Tim <ignored_mailbox@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > lee: >> I ruled out Libreoffice quite a while ago because it isn't up to the >> task. Not even a simple mailmerge worked without crashing LO, and the >> closer I looked at it, the more bugs I found that were getting in the >> way. So I went with LaTeX (and had to do without tables for that part >> because LaTeX cannot reasonably handle tables that may go over several >> pages and may contain tables --- which is something LO does just fine). > > Well, the point was about using some program that lets you create a page > in the way that you preview it, and it will print quite close to how the > preview looked... Hm, that wasn't my point/question, maybe I overlooked something? LO did do a good job with exporting to PDF last time I used it. > For what it's worth, I've never tried mail merge at home, but I have > tried it on Microsoft's Office (some time ago), and found *that* buggy > as hell. But I'm not surprised. Hm IIRC when I did that with M$ Office, I used an Access database and it worked just fine. Alas, there's nothing I know of for Linux that could keep up with Access. > Just about all programs let you down in some area, often because what > you wanted to do was not considered important, or even known about, by > the program author. They wrote it to solve their own problems, if it's > useful for anyone else, that's just a bonus. Still I'm finding it just amazing that it turns out to be so complicated to simply convert a text file into a pdf. >> LaTeX. Besides, things like LO come and go, and after a couple years, >> you might not be able to read your documents anymore: The effort you'd >> have to spend on learning how to program LO is much better spent on >> learning more about LaTeX (and maybe perl) because those will very >> likely still be around in another twenty years or so when LO may be long >> gone. > > Well, OpenOffice.org has been around for many years, somewhere around as > long as Fedora, if I recall correctly (it was StarOffice, before). > LibreOffice is newer, so I'm not that willing to predict its > longevity. LO is the successor --- IIRC, someone bought whoever made SO and changed licensing or something, so the devs moved off and forked LO. Does SO even still exist? You might be surprised how old SO is ... > Like OpenOffice.org, we could only predict the longevity of LaTex by > past experience, it *could* disappear tomorrow, if the authors give up, > or some patent arsehole goes after it. Or you could be stuck with your > distro or Operating System not supporting it. Same is true for LO and other WYSIWYG word processors. My experience is that things like emacs, LaTeX and fvwm have been around for ages during which many WYSIWYG word processors came and go: hence the assumption that emacs, LaTeX and fvwm seem more likely to still be there when current WYSIWYG things like LO are gone. And there's one big advantage: Even if LaTeX and emacs would suddenly disappear, the ability to display (and edit) text is even more likely to remain than a particular piece of software used for this very purpose. I have LaTeX sources from almost 20 years ago and they are still fully useable. Without LaTeX, I'd still be able to read them. Try that with documents created with Ami Word, aztec, Applix, Signum and a lot of other software the name of which I don't even remember anymore. I'd almost bet that you'd encounter some problems to read Staroffice files that were created on OS/2 ~20 years ago despite SO has gone away only recently (or even still exists somewhere). Besides, I've yet to see any WYSIWYG word processor that comes even close to producing output with the quality you get from LaTeX. Factor in all the buggyness the software that has been around for ages doesn't have and you really start asking yourself why you should waste your time with learning something else ... I did, and I came back to the old stuff after finding out that I've been wasting my time and would be better off now if I had invested the learning effort at the right place to begin with. This stuff just works instead of having a million features tending to get into the way, features nobody needs, while not even getting the basics straight. Don't get me wrong, if you write a letter once or twice a year, you're probably better off with LO. If you want to write a book or many letters, you're better off with emacs and LaTeX --- or vi, I guess. If you like shuffling around windows on your screen a lot and staring at fancy effects and/or icons that slow your computer down, use maybe kde or gnome or compitz. If you want a great window manager, learn fvwm, and if you want a window manager that manages the windows for you instead of doing that yourself, use i3. And xterm also still works best ... > I have been bitten by office software using proprietary data formats, > long ago, being left with mostly unusable data. It could be > hand-scraped, to try and get all the data out of the crap. yeah > But fortunately, I really only cared about two documents on file, the > rest had been printed, and that was good enough for us. > OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice use an open document format, so future > use of