FredPod 110221 – LibreOffice
February 21, 2011
This program was produced on February 21st, 2011. And today’s topics will include:
- Selections from “yum info recent” on the Fedora Linux project.
- The Latest from FredLUG.
- Today’s feature is the Document Foundation’s LibreOffice application.
- And we’ll close with a Creative Commons licensed work by
Ex Norwegian, entitled Smashing Time.
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FredPod by Mark Caldwell Walker is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
Here are some recently updated items in yum at the Fedora project:
Name : gnucash
Summary : Finance management application
Description : GnuCash is a personal finance manager. A check-book like register GUI allows you to enter and track bank accounts, stocks, income and even currency trades. The interface is designed to be simple and easy to use, but is backed with double-entry accounting principles to ensure balanced books.
Name : google-chrome-beta
Description : The web browser from Google
: Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.
Name : kmod-kqemu
Summary : Metapackage which tracks in kqemu kernel module for newest kernel
Description : This is a meta-package without payload which sole purpose is to require the kqemu kernel module(s) for the newest kernel.
Name : kmod-nvidia
Summary : Metapackage which tracks in nvidia kernel module for newest kernel
License : Redistributable, no modification permitted
Description : This is a meta-package without payload which sole purpose is to require the nvidia kernel module(s) for the newest kernel. to make sure you get it together with a new kernel.
Name : yash
Summary : Yet Another SHell
Description : Yash is a command line shell that conforms to the POSIX.1 (IEEE Std 1003.1, 2008 Edition) standard for the most part.
:
: Yash also has its own features beyond POSIX, such as:
: * global aliases
: * random numbers
: * socket redirections and other special redirections
: * right prompt, and
: * command completion
I yum installed yash and gave it a try. It can be invoked by simply entering yash at the bash shell prompt. A lone user-space dollar sign prompt is then displayed. I could “su” into root, and all seemed to function in a familiar fashion. One interesting thing to try is to invoke bash from yash. What this does is run bash inside of yash which is running inside the default bash shell. That would be worth keeping in mind anytime when invoking a program from another running program. Enter the command pstree | grep -B 1 yash and the interesting and expected result is:
$ pstree | grep -B 1 yash
init |-gnome-terminal-+-bash
| |-bash—yash—bash—yash-+-grep
Hmmm, how many nested programs would you say that is? Not to worry; just enter exit and return multiple times until the original shell window closes.
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You can find additional information on these, and many other recently updated packages, by typing yum info recent at the command line.
- You can find the Fredericksburg Linux Users Group email list at http://calypso.tux.org/mailman/listinfo/fredlug. Feel free to join the list.
- Besides the FredLUG email list, you’re also welcome on the IRC channel pound FredLUG on irc dot freenode dot net.
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Feature
Today’s feature is the Document Foundation’s LibreOffice application. The “whys and wherefores” of moving away from OpenOffice.org and creating LibreOffice are addressed in detail at the http://www.DocumentFoundation.org website.
But for now, let’s get straight into LibreOffice, the application.
As of this date, February 21st, 2011, LibreOffice 3.3 Final is the current version; and it’s released under the LGPL-version3 license.
It’s available for Windows; Mac OS X, for both PowerPC and Intel Macs; and also for 32-bit and 64-bit Linux computers in both rpm and deb package formats.
LibreOffice provides six basic applications within its suite of software. Those are:
- Writer, for word processing
- Calc, for spreadsheets
- Impress, for presentations
- Draw, for diagrams and sketches
- Base, a front-end for databases
- and Math, which is a simple equation editor that lets you lay-out and display mathematical type equations quickly in standard written notation. We’ll play around with the Math component of LibreOffice before we’re done today.
Any of those programs can export to PDF format, and Writer, Calc, and Draw can handle scalable vector graphics. SVG is an XML based language specified by the W3C for rich graphical content from one original source.
First, let’s look at the Writer in LibreOffice. For what it’s worth, the show prep for this podcast was done in LibreOffice Writer—on a 64-bit Fedora 14 machine. Although talking about word processing might seem boring at first, I’ve found a lot to love in Writer. I routinely use different fonts, colors, and sizes, as well as bolding, underlining, highlighting, aligning, bulleting, numbering, and block indention features. Tables are easy to construct, adjust, and edit. So are footnotes, line numbering, and word count features. Word count is useful for writing content offline before copying into a space-limited input block on a website. The format painter is very handy, especially when copying in content from different sources with different formatting.
Naturally, LibreOffice complies with the most Open of Open Standards. Writer’s capabilities include an HTML export feature, and it can automatically publish to a wiki in MediaWiki format. The “Export as PDF” feature generates a .pdf file, including production of ISO-standard PDF/A files. As with OpenOffice.org, .docx files can be read and edited by LibreOffice—there are two options to save in the .docx format: One is Microsoft Office 2007 .docx and the other is the Office Open-XML-Text .docx format.
