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
Wednesday, February 10, we have not limited our activity to the launch of LibreOffice 5.1, but we have also updated the look of the 5 years old TDF website – our first web property, and our first website – by using the same template of the LibreOffice website. We have also reorganized contents, to simplify the navigation. We now have a menu bar with the following items: Foundation (Statutes, Financials and Affiliations), Governance (Foundation Bodies and History), Community, Certification, Get Help (Professional Support) and Contacts. With the overhaul of the TDF website, we have now renovated all project’s web properties. TDF, LibreOffice and Document Liberation websites are complemented by this, which is supposed to become the place where people go for the last news.
LibreOffice can be configured according to user needs with the menu Tools > Options, which opens a context sensible dialog window with a menu on the left and many corresponding option pages on the right. One of the least known options pages is the Paths one, where the user can modify (or add to) the default directories used by LibreOffice to store – among the others – Images, Documents and Templates. The screenshot represents my own configuration, where I edit the three highlighted paths according to my working habits: I store all documents and images in two different folders, and I have a separate folder for templates. By tweaking the configuration, when I access templates, import an image or open/save a document, the dialog window will always point to the right folder inetad of the default one. Of course, this is especially handy for large deployments, as LibreOffice can be configured to access a shared storage area instead of the local folder.
LibreOffice Writer was born – as StarWriter – to produce lengthy documents, such as thesis and relations, and as such offers a number of specific features in this area. Two of the most important are Templates and Styles, which facilitate the creation of good looking documents, and make it easier to reproduce a standard document once the layout – including Styles – has been defined and consolidated. LibreOffice offers an almost hidden feature to produce a Template, which can be accessed from the menu File > Send > Create Master Document. This opens a “save as…” dialog window, which allows to save the open document as a Template.
LibreOffice offers an AutoText feature which can be accessed from the menu Edit > AutoText, which opens a simple dialog windows. The example shown in the image on the left is the well known Lorem Ipsum pseudo Latin blurb, which can be used to mimic a document layout, but the feature offers a number of pre-defined standard strings (for instance: 1st Reminder, 2nd Reminder, etcetera), plus several Business Cards layouts, plus a number of template elements (for instance: Header Brochure, Header Newsletter, etcetera). In addition, you can import a document to create your own AutoText elements. To insert the AutoText, you can either recall the dialog window or type the shortcut for the AutoText entry, and then press F3.
The Document Foundation (TDF), the charitable entity behind the world’s leading free office suite LibreOffice, seeks a Documentation Lead to start work as soon as possible. The role, which is scheduled for 20 hours a week, includes amongst other items: Mentor and train new members of the documentation project: how we do things, how to use the tools, and writing style as needed Guide and coordinate work: what needs to be done when, set priorities Set standards and templates Maintain Contributors Guide, which includes Style Guide Improve and enhance the online help, including building and mentoring a community to work on it Research, write and edit, as needed to fill gaps when volunteers contributions are lacking Publish chapters and full books Identify requirements for books and formats (ODT, PDF, ePub, HTML, other) Develop a vision, a plan and a strategy for documentation, to include things like version tracking, workflow, scheduling and recruitment Identify other forms of documentation that we should do, either in addition to, or instead of, the user guide books we’ve been producing Liaise and coordinate with marketing, translation, other user support, Help The role requires the following: Experience using LibreOffice and other open source tools (such as
