2012年4月20日金曜日

How LibreOffice Writer Tops MS Word 12 Features

When reviewers look at LibreOffice and its ancestor OpenOffice.org, they inevitably assume that it's inferior to Microsoft Office. At the very most, they may grudgingly find it acceptable for undemanding users.

However, when you examine LibreOffice and MS Office without assumptions, the comparison changes dramatically. That's especially true when looking at the word processors, LibreOffice's Writer and MS Office's Word.

For one thing, features frequently have different names in Writer and Word. Although LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org have a history of conforming to MS Office's name-choices -- for example, in the spreadsheets, data pilots were recently renamed pivot tables to match Excel's usage -- holdouts remain. For example, the equivalent of Word's AutoSummary in Writer remains AutoAbstract.

For another, features are not always in the same positions in Writer and Word. Since Word sports a ribbon interface while LibreOffice remains with a traditional menu, finding equivalent features is even harder than a decade ago, because Word often buries advanced features several levels down, often in drop-down lists.

Once you get to know Writer and Word, the differences become less clear-cut. To a degree, Writer has always imitated Word in the hopes of being competitive. More important, in the last few years the two have been in a mostly unnoticed arms race, with one rarely adding another feature without the other one copying it as soon as possible.

Far from one having an obvious advantage, in recent years the feature lists of Writer and Word have become closer than ever.

All the same, some basic differences remain. Far from being the underdog in every circumstance, Writer has at least twelve major advantages over Word. Together, these advantages not only suggest a very different design philosophy from Word, but also demonstrate that, from the perspective of an expert user, Writer is the superior tool.

1) The Navigator

Word has a pane on the left side of the editing window that uses headings as a tool for moving through a document. However, with Writer's Navigator, you can jump back and forth in a document not just by heading styles, but by any type of object you care to name: tables, frames, graphics, comments, links, or anything else you care to name.

Get into the habit of naming objects instead of accepting defaults like Table1, and the Navigator becomes even more powerful. Moreover, since the Navigator is a floating window, you can place it anywhere on the screen, so that it doesn't reduce the size of the editing window.

And that's not all: the Navigator can be used as a basic outliner and as a table of contents for a master document made up smaller documents. It's a little like KRunner or GNOME+Do -- a flexible, minimalist tool for advanced users. The longer the document, the more powerful you'll find the Navigator.

2) The Styles and Formatting Window

Another floating window, Styles and Formatting is even more powerful than the Navigator. Opened by pressing F11, it places all of LibreOffice's five categories of styles -- paragraphs, characters, frames, pages, and lists -- within easy reach, providing different views of each category, and allowing easy creation and modification of styles. Much of its functionality is also available in Word, but several layers down -- an arrangement that discourages users from adding the elegance of styles to their workflows.

True, Word does have style previews, which Styles and Formatting lacks. But previews are only useful for characters; for paragraphs, they would need to show at least three lines to be useful. Besides, when you can easy apply a style to the document directly as an experiment, then change it just as easily, previews become redundant.

3) Page Styles

In Word, you can adjust all the usual page features, from margins to the number of columns. But different page orientations and designs can only be added as a kludge, and all paragraphs have the same alignment.

Writer's addition of page styles gives you far more flexibility with less effort. By careful use of the Organizer tab, you can set your document to change page styles automatically, so that a First Page style is always followed by a Left Page and a Left Page by a Right Page. Since headers and footers are also attached to page style, you can also use different header and footer styles automatically.

4) Separate List Styles

Although the fact is hidden, Word does allow you to create paragraph styles that include a bullet or numbered list. In Word 2010, you can even create a multi-level style, which was difficult in earlier releases.

However, Writer makes list styles separate, and gains two advantages. First, the same list style can be used by more than one paragraph style, which reduces the number of styles to set up.

Second, because lists are a separate style category in Writer, there is more room in the dialog window for customizing features. Among other things, you can use a text or graphical bullet, and position the text precisely in relation to the bullet or number. You can even use a warning sign as a large bullet in order to add it automatically in an instruction manual.

5) Frame Styles

Frames are the containers for objects in a document. In Writer, they can have styles applied to them -- a feature that is roughly paralleled in Word for text frames, but not for other objects.