old data should not be impossible. Unless you really need that for some reason, try LaTeX ... > I have looked at Tex/LaTeX in the past, and considered it akin to > learning to use an offset press, mechanically, by hand. Unless I had > a real use for it, such as providing print-ready data to an actual > printing house, I don't consider it worth my time. The offset press or LaTeX? >> DTP programs and WYSIWYG word processors and/or so-called "office >> software" like Libreoffice are totally different worlds. WYSIWYG word >> processors don't even have the /concept/ of pages. Try to do something >> with "a page" in one and you'll find that you need a DTP program. >> >> Did they add a DTP module to LO now? If they did, I might even install >> LO just to try out the DTP part. > > I didn't say that. I mentioned two different things, in two different > paragraphs: (1) I've used OpenOffice and LibreOffice to do what the > original post talked about. The OP was a question about how to convert text files into pdf? > Now, I'll emphasise that second one even more - exporting from a DTP > program *should* give you *more* control over layout. > > I have used DTP software, in the past, and I'm well aware of the > differences between them. Hence what I said, earlier. I don't understand why/how you expect a DTP program to do the layout and placement of text like magically by itself through means of export options. When I convert --- or you could say export --- a text file into a pdf, I don't expect any fancy layout or placement of text but, plain and simple, the text "printed" on the "piece of paper" which the pdf is a substitute for. If I wanted fancy layout and special text placement, I'd have to do something else to get that. > I don't agree that word processors (of the kind like in OpenOffice, > etc), don't have a concept of pages. Then how do you do something with a particular page? Try to put a particular part of the text or a particular graphic or table onto a particular page with a WYSIWYG WP without the WP screwing everything up when you make changes somewhere above where that particular text/graphic/table is and sometimes even below of it. Try to force a particular page to have a different layout than other pages. Good luck with that ... WYSIWYG WPs only consider what you could call a continuous flow of content. They don't do associations of content with pages. The very concept of pages is pretty incompatible with WYSIWYG WPs. That's fine as long as you don't need to do any particular layout. > They don't do a particularly good job at it, but there are > page-related controls and features. Some of which sort-of work. > e.g. Widow and orphan control finally being included, a few years > back. Though you still had to manually reconfigure things so that the > program couldn't stupidly put a page break between a heading and the > following content. Geez, that ought to be preset, by default. That's one of the beautiful things with LaTeX: You don't need to worry about these things because it's all done for you. That isn't exactly true because you still need to make it so, but you set that up in one place and then you're done with it. With a WYSIWYG WP, I end up creating 15 different styles for paragraphs and then finding out that I still need more because there's something else that needs special treatment and that I forgot what half of them were for because it took so long to figure out how to create and apply the ones created that I have to come back to it the next day. The alternative is "I don't care", and when the document is longer than a page or two, there's no point in even bothering with LO since LaTeX is faster and looks much better out of the box. > No matter what software you use, you're still left with having to > hand-control certain things. Like manually using no-break spaces in the > middle of phone numbers, between Mr and surname, and other similar > things, because that's just lousy presentation. And we're still left > with exceedingly inadequate keyboards for doing the most basic of > punctuation (proper dashes, proper quotes, etc). Yes, computers are stupid, the question is what is the best way to make them do what you need them to. That can be a WYSIWYG WP or an edior, a DTP program or LaTeX, or whatever. A while ago I was researching the possibility of getting a keyboard that has 122 keys. Unfortunately, such appear to be incompatible with the hardware we have :( You can get some that send character combinations for the extra keys, but that doesn't seem very useful. Other than that, how much do you actually use keys like F12, Print, Scroll Lock, Pause? You can always put quotes and other things you frequently need onto them. >>> and maybe more coherent placement of text. > >> Uhm, did you ever try to coherently place text (and/or other stuff that >> goes on pages) with Scribus? > > I've only vaguely played with Scribus, I found it horrible. Luckily I > don't have a real need for DTP, it's been well over twenty years since > I've used friendly, or even tolerable, DTP software. same here Still I wish we had a useable DTP program. -- Fedora 18 -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines Have a question? Ask away: http://ask.fedoraproject.org
