[PLUG] Setting OO.o Writer Default

John Jason Jordan johnxj at comcast.net
Wed Sep 2 03:36:55 UTC 2009


On Tue, 1 Sep 2009 19:59:55 -0700 (PDT)
Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com> dijo:

> On Tue, 1 Sep 2009, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> 
> > I think of Lyx as a word processor on steroids - a word processor because
> > it is continuous text. In contrast Scribus is a design app where each page
> > is a discrete object and text is always in a frame, so it does not
> > automatically flow from page to page (unless you tell it to). Many
> > projects could be done in either one with equal facility; but the
> > fundamental concepts behind the way they work are completely different. In
> > my experience you like one or you like the other; few like them both.
> 
>    I strongly disagree with your initial statement. LyX is a GUI front end to
> LaTeX which is a markup/macro language for the TeX typesetting engine. The
> focus is on text-centric documents, but tables and graphics are easily
> incorporated. The author does not need to futz with document or page layout;
> tracking styles for headings; hyphenation; cross-references; tables of
> contents, figures, and tables; or indices. Want to change from a report
> style to an article style? One change in the document setup dialog box and
> it's a completely different appearance. The writer focuses on content.
> 
>    Scribus is a great page layout application which is more graphic-oriented
> than text-oriented. Sure, you can write a book with it but that's not its
> forte. Brochures, magazines, newspapers, and the like which have layouts
> designed to grab attention are best created with scribus rather than a word
> processor or LaTeX.

You have read something into what I said, or at least I didn't make
something clear.

(1) Suppose you have a document in Lyx that is currently 100 pages. You
insert a table in the middle of page 2. By default all the text will
move down on all the pages.

(2) Suppose you have a document of 100 pages in Scribus. You add a
table to the middle of page 2. By default none of the other pages are
affected because each page is a discrete object containing only the
objects within it.

(1) is how a word processor operates.
(2) is how a page layout application operates.

There are lots of other strengths/weaknesses that are different as
well, but that is what I was trying to get across when I said "the
fundamental concepts behind the way they work are completely
different." And that's all I was trying to talk about. I didn't say
anything about which is inherently better for which task.



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