Why would you want to use frame styles? For the same reason you use any styles: to automate your work. Instead of setting characteristics like the border, background and text wrap around each time you insert an object -- or finding, copying and pasting an earlier frame -- you can apply a frame style with a single click. Frame styles are especially useful for hard-to-position frames, like those for annotations in the margin.

6) Hierarchical Paragraph Styles

Technically, Word paragraph styles are hierarchical. However, since every style is based on Normal, the hierarchy is not much use when you want to make subtle design changes quickly

Admittedly, all Writer's paragraph styles are based ultimately on the Default style. But Writer's paragraph styles also have intermediate levels. If you want to change all the headings in a document, instead of editing styles Heading1 through Heading10, you only need to change the Heading style. The same arrangement applies to the styles used for indexes and tables of contents.

7) WYSISYG Headers and Footers

In the last few releases, headers and footers have become significantly less awkward in Word. Using multiple header and footer layouts in particular has become much easier.

Unfortunately, though, headers and footers in Word continue to be restrained by limited designs that divide the space into several columns and that use partly hidden features and labeled diagrams for editing. As a result, in Word you still get only an approximation of what the edited results are like as you edit.

Unlike Word, Writer shows headers and footers very chose to how they will print, with more options. It also ties them to page styles, making them easier to find than in Word.

Writer also gives you more control. Where Word only allows users to set the distance between the header or footer and page edge, Writer also lets you choose the distance from the text and the distance from the left and right margins and choices about how to set the height of headers and footers.

The type and position of any lines in the header or footer can also be modified, as well as the header and footer paragraph styles. Everything about headers and foots is handled more simply and in more detail than in Word.

8) Custom Properties

Individual users often ignore document properties. However, in corporate settings, details such as who wrote the document – and security to control who can do what with a document – can be important. Those who publish online or on an intranet are also concerned with keywords, which can help searchers to locate a document.

However, only Writer includes the ability to add properties. You could, for instance, add fields for an artist or an editor who worked on a document. These fields could then be used where appropriate in the document, instead of typing the names each time.

Should the names changed or need to be updated, you can do so once under custom properties instead of going through the document making manual changes. In this way, custom properties are much like styles.

9) Paragraph by Paragraph Hyphenation

How a document is hyphenated strongly affects its final appearance. Word treats hyphenation strictly on the document level. You can hyphenate manually, making decisions for yourself, or automatically. For automatic hyphenation, you can choose to limit the number of consecutive hyphens at the end of lines, and the "hyphenation zone"or the space in which hyphenation may occur at the end of the line.

In Writer, hyphenation is a feature of paragraph styles. This orientation has the advantage of letting you adjust hyphenation according to the format, letting it be looser on a line with a ragged right alignment, or tighter on a line with a justified alignment.

Just as important, instead of using the ambiguous concept of a "hyphenation zone," Writer lets you adjust hyphenation in the much more meaningful unit of characters at the end and start of a line. Writer does include a document hyphenation tool as well, but that is mostly a finishing touch, like spell checking to clean up what the paragraph settings have been unable to handle as you've rearranged text.

10) Improved Table of Contents Options

Word generates tables of contents quickly, using existing templates. However, the result is uneditable, and invariably runs leader dots between the title and page number -- a sure sign of failed design to any typographer.

Writer provides a far wider arrange of possibilities. You can adjust the position of all the components of a table of contents entry, or whether they appear at all. Each level of the table includes its own editable paragraph style, and, while Writer, like Word, assumes you will use heading styles to create entries, you can also manually enter other markers as well.

The result is a far richer set of design options than in Word, a set that is far more easily updated.

11) Advanced PDF Options

Both Writer and Word support saving a file as PDF. However, Word provides only basic options. Either you can choose to produce a minimal sized or print quality PDF, or you can chose from a handful of options, such as page range, and whether to create bookmarks or password protect the PDF.

As free software often does, Writer's Export to PDF provides an exhaustive set of options for those who want them. Instead of Word's vague options for quality, Writer lets you set the image quality and resolution.

Similarly, you can decide exactly how links in the original are handled and exactly what is password protected. In addition, it lets you set the details of the initial view for the PDF and the window in which it displays. Short of going to Acrobat itself, you won't find a more complete set of options for PDF creation.

