I’m creating a social enterprise startup that involves online educational and collaborative projects (focusing on young people in all countries). I’m now choosing software that will be necessary to use for participation, and I’d like everything to be open source when possible/reasonable.
We will be creating and collaborating on complex large data-heavy documents similar to what “Mellel for Mac” is ideal for. One of the main features I want is to be able to drag-n-drop rearrange sections within the outline (I’ve had trouble with this in the past). I’ve been a long-time OpenOffice and now LibreOffice user, and I still have a hard time setting up my document styles to use outline well (and moving sections often didn’t work properly).
Will also need to keep track of references, citations, bookmarks, footnotes, author comments, etc, so LibreOffice’s database feature is nice, but a big learning curve for most. I tried to find all this pre-configured in the templates but am not finding anything.
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It would be great if there was a comparison of features between LibreOffice, Mellel, and MSWord so I can make sure LibreOffice will work for these documents. I’m already convinced Mellel would be great (if free and avail on Windows). Also, since most of our community is tech-phobic or prejudiced towards Microsoft as the only “easy to use” software, it would help people to make the shift.
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Can someone please point me to any existing templates that are setup for a large research document (hundreds of pages, 3-4 level TOC, database tables as described above and for contacts, good outline structure for major editing and reorganisation activities, ability to hide/show body text in online view, easy access to TOC hyperlinks while anywhere in the document, etc)?
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Would such a document be able to convert to html to create a comprehensive online book? Apple has iBook Author software that create high-touch, enriched multi-media books. This is the goal of the types of books we will be collaboratively publishing. Any advice on if this is possible in LibreOffice would be appreciated.
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I’m going to hire someone through UpWork to help get some of these documents started and to train/support the students. This is a self-funded initiative and so I’ll be looking for someone at a low rate who lives in a country with low living costs, but who also communicates well in English. Any referrals would be appreciated.
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I’d love to know more about LibreOffice’s database backend (SQL?). If I create GoogleDoc forms (or something else using either a WordPress or Drupal website), how easy will it be to link the data with LibreOffice’s tables?
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Is there any plan to develop LibreOffice for iOS? I see other companies have done it, but I’m not sure if that means they would have access to some of the data. Any advice for iPad users?
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After years of seeing some of my favourite open source software disappear, I’m on a personal mission to find ways to help fund the ongoing development of open source projects. A portion of our proceeds will be contributed to the open source software we use, and once we have a large community (user base), I’d like us to partner with those organisations to give feedback for and help fund continual improvements. Anyone interested in learning more about what we’re doing should contact me. Even better, is anyone wanting to consider offering some expertise!
Thank You, Kaye