Re: [INDOLOGY] devanāgarī font

[Robert Zydenbos]

Dear Hans Heinrich,

On Aug 19, 2014, at 17:00 , "Hock, Hans Henrich" <hhhock at illinois.edu> wrote:

> Dear Robert,
> 
> Thanks for the helpful information. One question: How well do LibreOffice documents work in transmitting documents across platforms, to colleagues using different word processors, and to publishers?

My experiences could hardly be better. The native file format is ODT (OpenDocument Text), which is becoming increasingly the standard with governmental organizations across the world, and even with NATO (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument#Worldwide_adoption).

I request my students to send me term papers etc. either in ODT or RTF (emphatically *not* in DOC or DOCX from Word); most of them have followed my recommendation and are using LibreOffice (free software is especially attractive for students), and I have never experienced any problems. And I know that most of them use Linux and Windows machines, while I use Mac and Linux.

LibreOffice also has excellent filters for importing from and exporting to other formats: RTF, DocBook, XML, HTML, the infamous DOC and DOCX, and built-in export to PDF (with lots of fancy options). You can even get a plug-in that exports your text to more or less correct LaTeX (which usually needs some tweaking before it looks really good). Sometimes I have minor problems importing a very fancily formatted DOCX document (but Word users face such problems too: it's a problem with that file format).

Several publishers accept manuscripts in ODT. In any case LibreOffice can export texts in RTF, DOC etc., and the publishers with whom I have had dealings have never had problems with my submissions (which, in case of doubt, I send in two or three different file formats) either. It has always worked.

> Best wishes,

RZ

--
Prof. Dr. Robert J. Zydenbos
Institut für Indologie und Tibetologie
Universität München