Re: [libreoffice-users] tabs in LibreOffice - like you can do for MS-Word?

On 05/27/2011 12:19 PM, Brian Barker wrote:
> At 11:14 27/05/2011 -0400, Nobody Noname wrote:
> > I just read a article about adding "tabs" to Word that allows you to 
> > have multiple Word documents own in tabs, like you have for Firefox 
> > or IE.  The lady was saying that she had 4 or 5 Word documents open 
> > at the same time and the "tab" option.  She said she would be lost 
> > without web browsers having tabs, so it just makes sense to have such 
> > an option in Word.
> >
> > So I was wondering if anyone knows any add-on to LibreOffice that 
> > would allow multiple Writer docs open at the same time in without 
> > having multiple instances of LO open at the same time.  That would 
> > make life easier sometimes.  Since OOo's extension site is not 
> > working half the time, I thought someone here might know of such an 
> > extension.
>
> I think you are missing the point here!  If you open, say, Internet 
> Explorer, when it's already running, you get another instance.   Tabs 
> change that - don't they? - so that you can have multiple pages within 
> one instance.  But it's been a very long time since Word has behaved 
> like that: if you start Word when it is already running, it merely 
> opens another document in the same instance of the program.  This is 
> despite your seeing separate windows.
>
> In fact, OpenOffice and LibreOffice are already ahead of that, since 
> they are integrated suites, so you can even open multiple documents of 
> different types in one instance of the program.  You can have a text 
> document and a spreadsheet both open in the same instance of the suite 
> (which is why it's sometimes unhelpful to think of Writer and Calc as 
> being separate programs).  Try opening a spreadsheet from within Word 
> or a text document from within Excel: no joy!
>
> The way you move between multiple documents in applications is 
> generally using the Window menu - and this works in OpenOffice and 
> LibreOffice as in anything else.  And with these suites, you even get 
> all open documents, even if of different types.  (With the ribbon, 
> this appears under View | Window in recent versions of Word.)
>
> What you could be asking for, then, is not the ability to have 
> multiple documents open in a single instance - which is already here - 
> but simply a move from a Window menu to tabs as a way of handling them.
>
> Unless I misunderstand things ...
I do not deal with more than 1 to 3 different office type of documents 
at a time.  But for the person who writes books, papers, and other 
things like that, could have the main document in one tab, the 
bibliography in a 2nd, a footnote section in a 3rd, notes and other 
research in still others. Then tabbing between documents might be easier 
than between "programs" shown on the task bar.  I know of one author 
that went from StarOffice to OOo and from Windows to Linux since he used 
a different style of keyboard, instead of QWERTY, and Linux was easier 
to setup that keyboard that was easier for him to use.  He also wrote 
his own macros to do functions he needed, or wanted, that would help him 
write his 3 to 5 paperback novels a year.  His wife still use Windows 
since they could not get the Linux machine to work with the dial-up 
modem.  I do not know if he will be moving over to LibreOffice, not that 
Oracle owns the rights to the name.

I think the tabbed document idea would work great for the type of work 
he described doing in his author's note at the end of most of his books, 
or his monthly blog.  For me having tabbed web pages in Firefox works 
for my need to page back and forth between web "documents" to keep up 
with weather reports[2 pages], hourly/daily reports on what my computer 
is doing with BOINC, several LibreOffice related pages including several 
wiki pages, and whatever other web pages I need to keep an eye one and 
do not want to have to open up every time I want to see some info.

If I wanted to deal with writing, like I use to work on for thesis 
papers, I thing having a tabbed work environment would help keeping all 
the various documents together and arranged more neatly than the ways I 
had to deal with in the past.  Also it would give me only one listing in 
the task bar realistate when I have to have many different programs open 
at the same time.  I currently have a simple schedule, computer monitor, 
BOINC manager, LibreOffice, Thunderbird-main, this email in Thunderbird, 
and FireFox [with its own 7 tabs].  If I had to have 3 or more 
LibreOffice documents open, the task bar package names would get too 
small to mean anything to identify which LO task belongs to which 
document.  I once has over 15 tasks open at the same time, and it was a 
pain.  Tabbed document management withing LibreOffice would reduce that 
mess sometimes.

> > I just wish she would get her "story" straight since she promotes 
> > open source office suite options as the alternative to MSO.  Here she 
> > tells people she uses Word, while other articles tell people about 
> > the virtue of using OOo, then LibreOffice, instead of MSO.
>
> Isn't it possible that both may have their pros and cons?
>
> Brian Barker


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