Showing posts with label libreoffice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label libreoffice. Show all posts

01 August 2015

619. Making libreoffice look a bit nicer

...and by the title I actually refer to making it look like MS office...we can discuss the merits or lack thereof of that, but not here and now.

NOTE: you can install a few alternative icons themes directly from the debian repos by installing the libreoffice-style-* packages.

Anyway, we're commiting sacriledge by making our libreoffice look like MS office. You can obviously use the instructions here to pick a less controversial look.

Icons:
First go to http://charliecnr.deviantart.com/art/Office-2013-theme-for-LibreOffice-512127527 or use wget:

wget http://orig11.deviantart.net/e10d/f/2015/059/7/3/office_2013_theme_for_libreoffice_by_charliecnr-d8gwo4n.zip
mv office_2013_theme_for_libreoffice_by_charliecnr-d8gwo4n.zip images_office2013.zip
sudo mv images_office2013.zip /usr/lib/libreoffice/share/config/

Then in libreoffice go to Tools/Options/Libreoffice:view and pick your theme:
 Menu bar:
This is a weird one. Go to Tools/Options/Libreoffice:personalisation and under Firefox themes select own theme, and Visit Firefox Themes.



Then paste the URL of the theme you want. I used this URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/office2010-edit/

And this is how libreoffice writer looks now:

18 January 2013

322. Libreoffice and zotero for reference management

I'm happy using latex and bibtex whenever possible, and I'm forced to use Microsoft Office and Endnote in most of my collaborations, so I;m not that interested in libreoffice/openoffice.

However, having heard of a reference manager called Zotero has made me curious to learn more.

You can either get it as a plug-in for firefox, or as a stand-alone program which plugs into any browser of your choice.

While I haven't used Endnote seriously for about half a decade and thus may not know about any fancy recently added functionality, I just can't see any reason whatsoever to use Endnote anymore if you have a choice. Obviously, given the inertia of the 'common user' and the tendency for people to equal costly with good and cheap with rubbish, it will probably take a generation or two for change to happen, no matter how good zotero gets.

And here's another thing: when I went to Google Scholar using Chrome, zotero was recognised, and a list of 'updates' was suggested. I wasn't really interested, until I had a look at them -- Scholar had generated a pretty impressive list of articles that it thought might interest me. The match was surprisingly good. If nothing else I'll certainly make sure to keep my zotero database synced with my bibtex one.


Get it:
sudo apt-get install bzip2
wget http://download.zotero.org/standalone/3.0.11.1/Zotero-3.0.11.1_linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
tar xvf Zotero-3.0.11.1_linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
cd Zotero_linux-x86_64/
./run-zotero.sh

First time:
First time you run it it opens a browser window as well as an installation process
For some reason I keep getting errors about DBus even though the dbus-daemon is running. It hasn't caused any other problems beyond the error message in the screenshot.
Even the openoffice I installed for testing purposes got detected

And you're done

To make it work in Chrome, install the extension

The main Zotero window, without any references


Testing:
Importing a bibtex library

Everything looks ok


If you click on the icon by the arrow you can insert a citation. You need to have zotero running in the background though.
Determine what format to use

Generate the bibliography and you're done



Google Scholar, Chrome and Zotero play nicely together



09 January 2013

313. Which Office for linux users? Libreoffice, Openoffice, Lotus Symphony, Google Docs, Microsoft Live/Skydrive, Wine/Office2003 and Office2003 in Virtualbox, WPS Office

UPDATE 6 Apr 2013: I've added WPS Office

UPDATE 10 Feb 2013: I've tried Libreoffice 4.0 as well -- no improvement in terms of rendering vs Libreoffice 3.5.4 (below). The start-up times are greatly improved though.

UPDATE 4 Feb. 2013: Equation Editor in Office 2003 on Wine used to be supported -- however, while fixing the editor in office 2010 support for older office versions broke. This will (hopefully) be fixed in future versions and the codeweaver and wine devs are aware of the issue. Bug reports to that effect:
http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32697 and http://www.codeweavers.com/support/tickets/browse/?ticket_id=931759

Most of my publications are via collaborations, and I'm more or less the only one who uses Linux. When I'm in charge, I use latex -- but you can be a zealot, or you can be a pragmatist. Life tends to be easier for the pragmatic. I draw the line at actually using a native installation of Windows though.

A few things are important: figures should render ok, endnote should render ok, I need to use track changes and I should be able to insert equations. Oh, and the templates from the major publishers (RSC, Wiley, ACS) should work.

So, once and for all (well, I should revise this for each major version I suppose) here's an evaluation of  where each solution on Linux falls short and where it does well.

I mocked up a simple article style doc file using Word 2003, Endnote X and Microsoft Equation Editor 3.0 and the Angewandte Chemie template, and then opened it in various alternative solutions.

I tried:

  • LibreOffice
  • OpenOffice
  • Lotus Symphony
  • Abiword
  • Google Docs/Drive
  • Microsoft Live/Skydrive


Here's what I found:

NOTE: when I say 'good' or 'bad' I mean how well they reproduce the look which is found in Word 2003. It's not a judgement on the quality of the word processor as such. I also recognise that for a developer it isnt much fun spending time working on reproducing someone else's crappy and poorly documented software, when you could be implementing new and wonderful things instead.

