Book-writing with Writer

users
#41

That works just fine. For my tastes, however, it's not quite as smooth a process or polished a result as with LyX/LaTeX. But, as I've said before, LyX/LaTeX have their own sets of problems.

Perhaps the best solution is the one a person will actually use to get the job done. One Scrivener reviewer commented that evaluating writing software is more fun than writing. I have found that true as I often spend more time trying to find the perfect writing tool than I do actually writing.

Many years ago, a person was talking to Mike Royko, a Chicago journalist about writing a book. He asked Mike what the best software was for doing the task. Mike replied something to the effect of, "Software? Look, son, get yourself a legal pad and a pen and just start writing."

Virgil

#42

Hi :slight_smile:
+1
Well said! :)  The tools sometimes get in the way of doing the job.  Yes, keep learning new tricks and better ways when idling along but just use whatever you are comfortable with when you need to get a job done. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#43

Hi :slight_smile:
Thanks for the tips!

it's good to hear from someone that is getting published and able to show it
Thanks and regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#44

I fully agree. I use outline level styles all the time, and they make a world of difference, especially when used in headings. They make jumping from one heading to the next actually work on my Kindle.

Virgil

#45

I fully agree. I use outline level styles all the time, and they make a
world of difference, especially when used in headings. They make jumping
from one heading to the next actually work on my Kindle.

Virgil

Along those same lines -- when you convert in Calibre -- the ONLY thing
that matters (as far as chapters are concerned) is the style you use for
said chapter headings. I always use H3 and then make sure to catch this in
the Structure Detection section of the conversion window. With this you
can define some nice things (such as page breaks).

#46

I don't believe I've heard of "structure markup style concept" and
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. I used WordPerfect for years
and could never quite get the hang of WP's styles, all the while I
took to Word's and OO's (now LO's) styles quite easily.

To put it simply:

Wordperfect (or e.g. Framemaker) styles allow to do "structure markup".

Word, OO and LO "styles" don't.

In essence, this boils down to the fact that all sane document
processing applications (whether Wordperfect, Framemaker or dozens
of others, LaTeX or anything that outputs structured XML) use nestable
open- and close-"tags", while Word and LO/OO don't.

The style concept of Wordperfect was so well designed that the original
developers (Wordperfect) even implemented an XML authoring application
(for structured XML, using real schemas and stylesheets, not spaghetti
garbage like the "Opendocument XML") that used the Wordperfect UI,
including the style editor. This application is even shipped with every
copy of Corel Office, it's just mentioned or documented nowhere.

The style concept of both Word and LO/OO however is so severely screwed
up that I've never ever seen a document that would have allowed to
re-use content in any other way (within the same application!) than by
copying and pasting it as unformatted text and then re-applying all
the formatting by hand.

Unfortunately these days, people only "learn" with MS garbage and thus
they learn document processing exactly the wrong way.

And of course, the "reveal codes" view of Wordperfect at least allowed
to debug documents, while there is absolutely no way to do this with
Word or LO/OO documents. And I wish the source view in LyX was editable.

Sincerely,

Wolfgang

#47

Hi Wolfgang,

Wolfgang Keller schrieb:

I don't believe I've heard of "structure markup style concept" and
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. I used WordPerfect for years
and could never quite get the hang of WP's styles, all the while I
took to Word's and OO's (now LO's) styles quite easily.

To put it simply:

Wordperfect (or e.g. Framemaker) styles allow to do "structure markup".

Word, OO and LO "styles" don't.

All three allow structure markup. In Word it is a little bit hidden in the UI, but in AOO and LO it is easily done.

In essence, this boils down to the fact that all sane document
processing applications (whether Wordperfect, Framemaker or dozens
of others, LaTeX or anything that outputs structured XML) use nestable
open- and close-"tags", while Word and LO/OO don't.

That is wrong. AOO and LO use ODF which is XML. What do you want to do, which is not possible?

The style concept of Wordperfect was so well designed that the original
developers (Wordperfect) even implemented an XML authoring application
(for structured XML, using real schemas and stylesheets, not spaghetti
garbage like the "Opendocument XML") that used the Wordperfect UI,
including the style editor. This application is even shipped with every
copy of Corel Office, it's just mentioned or documented nowhere.

You will need to explain "spaghetti garbage".
You can read the schema for ODF in http://docs.oasis-open.org/office/v1.2/os/OpenDocument-v1.2-os-part1.html for example.

