Bruce Byfield, a journalist who specializes in writing about free and open source software, has recently released Designing with LibreOffice, a book about our beloved free office suite, which is not the usual death march through the menu and standard tasks. Instead, the book takes two fresh approaches to the world’s most popular free office suite.
First, it explains the importance of using styles and templates in order to use LibreOffice with the most convenience and the least effort. Second, it explains the basics of modern design and how to apply them in LibreOffice, expanding on the open secret that LibreOffice is as much a desktop publishing application as an office suite.
The result of these approaches is a unique overview of using LibreOffice. If you are a new user, the book will help you get up to speed with LibreOffice. If you have already used LibreOffice, then this book will leave you with a clearer overview of the program and its capabilities.
Designing with LibreOffice has been published by Friends of OpenDocument under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Readers do not need to ask for permission to copy, share, or re-use the contents of Designing with LibreOffice. However, the publisher would appreciate hearing how and where the material has been re-used.
Designing with LibreOffice has a website, with additional information about the book and the author. Of course, the book can be downloaded from the website, and purchased as a traditional paper book from the the Friends of OpenDocument store on Lulu.
Today, I’d like to talk about what is going on at the LibreOffice documentation project. My name is Olivier Hallot and I am a French national living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, since my infancy. Back in 2002, I got involved in the OOo project leading the software translation team for Brazilian Portuguese. My background includes being an executive in two of the major software companies before going on my own and joining the open source community.
March 8 is the International Women’s Day. The theme for 2016 is “Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality”.
The Document Foundation has 210 members, but only 20 are women: Belinda Dibra (Albania), Christina Roßmanith (Germany), Eliane Domingos de Sousa (Brasil), Ellen Pape (Germany), Gülşah Köse (Turkey), Irmhild Rogalla (Germany), Jacqueline Rahemipour (Germany), Jean Hollis Weber (Australia), Katarina Behrens (Czech Republic, living in Germany), Linda Martinez (Venezuela), Marina Latini (Italy), Pallavi Jadhav (India), Priyanka Gaikwad (India), Rajashri Bhat Udhoji (India), Regina Henschel (Germany), Sigrid Carrera (Germany), Sonia Montegiove (Italy), Sophie Gautier (France), Surbhi Tongia (India) and Vinaya Mandke (India).
LibreOffice has been exhibiting at Didacta, a large event focused on the education – schools and universities – environment, from February 16 to February 20, 2016, in Koeln (Germany). Booth was attended by Ellen and Walter Pape, and Thomas Krumbein during the week, plus Andreas Mantke on Saturday. Volunteers have answered individual questions (often about compatibility between MS Office and LibreOffice) and have, when it came up, mentioned Libre Logo, Dmaths and the export as a Hybrid PDF.