "Format > Page" is not clear because it starts formatting the page Style
On 2020-08-12 22:56, Samuel Sieb wrote:
On 8/12/20 10:50 PM, Todd Chester via users wrote:
Do you have any idea how much arguing I had to do to get LO to move that out of paragraph?
I didn't know it was ever in there, but I agree that it shouldn't be.
Writer: Looks as if switch Page to Portrait is impossible - Cause: "Format > Page" is not clear because it starts formatting the page Style
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=126608
And argue and argue and argue and argue. Leaves a bad taste in one's mouth.
My favorite response to the guard dog:
Guard Dog: > => RESOLVED NOTABUG
T: Danged tootin' it is!
Oh and two weeks ago I showed up at my bank with my calc spreadsheet and the last line was missing.
Calc: print does not print unsaved cell https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=125895
And argue and argue and argue and argue. Finally one of the developers over ruled the guard dog. AND !!!! once no one was looking, he put the bug back in.
Plus, someone has been pruning out posts to the bug reports that they don't like
As I said, it leaves a bad taste ion one's mouth.
When I am writing a document, the LAST thing I was to do is research what should be intuitive. Word Pro is entirey intuitive, so I know it can be done.
On 2020-08-10 21:11, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
Please tell me there is an alternative to Libre office that actually works right!!!
My current list of substitutes:
Free Office: https://www.freeoffice.com/en/download/applications
Softmaker: https://www.softmaker.com/en/ https://www.softmaker.com/en/servicepacks (has release notes)
Only Office Desktop: https://www.onlyoffice.com/download-desktop.aspx
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Doug McGarrett -
Ed Greshko -
George N. White III -
Joe Zeff -
José Abílio Matos -
jtagcat -
Patrick O'Callaghan -
Peter Boy -
Rikke Giles -
Samuel Sieb -
Temlakos -
Tim -
Todd Chester -
ToddAndMargo
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Tony Nelson -
William Oliver