Author: timcdana

Libre OfficeWriter can protect your Word documents

Posted on by timcdana in Uncategorized

The ability for multiple persons to work on the same document is important – for employees working on a sales report to soccer moms creating a flier for a bake sale. For a couple of decades now documents could be sent to others via email or by another means to others. Several office applications allow people to work on a document at the same time.

Many times there are people in a group who receive a document that do not need to edit a document or only edit parts of it. For those situations Microsoft Word and LibreOffice Writer have settings that allow the original creator of a document, or administrator, to make a document read-only, require a password to open it, or to make some sections of it un-editable. Both applications have similar capabilities in this regard. While Word has more protective features, LibreOffice has certain advantages over it.

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Privacy: A LibreOffice advantage

Posted on by timcdana in Uncategorized

Most software companies track you and collect data about you. They no longer deliver their applications through hard media, such as CDs and USB sticks, but users have to download them and create accounts. This is widely known.

Microsoft jumped on this bandwagon about 10 years ago when it introduced Office 365, a set of services combined with its traditional office applications. A Microsoft account is required to download the applications.

Users can no longer visit a store, pay cash for a copy with a DVD, install it on their computers and simply register the software.

LibreOffice takes a different approach. Continue reading “Privacy: A LibreOffice advantage” →

Graphic design apps extend LibreOffice

Posted on by timcdana in File formats, LibreOffice, Microsoft formats, Microsoft Office, OpenDocument Formats

Office applications are not closed entities that do not interact with other applications. Various elements created by other applications can be imported into an office document, such as a graphic or image. Other applications, such as financial software, can import office documents as well.

The focus of this article how applications outside an office suite can extend the capabilities of that suite. LibreOffice and Microsoft Office can import documents native formats of other applications.

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Portability makes LibreOffice more flexible than Microsoft Office

Posted on by timcdana in LibreOffice, Microsoft Office, user interface

Tom graduated from university with a degree in graphics design, and finding a full-time job was difficult. He had to take a job creating technical manuals for an appliance manufacturer. This job was through a temp agency.

His cubicle was in the basement of the office, and he was given a 10-year old computer, running Windows XP with the standard Microsoft apps minus a copy of Office. The IT department sees Tom as a low priority, so they have taken there time upgrading his computer.

Tom cannot use his own computer because he is required to save documents to the in-house servers that the XP machine is connected to. This problem would have frustrated most workers adapting to the professional world for the first time.

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Open formats give LibreOffice advantages over Microsoft Office

Posted on by timcdana in File formats, Google Drive, legacy documents, LibreOffice, Microsoft formats, Microsoft Office, OpenDocument Formats

During the 1980s, software companies were started, developing application types that are popular today. During this time there were several popular operating systems and computer manufacturers. When Microsoft started to dominate the market in the 1990s and early 2000s, many of the companies went out of business, or they were bought out.

For example, when the first Macintosh was released in 1984, its word processor MacWrite was one of the most popular on the market. However, in the 1990s, like many word processors it took a backseat to Microsoft Word.

Many applications were discontinued due to Microsoft Office’s market share, and many people and organizations did not migrate their old documents to active applications and formats.

As technology evolved, and they acquired new technology, many old documents could no longer be opened. This is one aspect of data rot, when data can no longer be accessed. A YouTube video gives more details.

Now there is much less concern over data rot.

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Clipboard managers extend LibreOffice, Microsoft Office

Posted on by timcdana in LibreOffice, Microsoft Office, word processors

A college student in 1981 is sitting in front of a typewriter working on a term paper for a course in Western Civilization realizes that a lengthy quote he just typed would work great in the paper he is writing for a philosophy course. At this point in history, he has to retype it.

Four years later that student is working in the computer lab on his senior thesis. The Macintosh he is sitting in front of allows him to copy and paste quotes and other passages from one document to another.

The clipboard built into modern operating system and applications has become common place. People use the feature billions of times per day. Typically they copy one passage of text, graphic, or other object at a time. Then they paste it immediately.