Outcome: all non-Word 2003 solutions at a minimum had the figure move slightly relative to the text. All solutions did the Endnote references ok, if not the location of them. Some solutions had issues with the greek letters in the equation. All non-MS solutions rendered the equation as an image which couldn't be edited.

See for yourself...


Office 2003/Virtualbox
This is the canonical version -- this is how it was created and how it should look.
Word 2003 in Virtualbox


Libreoffice 1:3.5.4+dfsg-4 
Looks fine, but
* The numbering for the equation (put it there using a tab stop) is too far left
* part of a paragraph now separates the figure from its caption -- the picture hasn't moved, but the first column on the first page seems to be one line shorter, which pushes the text of the previous paragraph past the figure.
* The last paragraph doesn't end on the first page, but in the first column of the second page..
* The second page also looks different, with the endnote bit moved to the second column.
LibreOffice


Openoffice 3.4.1-1
I grabbed the latest debs from http://www.openoffice.org/download/other.html#tested-full
On the second page the Endnote references are in the right place (c.f. Libreoffice).

* Greek letters in Equation replaced by squares (missing font?). (greek letters in text is ok)
* The numbering for the equation (put it there using a tab stop) is too far left
* part of a paragraph now separates the figure from its caption -- the picture hasn't moved, but the first column on the first page seems to be one line shorter, which pushes the text of the previous paragraph past the figure.
* The last paragraph doesn't end on the first page, but in the first column of the second page..


OpenOffice


Lotus Symphony 3.0.1
I downloaded the Lucid i386 deb and installed it in an Ubuntu Lucid virtual machine. Symphony is based on OpenOffice.

* Greek letters in Equation disappeared completely. (greek letters in text is ok)
* The numbering for the equation (put it there using a tab stop) is too far left
* part of a paragraph now separates the figure from its caption -- the picture hasn't moved, but the first column on the first page seems to be one line shorter, which pushes the text of the previous paragraph past the figure.
* The last paragraph doesn't end on the first page, but in the first column of the second page..
* The second page also looks different, with the endnote bit moved to the second column.


Lotus Symphony


Office 2003/Wine
See here for installation: http://verahill.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/307-installing-office-2003-in-wine-on.html
Everything looks fine with one pretty important exception:
* The equation is missing completely. Note that other people may have better luck installing Equation editor under wine -- I haven't managed to install it at all.
Word 2003 in Wine
Abiword
Plenty of issues:
* The author box has move to the top left corner.
* Can't find the table
* Greek letters missing in equation
* Greek letter in text missing
* Lots of stuff missing or misplaced (e.g. Keyword background picture)
Abiword


Google Docs
This was the big surprise -- I've always thought that google docs was essentially as 'good' as Microsoft Office. They have a financial incentive to be, after all. Turns out that the document was all but unrecognisable when opened in Google Docs. By far the worst solution. Note: the out-of-date warning is triggered by Chrome 18. Most similar to Abiword.
Google Docs

Microsoft Live 
Yes, that's right -- Microsoft Live works on Linux. This is the free version you get via Hotmail/Skydrive -- not their Office 365 or whatever they use now.
There are more surprises -- it doesn't render the document faithfully.

View:
* The numbering for the equation (put it there using a tab stop) is too far left. (like Libreoffice)
* part of a paragraph now separates the figure from its caption -- the picture hasn't moved, but the first column on the first page seems to be one line shorter, which pushes the text of the previous paragraph past the figure. (like Libreoffice)
* The last paragraph doesn't end on the first page, but in the first column of the second page. (like Libreoffice)
* The last paragraph doesn't end on the first page, but in the first column of the second page. (like Openoffice)
In other words -- Libreoffice/Openoffice do just as well as Microsoft Live


The interface for the View mode


full -- and no, you can't zoom in and out...


Editing:
In editing mode all it looks like a mess -- see figures.
In addition to the obvious formatting mess,
* greek letters in text show up as squares (problem with fonts on my computer or problems with live?)
* The equation cannot be edited.
However, once you go back to View mode the formatting is restored -- but it'd leave you flying blind while trying to make changes.

Editing mode


The full document -- yes, there's no Zoom...
WPS (Kingsoft)
I only discovered this by accident. Kingsoft (金山软件) is a legitimate Chinese company (Star Office was big in the 90s) and somehow there's a linux version (i386) of their Office suite: http://linux.wps.cn/. The bad news is that it's in Chinese, but that doesn't stop me from evaluating it -- it's such a close copy to Office 2007 that you can pretty much guess how to use it.

You can download it by clicking on this link: http://wdl.cache.ijinshan.com/wps/download/Linux/unstable/wps-office_8.1.0.3724~b1p2_i386.deb

It seems to be reproducing the file pretty well, with the exception of how it renders the equation and the missing stars in the author affiliation section. However, the location of the figure caption is correct, and the second page looks good.

And here's how it looks:




06 June 2012

175. Track Changes in Libreoffice

Since I collaborate I occasionally need to whip out libreoffice. I can never find the track changes function , so I'll make this a brief post:

In Libre Office, go to Edit, Changes, and tick Record.

Other than that it works exactly like the Track Changes function we've come to hate/love in Word.