[SI-LIST] Re: Report Creators
- From: "Michael J. Degerstrom" <degers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: p2rich@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, "'SI Newsgroup'" <si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2003 10:38:09 -0500
Rich
If you have a lot of unix experience then I am very happy with my tools for
technical documentation:
1) word processor : openoffice - you can import EPS figures
2) graph plotting: grace (xmgrace) - I print to a postscript file
3) drawing tool: xfig - you can draw from scratch, or use 'pstoedit'
to convert postcript to an xfig file - then export EPS for importing
into openoffice
4) formulas: LyX, I haven't used it yet but have heard good things about it.
I don't know if you can somehow read LyX formulas in EPS format
into openoffice and reference them. You can write your entire document
in LyX but I'd guess LyX, as a general word processor, is primitive
5) ps2pdf, is a utility to convert postscript to PDF, most tools including
openoffice will allow you to print to a file in postscript format
6) presentations: same as (1)
7) spreadsheets: openoffice has a very good spreadsheet
So the result from these tools is a final report with figures that are vector
format, meaning that they are crisp looking and the file sizes are very
small. I've downloaded too many 3Gb powerpoint files (or PDF created from
powerpoint) only to see very little content and the graphs are fuzzy).
I know many of you who have some unix experience are thinking that you have to
do a lot of messy command lines in xterm shells. However, I've written the
commonly used command lines into file associations into the KDE file browser.
So I can quickly go through the entire process flow described above without
ever using a command line.
One thing I haven't been able to do on unix/linux is to create a PDF file with
bookmarks and side thumbnails. But I haven't looked for a solution either.
Mike
On Friday 06 June 2003 09:01 am, Rich Peyton wrote:
> Does anyone have suggestions on software that is dedicated for creating
> Technical Reports with the capability to do drawings, formulas, pictures
> which layers all types of formats. I've been creating them in Microsoft
> Word, Excel etc. but there has to be something else more dedicated to the
> creation of Technical Reports.
>
> Thanks
>
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