The style concept of both Word and LO/OO however is so severely screwed
up that I've never ever seen a document that would have allowed to
re-use content in any other way (within the same application!) than by
copying and pasting it as unformatted text and then re-applying all
the formatting by hand.

So you would need to blame the people who wrote the documents. If you use LO correctly, then copy and paste works well. That does not mean, that all cases are free from errors. But those are bugs and no errors in the concept.

Unfortunately these days, people only "learn" with MS garbage and thus
they learn document processing exactly the wrong way.

You underestimate the teachers.

And of course, the "reveal codes" view of Wordperfect at least allowed
to debug documents, while there is absolutely no way to do this with
Word or LO/OO documents.

Mmh, I had no problem to detect the errors in the documents my pupils had produced.

  And I wish the source view in LyX was editable.

Then you will like to use fodt in LibreOffice.

Kind regards
Regina

#48

Wordperfect (or e.g. Framemaker) styles allow to do "structure markup".

Word, OO and LO "styles" don't.

In essence, this boils down to the fact that all sane document
processing applications (whether Wordperfect, Framemaker or dozens
of others, LaTeX or anything that outputs structured XML) use nestable
open- and close-"tags", while Word and LO/OO don't.

Just because LO/OOo/MSO does not show tags, does not mean that they do not
allow "structural markup".

In LaTeX, you are free to make the same spaghetti garbage as in any other text
processing software. No one prevents you from creating you heading like this:

#v+
\vspace{2 cc}
{\LARGE \textbf{1.\hspace{1.5 cc}This is my heading}}
\vspace{1 cc}
#v-

It's equivalent to putting empty paragraphs before and after heading and
manually formatting it (making text larger and bolder).

LaTeX \section{This is my heading} is equivalent to LO's applying one of
Heading X styles.

The style concept of both Word and LO/OO however is so severely screwed
up that I've never ever seen a document that would have allowed to
re-use content in any other way (within the same application!) than by
copying and pasting it as unformatted text and then re-applying all
the formatting by hand.

This only means that people who you've had working with can not use their
tools properly. If they had used styles, you could reuse content of one
document within another with ease.

OK, I can agree that this is somewhat tools fault (they could make more
advanced features more discoverable and easier to understand); but I can not
agree that only tools are to blame.

And of course, the "reveal codes" view of Wordperfect at least allowed
to debug documents, while there is absolutely no way to do this with
Word or LO/OO documents

MS Word's Style Inspector is pretty useful, but rather hidden feature designed
for exactly this task.
Unfortunately, LO does not have any equivalent.

#49

Wolfgang,

Forgive my ignorance, but I'm trying to understand what you're saying. You wrote:

In essence, this boils down to the fact that all sane document
processing applications (whether Wordperfect, Framemaker or dozens
of others, LaTeX or anything that outputs structured XML) use nestable
open- and close-"tags", while Word and LO/OO don't.

I've created my own paragraph styles, and I have one called "BodySingle." It's just a single-spaced body of text with no paragraph indents. When I create a document in WordPerfect (an old Version 7) and look at a document in reveal codes, I get a code that says, for example, "Para Style: BodySingle" before each paragraph that has BodySingle applied to it and the same code at the end of each paragraph with that style.

When I look at a similar document in LO's "content.xml" file, I see "<text:p text:style-name="BodySingle">" before each BodySingle paragraph and a </text:p> at the end of each paragraph.

The only real difference I see is that LO ends each paragraph with a more generic tag </text:p:> with no specific reference to the applied style whereas WordPerfect ends each paragraph with a specific reference to the applied style.

Is that the distinction you're making between the two methods, and if so, how does that matter?

Virgil

#50

Wolfgang,

You also wrote:

The style concept of both Word and LO/OO however is so severely screwed
up that I've never ever seen a document that would have allowed to
re-use content in any other way (within the same application!) than by
copying and pasting it as unformatted text and then re-applying all
the formatting by hand.

If I understand you correctly (and I'm not at all certain I do), I think I've noticed similar behavior. I've noticed that if I copy and paste text in Word or LO/OO *and* include the closing paragraph marking (¶) then the paragraph formatting will also be pasted, but if I copy text without including the closing paragraph marking, then the text will be pasted using the same paragraph style as the destination paragraph. However, character formatting (bold, italic) is retained in the pasted text. I've never had a problem, as long as I keep the paragraph markings revealed and either select or not select them based on my specific needs at the time.

