? about MS Office Home and Student 2010

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

Hitch, Doesn't the document NavMap get in there automatically somehow when you put the Word doc (via turning it into .html) into Sigil? (If not, how do I "throw it in there"?) (You "threw" me with this.)

Got a link for the MS online tutorial on styles? (I'm using MS Office Word 2003, if that matters.)

Thank you.

Gregg:

The NavMap is automagically created, in Word, when you use Word's built-in styles and header classes for identifying your document by structure, rather than styling. In other words, instead of using a paragraph class that you've styled to be, say, TNR 18pt, for your Chapter heads, use the built-in H1 or H2 style and modify that style's styling to meet your own likes or dislikes. So, take the h1 header style, that currently looks idiotic in Word 2010 (light blue something-or-other), and modify the style to be automatic (color), font-size of 18pt, font TNR, and use THAT. Then when you view the Document Map in the Nav pane, you can instantly see all your chapters (handy to ensure you don't dupe numbers, if you use them), jump around inside your document rapidly--just as you use the NCX in ADE. The NavMap is the NCX of Word, for all intents and purposes. OK?

Um...you said you have Office 2003 or 2007 or both? For the toots? I'm not sure that 2003 is still supported at MS. Honestly, I find MS's simple online toots the easiest and most thorough, even though they are very, very, very simplistic. (if you have a later version, Start here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/su...101782702.aspx , select your version, and then look for "Style Basics in Word" for your version.) I'd still search for the old official toots on MS's site, but if you can't find them, try this one: http://www.officearticles.com/tutori...osoft_word.htm for 2003 running on, what, XP? That might cover it.

Hitch

[Freeshadow]

I'm kind of a long term user of StarOffice and its follow-ups. Long before it was bought by Sun. Started with Starwriter 2.0 on OS/2.
All the basics were always organized in such a way that I never had trouble finding the same functionality on a MSO install. (usually looking for them when others asked "how did you do that")

Don't mistake me for a guru or wiz there.
I'm sure both office packages have options I'm still absolutely ignorant of, but I did correspondence and study papers with Writer as well as working hour management with Calc.
Methinks I have the basics covered.

Never run across the problem "Word has this and that function which I desperately miss in Writer" (the other way around I did) thus I think it is a sufficient tool. You should give it a try.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by GlenBarrington

Writer2xhtml at this point, doesn't claim compatibility with LibreOffice V4. If you want to use it without any surprises, you might be advised to use one of the older versions of OO or LO it claims compatibility with.

While both OO and LO make it easy to download the latest version, the older versions remain available for situations like this. Yet another reason to love the Open Source concept!

Thanks for the heads-up, Glen.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Gregg:

The NavMap is automagically created, in Word, when you use Word's built-in styles and header classes for identifying your document by structure, rather than styling. In other words, instead of using a paragraph class that you've styled to be, say, TNR 18pt, for your Chapter heads, use the built-in H1 or H2 style and modify that style's styling to meet your own likes or dislikes. So, take the h1 header style, that currently looks idiotic in Word 2010 (light blue something-or-other), and modify the style to be automatic (color), font-size of 18pt, font TNR, and use THAT. Then when you view the Document Map in the Nav pane, you can instantly see all your chapters (handy to ensure you don't dupe numbers, if you use them), jump around inside your document rapidly--just as you use the NCX in ADE. The NavMap is the NCX of Word, for all intents and purposes. OK?

Um...you said you have Office 2003 or 2007 or both? For the toots? I'm not sure that 2003 is still supported at MS. Honestly, I find MS's simple online toots the easiest and most thorough, even though they are very, very, very simplistic. (if you have a later version, Start here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/su...101782702.aspx , select your version, and then look for "Style Basics in Word" for your version.) I'd still search for the old official toots on MS's site, but if you can't find them, try this one: http://www.officearticles.com/tutori...osoft_word.htm for 2003 running on, what, XP? That might cover it.

Hitch

Thanks, Hitch, but I'm going to have to process this one. Just briefly though: is this nav map, built-in styles by structure stuff all optional? I mean, I've got my book all epub checked and as clean as can be as far as I can tell, and I haven't done any of the nav map or structure stuff.

And thanks for the links. Will definitely check them out.

Gregg

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

I'm kind of a long term user of StarOffice and its follow-ups. Long before it was bought by Sun. Started with Starwriter 2.0 on OS/2.
All the basics were always organized in such a way that I never had trouble finding the same functionality on a MSO install. (usually looking for them when others asked "how did you do that")

Don't mistake me for a guru or wiz there.
I'm sure both office packages have options I'm still absolutely ignorant of, but I did correspondence and study papers with Writer as well as working hour management with Calc.
Methinks I have the basics covered.

Never run across the problem "Word has this and that function which I desperately miss in Writer" (the other way around I did) thus I think it is a sufficient tool. You should give it a try.

