I was able to salvage my manuscript and will proceed to publish with the following author's note:
A Note on Production The reader will notice that the Table of Contents is inexplicably numbered "Page 0." This is not a stylistic choice, nor is it an homage to zero-indexed arrays, nor is it a philosophical statement about the void that precedes all narratives. It is there because LibreOffice Writer, after three hours of increasingly desperate attempts, absolutely refused to allow the deletion of a single character without catastrophically destroying every other page number in this manuscript. Every standard solution—adjusting page number offsets, inserting manual breaks, modifying page styles, unlinking headers and footers—resulted in either: (a) the spontaneous generation of blank pages numbered "1" throughout the document, (b) the complete disappearance of all page numbers except the zero, or (c) both simultaneously, in apparent defiance of logic and causality. The final attempt involved changing the font color of the zero to white, rendering it invisible. LibreOffice responded by making every page number in the entire manuscript invisible, because... of course it did. At a certain point, one must accept defeat. The zero stays. Consider it a monument to the limits of human patience and the arbitrary cruelty of deeply flawed word processing software.If you are reading this in a position to make decisions about document software: please, for the love of god, consider literally anything else. -jrh Sent with [Proton Mail](https://proton.me/mail/home) secure email. On Tuesday, December 9th, 2025 at 2:50 PM, Waltr <[email protected]> wrote: > Farhan, > > I really don't have any specific recommendations as I have never been a heavy > user of MSOffice except when forced. When MSWord came out, I was using mainly > ATT and BSD Unix and DEC machines, and then went to BSD variants and MacOS > which are my main platforms. So, I used MS and learned what I needed to when > in that environment. > > I think the biggest conceptual difference is understanding that MSOffice is > more direct, traditional formatting, while LibreOffice is more preplanned > formatting from a conceptual basis. This takes a bit of up front thought on > "how do I want my document to look." Or you can just write your document, > getting the thoughts down and organized into a cohesive flow and then make > final decisions on how you want things to look and feel at the end of the > process. Another way I've done it is an evolutionary where I've structured > the document to fit the needs of one granting agency, then found out another > with a different set of requirements for formatting would be the reviewer. It > was a fairly simple format changeover, once the requirements were understood > without changing a single punctuation mark in the text. There's a lot more > power there I have never had the need to use, too, so there is that. > > Mainly, I read what I can find that fits what I want to do, then am not shy > about asking specific questions on the web forums. Some sites tell me to go > RTM and soak my head, others say, yeah, great idea and we work together to > see if it can be done reasonable quickly. It averages. That is part of the > beauty of OSF and open source. People are more helpful than the Microsoft > Help desk. > > Walt > > Sent from [ProtonMail](https://protonmail.ch), encrypted email based in > Switzerland. > > Sent with [Proton Mail](https://proton.me/mail/home) secure email. > > On Tuesday, December 9th, 2025 at 13:15, FARHAN ISHRAK Fahim > <[email protected]> wrote: > >>> What do you recommend them who come from microsoft office but don't have >>> time to learn libre office from scratch and no one in his community e.g. >>> classmates, colligues and faculties don't use it? -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: [email protected] Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: https://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy
