I am trying to write a book. It will have a lot of pictures, images, equations, tables, etc. I would like to know what the maximum file size writer can accommodate and work with.
I don’t know the technical answer to the title question, but I’m not sure that’s the real question here.
The documentation for LibreOffice Writer is itself a book of 451pp with many illustrations, and is 22.7Mb. You can (and probably should) download it and consult ch. 16, on “Master Documents”. Here’s how it begins:
A master document (.odm) is a container that joins separate text documents (.odt) into one larger document, and unifies the formatting, table of contents (TOC), bibliography, index, and other material. Master documents are typically used for producing long documents such as a book, a thesis, or a long report.
A master document is especially useful in these situations:
- When the file size or number of pages is quite large; writing, reviewing, and editing may be easier when done on subsets of the full document.
- When different people are writing different chapters or other parts of the full document.
- When files will be published as stand-alone documents as well as becoming part of a larger document. The chapters of this Writer Guide are an example of this usage.
- When subdocuments are used in more than one final document.
You can use several methods to create master documents. Each method has its advantages and disadvantages. Which method you choose depends on what you are trying to accomplish. The different methods are described in this chapter, along with suggestions on when to use each one.
You should probably be thinking along these lines for managing a large book project, rather than a single, gigantic file.