[lug] Free Linux Authoring Tools?

stimits at comcast.net stimits at comcast.net
Sun Mar 13 08:29:15 MDT 2016


Hi,
 
I have the need to write a technical document which isn't a full book, but which is large enough it could use chapters, index, table of contents, so on (a structured document). It would be best if it could be exported to PDF, XHTML, plain text, and PostScript. I'm looking for authoring tools to do this from Linux.
 
It seems that having the document in DocBook XML format would make structuring this for all of the different output types practical. There are tools to quickly produce any layout I want. The trouble is, I don't want to write a hundred pages by manually writing tags and codes, and would really like the table of contents to be dynamically generated based on chapters. I have not seen any free editors which could run on DocBook code under the covers, while giving a WYSIWYG display for whichever style sheet. Many people have used TeX and family for thesis and technical documents, but I suspect this also requires knowing the tags and macros (plus I don't think it supports automatic generation of a table of contents without writing code). I see Lyx, and I like this for simply laying out a page, but it becomes terribly manual at times when doing things like vertically centering text for a page cover...I'd prefer to mark the text as vertically centered, and then let a style sheet conversion decide how to do it (if at all). I could live with seeing plain text in some form of tree hierarchy, and then running separate conversion tools for final format, such as something half way between an XML code editor and plain text.
 
Is there any advise anyone can give on Linux tools for structured authoring with subsequent conversion to multiple formats?
 
Thanks!
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.lug.boulder.co.us/pipermail/lug/attachments/20160313/78ed6cf1/attachment.html>


More information about the LUG mailing list