MLE: Proposed Topics

 

Included are:

• B2T V L2R: Writing Direction;

• B2T V R2L: Writing Direction;

• Boustrophedon: Writing Direction;

• L2R 45 downslant: Writing Direction;

• L2R 45 upslant: Writing Direction;

• L2R H T2B: Writing Direction;

• L2R V B2T: Writing Direction;

• R2L 45 downslant: Writing Direction;

• R2L 45 upslant: Writing Direction;

• R2L H T2B: Writing Direction;

• R2L V B2T: Writing Direction;

• Reverse Boustrophedon: Writing Direction;

• T2B V L2R: Writing Direction;

• T2B V R2L: Writing Direction;

• Akkasian;

• Alibata;

• Aramaic;

• Coastal Salish;

• Coptic;

• Devangari;

• Greek;

• Hangul;

• Hebrew;

• Hittite;

• Huna;

• Lepcha;

• Manchu;

• Meriotic;

• Mongolian;

• Nashu;

• Naxi;

• Ogham;

• Orkhon;

• Pahawh Hmong;

• Pegong

• Rongo-Rongo;

• Sanskrit;

• Tengwar;

• Thai;

• Tsalgi;

• Vai;

• Xhosa;

• Zuni;

• Chinese (Language) (Traditional);

• Spanish (Language);

• English (Language);

• Hindi (Language);

• Arabic (Language);

• Portuguese (Language);

• Bengali (Language);

• Russian (Language);

• Japanese (Language);

• Lahinda (Language);

• Javanese (Language);

• German (Language);

• Enochian (Conlang);

• Solresol (Conlang);

• Mondoshowan (Conlang);

• Klingon (Conlang);

• Tengwar (Conlang);

• toki pona (Conlang);

• Esperanto (Conlang);

Template: Music Paper

Music Paper

• Template URL: http://templates.services.openoffice.org/en/template/music-paper
• Rating on Apache OpenOffice Website: 3.9 (48 votes);
• License: BSD
• License URL: http://www.openoffice.org/licenses/BSD.pdf
• Template attributed tor: Volker Ahrendt
• Template creator: Sun MicroSystems
• Component: Write
• Page size: US Letter
• Font: Liberation Sans

Function

This template is for printing music paper.

There are nine staves on the page. For transcribing music, one will probably want to create a second sheet, that consists exclusively of staves.

Each stave is constructed as a table. As such, it is not usable for those who use the LOSA set of extensions, to create sheet music from within LibreOffice. For those who write music by hand, printing the sheets out.

Template: 1/10 ¨ Cartesian Graph Paper

1/10 ¨ Cartesian Graph Paper

• Template URL: http://templates.services.openoffice.org/en/template/110-cartesian-graph-paper
• Rating on Apache OpenOffice Website: 3.9 (31 votes);
• License: BSD
• License URL: http://www.openoffice.org/licenses/BSD.pdf
• Template attributed tor: Volker Ahrendt
• Template creator: Sun MicroSystems
• Component: Write
• Page size: US Letter
• Font: Albany

Function

This template is for printing graph paper. It is not a full page. By playing with page styles, the table can be expanded by adding additional rows and columns, so that it is a full page.

I don’t have a printer, so I can’t print this out, to verify that the squares are one tenth of an inch in size. Furthermore, the only ruler I have, uses the metric system.

Template: 1/4 ¨ Cartesian Graph Paper

1/4 ¨ Cartesian Graph Paper

• Template URL: http://templates.services.openoffice.org/en/template/14-cartesian-graph-paper
• Rating on Apache OpenOffice Website: 3.9 (31 votes);
• License: BSD
• License URL: http://www.openoffice.org/licenses/BSD.pdf
• Template attributed tor: Volker Ahrendt
• Template Creator: Sun MicroSystems
• Component: Write
• Page size: US Letter
• Font: Albany

Function

This template is for printing graph paper. It is not a full page. By playing with page styles, the table can be expanded by adding additional rows and columns, so that it is a full page.

