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

On 7/7/13 10:34 PM, Pablo Dotro wrote:
> Greetings!
>
> I am beginning a large writing project, that will most probably take the
> form of a self published, free ebook. And while I have created very
> long, complex documents before, I have never formatted them as a book.
> Having been using word processing software for a living for the last 15
> years or so, I thought myself as "power user" enough to take the next
> step and try to create my document relying on Writer's features and not
> depending on someone else to typeset the material.
> However, after reading both the "Getting Started" and the "Writer
> Guide", I am convinced that it is possible. Heh, the mere existance of
> those books is proof enough ;-) But I find that there is a gap between
> the techniques described there for working with templates, styles and
> master documents... and the actual craft needed to make them work. A
> quick look to the odt files themselves convinced me of that.
> So after some googling and a disappointint amazon search on books on
> this subject, I come here to rely on our collective knowledge, with a
> question:
>
> Does anyone know about a tutorial, book or website where I can
> specifically learn about creating a book-lenght document, with chapters
> (as subdocuments) and a master document, consistent styling, indexing
> and table of contents with Libreoffice?
>
> Thnk you very much for your time, and best regards,

Since you seem to have a similar view to me, regarding major project, 
here's my thoughts...

That similar view is to search out and find the right tools before 
actually starting the project.  I've got some personal ideas that need 
some kind of document output, so I'm looking at, or at least trying to 
look at, all the available alternatives to the ubiquitous office suites, 
which may or may not be the best tools for the job.

First, I've only had time to skim the posts, I may have misread or 
simply missed something here and there.

Lyx has been mentioned.  I just took a quick look at it, and was 
dismayed to find it has, essentially, zero support for .doc/docx files. 
 And, if memory serves, few export formats if any.  :-(  Why, I don't 
know, just about every other text program I've looked at does.  :-)  So 
it's been removed from my computer... for now.   LOL  Maybe there is a 
way to convert it's files, I did not do any searching for something.

Someone mentioned Scrivener.  I'm in the process of using the demo, off 
and on, right now.  Even if you don't use this program for the final 
output, I'd recommend it solely from the aspect of the user's ability to 
keep all his research notes within your Scrivener project, from PDF 
files to personal notes to web pages to images.  Yes, it will open web 
pages from within Scrivener, no need to open your browser to view them.

A plus side for you, it would seem, is it directly supports the eBook 
format.  I know nothing about the ebook format, but if that's where you 
are really going, I'd at least look at this.

At the moment, my biggest personal concern is how it would handle images 
in the final output.  I have not investigated this yet, but need to.

It's not expensive, IMO, $45 US.  I do plan on purchasing it simply 
because the ability to put all my research in the project where it's 
seems to be extremely easy to access.  Even if the final output is done 
some other way.  One advantage of my Mac, the Mac natively produces PDF 
files, but I don't know how good the output will be.

There are a number of Scrivener tutorials on YouTube, and it comes with 
a 500+ page manual, all done in Scrivener.  Yes, you heard me right, a 
real live manual in PDF form.  And tutorials are built into the program.

Someone mentioned DTP.  I.E. a program like Adobe Pagemaker.  Which, you 
obviously don't want to purchase for this.

There is a free DTP program called Scribus, 
http://www.scribus.net/canvas/Scribus

The Lite version of Calamus is shareware, 
http://www.calamus.net/calamus/lite.php  I used the paid, commercial 
version on the Atari platform years ago, liked it, but haven't used any 
DTP software for years.

Serif.com has a reasonably priced DTP program, PagePlus X7, 
http://www.serif.com/pageplus/

Whether any of these programs do much, if anything, for ebooks I do not 
know.
And neither will you if you don't check them out.

I had not heard of yWriter, so I'll have to check that out.  Have the 
page in my browser as I write this post.

If/when you settle on something, I wouldn't mind knowing why you picked 
one over the another.  The email address on this post is valid, please 
use it if you wish.

--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.8.4
Firefox 20.0
Thunderbird 17.0.5
LibreOffice 4.0.3.3


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