On 19 Dec 2005, at 0:58, Matej Cepl wrote: > my wife is a PhD student of linguistics.
I am a grad student of linguistics, but nowhere near as advanced as your wife. Still, I have some understanding of her needs. > > a) trees (some example as ASCII-art are here: The last time I had to do something with trees (simple, beginner stuff) I used Adobe InDesign on Windows, although last term I did write a complete project paper in OO.o Writer on Linux. The paper didn't contain any trees, though. I have been thinking for some time that I wanted to find a Linux alternative that would work for trees. Your message prompted me to do some preliminary poking around. My first choice for vector drawing would be Inkscape. However, I just tried it and discovered a couple of serious limitations. While it is an excellent drawing program, you cannot copy and paste into Writer. (This is probably a problem in Writer, as there are lots of glitches copying and pasting to and from Writer.) The second problem is that it cannot save a drawing in any vector format except its own and eps. Writer cannot import the native Inkscape format, and when it imports an eps saved from Inkscape you discover that Inkscape created no preview header. All you get is a box with the filename in it. Result is that (from very preliminary research) OO.o Draw is probably your best bet for the phrase structure trees. It's kind of clunky, but you can do it without leaving the Writer document. There is another alternative that I think I will use. First, I will create a simple ^ tree and save it to the Gallery. I can drag this into any document anywhere I need it. When selected in Writer you can squeeze/expand with the handles on the sides. Thus, this one graphic can be used in all kinds of places. In similar fashion you can create graphics for the other components you need in your tree and just resize and reshape them as needed. > something about b) glosses. One very simple gloss can look like this: > > NeboÅ¥ tak Bůh miloval svÄt > Because that so [the]God loved [the]world > For God so loved the world I think your idea of the tables is the best approach. You could set the rows to size themselves according to the minimum needed for the contents. I have not had to do this yet. I have had only a few occasions where I needed to do the IPA, the structure line, and the gloss. I just used tabs and spaces. If I had to do it often I would just type each one out using tabs, then Convert Text to Table, then set the column size formatting for "as required." For the gloss line I would merge all the cells horizontally so the last line appears as normal English text. I believe you could macro this, but I know nothing of programming. I'd start by trying to record it. As an alternative you could create a blank table with, say, ten columns and three rows, format it the way you will need it (including merging the cells in the gloss row), then save it to the Gallery. Whenever you need one just drag it from the Gallery and fill in the blanks. Delete unneeded columns. > I would love to create macro for my wife, which would translate freely > written plain text like this I think the macro would be more work than using a table template. But Maybe I don't understand how often your wife will have to do this. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
