Hey you all, i started using LibreOffice since i switched to Linux, but i didn’t used it often yet so I’m still getting the hang of it. Since I’m gonna start College next week, I’m interested in what extensions you can recommend. Some weeks ago i read that it’s recommend to install some fonts, so when you exchange documents with other students that are using Microsoft Office, there will be less of formatting issues.
So can you recommend me some useful Extensions, e.g. fonts for the situation above, that can help me in everyday life (as a student)?
I’m looking forward to your suggestions :)
While I don’t know too much on fonts, I would highly, highly recommend looking into the reference manager Zotero and its LibreOffice and browser extensions for reference management. It’s helped me significantly organizing research for papers and cutting down the time I spend doing menial tasks like reference checking, I can just click a button to add a source to my library and then another with the LibreOffice extension to plop it in as a reference. It has options for every major referencing style and you can create your own as well, though I haven’t cared enough to try lol
I use JabRef which is another open sourced bibliography tool. I use it regularly and truly have no clue what I’d do without it at this point!
JabRef is much more feature-rich than Zotero, IMO. It’s what I use, and I love it, but I had issues getting it to communicate with LibreOffice–it’s really designed to work with LaTeX. I ended up having to export to a file each time I updated the bibliography and import that into LibreOffice.
There are also a bunch of reference managers out there–with the exception of Mendeley (curse you, Elsevier, for being the scum of the earth) they can all export and import biblios from each other, so you can try them out without losing your work.
Thanks for these two recommendations. I will look into these and see which suits me better :)
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That sounds like a nice one, Thanks!
Not sure exactly what you meant about the fonts but I do routinely install the Microsoft Fonts from my Linux repo whatever system I’m on. It used to be very important when browsing the net as Arial and Times New Roman were ubiquitous. That is less true now, and many sites use their own fonts.
But in office Times New Roman and Arial are still there. Microsoft has moved to newer fonts now like Calibri and Cambrea but this is proprietary. You could try and get your hands on copies of these (relatively easy if you already have windows).
When creating documents you can embed the fonts you used in Libre Office in it to ensure if you send it to someone else it renders as you intended. When you open someone else’s documents you can see what fonts were used and try and install those or ask libre office to substitute fonts you do have for the missing ones. A metric font is a font with the exact same size of characters in terms of character width and height (even if it looks different) - this preserves the layout so if you’re missing a font and have a metric equivalent you can subsitute that font and the document layout should then be preserved.
For Calibri there is a freely licensed Google metric alternative called Carlito. I believe that usually comes with Libre Office but double check. Also Cambria is another common Microsoft font with a free metric equivalent called Caladea that should come with Libre office.
The Liberation fonts commonly found on Linux and Libre office are metric equivalents of the Times New Roman, Arial and Courier fonts if you want to avoid Microsoft proprietary fonts all together.
Finally if you are sending documents to be read and not edited or just to print at another location, then save/export them as PDFs. PDFs will look the same on any device and OS and will print the same from anywhere.
Lastly I would suggest you use a sync service to keep your documents and keep your school docs in folders that sync. Something like DropBox. Microsoft Office uses OneDrive and it is fully integrated which was a game changer when it comes to accessing documents from anywhere but you can do the same with DropBox and Libre Office on other devices to ensure you can get your documents wherever you are and edit them in whatever is available (e.g. a school PC if you don’t have your laptop to hand or your mobile device). Lots you can do with synced documents but you don’t need Microsoft to do it.
I will mention that while I like sending PDFs for things, that won’t work for any sort of collaborative project. I was surprised by how many of my coworkers don’t know you can comment on PDFs just like you can for Word documents, and are totally unwilling to learn how.
Not that thats what you recommended PDFs for, just something I was surprised by and think is useful to know!
Edit: I re-tested the integration, and it went fine this time–10/10 would recommend.
Zotero for managing your references. Since you’ll be sharing with others using Word—make sure to use the right settings.
I use a TTS extension which reads out text using the system’s TTS engine. I forgot the name but it’s very handy for reading or reviewing text.
