On Tuesday 03 August 2010 05:54, Alan Taylor wrote: > I've just spent several days surveying the landscape of book-authoring > software. There are a number of ongoing efforts, however the only mature > project is an Apple-only program called Scrivener.
I do not know this product and as such cannot comment on it. I consider Apple to be more of an evil empire than Microsoft ;) > While I use, and enjoy, OO Writer for my everyday word processing needs, > writing an entire book or dissertation frequently calls for a different > tool. It would be helpful to have a side pane that can be used for > outlining purposes that will, when selected, call up a text for editing > with Writer. A corkboard, or storyboard, would also be very helpful in > organizing large projects and in quickly finding portions of huge, > sprawling documents for editing. If i am not mistaken Navigator is designed for this purpose, but... Navigator really requires the use of styled headings and subheadings. The learning required to learn styles and proper use of headings by the average user is looked at as painful even though it will save time and money. BTW default styles for headings, subheadings and chapter titles do exist in OO.o and are really all that is required for a book writer; the eventual styling being acomplished by the publisher. > I cannot recommend this article more highly for explaining the > philosophy behind a project such as this. This particular article > examines an add-on for LyX, which is very interesting and is intended to > be a clone of Scrivener. > http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2009/03/04/perfect-tool LyX is a better tool for dedicated writers than both Microsoft Word and OpenOffice.org Writer are. It is designed to take away the desire to style every last detail of the document and leave those details to the production step. For a book writer this is ideal as their is no need to produce final output, that being the publishers responsibility. > Is anyone working on such a project with Open Office? Or would anyone be > interested in trying? Are you or anyone prepared to invest in such a project? OO.o may be Open Source but money still talks. -- Michael --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
