anybody using LibreOffice to compose?

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by gmw

All those wasted key strokes. I don't mean the find and replace, I mean all those tab and then start typing. Anyone would think you were still using a typewriter.

There can be lots more to it than simple indent fixes. Styles give you a lot of flexibility whether you're going to epub, pdf or paper. A quick change of style setting and I have my preferred paragraph spacing for paper based review. When producing print-ready PDFs for print on demand I get to fiddle with the styles make the pages fit together as I want them - automatically adjusting the spacing of the chapter titles, margins and so on.

The problem with waiting for things to become more involved is that your habits are all entrenched and it starts to look like hard work to change. To turn a non-styles-consistent document into a styles-consistent document can be fiddly, so you waste time trying to adjust your processing for "just this little thing" and then "oh, just this little bit here too". Training yourself early, while things are simple, can save time later.

Of course there is another way: I once worked with a person who happily reported that he knew everything he needed to know about computers, he would turn to his secretary and say, "Do this for me."

Hey gmw,

I'm about to embark on some lengthy writing so I wanted to make sure I had things set up as efficiently as I could. I re-read your posts on styles and for the most part they just go over my head. What I did, though, was set up the styles box to the right of the screen (this in MS Office Word 2003) as I worked. I saw no changes in the style box when I indented paragraphs with the tab key. What I did see was when I used the tool bar to make something italisized that the italics style popped up in the styles and formatting box. But, when I italicize with "ctrl i" it pops up as well. So I don't know if I just need some super-remedial styles tutorial or if I'm just wasting my time (in that I--writing simple novels--don't really need to use styles.).

Anyway, if you had some simple advice for me I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

[...]Anyway, if you had some simple advice for me I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

First simple advice is don't use your tab key while typing your document - ever. Nor should you put manual spacing between paragraphs (hit enter twice) - except when providing an intentional break between scenes. Similarly don't try to use manual spacing for your chapter headings. Any formatting (tabs, spacing, direct italics and bold etc.) that you add to your paragraphs are added over top of the existing style - and this is exactly what you want to avoid.

If you want a tab-like indent then modify the "Normal" paragraph style (called "Default" in OO/LO) and set it up there - just once. (You can copy styles between documents or set up a template with your preferred styles for writing to make it easier in the future.) I'm not familiar with all dialogs in MS-Word 2003 - and MS keep changing things, I sometimes suspect they do this to make it difficult to help people use their products. But Google gave me links like these:
Word 2003: Style Basics
Understanding Styles
Styles basics in Word (about Word 2007 but from MS themselves)

Typically, normal paragraphs should using "Normal" style - it's just easier that way (there is some linking between styles so that changes to Normal (for example) will pass on the child styles, but here we're getting into more advanced territory). For chapter headings I using "Heading 2", but you could also create your own style (perhaps copy an existing and modify) and name it to suit yourself. If you want to increase the space between the chapter heading and the chapter text then alter the chapter heading style - do not hit enter multiple times to achieve it.

That's paragraph styles. To apply emphasis to a word in a paragraph I always prefer to use the Emphasis character style (OO/LO have it already there, don't know about MSO), rather than ctrl+i, though the advantages here are less clear because it is doubtful you will ever what to change from using italics. I prefer to use an explicit style because it shows up as a CSS style in the generated epub and makes everything neatly explicit.

While the advantages for emphasis are questionable, this is much less likely to be true for any other special character styles you may want. These are less common in writing a novel but can happen - for example you may decide to show what the user typed on the screen with different formatting. Always use character styles for these.

Trying to stay brief. Is this enough to get you started?

[pholy]

A couple of years ago JD Sawyer posted his style settings template for OO. I don't know if they are still accurate, but you can find them here: http://jdsawyer.net/2011/03/30/smash...nd-openoffice/ There is also a Word version, and instructions in the comments.
Having worked on formatting stuff straight out of Word, I'd love to have all authors use these templates, at least as a starting point.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by pholy

A couple of years ago JD Sawyer posted his style settings template for OO. I don't know if they are still accurate, but you can find them here: http://jdsawyer.net/2011/03/30/smash...nd-openoffice/ There is also a Word version, and instructions in the comments.
Having worked on formatting stuff straight out of Word, I'd love to have all authors use these templates, at least as a starting point.