12) Stability, Long Documents, and Recovery

MS Office 2010 is generally credited with having the reputation of being far more stable than earlier releases. However, a service pack has been released, and stability remains a relative concept.

Rearranging material can still leave a document in hopeless confusion, and, in general, the use of word should be confined either to documents that contain only text and are under about thirty pages, and documents with graphics, tables, and other objects of under twenty pages.

The verdict is also out on whether master documents in Word are reliable -- mainly, from what I can figure, because experienced users have developed such a phobia about master documents corrupting their files that they never use them.

The situation in Writer is much different. From first-hand experience, I can say that two gigabytes of RAM is enough for tolerable performance while editing documents of up to five hundred pages without documents. And while I have had master documents (and one or two other large files) crash LibreOffice, I have always recovered them without them being corrupted, and almost always without a recurrence.

The main reason for crashes in LibreOffice appears to be system memory. With sixteen gigabytes of RAM, Writer has yet to crash any document that I have opened -- something that I can't say about Word.

The Difference in the Design

These twelve features are not cherry-picked. Rather, they are a result of going through the menus item by item, ignoring cosmetic differences and concentrating on the major functional ones.

To be fair, you could make a similar (if probably shorter) list of Word's advantages that would include superior outlining and cross-reference systems, as well as grammar checking. Word also comes with a larger selection of templates, although a few dozen downloads of Writer templates would soon remedy that.

Moreover, the discussion could be complicated immensely by considering all the available add-ons. For instance, as Word installs, it lacks Writer's hidden sections and paragraphs, offering only the much more cumbersome hidden text. With an add-on, it achieves parity.

In the same way, LibreOffice's extension PDF Import gives it an ability utterly lacking in Word. However, since many users are unaware of these extras, I have left them out for simplicity's sake.

However, when all these considerations are taken into account, what is striking is not just that Writer more than holds its own, but the pattern that its advantages fall into.

Features like the Navigator emphasize that Writer is a mid-level desktop publishing app as much as a word processor. In fact, as I proved to myself years ago, LibreOffice makes a more than adequatesubstitute for FrameMaker, which is intended for long, text-oriented documents.

Further proof of Writer's design is its emphasis on styles, and its ability to fine-tune features whose defaults a Word user often has no choice except to accept. The closer you look, the more Writer seems designed for those who frequently write documents of over twenty pages, and who want the option sometimes to control layout closely, sometimes down to the last millimeter.

By contrast, Word's design favors shorter documents, and users who are less concerned with layout and exactness than getting a task done with a minimum of distraction.

Moreover, while a bit of preparation can make Writer suitable for light users, little can be done to make Word suitable for more demanding users.

Really, the superficial conventional wisdom has the wrong view entirely. It's not LibreOffice Writer that needs to catch up to MS Word. From an expert's perspective, it's frequently MS Word that needs to catch up by LibreOffice Writer.

Porting ICS Transition Animation on all Android Phones and ROMs

We are showing you the procedure to port the ICS transition animations on all the ROMs and also on all the mobile phones. The procedure is simple and it is written to cater the requirements of all the smartphones so that on every mobile, ICS transition animation can be ported.

Instructions
1. The first requirement is that you must have APK Manager installed. So, downloadAPK Manager <http://www.techofweb.com/technology/modify-android-apk.html> .

2. Install the APK Manager.

3. Using any unzip tool such as Winrar or Winzip, extract the file framework-res.apk, which can be seen in the \System\framework\ folder.

4. On your system, go to the directory apk_manager.

5. You will see a folder by the name 'place-apk-here-for-modding'

6. Put the file 'framework-res.apk' in this folder.

7. Go back to apk-manager folder.

8. You will see a file Script.bat there.

9. Single-click Script.bat file and hit Enter key.

10. You will see that a command prompt window appears.

11. Search there 'Please make your decision'.

12. Write 22 and hit Enter button.

13. Then write 1 and hit Enter.

14. Write 9 now and hit Enter.

15. You will see that the script is decompiling framework-res.apk.

16. Go to your apk manager directory.

17. Go to Projects/framework-res.apk/res/anim/. You will see that there are your ROM animations in the form of some .xml files.

