Hullo scientists, fellow researcher here with a question for peers:

Do you have any suggestions for closed-off writing software (no AI scraping, no school oversight, no cloud storage with mysterious and unknown security). As we are all aware, formatting an article can take as much effort as writing the damn thing some days, especially if you do not want to use Microsoft or Google for ethical and privacy reasons.

My peers and I work with a lot of students who want to study and work with vulnerable populations, the sort of populations that some companies and (shameful) universities are attempting to delete evidence of. I am attempting to address some concerns coming up in the classroom without putting my career at risk. What better way than with a lesson and a resource list for secure writing and storage tips?

The school doesn’t pay for a Microsoft license, and some students have expressed feeling unsafe and uncomfortable supporting google. I have suggested Libreoffice as its what I use but some of the students are really struggling with formatting their papers to academic standards in this software. Admittedly, I agree, Libre takes 7-14 steps to do some things google can do in two clicks. I would like to look into alternatives.

Most of the writing applications I’m seeing both free and paid tend to be for creative writers or note taking and I am not seeing tools to make running titles or easily format your sources.

What are you all using, do you have recommendations? I

  • Libb@jlai.luEnglish
    2·
    6 days ago

    So things like running headers, simple reference lists formatted correctly with hanging indents. Running page counts.

    Styles (Paragraph, characters and pages styles) should be able to deal with most of that.

    The ability to insert figures easily without altering layout dramatically.

    In a program like a word processor, any added image will more or less dramatically screw up the existing layout. There is no workaround that as things on the page need to move around to make room for the new one, or to fill the space left by the one that you just removed.

    Also it’s important to keep in mind that apps like Word, Writer, Google Docs or Apple Pages do rely on the availability of the fonts used in the original document to correctly display the document on the viewer’s computer. So, if you open a document on a second computer n which there is not the same fonts, another font will be used which may not share the exact same properties as the original one and may screw up the layout more or less completely. Or you need to create a PDF file that anyone on any computer will be able to opne and display exactly as it was created but not to edit or certainly not as easily and in a much more limited manner that just opening the wordprocessor file itself. Here again, there is no perfect solution.

    The good news is that LibreOffice comes with its own preinstalled fonts and they are the same on Linux, Mac and Windows so it would be safer to stick whit those fonts and not use anything fancy. It can also easily create PDF.

    But, imho, the real good advice would be encourage your students (and maybe their teachers too) to not worry about page layout while they’re writing the paper. And to only work on the layout after they have finished writing it. Just don’t care about margin or look, colors, anything. It’s wasted time and energy while one is writing.

    They should only use a few Styles to format Headings and paragraphs of text, things like that’s it. Doing that, it will be much simpler when they start working on the layout to format everything at once exactly like they want or need it. And it should be much faster too because they will only have to do it once, and won’t have to constantly be adjusting things here and there every time they add or remove a picture, or change some text.

    That being said, Styles in LO Writer are not a magic wand that will do stuff automatically. They help a lot but one still need to learn to use them properly—never, ever use direct or manual formatting, never use the Enter key to add space between two lines or to create a page break, and so on. So, I insiste, but I don’t think there is a solution that will simply work out iof the box… beside hiring someone to do the layout for them (what many publishers do, btw: they have their own in-house design team or a freelance guy/team they hire to do exactly that).

    More info on Styles and templates in Writer:

    Im embarassed to say

    There is no need to be ;)

    I am unfamiliar with styles and will be looking into learning more about them. I’ve gotten sadly complacent with the familiarity of working in the school reccomended google apps for so long. Never too late to learn though!

    Indeed. I learned to mend clothes aged 40, I learned to solder electronics aged 45 and to write Linux scripts aged 50+.

    Thanks for your thoughts

    You’re welcome.