That is certainly not a template used to demonstrate styles (not the OO template anyway, didn't look at the Word one). I guess it's neat enough to to demonstrate content you might want to consider including, but as a demonstration of how to format your document using styles it is sadly lacking. He uses exactly two paragraph styles - one for story paragraphs (Text Body Indent), and one for all the rest of the text (Text Body). Everything else is manually formatted - titles, section titles, everything.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by gmw

First simple advice is don't use your tab key while typing your document - ever. Nor should you put manual spacing between paragraphs (hit enter twice) - except when providing an intentional break between scenes. Similarly don't try to use manual spacing for your chapter headings. Any formatting (tabs, spacing, direct italics and bold etc.) that you add to your paragraphs are added over top of the existing style - and this is exactly what you want to avoid.

If you want a tab-like indent then modify the "Normal" paragraph style (called "Default" in OO/LO) and set it up there - just once. (You can copy styles between documents or set up a template with your preferred styles for writing to make it easier in the future.) I'm not familiar with all dialogs in MS-Word 2003 - and MS keep changing things, I sometimes suspect they do this to make it difficult to help people use their products. But Google gave me links like these:
Word 2003: Style Basics
Understanding Styles
Styles basics in Word (about Word 2007 but from MS themselves)

Typically, normal paragraphs should using "Normal" style - it's just easier that way (there is some linking between styles so that changes to Normal (for example) will pass on the child styles, but here we're getting into more advanced territory). For chapter headings I using "Heading 2", but you could also create your own style (perhaps copy an existing and modify) and name it to suit yourself. If you want to increase the space between the chapter heading and the chapter text then alter the chapter heading style - do not hit enter multiple times to achieve it.

That's paragraph styles. To apply emphasis to a word in a paragraph I always prefer to use the Emphasis character style (OO/LO have it already there, don't know about MSO), rather than ctrl+i, though the advantages here are less clear because it is doubtful you will ever what to change from using italics. I prefer to use an explicit style because it shows up as a CSS style in the generated epub and makes everything neatly explicit.

While the advantages for emphasis are questionable, this is much less likely to be true for any other special character styles you may want. These are less common in writing a novel but can happen - for example you may decide to show what the user typed on the screen with different formatting. Always use character styles for these.

Trying to stay brief. Is this enough to get you started?

Thanks gmw. I'm getting it little by little. But the force of habit is still so strong in me (for instance, if I were to go the styles route I couldn't imagine getting through a whole novel without, albeit inadvertently through habit, hitting the tab key to indent a paragraph.

The MSOffice Word 2003 tutorial is perfect. It will take a while to grasp it,though.

And I know I said this before and I don't want to seem thick about it, but I don't really see the advantage (at this point anyway) of doing all this styles stuff in a simple document. I mean, it hasn't been hard converting my Word docs into epubs, even with using no styles. (And, in a slightly unrelated vein, there seems to be much more gunk in LO than in MSOfficeWord2003.) Maybe in my pursuit of efficiency I'm getting in deeper than I need to--and maybe not. I will keep experimenting. One thing is sure,though, I certainly do appreciate your help.

[gmw]

Everyone works differently - some write in plain text editors and get by happily enough. I do understand about breaking old habits - in my software development work I have to switch between various programming languages and the fingers keep trying to type whatever it was they were doing last.

If you can switch to using styles I believe you will eventually find the pay-off (for the reasons I've already given), but I wouldn't let it stress you out too far. Ultimately it comes down to doing what works for you - but you won't know if something works until you give it a reasonable chance. Good luck.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by gmw

Everyone works differently - some write in plain text editors and get by happily enough. I do understand about breaking old habits - in my software development work I have to switch between various programming languages and the fingers keep trying to type whatever it was they were doing last.

If you can switch to using styles I believe you will eventually find the pay-off (for the reasons I've already given), but I wouldn't let it stress you out too far. Ultimately it comes down to doing what works for you - but you won't know if something works until you give it a reasonable chance. Good luck.

Thanks gmw. I played with it a bit today. It helped when I was able to make a style to get a line space in between paragraphs. But then I had to be in "Style 1" (which I created) for that to happen. And then I had to clean up all the style 1 things in the html. But it was a real benefit (and time saver) not to have to hit the tab key for every paragraph. I'm going to delve deeper into the tutorial. (I think I could get used to it.) Yeah, I need to give it some more thought and time. Thanks again.

[James_Wilde]

I used it for my first novel. The master document system is good. Then I discovered Scrivener which is now available for Mac, Windows and Linux. The Linux version is still a beta as I understand it, but it does all that I want.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

Thanks gmw. I played with it a bit today. It helped when I was able to make a style to get a line space in between paragraphs. But then I had to be in "Style 1" (which I created) for that to happen. And then I had to clean up all the style 1 things in the html. But it was a real benefit (and time saver) not to have to hit the tab key for every paragraph. I'm going to delve deeper into the tutorial. (I think I could get used to it.) Yeah, I need to give it some more thought and time. Thanks again.

