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Open Secrets
Publish with Style using OpenSource Software

Note: this is “Work in Progress” in Draft and largely extracted from my ‘Diary’ and is intended to form the basis of a real printed book in the future. The screenshots are from an earlier version of Open Office and may differ in the latest LibreOffice which replaces OpenOffice.

Introduction

This book has come about because I could not find any good information on cheap but professional publishing using Open Source Software. For many years I have maintained a web site providing help to normal users and small firms. I have moved all my own work to Open Source software running under Linux, but this book does not assume you have taken that step.

You may well ask - Why publish books at all these days on paper in an interconnected electronic world? For many people it is what has come to be called Vanity Publishing, where people like to see their name on the cover of a book and are prepared to pay to see it happen. For me a major part of the answer is to do with permanence, what I would term - Perpetuity or Posterity Publishing. So much information these days is transient and un-attributable. Even the best of information on web sites does not stay for ever and is subject to change so it is difficult to quote. I am a great fan of Wikipedia but again you do not know from day to day what will be present on any subject. Worse still some of the technical pages on Wikipedia are suffering from the subtle and sometimes not so subtle effects of commercial interference as seems to have occurred on some of the OpenSource pages. This is termed FUD and refers to the use of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt that sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering alternative products.

In contrast paper has a life of hundreds of years - I have some of the technical books used by my grandfather, they may be slightly yellowed, but they still give give fascinating insights into science and technology a hundred years ago. How long will our current media last and will we be able to read they in twenty years time - have you tried to read an 8 inch or 5.25 inch (or even a current style) floppy disk recently? Reading old books also reduces the changes made to history by the selection mechanisms of political correctness.

If you publish a book and obtain an ISBN number for it you will be required to place 6 copies in copyright libraries where they will remain accessible to all for many decades, unchanged and safe for anyone to refer to. The intention of this book is to show how you can make sure your little contribution to the jigsaw of life is preserved for in perpetuity for posterity for about £100 using internet based Print on Demand services such as Lulu and an investement in a block of ISBN numbers.

Requirements for formatting a book for printing

Books have an interesting and variable set of requirements when you come to format, number and title the pages for printing even before converting them to a form which is acceptable to publishers. It is, unfortunately, only too easy to spot many of the Self Published books as they do not follow normal publishing conventions. You may chose for good reason to deviate from what conventions exist but it is better to do so consciously. It is best to try and decide on an overall layout well before you start to format the book and preferably when you are starting to write it - but in most cases that advice will come too late for readers of this book. The first major publication I produced was the thesis for my doctorate and I spent some time analysing all the others I could get hold of in my field so I knew what layout was conventional, the breakdown of content, average lengths of each part etc. I did that analysis at the end of the first year of my three, going on four year research program so I could write any background parts at an early stage and get the various drawings and pictures produced in parallel with other talks and publications, many at somebody else's cost! The same planning is sensible for a book and a piece of good advice I was given was to look in the local library and see where your book would sit on the shelves and examine all those round it for format and with an eye to likely competition. Once on the shelf the cover and title are both paramount it getting your book even opened. You may feel it is worth doing an initial survey on the internet but there is no substitute for a visit to a physical library to get your thoughts in order.

Whatever sort of book you are writing there are some conventions you will want to consider and probably follow and some which publishers like Lulu insist that you follow if they are going to sell books on your behalf especially with an ISBN number - they rightly believe they need to maintain a good reputation.

By convention the 'Sections' that make up a Book are:

  1. A Title page - un-numbered but in the initial roman numerical sequence (i, ii, iii etc)
  2. A page often referred to as just the Verso as it is often on the back of the title page which contains the ISBN Number, copyright information and other standard text - page number not displayed but in the initial numerical sequence (i, ii, iii etc) (strictly any back of a page is a verso)
  3. Dedication(s) optional or may be within Acknowledgements - page number not displayed but in the initial numerical sequence (i, ii, iii etc)
  4. The Table of Contents and possible Tables of Figures, page number not displayed on the first page of each but reflecting the following numbered parts (Preface, Acknowledgements, Body, Appendices and Index) correctly. Left and right pages may need to be different. Numbered in the initial numerical sequence (i, ii, iii etc)
  5. Prefix and/or Forward (optional) - numbered in the initial numerical sequence (i, ii, iii etc) - left and right pages differ .
  6. Acknowledgements - numbered in the initial numerical sequence (i, ii, iii etc) - left and right pages differ
  7. The main text of the book possibly broken into Parts (optional) and definitely Chapters. The page numbering is reset to start at 1 in arabic 1, 2 ,3 etc). Left and Right pages different layout because of the binding. Headings typically contain Title on left, Chapter on right. First page of each part and chapter different. First page of chapter often forced to be a right (odd numbered page) . First page of a part may only have Title of the Part and may follow a blank page with the page number not displayed but still in the numbering sequence.
  8. The Back Matter as it is called in the printing trade which comprises some or all of the bibliography, references, index, and appendixes will be similar or identical in presentation to the main text but with less information in the Header.
  9. Blank final page - must have nothing on it (used by printer to overlay information)