Virgil

#51

Hi :) 
Has anyone successfully tried this to get ePub versions of something fairly hefty such as our Published Guides?  I think it would be great if we could get all those guides done as ePub wouldn't it?  Anyone able to give it a go? 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#52

Tom,

Do you have a link to one of the guides? I may have a go at trying different ways of converting one to EPUB just to see how it works. Might be kind of fun.

Virgil

#53

Hi :slight_smile:
Sorry, got distracted.  Here's a link
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#54

I just did a couple experiments with LO and Writer2epub. I tried converting the entire 390 page Getting Started book to EPUB. It choked. I then tried doing the same with just the 18 page introduction. Same result. No EPUB output file was generated.

I noticed that Writer2epub doesn't like custom styles. It is apparently designed for fairly simple documents, using LO's built-in styles. It can't handle the elaborate formatting of the LO User Guides.

I then tried it using a theology paper I wrote a few years ago. I have several outline numbered styles, which again, Writer2epub doesn't translate well.

I think Writer2epub will work best with a document that is designed from the beginning for EPUB, but if you want to translate an existing document, you may need to do considerable work to make it ready for the extension.

These are just my observations after a half-hour experiment.

Virgil

#55

Hi :slight_smile:
That sounds a lot like LaTeX being best if you stick with their defaults so it kinda makes sense to me.  I think the Docs Team (i think mostly Dan & Jean wasn't it?) experimented with a few ways of getting ePubs from the guides and they might have useful ideas about it even though it's years later already. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#56

I just redid the Writer2epub test with my theology paper after applying default LO styles. It worked a *lot* better. I really liked the way it handled the default "Text Body" style by not indenting the first paragraph after a heading and then indenting subsequent paragraphs. That is excellent typography (a standard in LaTeX) and often missing in EPUB files. However, it still ignored my attempt to apply outline numbering to the default Heading styles. But, it did recognize the heading styles for my table of contents and navigation keys on my Kindle.

As you allude, this is a good tool as long as you understand what it will, and will not, do. Work within its parameters and you'll like the result. Try to make it work *your* way, and it will disappoint.

Virgil

#57

Another thing I noticed about the writer2epub extension. When I first downloaded it, it would not properly install into my LO 3.6.7. I then uninstalled my AOO 3.4.1 and AOO 4.0. The writer2epub extension then installed into LO.

It appears (as others have alluded) that LO and AOO have some conflicts when installed side by side on the same machine (registry perhaps which is beyond my knowledge). Since I'm finding that LO is progressing better than AOO, I'm happy to commit to just one of the suites.

Virgil

#58

Hi :slight_smile:
That progress is sometimes a double-edge sword.  Many of us stick with older branches, or in other word only upgrade most of our machines to the newer branch when the newer one reaches x.x.3 or x.x.4.

On the other hand AOO is more stable for more of it's branches life-cycles precisely because they don't develop so fast, which kinda makes it a tad dull and unlikely to succeed in the longer term once everyone else has left it so far behind.

There is a guide somewhere on how to get 2 versions of these suites working alongside each other.  It's not trivial, unless you have done it before in which case it's probably quite easy
Regards from 
Tom :slight_smile:

#59

There is a version for AOO, several actually written by a guy with an Italian country code.

One for version if for 3.x, another for 4.0, and a new Beta one.

So you may need to look into which one you are using for which version of LO or AOO.

I found this out by Googling "odf to epub converter"

#60

I got mine from http://lukesblog.it/ebooks/ebook-tools/writer2epub/. There's a version that words for LO 3, LO 4 and AOO 3, along with a separate version for AOO 4.

My problem wasn't that I had the wrong version. I got the version that was designed for LO. It just wouldn't install as long as I had AOO on my system. Once I uninstalled AOO, the extension worked fine with LO.

Of course, I have no idea *why* this behavior occurred. I won't blame AOO or anything else. I can't even scientifically say that LO and AOO had a conflict. I just know that, once I uninstalled AOO, I was able to install the writer2epub extension into my LO. I recalled someone else on the list saying that LO and AOO may conflict by sharing common Windows registry entries. That stuff is beyond my abilities, but I just shared it for others who may be interested.

Virgil