Linux and Libre office questions

[Brian Cluff]

Arguably the best program to use for this might still be Libreoffice, 
but using one of the most overlooked of LO programs, Libreoffice Draw.

LOW Draw will allow you to do whatever you want to the document without 
all the silly word processor stuff getting in the way, but still allow 
the power of the word processor in the text boxes themselves, and adding 
pages is as easy as right clicking in the thumbnails and selecting new page.

I would say the next best would be Scribus, but while it's great at 
laying out documents, it's not very good at creating the actual text, it 
lacks the very basics, including a spell checker.  This makes sense 
since the text you would be laying out in Scribus should come from 
another program that does have those features.

Inkscape (svg) could also do the job, but while it would allow you the 
most versatility in layout, it also would give you the least 
functionality in filling out the forms.  It's also currently limited to 
a single page.

It's probably worth mentioning that both Scribus and Libreoffice can 
create PDF forms that can be filled out, but as Alton Brown always says, 
"But that's another show"

Brian Cluff

On 11/27/2012 03:53 PM, Joseph Sinclair wrote:
> I did not mean to give offense.  I was just noting (perhaps overly harshly) that the document, in it's current form, is very difficult to work with due to the use of text boxes and no enclosing text content (definitely not the intent of text boxes in ODT).
> Libre Office (or any word processor) is a fairly poor tool choice for this type of ultra-specific and precise layout positioning; XHTML with CSS3 is somewhat better for that purpose; SVG is even better; and a good page layout tool such as Scribus is best.
>
>
> On 11/27/2012 11:56 AM, joe at actionline.com wrote:
>>
>> Joseph wrote:
>>> IMO, this is a horribly designed document.
>>
>> That seems a bit harsh, Joseph.
>>
>> I may be a bit ignorant and inept,
>> but I was merely trying to figure out how to
>> create a document that would satisfy my client's
>> very specific format/appearance requirements.
>>
>>
>>
>>> The content is all in text boxes, so the only way to add a new page (with
>>> all the content copied) is to click outside the text boxes (top-left
>>> corner works); insert manual break, then select page; then copy/paste each
>>> text box individually (there are 4) to the new page.
>>> Alternatively, one might use the features of Libre Office (specifically
>>> the Master Document support) to cause the content to be automatically
>>> copied to each new page...
>>
>>
>>
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