The main differences you will find are in the number of different sections that are present and how they are broken up. Some books will have quite a few blank pages so that the starts of the various sections are on a new page and on the right hand page. The may want to have a new part start on a Right hand page and have the following Chapter also start on a right hand page. Starting all chapters on a right hand page is common but does add many blank pages. If the book will be produced only as an eBook or in in parallel with a real book then you will want to keep empty pages to an absolute minimum or remove them altogether in the eBook version.

The parts that make up a page are:

Header and Footer Contents

The information which will be found in the header/footer will include the Book Title, the Author and possibly the Chapter Title along with the page number and possibly a horizontal lines to separate it from the body.

Page Numbering:

There seems to be no standards other than page numbers must be in a numerical sequence. Have a look at books in a similar area to which you intend to publish and there may be a consensus within that area you could follow.

Outline of a Book

It is worth while creating an outline of some form early on to which you can add information as you progress. The is an example of what I suggest and I have included a column marked Style which you will shortly come to understand

Section Page
No
First
Page
No
Header First Header
Left
Header
Right
Footer
First

Footer

Force
Position
Force Blank
Page
First Page Style Page Style Comments
Title - - - - - - - Right - Preamble - -
Verso - - - - - - - Left - Preamble - -
Blank                        
Dedications Roman - - - - - Page No Right - Preamble
Roman

-

Single Page
Blank                   Preamble -  
Table of Contents - Roman - - - - - Right - Preamble Preamble
Roman
-

Introduction
5 pages ??

Roman Roman - - - - Page No Right? - Preamble
Roman
Preamble
Roman
-
Acknowledgements
2 pages ??
Roman Roman - - - - Page No Right? - Preamble
Roman
Preamble
Roman
-
Blank ??                   Preamble -  
Part 1 of ? - - - - - - - Right After Heading
Page
- -
Blank                   Heading
Page
-  

Chapters in part 1 ~7 ~70pages

- Arabic - Book
Title
Chapter
Title
- Page No ?? - Heading
Page
Default -
Blank ??                   Heading
Page
-  
Part 2 - - - - - - - Right After Heading
Page
- -
Blank                   Heading
Page
-  
Chapters in part 2
~15 ~100 pages
- Arabic - - - - Page No ?? - Heading
Page
Default -
Blank ??                   Heading
Page
-  
Part 3 .... - - - - - - - Right After Heading
Page
- -
Blank                   Heading
Page
-  

Chapters ...
~9 ~60pages

- Arabic - - - - Page No ?? - Heading
Page
Default -
Appendices ...
3 ~5 pages
- Arabic - - - - Page No Right - Heading
Page
Postamble -
References
~9 pages
- Arabic - - - - Page No Right - Heading
Page
Postamble -
Index
If I must - 9 ??
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Blank Final page - - - - - - - - - - - -

As the book progresses and your thoughts firm up you can fill in more of the table. You may then decide you need to bring out more on the Appendices and may be format them differently, perhaps more like the Chapters or you may want to add an Index. You can however at any time get an idea of the overheads you are adding in forcing starts to be on the right and other sources of blank pages.

What goes on a page - Styles for Headings and Paragraphs

To follow

Using Open Office to format a book for printing

This is best done by defining a series of styles for the pages and text. The style is changed for a page in the book by inserting Insert -> Manual Break which provided the opportunity for a change in style and to reset the numbering. Normal page breaks inserted by Ctrl Enter do not change the style. In the definition of a style you specify what style follows for the next page ie a left page style will specify it is followed by the matching right page style and vice versa.

