Couldn't agree more.
I've found the best way to start is write short document consisting of
all the parts you need.
Learn the appropriate Writer terms and functions.
Get everything to format properly down to the last little item.
Save your template and your good to go.
By the time your done with it, you'll understand your own created
format, that it becomes second nature.
Then write your book.
The longest document I've done was 64 pages from and old Lotus Wordpro
that I had to totally redo in Writer.
I am pretty happy with the results.
Hope this helps.
On 7/9/2013 5:27 AM, Tom Davies wrote:
Hi :)
When i first started using Writer i found i struggled against the software
quite a bit. Often people try something new unaware of the baggage they bring
with them (such as bad habits learned through years of using other products)
and somehow keep managing to find unsuitable work-flows that do make it more
difficult than it needs to be.
It's like watching someone that is scared of the water splashing about and fighting
(and failing) to stay on top. If you are now a good swimmer can you remember the
first time you laid back and relaxed and found that human beings are naturally
bouyant? That only small minimal strokes of your arms almost parallel to the
surface are far more effective at keeping you above water than up&down strokes.
For me it took a huge wrench in my mind. Other people seemed to find it easy.
I have taught Word as part of ECDL and other courses and people generally think
i am extremely proficient with it, at least until MSO 2007, but i often found
that other people's documents were a nightmare to beat into shape. Even a tiny
change often threw up some unexpected formatting tangle that they had somehow
managed to root deep into their document. Also old documents written with
previous versions often came out all wrong.
With LibreOffice it is much easier to get a good looking result that behaves
itself. However if you do fight against it all the time then maybe you do need
to either
1. Read up on documentation and adjust to the software and/or
2. Experiment and play with documents created by other people to see how they
did it and/or
3. Experiment and play around with different ways of doing things. See if you
have any baggage or bad habits that you can break-down to simplify your
work-flow
Otherwise, if you are always struggling against the flow then you really are
better off with something that does suite you.
First time i used LO to do a ToC it was a major pain. 2nd time (and from then on) i found it
amazingly easy. That first time i did mess around with all sorts of aspects of it to work out how
to beat it into submission. Eventually i worked out how to use it rather than to fight against it.
Now it's incredibly easy. Even after a radical change i just right-click and choose
"update" and it fixes itself. "Simples" ;)
Regards from
Tom :)
________________________________
From: Virgil Arrington <[email protected]>
To: Mirosław Zalewski <[email protected]>; [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, 9 July 2013, 1:29
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Book-writing with Writer
Miroslaw,
You're right; I did merge *writing* and *publishing*. To that end, let me muddy
the waters even more by mentioning yWriter, a software program designed
specifically and solely for writing novels with many of the tools you suggest.
The frustration that I've found is that there are some publishing (or
formatting) tasks that are best handled completely separate from writing, such
as page layout, font selection, table of contents generation, etc. However, I
find other formatting tasks are better handled on the fly while typing, such as
applying italics to a word. Sometimes, I find seeing the paragraph layout
onscreen helpful to organizing my thoughts, which of course you won't see with
a strict text editor or pure LaTeX editor. At least LyX helps by showing some
formatting onscreen.
Anytime I use a program like yWriter, I end up spending a lot of time later
applying formatting that I could have applied on the fly with a decent word
processor. That may not be a concern for a person whose work will be published,
and therefore formatted, by someone else, like a professional publishing house.
But, the original poster mentioned self-publishing an e-book.
Virgil
-----Original Message----- From: Mirosław Zalewski
Sent: Monday, July 08, 2013 5:51 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Book-writing with Writer
On 08/07/2013 at 22:58, "Virgil Arrington" <[email protected]> wrote:
but to
me trying to write a book with LO Writer is like trying to force a square
peg into a round hole. Yes, it can be done, but the labor involved may not
be worth it.
I think you merge two totally different ideas: writing a book and publishing a
book.
As for writing, Writer and LaTeX are pretty much comparable - they both sucks.
They do not provide basic tools needed for writers, such as character
descriptions (were her eyes blue or green?) or detailed outline of story (this
is different than outline of chapters). Of course you can overcome it with nice
note-taking app, custom wiki or organized papers, but in some other programs
you do not have to.
As for publishing (making it look beautiful), LaTeX classes and forced
separation of structure and look usually provides better defaults than Writer.
Agreed.
But then, we talk about defaults. It's not like you can't change them.
If you learn your tools and think in advance, create decent-looking long
document in Writer can be done with little hassle.
I have created and edited some long (100+ pages) documents in Writer and never
seen anything in LaTeX that would be a dealbreaker for me. If anywhere, I
would go to full-fledged DTP suite such as Adobe InDesign.
-- Best regards
Mirosław Zalewski
-- To unsubscribe e-mail to: [email protected]
Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
-- To unsubscribe e-mail to: [email protected]
Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
--
To unsubscribe e-mail to: [email protected]
Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