Thanks a lot, Freeshadow. Starwriter is new to me, but I will definitely check it out. Thanks for telling me about it.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

Thanks, Hitch, but I'm going to have to process this one. Just briefly though: is this nav map, built-in styles by structure stuff all optional? I mean, I've got my book all epub checked and as clean as can be as far as I can tell, and I haven't done any of the nav map or structure stuff.

And thanks for the links. Will definitely check them out.

Gregg

Gregg:

Well...yes and no. It's optional in Word, of course; and if you've already cleaned up your file in Word and/or in an HTML editor, then, god, no, don't go back and redo it. I simply meant that if you format your document in Word correctly, you'll be able to SEE the navmap, auto-magically, IN Word. If you used paragraph styles for your chapter heads, you won't see any NavMap entries. If you used header styles, you shall. If you use a header style for your chapter heads (and anything else you want on the TOC, including frontmatter), and a conformed paragraph style throughout the book, then when you export it to HTML, the file really will be nearly "ready to go" to ePUB with very, very little clean-up.

That's all I meant. Process away! ;-)

Hitch

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Gregg:

Well...yes and no. It's optional in Word, of course; and if you've already cleaned up your file in Word and/or in an HTML editor, then, god, no, don't go back and redo it. I simply meant that if you format your document in Word correctly, you'll be able to SEE the navmap, auto-magically, IN Word. If you used paragraph styles for your chapter heads, you won't see any NavMap entries. If you used header styles, you shall. If you use a header style for your chapter heads (and anything else you want on the TOC, including frontmatter), and a conformed paragraph style throughout the book, then when you export it to HTML, the file really will be nearly "ready to go" to ePUB with very, very little clean-up.

That's all I meant. Process away! ;-)

Hitch

Thanks Hitch. I'm going to look at the tutorials and learn about styles before I ask any more questions about this. (Thanks for easing my mind.) Gregg

[Freeshadow]

Starwriter is the first name of OpenOffice Writer back when the software suite was made by StarDivision. Was part of my software package for OS/2. So no need to go historical.

My point was, that most people using MSO just do it because it was easy to pirate at work
80-20 rule. Said 20% of functions are no black magic... OO/LO is feature rich enough.

[GlenBarrington]

I said no text, what are you looking here for?

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

Starwriter is the first name of OpenOffice Writer back when the software suite was made by StarDivision. Was part of my software package for OS/2. So no need to go historical.

My point was, that most people using MSO just do it because it was easy to pirate at work
80-20 rule. Said 20% of functions are no black magic... OO/LO is feature rich enough.

I just always did MSO because I thought that's all there was. Thanks for the feedback.

[exscentric]

"I'm so used to using Word, I'd be hesitant to use O.O. or L.O.. I end up using Sigil so I'd be interested to know if O.O. and L.O. are compatible with Sigil. What's your opinion of them in general, esp. compared to Word?"

I haven't used them extensively because neither has a grammar checker and I didn't do any English after 9th grade so that is a must though I've learned a lot of grammar since.

They are similar so just download one and see what you think. They DO most everything Word will but there are features missing from what I read. You can save in Word format or their format or others.

One of them does have the beginnings of a grammar checker but I tend to think they forgot to begin :-) as it doesn't do much for my work.

[Freeshadow]

While a spellchecker is at least useful in spotting some typos I'd never trust a grammar checker.

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

While a spellchecker is at least useful in spotting some typos I'd never trust a grammar checker.

Depends on the category of error your looking at. I find it useful, and use it extensively. However when I think I got the document best I can with the tools, I then pass it to a editor/proof reader. It does help me, but as a part of a tool chain and not as a single authority.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

While a spellchecker is at least useful in spotting some typos I'd never trust a grammar checker.

I wouldn't trust a grammar check, but it's occasionally useful, especially with a document that's been edited multiple times. Grammar check will notice "I saw the that cat again" and random sentence fragments where the first half of the sentence got moved and the second half was forgotten.

It gets a lot more false positives than actual errors--it's not happy with some kinds of complex sentences and some subordinate clauses confuse the hell out of it--but anything that's been raked over and edited again and again is worth an automated grammar pass.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by exscentric

"I'm so used to using Word, I'd be hesitant to use O.O. or L.O.. I end up using Sigil so I'd be interested to know if O.O. and L.O. are compatible with Sigil. What's your opinion of them in general, esp. compared to Word?"

I haven't used them extensively because neither has a grammar checker and I didn't do any English after 9th grade so that is a must though I've learned a lot of grammar since.

They are similar so just download one and see what you think. They DO most everything Word will but there are features missing from what I read. You can save in Word format or their format or others.

One of them does have the beginnings of a grammar checker but I tend to think they forgot to begin :-) as it doesn't do much for my work.

Yeah, that's the bottom line: I need to check them out. Thanks for the feedback.