There is an excellent introduction to styles at http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/OOo3_User_Guides/Writer_Guide/Stylist

Unfortunately after a series of tests I discovered that saving an Open Office (OO) writer file in Word 97/2003 format does not save the Page Styles as they do not exist in Word 97/2003 so that did not help with getting a suitably formatted file to sent to Lulu.

Fonts acceptable to Lulu

Arial - this is an example of Arial abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890-=!"£$%^&*()_+ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Book Antiqua - this is an example of Book Antiqua abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890-=!"£$%^&*()_+ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Bookman Old Style - this is an example of Bookman Old Style abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890-=!"£$%^&*()_+ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Century - this is an example of Century abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890-=!"£$%^&*()_+ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Courier - this is an example of Courier abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890-=!"£$%^&*()_+ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Garamond - This is an example of Garamond abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890-=!"£$%^&*()_+ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Palatino - this is an example of Palatino Linotype abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890-=!"£$%^&*()_+ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Tahoma - this is an example of Tahoma abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890-=!"£$%^&*()_+ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Times New Roman - this is an example of Times New Roman abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890-=!"£$%^&*()_+ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Verdana - this is an example of Verdana abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890-=!"£$%^&*()_+ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Symbols

Many of these are not standard in Ubuntu but can easily be added if you have a dual booted system from the Windows font file.

Adding Fonts in Linux so they are accessible from Open Office and Word running under Wine.

I initially wanted to install some extra Fonts in Ubuntu, namely the Nadianne True Type font I use for Invitations, Wine Labels etc. and the various Windings fonts which provide ticks and other symbols used by Pauline for marking Open University eTMA scripts. Some of the fonts used by Lulu are not standard under Ubuntu so also need to be added. Nadianne is not a standard Windows font and originally I think came with a printer but the others are common to Windows XP hence the need to import them for marking. There should be no licence issues in using them on a dual booted machine with a valid copy of Windows. You can find the the Windings and other fonts in c:\windows\fonts. The True Type fonts which are available to all users are stored in folders under /usr/share/fonts/truetype in Ubuntu Linux so type in a terminal:

gksudo nautilus /usr/share/fonts/truetype

Next I created a new folder for your extra fonts which I called ttf-extra by a right click -> create folder etc.

Drag the extra fonts into the ttf-extra folder from where they were stored

Then alert Ubuntu that you added the fonts by typing the following in a terminal

sudo fc-cache -f -v

This rebuilds the font cache - the options are verbose and to force complete regeneration of the cache (neither may be necessary but I followed the instructions before reading the manual page)

It is possible from something else I read that creating a folder .fonts in your home directory and copying the font into it may be sufficient for a single user - I have not tried it. Other Linux systems may store fonts in a different place so you can try a search for truetype or fonts.

 

24th July 2009

Covers for Publishing via Lulu

I have been exploring the use of GIMP to produce the cover for Pauline's Book. GIMP is not the easiest program to use as it goes back a long way to before GUI interfaces had become reasonably standardised between operating systems. It is however very powerful as I have discovered in the past. This time I am using it in a different way to previously and it took a days to get up the learning curve to be able to do anything useful including several hours working through the help system and introductory tutorials. In particular I wanted to be able to use the layers facility as I had the cover picture scanned in two parts and I wanted to be able to merge them and then make the unpainted sky area transparent so I could change the background under the text for the title, subtitle and authors name. Each block of text you add in GIMP has its own transparent layer with the text in a font, colour etc of your choice but not changeable within the block.

Lulu has two options of interest for creating a Cover using ones own full size graphics - the first takes one or two full size graphics and I will get to defining full size, and creates the spine with a Title, Author etc for you. The second allows you to upload the completed cover including the spine. The second needs you to calculate the width of the spine from the number of pages and you also have to add all the back cover text to the large graphic. The reason to use the second route is that it seems to be the only way to add your own ISBN number rather than ones which they issue in their own name as Publishers.