I set the Default (Normal in MSO) style to whatever I type the book in (as noted previously I have paragraph spacing while I'm working and for print review, but remove it when I export to epub). I use various special (unindented) styles for all front and back matter (so that things centre properly), and of course separate styles chapter titles and emphasis etc..

I'm not sure what you mean about cleaning up the html - it should export with <p class="Style 1">...</p>. This is normal and expected. If you want to adjust the appearance in the epub you either adjust the style before export or you adjust the CSS in the epub. I have seen some epub creations that set the default style for p and remove the class="...", but there is no need, it might even be argued that an explicit class is better (since it is not clear exactly what the default paragraph style really refers to, and changes to the default may cascade to things you don't want it to change).

[ApK]

Anyone have a defensible opinion on which variant (OO, LO3, LO4) is currently the best for someone who'd like to jump from MS as painlessly as possible?

[gmw]

Originally Posted by ApK

Anyone have a defensible opinion on which variant (OO, LO3, LO4) is currently the best for someone who'd like to jump from MS as painlessly as possible?

I changed from OpenOffice to LibreOffice (v3) back at the start of the year. My main reasons being: LibreOffice appears to be under more active development and LibreOffice appears to actively support a "portable" version. (You can get a portable version of OpenOffice from portableapps.com, but I like the idea that the original developer supports the concept.)

I am still on LO v3, I had been waiting for v4 to stabilise. It's up to v4.0.4 now so I should think the worst of the new version glitches should be gone. If I was just starting now then I would go with LibreOffice v4. (OO and LO have, so far, been much more considerate than MSO in terms of backwards compatibility and not changing the interface to whatever is the current trend in what looks good.)

For most use I don't think it is likely to matter whether you OO or LO; the above are my reasons, others may vary. In my experience both OO and LO support for MSO documents has been very good - not perfect by any means, but good enough for most purposes.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by gmw

).

I set the Default (Normal in MSO) style to whatever I type the book in (as noted previously I have paragraph spacing while I'm working and for print review, but remove it when I export to epub).

So I start out by going to Format-->Paragraph-->Spacing and I put say 10 pts before and after the paragraph. Cool. Then I get a "normal & Space before 10pt, after 10pt." style in my styles and formatting window. So I do my work and save it for the day. Then a month later when I'm done with the entire novel I 'select all' and return the paragraph spacing to 0 pt before and 0 pt after. and then the "normal& Space..." style disappears and I have single spacing, right? (And somehow the html knows where the paragraphs are.)

I have seen some epub creations that set the default style for p and remove the class="...",


This is exactly what I have done.

So what you're saying is I have my html with <p class="Style 1">...</p> or whatever and I adjust my css in the html to adapt to that being there?

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

I set the Default (Normal in MSO) style to whatever I type the book in (as noted previously I have paragraph spacing while I'm working and for print review, but remove it when I export to epub).

So I start out by going to Format-->Paragraph-->Spacing and I put say 10 pts before and after the paragraph. Cool. Then I get a "normal & Space before 10pt, after 10pt." style in my styles and formatting window. So I do my work and save it for the day. Then a month later when I'm done with the entire novel I 'select all' and return the paragraph spacing to 0 pt before and 0 pt after. and then the "normal& Space..." style disappears and I have single spacing, right? (And somehow the html knows where the paragraphs are.)

Using Format->Paragraph->Spacing is creating a new style (for the current/selected paragraphs), you don't want to do that. You can modify the Normal style directly in your styles and formatting window (in OO/LO you do this by right click on the item in the styles and formatting window and choose Modify). Similarly configure styles for your chapter headings and so on. You may choose to rename the styles to for neatness and clarity.

You should NOT do a select all when altering a style. The style is already applied to all relevant paragraphs, you just modify the style to what you want and all paragraphs using that style will change automatically. (Which is the point of using styles in the first place.)

I use a plug-in for OpenOffice/LibreOffice that produces my epub with all the styles transferred to CSS and so on - including any current paragraph spacing. I can't speak for how things are done in MS-Office (though I have heard that direct export to HTML can be messy).

The sorts of things I check for in my epub CSS file is where the export may have transferred some measurements as px (pixels) or explicit (cm/inch) sizes, rather than % or em (font size). Not generally much a problem now, but I check anyway.

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

I have seen some epub creations that set the default style for p and remove the class="...",

This is exactly what I have done.

