Re: [libreoffice-users] Book-writing with Writer

On 08/07/13 14:30, Marc Grober wrote:
> I have seen quote a bit of argument against using a master document for
> a book as I was exploring this subject just recently as well.  The help
> docs of course are a good place to start.
> https://help.libreoffice.org/Writer/Master_Documents_and_Subdocuments
>
> There are a number of different tools for moving from LO to epub.  There
> is the new eLAIX extension, Writer2epub, and you can also export as
> docxml and then use pandoc which will create epub3 docs for you. I used
> to use eScape but that is no longer supported, though it still works.
> The folk at infogridpacific looked like they were going to move it to an
> online service but it looks like that project was killed and that they
> are concentrating on their Digital publisher solution.
Hi!
Thanks. I went through that. It's well written. It helped me to 
understand the concept. But It's a little shy on the actual practice. 
I've been experimenting with templates and a set of test documents, with 
mixed results.

I notice that master documents tend to elicit a love-hate relationship: 
some people think they are The Right Thing, others that they are worse 
than accepting a ring from Sauron hehehe. I had bad experiences dabbling 
with them in MS Word a few years ago, and I never touched them again.
I've also experienced that Writer is a lot more stable than MS Word when 
dealing with very long documents and complex formatting (embedded 
images, tables, crossreferences, etc.), but I never have used it for 
anything over 100-120 pages long.
I expect my current assignment to reach around 500 pages easily, with 
math, complex tables and so on. When I read the "Writer's Guide", I came 
across the suggestion that a master document and chapter subdocuments 
where the preferred way to tackle long, complext texts. In any case, I 
am aware that I will need a lot of planning, careful styling and no 
direct formatting to make it work, either as a single file or using a 
master document.

As for publishing... I was thinking plain PDF export with no DRM. Epub 
is an interesting option. On the print side... small printing houses 
down here, the ones that accept material for self publishing, demand MS 
Word .doc format, so that was another reason for me to chose Writer 
instead of a full DTP or plain text format.
Anyway, thanks for the tips. I'll keep digging ;-)

--
Pablo M. Dotro
wizard@elysium.com.ar    pdotro@df.uba.ar
pdotro@gmail.com         Twitter: @Pablo_El_Mago
http://www.blog.elysium.com.ar


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