So what are the sizes needed? It is not just the final book size as there is a certain amount of trimming after the book is bound which can take off up to .25". Lulu provides various templates and information but the bottom line is that the covers for a Royal size book need to be 1890 x 2835 pixels and set to 300 dpi - this gives an extra .15 inch on the unbound edge and .25 for the top and bottom. Their template also indicates that you should count the outermost 105 pixels as a buffer which is clear of text. I have been working with an image of 2000 x 3000 to give me some scope to trim at the end. I have decided on doing it in several layers once I had combined my scans, a one off job. The layers are

  1. Author text - white
  2. Sub Title text - black
  3. Title text - black
  4. Pauline's Painting with a transparent area for the background
  5. Background 2 - Blue Colour - Transparency adjusted to lighten background
  6. Background - White

If we make a full cover the layers will have to increase with a layer for the spine ( a graphic???), another background colour or split the existing background and layers for each set of text and graphics on the back cover plus the graphic for the Barcode with the ISBN number. If the background is the same under the spine and the back cover then we can just make final adjustments on the edge of the back cover for a few pages more or less.

The cover size for Royal is given in the cover tables at http://www.lulu.com/uk/help/book_covers_faq#cover_dimensions to be 6.265 x 9.459" or 15.91 x 24.024cm (1880 x 2837) and this is a very good match to their template which you can download of 1890 x 2835 which is x 24.0 cm

 

Royal Word Processor Page and Full Cover Template Dimensions that I use

Word Processor Custom Page: 15.60 cm x 23.40 cm

Full bleed cover image to upload to Lulu Cover creator (Lulu template) 1890 x 2835

Full page for the cover PDF: 31.8 cm + spine x 24.0 cm

Images for front or back as part of full page cover: 1880 x 2835 pixels (15.91 x 24.0cm)

 

1st August 2009

Books in OpenOffice 3.0

I have spent a long time trying to get the desirable layout for Pauline's book with respect to the various types of pages, the Table of Contents, Headings for the various 'levels' and the ability to add the chapter to the Headers on right hand pages. This is all done by a combination of Styles and the Outline of the document. From the start I have been using Paragraph Styles to define the layout of each paragraph and Page Styles to get the 'mirror' layout required for a book where left and right pages have to be different because of the need to allow more margin against on the side adjacent to the spine where the book is bound. However when I started I did not realised the significance of the Outline.

Document Outlines and the Table of Contents.

Every document in Open Office has an Outline but its importance is far from obvious in simple documents. The Outline is what determines the layout in the Table of Contents and much of the automatic numbering in headings - neither are present or active by default so the impact is not visible initially and it is only when one come to do 'clever' things that it all becomes obvious, or in my case obscure! The explanation that follows may be a simplification but it got me to the point where I understood enough for laying out the book.

In this part of my Howto I am going to make the assumption that we will use the Style Heading 3 for our chapter headings in the book [and that we may want to have the chapter number automatically added to the text we enter for each chapter title and in the Table of Contents]

Firstly the Heading Style is directly related to the the Levels in the Outline - every time you add a Heading x (where x is 1 to 10) to your Document you add another entry to the document Outline at level x. In a default situation everything which is in the document Outline is in the Table of Contents (TOC). The initial styles for the the Various Headings are defined and these map onto styles for the TOC ie the Heading 3 style which is about right for a book chapter without changes will be mapped to a style called Contents 3 which again will look sensible in our contents list. You can then change the styles for Heading 3 and Contents 3 to suit your exact requirements in the book including adding automatic numbering.

Initially there are no numbers displayed with these Heading or Contents styles. The numbers can be set up using Tools -> Outline Numbering. In the Outline Numbering you become fully aware of Levels - Heading 3 by default is linked to Level 3 of the Outline. See below for how I have it set up for Level 3. Only Level 3 is changed from the defaults and looks like the following:

 

You will note that I have specified the Number using the drop down list on the first tab and on the second I have set that the number is followed by a tab to space it away to an absolute position of 1.4 cms and also an indent of 1.4 cms to align the text if it is more than one line in length. After this the display of a Heading 3 has a number in front of it in the body of the text.

We now need to insert a Table of Contents at the front of the book by Insert -> Indexes and Tables -> Indexes and Tables. We get the following which is OK for the Index/Table Tab.

We now need to look at the Entries Tab which initially looks like the following when we click on Level 3:

The changes needed to format the table of contents do not follow any standard method I have met. The line called Structure is what does the work and you can find out what is there and what it does by hovering over each entry.

