[way OT] Migrating from non-free programs to LibreOffice

[Michael Torrie]

On 01/07/2014 09:58 AM, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 3:45 AM, Michael Torrie <torriem at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I tend to add my own [styles]
>> for quotes, captions, etc.  After composing the document,
>> then you modify the styles to set the spacings, fonts, indentations,
>> border lines, etc.  The workflow is very similar to using LyX, or even a
>> plain markup language for that matter.
> 
> That's all very well when you put everything into a single file, but
> how do you manage those styles across a multi-file book? Mum's project
> was partially rescued by the discovery that you can import styles from
> another document, but that's still unworkable for repeated edits.

Sorry should have been clearer on this. I do use multiple documents with
LO with a master document.  The table of contents can even be generated
across documents.  I believe my TOC is in my master document, along with
the front matter.

As for styles, basically you create a master template style that you use
as a basis for each of your files (master document as well as the
subdocuments).  I make all my changes to the master template style and
then when I open the various documents LO will update the templates.
They aren't linked templates per se; they are copied. But the mechanism
works okay, if a bit clunky.

> 
>> The weakest part of LibreOffice is embedding images.
> 
> And that's why this particular book is being divided up: it's full of
> images. Putting the whole thing into a single file makes that file way
> way too big to work with (at least on the computer Mum's using - it's
> X times larger than her installed RAM, so Writer is constantly
> hammering the page file), and there's no convenient way to read in
> only part of the file. Hence my recommendation of a markup system like
> LaTeX that simply *references* images, and which deliberately isn't
> WYSIWYG; plus, having the concept of content, structure, and style all
> separate means it's not difficult to build just one file - maybe not
> even a whole chapter - while still being confident that all pages
> reference the same styles.

LO does reference images if you would like.  But I find embedding the
whole works is just more self-contained.  And with multiple file
documents the chances of losing data or messing with pagination are
contained to individual sections.