More advanced users like to paste several different items in a clipboard, so they can paste different ones later.

The clipboard is an advantage Microsoft Office has over LibreOffice. It comes with a feature that allows up to 24 items to be copied and pasted when the user desires. LibreOffice’s clipboard only allows one item to be pasted at a time.

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LibreOffice, Microsoft Office can share package graphics

Posted on by timcdana in LibreOffice, Microsoft Office, Office for Mac, presentations, spreadsheets, word processors

Modern office suites allow you to add graphics to any type of document. This includes pre-packaged graphics that comes with the suite.

LibreOffice and Microsoft Office have a series of graphics that are available to any document, regardless of whether it is a text document, spreadsheet, or presentation. Both suites have dialogs that allow for easy insertion of a desired graphic.

LibreOffice has 13 categories by default, and it allows you to create new categories as well as add more graphics. The section is called the Gallery.

In Microsoft Office, the dialog is called Icons. The graphics in this collection are all black and divided into 26 categories. No more can be added to the library, however. The icons are available in the Windows and Mac versions of Office.

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StartCenter makes LibreOffice great tool for multiple documents

Posted on by timcdana in File formats, Google Drive, LibreOffice, Microsoft Office

LibreOffice has an element and feature that Microsoft Office doesn’t have. The feature is document centralization.

Users can open any recently created and opened documents from any of the applications. A spreadsheet that you created last week can be opened from Writer. You can open the Draw document that you worked on yesterday from Impress.

These documents are listed when you click the arrow next to the Open icon in the Standard toolbar and the Recent Documents sub-menu in the File menu of any of the six applications.

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If you have Visio documents, you need LibreOffice

Posted on by timcdana in File formats, LibreOffice, Microsoft formats, Microsoft Office

One interesting advantage LibreOffice has over Microsoft Office is that it works with some Microsoft products and formats that Office does not. One of those products is Visio.

LibreOffice Draw can open standard Visio documents, which are in VSD and VSDX formats. These formats cannot be opened by Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, even though Visio is considered to be an Office application.

There are several other vector-drawing applications that can directly open and edit Visio documents. These include Inkscape and CorelDraw.

Visio is a vector application, but it is different than Adobe Illustrator and those just mentioned. Visio’s purpose is mainly to create diagrams, flowcharts, and similar types of drawings. The other applications are for graphic artists. While they have shapes and flowchart symbols, they also have free-drawing tools that are not present in Visio.

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LibreOffice new EPUB feature a step in the right direction

Posted on by timcdana in Apple iWork, File formats, LibreOffice

Modern technology has allowed the individual to share his ideas and stories more easily. It has also given people low-cost or free access to more books.

Readers can enjoy their favorite books on any device, and they can read them on the go. Literature students can start Hamlet on their tablets in their dorm rooms and continue reading it on their phones in between classes.

A computer engineer, at his first job after graduation, can read “The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary” during lunch breaks on his laptop and continue reading on his phone during the train ride home.

Ebooks have changed how humans interact with books. They have been around for decades, but they became popular when Amazon released the Kindle in 2007 and Kindle apps in 2009. Barnes & Nobles, Kobo, and others released e-readers later.

New file formats, designed for e-books, were created at about the same time as these devices were released. One of the most widely used formats for e-books is EPUB (Electronic Publishing). Many e-book stores accept publications directly in this format, or they will convert the submissions to a proprietary format based on EPUB. Amazon uses a file format that is similar to EPUB, and will accept author submissions in the format.

Books are best converted from their original formats to EPUB through special software. Recently, several word processors have been released with basic export features to EPUB. LibreOffice Writer 6.0 has this as a new feature. Previous versions required an extension to be installed.

Another popular application, for Apple users, however does. Apple Pages allows users to export their documents to the EPUB format.

Microsoft Word 2016 does not have an EPUB export feature. However, Amazon has created a plugin for Word, so authors can format a book before submitting it to the Kindle store.

This article will give a brief overview of the format, then compare Writer and Pages capabilities of exporting to the format.

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