We now want to separate the Chapter Number and the Entry text by a Tab Stop which we will need to add. Click the box between the |-# and the |- then click the Tab Stop Button after which we get a display like the following which includes our new Tab:

You will see that a new entry has appeared in the Structure with a T in it. I have already set the Tab Stop position to 0.80 cms. If you want to edit this (or the tab at the end) then you click on the T to get the configuration as displayed. If you want to delete an entry completely click on it then hit the Del key on your keyboard which will remove it completely.

You do not need to change the other 3 tabs

If you want to make changes to an existing TOC right click anywhere on it and click Edit Index/Table to get back to the above display.

Assuming we only have Heading 3 we are now set for automatic numbering.

It would however be nice to put the 'headings' for all the other pages in the preamble and postamble into the table of contents. It would seem logical to add these as more Heading 3s but that does not work as they are also numbered which we do not want - the same goes for the Parts. These have to be added as Headings at a lower level such as 4 and 5 to avoid them messing up the numbering. The initial Styles for Heading 4 and Content 4 will need to be changed to give sensible displays in the book and in the Table of Contents. It took me hours to realise that this seemingly back to front way was the only easy way to avoid the number sequence being disturbed. I therefore use Heading 4 for the Parts and Heading 5 for headings such as acknowledgements and references and change the styles to roughly match what was used by Headings 2 and 3 and Contents 2 and 3.

Editing Styles

There are several ways to get to the Style you want to edit - I will chose a general way which allows one to carry out most of the operations involving Styles you will need to do to format your book. This is to use the Styles and Formatting floating Panel. You can toggle it on and off at least 3 ways: by clicking on the big button to the left of the Style drop down on the Formatting Toolbar, by F11 and by Format -> Styles and Formatting. The first is easiest. It looks like:

The first 5 buttons across the top select between styles for paragraphs, text, frames, pages and lists. The last button allows you to create a new style based on the one selected. At the bottom you can filter the styles which are displayed - it is set to Applied which restricts the display to those in use - at times you may need to see them all to apply a new style. If you want to apply a style you can drag it onto the page, paragraph, selection etc. When you want to edit it you right click the style and click modify.

If you have a reasonably big/wide screen it makes life very easy if you drag the panel (by the top bar) to either side at which point it will attach itself (dock) and the the editing area will will resize to match. You can then keep it there all the time or toggle it by the button as above.

You will probably want to check and possibly change 5 of the tabs for paragraphs: Organiser, Indents and Spacing, Alignment, Fonts and maybe Borders.

We will now look at my requirements and how I have modified the Header 3 Style to what I want for the chapter titles in the book.

So I open up the Styles and Formatting Window as above, select paragraphs (first button) right click Heading 3 and click Modify which gives me:

You will see that I am in the process of selecting one of my own Styles to follow a Heading 3 - a nice touch but you can always change it afterwards. Now to any easy part:

We have chosen Arial Bold 12pt for our chapter heading above. Now the difficult part - indenting and lining up the text on the subsequent lines of the title:

You will note that the first line is brought back so the overall indent to the chapter number is 0.6cms then all the text lines up at 1.40 cms from the margin. There is also a vertical space of 0.52cm above the chapter title to space it from the top margin and 0.71cm below to space it away from the first paragraph of text which we have chosen to be my bookflush style (which does not have any spaces on the start of the first line)

You will need to do the same Indentation trick on the Contents 3 style to line everything up in the Table of Contents even if you make no other changes.

Contents 5 used for other section headings has a 0.80cm indent to also line up with the text in the 'body' and no difference for the first line.

Setting up the Page Styles and Pages in the Book

If you are setting up or changing a Page Style you will want to check or change: Organiser, Page, Header and Footer. Organiser is important as it defines what Page follows - Default will be followed by Default, a page with a Book Chapter Title (your Header 3) will be followed by Default. Specially defined pages for the Preamble and Postamble will be followed by identical pages. The main setting up is on the Page tab which is where you define the size of paper, all four margins, the layout (mirrored) and Numbering (used in page numbers etc). The Header and Footer Tabs are self explanatory and need to be set sensibly to match up with the margins set earlier and with other page styles in use. The following is an example of the Page tab for my Default Page Style.