Scenario Template

• Template URL: http://templates.services.openoffice.org/en/template/scenario-template
• Rating on Apache OpenOffice Website: 4 (2 votes);

This template was not available for downloading. Consequently, it was neither tested, nor rated.

Extensions for NeoOffice, Libreoffice, EuroOffice, Apache OpenOffice, and AndrOffice.

AndrOffice offers 3 extensions.

 
Apache Open Office claims the following number of extensions:

By operating system:

• 752 extensions for Windows;
• 684 extensions for Mac OS X;
• 704 extensions for Linux;
• 668 extensions  for Linux x86_64;
• 657 extensions for Solaris x86;
• 655 extensions for SolarisSparc;

By component:

• 391 extensions for the program as a whole;
• 284 extensions for Writer; 
• 195 extensions for Calc;
• 100 extensions for Draw;
• 84 extensions for Draw;
• 29 extensions for Base;
• 13 extensions for Charts;
• 10 extensions for Math;

Doing a keyword search, there are:

• 159 extensions which are dictionaries;
• 51 extensions which are templates;
• 34 extensions which consist of clipart;

EuroOffice offers 17 extensions.

LibreOffice claims:

• 304 projects with 680 available releases.

NeoOffice does not appear to offer any extensions.

These numbers were initially compiled on 21 December 2016. 
The most recent  update was on 30 December 2016.
Not all figures were verified when the most recent update was done.

LibreOffice Tools for Translators

Whilst I jest that I learned to read a dozen languages in self-defense, there is more than a grain of truth to that. Virtually all of the translation I do, is for my own use.

For those that infrequently translate material, the extensions available for LibreOffice are more than adequate.

The major issue is machine translation is what has been referred to as the "invisible, insane problem. Translating the expression "Out of sight, out of mind", into the target language, the  back-translation becomes "Invisible, Insane".

Translation Table

At a basic level, this tool splits your page in half, with the source content on the left hand side, and the target content on the right hand side.  You have to do the translation yourself.  This is emphatically not Computer Aided Translation, but rather, a way to have the source and target material right next to each other, and still use LibreOffice.  Rephrased, for infrequent translation, or "short" material, it is "good enough".

In the screenshot below, I'm using Genesis chapter 1, from the Clementine Vulgate, as the example source text. I haven't started the translation, hence the white space on the right hand side.

Translation Table in Action

Linguist

This was originally written to ease the difficulty in creating dictionaries. More specifically, finding words that are not in the dictionary.  To that end, it can generate four different lists:

• Unrecognized Words;
• All words listed alphabetically;
• All words listed by frequency;
• Statistics;

Statistics, provides some of the same statistical data as is provided at ">File >Properties >Statistics".

Using the Clementine Vulgate to generate an example Linguist Statistics report:

Number of words: 760,594
Number of full stops: 238
Number of long words (7 or more characters): 194,322
Number of words per full stop: 3195.7731092436975
Percentage long words: 25.54871587206841
Lix (readability): 3,221.321825115766
Number of different words: 85,775.0
Lexical variety: 0.113

Using the same text, ">File >Properties >Statistics" generates the following:

Pages: 1,241
Tables: 0
Images: 0
OLE Objects: 0
Paragraphs: 35,492
Words: 760,555
Characters: 4,482,356
Characters excluding spaces: 3,686,205
Lines: 13,864

Those differences should suffice to demonstrate the focus of Linguist on content, rather than presentation.

Anaphraseus

This tool is not intuitive to use. It requires spending time, and effort, learning how to effectively utilize it. Once one has done so, it is invaluable.

The big question is whether to put the time into learning how to use this tool, or in learning how to use Omega-T.

Short answer:

• For professional translation, Omega-T is the clear winner;
• If you are frequently translating material, Omega-T has the edge;
• For non-professional translation, it is a toss-up;
• For infrequent translation, it is a tossup, with Anaphraseus having a slight edge;

I might well be showing my bias toward Omega-T here.There are professional translators, who swear by this extension. Point is, I'm comparing an extension to a specifically written program, both of which achieve the same end result.


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This post was originally written in 2014.