18. Download ICS Transition <http://www.mediafire.com/?1qjwtotg1r8umm1>

19. Consider copying the files from anims directory of downloaded into anim folder.

20. It will ask if you want to replace the files.

21. Confirm the replacement by selecting 'Yes'.

22. After the above copy is done, copy the files form directory 'other_files' to 'anim' folder.

23. Go to apk-manager folder. Go to Projects/framework-res.apk/res/anim/.

24. Open xml file integers with any Editor.

25. Search for text 'shortAnimTime'.

26. Add below lines under the 'shortAnimTime' line.

27. Save the xml file integers.

28. Return to the Script.

29. Enter 11 and hit Enter

30. You will see that the script is re-building the framework-res apk.

31. You will be asked to confirm it as a system app.

32. Confirm it by entering y.

33. Hit Enter button.

34. It will ask you one other question.

35. Enter y.

36. Some processing will take place.

37. Please make sure that now you are not pressing any button now and also make sure that you not close that window. This is must.

38. In the apk-manager directory, a new folder will be created by the process. The name of that folder would be 'keep'.

39. Open the 'keep' folder and delete 'resources.arsc' file.

40. Go inside 'keep' to /res/anim and consider deleting all the files with same name as all files with 'anims' folder

41. Return to Script and hit Enter button.

42. Some processing will take place.

43. Go to directory 'place-apk-here-for-modding'.

44. You will see an apk by the name 'unsignedframework-res.apk'.

45. Copy this apk outside and rename it as 'framework-res.apk'

46. You can now push it to your system or can create a flashable zip file but make sure that you sign it first :)

47. You all are done. Congrats a lot :)

MagicCode---run a arm apk in mips device

The developers of code magic team have developed a tool by the name 'magic-code' that enables running arm based nativec apks on MIPS devices. The tool Magiccode helps in converting .so in apks to the MIPS code directly. It helps the users running arm apks easily. The developer team tested their tool on a number of applications and all are working perfect as per them.
Please note that only some of the arm based applications are found to be working and we cannot guarantee that all applications will work. It is been tested on ICS 4.01, 3.2 HoneyComb Knight and Ainol Novo7 Basic. So, if your smart phone has Android 3.2 Rom then you can install it in the same way as you install the other apks. After installation, you need to open the app, turn it on, wait for some time and you are ready to all go .

This is good attempt by the developer team as it lets you buy certain smart phones which you think not to buy just because of the incapability of those devices to run some apks. Such as if you are thinking of purchasing basic then you can go for it and can predict that your phone will be able to run many HD games in the coming future.
Porting Ics on mobiles
One of the users who tried this magic-code with the chainfire 3d drivers find his phone hanged. The chainfire 3d application, when is installed, hangs the mobile device when the drivers are installed. You will not be able to boot your smartphone and you will be required for firmware update.
Please note that for Novo7 with HC 3.2, you need 20111217 HC Rom else you will get the error message of 'operating system not supported'.

Download Magic code <http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1411879>

2012年4月19日木曜日

Win 95/98/XP and Linux OSs (Knoppix/Ubuntu/Redhat etc) on your Android!!!

Yes ! Now you can run x86 based operating systems on your ARM device. 

Now you can have full desktop windows/linux experience on your Android smartphones. 

The windows 95 works great on my EVO3D 
All credits to their respective developers..... 

Instructions :
1.Download and install Bochs2_5_1.apk (stable but slower) orQEMU.apk (unstable but faster)

2.Download SDL(BOCHS).zip for Bochs2_5_1.apk and SDL(QEMU).zip forQEMU.apk and extract on root of sdcard , so path should be sdcard/SDL/*.*

3.Put a disk image of type ".img" of any operating system in SDL folder and rename it to "c.img" (tested : win 95/98/XP ----------------Linux OSs like Ubuntu/Knoppix/redhat etc can also be used)

4.Run Bochs or LibSDL from appdrawer. Let it boot (takes a while) and enjoy.