Above should be Width 15.6 and Height 23.4

It is best to set up the Default Page tab first the you can base the other Page styles you use on it. I have 3 additional Styles: Heading Page, Preamble and Postamble. Default has a Header and Footer and is used for the body of the book. A Heading Page starts each 'chapter' in the body of the book or other sections and has no Header or Footer, they are also used for blank pages which have no footer (page number). Preamble pages have Roman Numbering for the page number in the footer and no Header and are used for the continuation pages for the Prefix etc which are placed before the main 'chapters' of the book start. Postamble pages have no Header and Arabic numbering for the page number in the footer and are used for the continuation of References, Acronyms etc.

Where a Footer is present it just contains a centred page number. A page number is inserted by Insert -> Page Number.

Where a Header is Present (ie the Default Page with a Header 3) it contains the book title typed in on any left hand page and a right justified Chapter Title on the right hand pages inserted by Insert -> Fields -> Other -> Document -> Chapter -> Chapter Name - Set Level 3 -> Insert. The Chapter Field can then be selected like any other text and Right Justified and the font and font size can be chosen to match the book title on the left hand pages.

There has to be a Manual Page Break before each change of Page Style - a Page Break using a Ctrl Return is not sufficient as you can not chose the new style. This is done by Insert -> Manual Break and selecting Page and choosing the Style of the following page as below for a page with a heading:

You do not need to always change the style following a Heading Page as you will recall we set up the Organiser tab for the Heading Page to set the following Page to have Style Default. If it is in the preamble and postamble areas we do need to use a Manual Page Break to change the Style and it is probably safer to always do so. Unfortunately the Manual Page Breaks do not appear as a field which you can see although the top margin outline is slightly thicker.

Other codes and fields can be made visible by a combination of Tools -> Options -> OpenOffice.org Writer -> Formatting Aids and View -> Options .

5th August 2009

Cover Page for Books on Lulu

There are a number of 'tricks' in laying out a book cover. First you need to know the exact size of the cover required and be prepared to correct to what is requested when you get to that point. You can then complete the image to the exact size to match the front cover and insert it on the right of a Openoffice page which you set up. As the number of pages changes you may need to make small adjustments to the size.

The spine text can be set up using a text box accessed via the Drawing Tools toolbar and rotated after the text has been inserted. The text box can be exactly sized to match the spine using the various numerical options rather than dragging the corners and after rotation can be positioned exactly the same way.

Background colour is where we need a trick as the colour is normally only under the text area and not under the margins. The trick is therefore to reduce the margins to the size that you want covered by background colour ie left, top and bottom margins to 0.0cms and the right margin to make sure you have a text area extending under the spine. Then set a border for the page which is the same colour as the background and give this a border width to provide the text area you require. The following screens shots will make it all clear:

First set the background colour:

Now set the size of the page and margins to define the area we want to be the background colour ie the whole left side and extending under the spine.

Now we defining a border which is the same colour as the text and delineate the area for text by setting the spacing to the contents. You will find there is a limit of 5 cms hence the size large of the right margin above.

And we now have what we want.

Spine Text

Lulu has a calculator for the spine width which we used and we found the best way to put together the text on the spine was to create it as an image using the text tool in Gimp as we could get the exact size of text and spacing between lines. We first created a background which was the same colour as the text background and the exact size we required, added each set of text for Title Subtitle, Author and Publisher the rotated it and exported it as a JPEG (.jpg) file ready to Import into OpenOffice for the cover.

Upgrading to the latest OpenOffice 3.x under Hardy Heron

Ubuntu does not automatically upgrade to the latest issue of OpenOffice, it just applies any updates to the version which came with the original Distribution ie 2.4 in the case of Hardy Heron. There are advantages in some cases in upgrading to version 3.x which is in Jaunty.

There is now a repository set up for the latest versions of OpenOffice which can be used to keep OpenOffice updated automatically. This is the Personal Package Archive PPA set up by the Openoffice Scribblers - see https://launchpad.net/~openoffice-pkgs/+archive/ppa and http://www.rebelzero.com/ubuntu/ppa-for-openofficeorg-301-for-hardyintrepid/94.

The way to include this repository is to:

Add the OpenOffice PPA repository to your sources.list file by System > Administration > Software Sources. Click on the Third-Party Software tab and click the Add… button. Copy the PPA’s repository address in the APT Line box, and click the Add Source button. Hardy users should use:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ppa/ubuntu hardy main

Replace hardy by jaunty or the version you are using as appropriate

You will be asked to update the repository list

Next it is important that you click on the Ubuntu Software tab and make sure the universe repository is enabled as the PPA packages need some hardy packages from that repository.

