This repository contains the uncompressed LibreOffice XML files (ending in
.fdot) used for creating the reference manual of flow
To make the rather large manual feasible to edit on most systems, the document is organized as a master document (`parts/main.fodt) which contains links to many other LibreOffice documents that contain the individual parts.
Each chapter is in its own document (e.g. parts/chapters/1.fodt for the first
chapter). The same holds for the chapters of the appendices (e.g
parts/appendices/A.fodt for Appendix A).
Many of the chapter files contain themselves links to external documents. Those
are representing sections (e.g. parts/chapters/sections/4/3.fodt for section
4.3 that is linked to from parts/chapters/4.fodt).
The special subsections (4.3, 5.3, 6.3, 7.3, 8.3, 9.3, 10.3, 11.3, and 12.3)
contain all the descriptions of the keywords supported or not supported by
flow. Each keyword is described in its
own LibreOffice file and referenced as an external link in the subsection file.
An example of such a file is parts/chapters/subsections/4.3/COLUMNS.fodt.
Note that any document containing links to external documents should never be edited directly. If such a document would be saved then LibreOffice would remove all the links to the external documents and instead embed those documents into the document that is edited. This would break the above described structure.
Make sure to disable document comparison mode in LibreOffice. Since we already use version control with Git, it would make editing the documents more difficult if LibreOffice saved version information into the files also. The option can be disabled in LibreOffice by choosing the menu item Tools → Options → LibreOffice Writer → Comparison and then uncheck the box "Store it when changing the document", see screenshot.
Please note that this setting might influence your whole LibreOffice experience as it is used whenever you open LibreOffice. If you do not want that then you will need to set it back after editing the manual.
Open main.fodt. Select from the menu item Tools → Update → Indexes and Tables.
You may have to wait some minutes for the update to complete.
You can now export the manual to PDF. From the File menu, select "Export As" → "Export as PDF…",
and click the "Export" button in the dialog, then choose a filename for the PDF file.
For further information please see the following READMEs:
- fonts/README.md for information about how to display the documents correctly with the correct fonts (e.g. using docker)
- scripts/python/README.md for information about the scripts used for splitting the original document.