How to Create .IMG from .VHD disk image in Second Post

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Instructions (BOCHS) : (i forgot to post the instructions so thanks to HDD_x8 for posting this)
- The screen works as touchpad to control the mouse cursor and volume up/down works as left/right click.
- You can also tap the screen to generate left click.(this does not work everytime)
- Back = BackSpace, Menu = Enter, left-upper corner click generates TAB
- left-lower corner click popups keyboard 
( For a desktop like experience use this keyboard -> Hackers Keyboard)
-Create a folder called "HDD" on the root of your SDcard and put your softwares/files or anything in there. When you boot windows, then in "My Computer" you will see "d" drive which will have the "HDD" folder contents. So you can install/use them in Windows.
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Instructions (QEMU):
- The screen works as touchpad to control the mouse cursor.
- You can also tap the screen to generate left click (right click is not possible AFAIK) .
- Back = BackSpace, Holding Menu = popups keyboard 
( For a desktop like experience use this keyboard -> Hackers Keyboard)
- No custom files can be used as of now,  will find a way and post here again.
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MHL to HDMI out tested and confirmed working  (thanks to HDD_x8again.)

Some freeware disk images can be found here or here (not sure if any of them will work as i have not tested , only win 95/98/XP are tested.)


Attached Files
Bochs2_5_1.apk - [Click for QR Code] (1.21 MB, 3688 views)
SDL(BOCHS).zip - [Click for QR Code] (48.6 KB, 3207 views)
SDL(QEMU).zip - [Click for QR Code] (55.7 KB, 2533 views)
QEMU.apk - [Click for QR Code] (666.7 KB, 3265 views)
 

Install, Run Windows 95 98 XP on Android HTC EVO 3D

Power users love to play with their Android phones and often they experiment installing Linux flavors on their Android phones.

XDA developer mnomaanw has successfully installed Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows XP and Linux on HTC EVO 3D in a fairly easy process. To summarize, all a user needs to do is download the required software, modify a file or two and run the apk.  And it boots into Windows.

 

This Windows port for Phones is one of the best ever. It does fair justice to the hardware buttons, touchscreen by giving you fairly easy controls.

How to Install Windows 95, 98, XP on Android Phone: HTC EVO 3D

Pre-requisites: Windows 95/98/XP Image: ISO or .IMG. (IMG preferred and tested).
Step 1. Download bochs.apk [mirror] and SDL.zip [mirror]. Put SDL.zip on root of sdcard/
Step 2. Put the Windows 95/98/XP disk image .img/.iso [(need to change setting in bochsrc.txt accordingly (iso not tested yet)] of any operating system in SDL folder and rename it to "c.img".
Step 3. Run Bochs apk. Let it boot (takes a while) and enjoy.

Note: Use this bochsrc.txt to use a folder called "HDD" on your sdcard as a drive in windows. Replace the original bochsrc.txt withthe one stated before. Further updates on xda thread.

Instructions for input controls are as follows:

  • To emulate touchpad on touchscreen and left/right mouse buttons on volume
  • You can also click touch screen to generate mouse left button click.(this does not work everytime)
  • Back = BackSpace, Menu = Enter, left-upper corner click generates TAB
  • left-lower corner click popups keyboard

 

WindowsでAndroidアプリを動かす『BlueStacks』がなかなか面白い

Androidのゲームアプリやカメラアプリを、より大きな画面で楽しみたいという方に、ユニークなWindows用フリーソフトをご紹介しましょう。このソフトを使えば、Windows上でAndroidアプリを利用することができます。普段小さな画面で目が疲れるという方にはオススメ!

ソフトは『BlueStacks』と言います。2012年3月末に「beta-1」版がリリースされて以来、すでに100万ダウンロードを達成し、このソフトを経由してダウンロードされたAndroidアプリは1200万以上にも上るそうです。海外のネットユーザーで注目を集めており、はやくも人気の兆し。

利用はとても簡単、アプリをダウンロードすると最初に、言語選択を行います。Android端末をお持ちの方は、メールアドレスと電話番号を入力(国コード:日本は81)。端末を持っていない方はメールアドレスだけでも利用が可能です。以上でインストールは完了。

デフォルトで「Evernote」や「Document To Go」、「カカオトーク」が入っています。そのほか利用したいアプリを検索したり、おすすめアプリをインストールすることが可能です。

しかしすべてのアプリが利用できるわけではなく、ものによっては思ったように機能しないアプリもあります。無料アプリをいくつかダウンロードして、試してみると良いでしょう。記者(私)もいくつかのアプリで試してみたのですが、ゲームアプリはうまく機能する頻度が高いようです。また、音楽制作アプリにも向いているかもしれません。興味のある方はお試しなってみてはいかがでしょうか。