Finally you need to add the authentication keys for this repository, this is most easily done in a terminal by:

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 247D1CFF

You can use the Synaptic Package Manager to update everything (Add/Remove was not happy with these changes until I had used Synaptic). System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager

First update the package lists by clicking Reload

Then click Mark all Possible upgrades which should show all the ones for Open Office upgrade and click Apply.

You should now find that OpenOffice has been upgraded

Taming Open Office for books

Autocorrect

 

Turn off automatic recognition of URLs

Set up to use smart singe quotes as well as double quotes

Options

To Follow - there are some hints in the ouopen page which I will extend.

The Navigator

Openoffice has a very powerful tool for navigating, that is moving arround, a large document called the Navigator. It is turned on and off by the gold star shaped button on the Standard Toolbar. It appears first time as a floating tool but can be docked by dragging it to either side. If you have a large wide screen it is sensible to keep it permanently docked along with the Styles and Formatting Tool as they will both be used a lot whilst working on a book.

The Navigator is a very powerful tool which amongst othe things can display the structure and all the different items that make up a document, such as headings, tables, graphics, indices, objects and hyperlinks - you can go to any one of them by double clicking on it in the Navigator. The button on the bottom one from the left (content view) controls this feature anong with the drop down button (Heading Levels Shown)

 

Formatting Text - Find and Replace - Regular expressions

In OpenOffice.org Writer, regular expressions may be used in the Search for box but, in general, they may not be used in the Replace with box. In Writer regular expressions usually divide the text to be searched into paragraphs which are treated separately and in addition Writer considers each table cell and each text frame separately. Link to information on Regular expressions http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/How_Tos/Regular_Expressions_in_Write

Avoid using the Replace All button with regular expressions - there are occasions when this will give unexpected results. It is always best to 'Find All', then see what you have and then 'Replace'.

Remove empty paragraphs

^$ is regular expression for an empty paragraph. I have had problems with a repeated Find and Replace with nothing so do a Find All then a Replace

Replace Default paragraph style by your custom style.

use More Options and and tick the style box and select the old and new styles from the drop down boxes

Remove spaces at end of paragraph

I have used the More Options and ticked Regular Expressions then found space$ and replaced by nothing repeatedly

remove double spaces between sentences

An ordinary Repeated Search and Replace for double spaces and replace by single space

Remove tabs and spaces at start of paragraphs

Other Miscellaneous replacements

Replace non-breaking spaces with regular spaces ([:space:]) -> space
Replace manual line breaks with paragraph breaks \n -> \n
Replace double smart quotes (aka book quotes or curly quotes) with straight quotes (aka dumb quotes) [\x201C\x201D\x201F] -> "
Replace single smart quote with straight quotes [\x2018\x2019\x201B] -> '

Change double quotes and single quotes to smart quotes

First Find opening dumb double quotes ("\<), since opening quotes are most likely to come right before a word and Replace with a smart opening quote “ - you will need to create the opening and closing smart quotes and copy and paste them into the replace field . Then Find all the remaining dumb double quotes and Replace with a closing smart quote. Depending on your consistency in writing it may be best to do them individually rather than a Replace All. Repeat for single quotes - this will also correct dumb single quote marks in abbreviations. in detail:

Make sure you have the autocorrect function to enable smart quotes turned on
Type any word with quotes round it so you generate some smart quotes you can cut and paste as required.
Highlight the left smart quote (“).
Copy the selection to the clipboard (Right click menu or Ctrl+C).
Edit -> Find & Replace from the menu.
Paste the from the clipboard contents into the Replace with field (right clicking menu or Ctrl+V)
type "\< in the Search for field.
Press the More Options button.
Check the box Regular Expressions.
Click the Find All button.
Click the Replace All button.
Highlight the right smart quote (”).
Copy the selection to the clipboard.
In the Search for field, type a single dumb quote (").
In the Replace with field, paste the ” from the clipboard.
Click the Find All button.
Click the Replace All button.