So what you're saying is I have my html with <p class="Style 1">...</p> or whatever and I adjust my css in the html to adapt to that being there?

Yep. You can, if you want, leave your spacing in your source file alone and just edit the CSS in the output to get the spacing you want. As noted above, giving your styles neat meaningful names in the source document can help when it comes time to edit the CSS.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by gmw

Using Format->Paragraph->Spacing is creating a new style (for the current/selected paragraphs), you don't want to do that. You can modify the Normal style directly in your styles and formatting window (in OO/LO you do this by right click on the item in the styles and formatting window and choose Modify). Similarly configure styles for your chapter headings and so on. You may choose to rename the styles to for neatness and clarity.

You should NOT do a select all when altering a style. The style is already applied to all relevant paragraphs, you just modify the style to what you want and all paragraphs using that style will change automatically. (Which is the point of using styles in the first place.)

I use a plug-in for OpenOffice/LibreOffice that produces my epub with all the styles transferred to CSS and so on - including any current paragraph spacing. I can't speak for how things are done in MS-Office (though I have heard that direct export to HTML can be messy).

The sorts of things I check for in my epub CSS file is where the export may have transferred some measurements as px (pixels) or explicit (cm/inch) sizes, rather than % or em (font size). Not generally much a problem now, but I check anyway.



Yep. You can, if you want, leave your spacing in your source file alone and just edit the CSS in the output to get the spacing you want. As noted above, giving your styles neat meaningful names in the source document can help when it comes time to edit the CSS.

And it's really cool. Basically I just do in the styles what I was doing on the tool bar. (I took your suggestion of getting rid of the toolbar.) One question (I'm sure I'll have more when I study this further): doing italics in styles. I went to make a new style for italics (I named it "italics"), but then, since I wanted to keep the italics for the html, I didn't delete the style "Italics" (because that would've deleted the italics), so I kept the style "italics' in there. But in the html this is what showed up: (I was italicizing Encyclopedia)

<span class=italics>Encyclopedia </span>

I reopened the tool bar and did an italics version that way and in the html it was the familiar <i>Encyclopedia</i>.

It seems italics is the only thing I would need, so is there a way to do italics in styles?

And lastly I'm giving you an apple for being such a great teacher! Thanks!

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

And it's really cool. Basically I just do in the styles what I was doing on the tool bar. (I took your suggestion of getting rid of the toolbar.) One question (I'm sure I'll have more when I study this further): doing italics in styles. I went to make a new style for italics (I named it "italics"), but then, since I wanted to keep the italics for the html, I didn't delete the style "Italics" (because that would've deleted the italics), so I kept the style "italics' in there. But in the html this is what showed up: (I was italicizing Encyclopedia)

<span class=italics>Encyclopedia </span>

I reopened the tool bar and did an italics version that way and in the html it was the familiar <i>Encyclopedia</i>.

It seems italics is the only thing I would need, so is there a way to do italics in styles?

And lastly I'm giving you an apple for being such a great teacher! Thanks!

By italics I presume you mean emphasis of one or more words within a paragraph (character type styles rather than paragraph type styles). Yes such emphasis is generally represented by italicised text in novels but I make the distinction because it is generally better that a style is named for the purpose (which presumably will not change), rather than the formatting used, which could change.

The distinction can be important. For example I may have emphasis in the dialogue in the main text, but I may also have - for example - a bibliography at the end that uses variously formatted text. If my emphasis style is named "italics" and today I choose to format parts of my bibliography as italics, then I may make the mistake of using the "italics" style. And now, suddenly and presumably accidentally, I have tied the formatting of my bibliography to the formatting of my main text. If I want to change one without changing the other I would have to go back and change the styles of all the relevant words. I can avoid such accidents by naming my styles by purpose. A style of "Emphasis" means I one thing, "BiblioBookTitle" means something else.

And yes, the result is that your html looks like:

Main text: I will <span class="Emphasis">not</span> do that.

Bibliography: Smith, A, B. <span class="BiblioBookTitle">Words of Wisdom</span>, pages 325-329.

This is normal and expected. Both styles exist within your CSS and can be adjusted if needed - and because they are clearly named you know specifically what you are changing. Obviously "<span class="Emphasis">" is much longer and uglier than "<i>", but the reader is never supposed to see the raw HTML. Yes, HTML and XML can be horribly verbose languages and do increase the file size significantly, but this is also normal and expected. (And anyway, we only use emphasis carefully and deliberately - don't we? - so there is not going to be that many of them.)

PS. Thanks for the apple.