How to Layout a Bible in Writer?

[JohnBoyTheGreat]

Hi Everyone,

I'm a Bible translator, and would like to use OpenOffice to layout the Bible, complete with footnotes, index, etc. Any ideas? I'm finding it difficult...

The format hasn't been decided yet, but it will be either a large column with a notes column on the side (probably left side) or two columns with notes below. I haven't the slightest idea how to implement footnotes or how to get started with this project. I'm hoping that someone has some ideas I can use. I THINK I may be able to setup page numbering, but I'm not entirely certain. Also, I believe alternating pages should have alternating margins (i.e. left-hand pages should have the right binding edge a bit larger, right-hand pages the opposite).

Any suggestions would be sincerely appreciated!


John

[acknak]

You may want to read these threads for some discussion of some issues that come up:
http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=51986
http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=59443

It should be ok if you only need a fairly simple text layout. Once you start including notes, cross-references, special headings and all the extras that modern English Bibles have, it becomes quite a stretch to do in a word processor like OOo Writer.

If you have a complete translation, you probably want to use a master document, with subdocuments for each book. Otherwise, working with the whole thing in one file becomes rather unwieldy: many minutes to load or save the file, and increased likelihood of a broken file.