Find Duplicate words separated by spaces

Put this magic string in the find box and click More Options and check the Regular Expressions Box

\<([^ ]+)[ ]+\1

(note that there is a space before each ])

Appendix A Updating and extending Open Office

Upgrading to the latest OpenOffice 3.x under Hardy Heron

Ubuntu does not automatically upgrade to the latest issue of OpenOffice, it just applies any updates to the version which came with the original Distribution ie 2.4 in the case of Hardy Heron. There are advantages in some cases in upgrading to version 3.x which is in Jaunty.

There is now a repository set up for the latest versions of OpenOffice which can be used to keep OpenOffice updated automatically. This is the Personal Package Archive PPA set up by the Openoffice Scribblers - see https://launchpad.net/~openoffice-pkgs/+archive/ppa and http://www.rebelzero.com/ubuntu/ppa-for-openofficeorg-301-for-hardyintrepid/94.

The way to include this repository is to:

Add the OpenOffice PPA repository to your sources.list file by System > Administration > Software Sources. Click on the Third-Party Software tab and click the Add… button. Copy the PPA’s repository address in the APT Line box, and click the Add Source button. Hardy users should use:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ppa/ubuntu hardy main

Replace hardy by jaunty or the version you are using as appropriate

You will be asked to update the repository list

Next it is important that you click on the Ubuntu Software tab and make sure the universe repository is enabled as the PPA packages need some hardy packages from that repository.

Finally you need to add the authentication keys for this repository, this is most easily done in a terminal by:

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 247D1CFF

You can use the Synaptic Package Manager to update everything (Add/Remove was not happy with these changes until I had used Synaptic). System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager

First update the package lists by clicking Reload

Then click Mark all Possible upgrades which should show all the ones for Open Office upgrade and click Apply.

You should now find that OpenOffice has been upgraded

 

Adding a Grammar Checker to Open Office (Versions 3.01 and 3.1)

Open Office does not have a Grammar checker built in but it is possible to add one as an Extension. The mechanism for Extensions is built into OpenOffice but the Extensions are written by individuals or groups - this is a beauty of OpenSource but one is vulnerable to the quality and support level. At the worst one can always remove or disable the Extension but I would always recommend not working on 'live' documents when testing any new feature. In the case of Grammar checking it was always intended that one would be available and all the menu entries etc are already built in and ready to go

The Grammar Checker for OpenOffice is called LanguageTool. To loosely quote:

"LanguageTool is an Open Source language checker for English, German, Polish, Dutch, and other languages. It is rule-based, which means it will find errors for which a rule is defined in its XML configuration files (and there are close to 500 rules implemented for English). Rules for more complicated errors can be written in Java. You can think of LanguageTool as a tool to detect errors that a simple spell checker cannot detect, e.g. mixing up there/their, no/now etc. It can also detect some grammar mistakes. "

The extension is in the main library of OpenOffice Extensions under LanguageTool. It has been downloaded by over 100,000 people and gets good marks so it is reasonably well thought of! http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/languagetool and has had many years of development under OO 2.x.

It needs the machine you are using to have Java from Sun Microsystems installed, which is likely and a the Java runtime environment of 5.0 or later selected before you install this extension. This is set by Tools -> Options -> Java in any OpenOffice program - you will have to wait a long time and the version 5 is 1.50_xx and you are likely to have version 6 1.60_xx. Versions of Java less than 1.50_xx may fail to work and in version 6 you need higher than 1.60_04.

If you are using Ubuntu then you must also add the java package to OpenOffice as it is not installed in Ubuntu by default. System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager and Search for and Install openoffice.org-java-common before proceeding.

To Install, download the file from the site and Double click LanguageTool-0.9.9.oxt to install it. If that doesn't work, call Tools -> Extension Manager -> Add... to install it. Close OpenOffice.org and re-start it. Type some text with an error (e.g. "This is an test." -- make sure the text language is set to English) and you should see a blue underline.

Catches

There have been problems with LanguageTool if you make any version upgrades to OpenOffice without first uninstalling LanguageTool and it can no longer be uninstalled to sort them out - you may have to reload the earlier version of OO and then remove it, assuming you still have the earlier version. There is a risk with some systems that upgrades take place automatically. This seems to have mainly been a problem after OO 3.0 came out with the first integration of grammar tools alongside the existing dictionaries and these mechanisms were changed in OO in the upgrade to 3.01 - now everything seems much more stable from the OO end.

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