I have kind of given up on estimates, since whatever I think I can manage seems to fail for one reason or another (That reason is annoyingly often MS Word, which does not at all enjoy this file). But what I can say is that the first 400 pages of the Tome have been properly laid out, and a large segment of those pages are now in the hands of the beta testers.
It will be ready for release once I have finished laying out all the pages, and made any changes required based on reports from the beta testers.
Posted By: VintyriHave you tried the Writer in LibreOffice.org or OpenOffice.org?
Yes. If Word is an annoyance, those two are a nightmare. OpenOffice cannot even open the document. I gave up after it had kept my CPU at full utilization for 30 minutes (word opens the document in less than 15 seconds) LibreOffice managed to open the document, but it is horribly slow, and it really messed up the document. elements that were absolutely positioned were in the completely wrong position, the headers/footers where missing and/or appeared stacked in the middle of a single page, text columns were ignored, as were special first-page layouts and alternating margins, and there were a host of other problems. Then, after a short while, the program decided to simply crash on me.
I have used both Word and OpenOffice in the past as well, and while Word does give me some (or a lot of) grief, OpenOffice have always provided me with even more of that, especially when working with large complex documents.
OpenOffice (and LibreOffice) are a great program for lighter tasks though, and you can't beat the price.
Interesting! The kind of problems that you're describing I've had to some extent only when I convert or import a Word document. I've never had such problems when I've started with OPenOffice or LibreOffice.
Yes, publisher is better on complex layouts, but it is not a good tool to handle large documents (600+ pages in this case). It doesn't even manage to open this document actually.
I know you are only trying to be helpful, and for that I am grateful. I may have a lot of grief about Word, but do know that the choice to use it was definitely a conscious one on my part, and I know the inns and outs of it very well. Also realize, that at this point, the tome IS a huge word document, so if I were to switch program, I would need something that could import the existing document flawlessly.
I'll request that we stop the text editor discussion here though, as this discussion is not really suitable for this forum.
Comments
I have kind of given up on estimates, since whatever I think I can manage seems to fail for one reason or another (That reason is annoyingly often MS Word, which does not at all enjoy this file).
But what I can say is that the first 400 pages of the Tome have been properly laid out, and a large segment of those pages are now in the hands of the beta testers.
It will be ready for release once I have finished laying out all the pages, and made any changes required based on reports from the beta testers.
OpenOffice cannot even open the document. I gave up after it had kept my CPU at full utilization for 30 minutes (word opens the document in less than 15 seconds)
LibreOffice managed to open the document, but it is horribly slow, and it really messed up the document. elements that were absolutely positioned were in the completely wrong position, the headers/footers where missing and/or appeared stacked in the middle of a single page, text columns were ignored, as were special first-page layouts and alternating margins, and there were a host of other problems. Then, after a short while, the program decided to simply crash on me.
I have used both Word and OpenOffice in the past as well, and while Word does give me some (or a lot of) grief, OpenOffice have always provided me with even more of that, especially when working with large complex documents.
OpenOffice (and LibreOffice) are a great program for lighter tasks though, and you can't beat the price.
I know you are only trying to be helpful, and for that I am grateful. I may have a lot of grief about Word, but do know that the choice to use it was definitely a conscious one on my part, and I know the inns and outs of it very well. Also realize, that at this point, the tome IS a huge word document, so if I were to switch program, I would need something that could import the existing document flawlessly.
I'll request that we stop the text editor discussion here though, as this discussion is not really suitable for this forum.