AutoCorrect for spellcheck is an indispensable feature for me.
For further reference material on the many rich features in LibreOffice Writer, the PDF Getting-Started-Guide provides 32 pages of non-fluff information with pictures. For those already used to word processors, LibreOffice Writer should be a natural transition.
LibreOffice Calc has a useful set of features also. I personally have not used all of the spreadsheet capabilities, but I can speak to the ones I have used. Data sort and formula entry are easy to enter and edit. Formatting for dates and numbers, as well as word-wrap in large cells is easily done. In addition to the open standard .ods spreadsheet format, LibreOffice Calc can save in the comma delimited .csv format, the Microsoft .xls and newer xlsx formats, dBase .dbf, and the .dif Data Interchange Format. There’s also export to PDF in Calc. The fonts, colors, and highlighting capabilities are there too. One thing of note about key-mapping on a Mac—the documentation identifies some keystrokes and menu items that are different on a Mac from those used in Windows and Linux—they provide a table with some common substitutions for those specific instructions.
The LibreOffice Impress application has an ample set of features for creating professional presentations. My main experience with Impress was with OpenOffice.org—but upon opening LibreOffice Impress, it’s obvious that development has continued to evolve in a productive way. Graphics importation and editing features are readily accessible, as well as slide transitions and animations. Tables and multimedia features are included, along with provision for speaker notes. File Save-As capabilities include Microsoft .ppt and the newer .pptx formats. Export capabilities cover several common graphics file formats—and remember that Impress can export to PDF as well.
Regarding the LibreOffice Draw application, it might be described as a cross between the Visio-like open source Dia program and the free-style capabilities of the GIMP graphics editor. If you need professional style stencils for engineering or networking drawings, then Dia would be a better program. But for quick construction of creative concepts, LibreOffice Draw is convenient and its output is readily imported into other applications such as Writer. Draw can Save-As an Open format drawing .odg file, or as a Flat-XML .fodg file. In addition to exporting as PDF, Draw also can export to several different graphics file formats.
Although I have not used Base, the database front-end in LibreOffice, it appears to be ready to work with any database in .odb file format. The following feature summary from the Document Foundation website might be helpful:
Base comes configured with the full HSQL relational database engine. It’s an ideal solution for uncomplicated needs, and for people requiring an easy-to-understand, simple-to-use system: the data is stored right inside the Base file, and you also get native support for dBase flat files.
But Base also caters to power users and enterprise requirements, and provides native-support drivers for some of the most-widely employed multi-user database engines: MySQL, Adabas D, MS Access and PostgreSQL. In addition, the built-in support for JDBC- and ODBC-standard drivers allows you to connect to virtually any other existing database engine as well.
And there’s additional descriptive information about the Base application on the Document Foundation website.
Now let’s look at LibreOffice Math. Remember, that’s the simple equation editor that lets you lay-out and display mathematical type equations quickly in standard written notation. The Math application is opened by going to File → New → Formula on the main menu. This opens a separate “Math” window, which consists of an entry window at the bottom, and a display window above it. By going to View → Elements and selecting the checkbox, another separate window appears that displays several types of formula types for entry. Clicking on one of the formula types places a text string representing that formula in the entry window—from there you can enter actual values to replace the question marks. The result is displayed in the window above it.
One must keep in mind that the “Math” application is not a calculator—it’s just a means of rendering a complex formula for entry in a word processor or presentation. Actual calculations are done by Calc, so Math—perhaps better named as “formula display”—is not needed for calculations. Math is useful for creating formula representations for humans to read in a document. Here’s an example: How would you enter the 3rd root of 27 in a word processing document? Math “formula display” to the rescue.
The notation is “nroot{3}{27}=3”
n-root left-curly-brace 3 right-curly-brace left-curly-brace 27
right-curly-brace equals 3
The “n-root” in that is the character string n-r-o-o-t. The display is the mathematical notation for cube-root of 27 with an equal sign followed by a 3.
But you have to know the answer ahead of time—the Math “formula display” application will let you enter erroneous information as well.
The next challenge is how to use your newly rendered formula. In Math, saving the file will only save it as a formula—that’s not much use in a word processing document. So you can export it as a PDF—the only export option. All is not lost. Your options are to open the PDF in the GIMP and export to a standard graphics format, such as jpeg—or to open the PDF with something like InkScape and export it as an SVG. The SVG can then be imported into your word processing document, with all the manipulation capabilities inherent in the SVG format.
A reasonable conclusion from reviewing the LibreOffice suite of applications would be that these are programs worthy of your toolbox. My recommendation is to download, install, and be productive.
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Today’s podcast will close with a Creative Commons licensed work by
Ex Norwegian, entitled Smashing Time, from music.mevio.com. Enjoy.
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