The right click on an element activates a new context menu. The current active element of the form has a red frame border you can select an element in choosing the Select icon (the one with an arrow, left to the text frame icon) and clicking on the item to be chosen. To add a field simply click on the arrow on the right side of the OK icon and select a type from the displayed options: button, text field, check box, combo box, and list box. Now we can start adding form elements: some text fields and one button for submitting our form to an URL.
Having filled our frames with text, we can change their properties with the Properties palette, which can be found in the Windows menu. We need some text frames to make a nice title and field descriptions - a few clicks on the text frame icon (that one right to the arrow) and all the text frames are there in no time. Let us turn on the grid first (menu View>Show Grid), it will help us to correctly locate our form fields on the page. We start with clicking on the "New Document" icon or choosing New from the File menu. Its rather simple to create a new form with Scribus.
Nevertheless, Scribus already is a useful PDF forms tool for many people, and it is becoming better at an incredible pace. For example, there is an issue with the behaviour of radio buttons(see this list of bugs and feature requests related to PDF forms). There are still some issues around creating PDF forms in Scribus that need to be addressed to make Scribus a fully featured PDF forms tool. However, this online submission works only when using the Acrobat Reader plugin, not when using the standalone Acrobat Reader application. Information in a PDF form may also be submitted online to a remote location for further processing. Usually, PDF forms are filled out by users on their computers and then printed out locally. One of the biggest advantages of Scribus is its ability to create PDF forms with embedded JavaScript scripts.
The Downloadsīasic_novel_LibreOffice.zip – A zip file that unzips to a folder containing all the files. In order to use different fonts, you will have to edit the LibreOffice style. Instead of these fonts, you can use any fonts on your system.
The template, like its Scribus partner only uses two fonts, EB Garamond and Sorts Mill Goudy download them here: EB Garamond and Sorts Mill Goudy. I wanted to make Scribus and LibreOffice templates to produce about the same output. You might have noticed that this looks a lot like the PDF made from the Scribus template I put in my previous post. I made this PDF from the template: basic_novel_LibreOffice. The template is for a basic novel in the 9×6 format. If you try this, beware! Basic Novel LibreOffice template The switch to Word might mess up the formatting. Newer versions of MS Word are alleged to open. The purpose of this post is make a template available to the LibreOffice (or OpenOffice) community. Some of these cost $3o or $40, but they are available. There are templates for MS Word already available on the web. (Need I say more?) If you haven’t made the switch, go ahead and download it. LibreOffice is a fully-featured office suite for Linux, Mac, Windows and other operating systems. In this post I provide a LibreOffice template for a basic novel. If you must use your word processor, do a good job of it. It is better to use a graphics design program such as the open source (and free) Scribus or the $$$ Adobe InDesign, but these programs have steep learning curves. Using your word processor can lead to a shoddy job (see Book Interior Design: Tips to Avoid the Amateur Look). If you want to do it yourself, if you can’t afford to pay someone to do it for you, or if you are trying to cut the costs of producing our book to the bone (see Twelve Tips: How to Reduce the Cost of Your Self-Published Book), then you might be tempted to use a program you know: your trusty word processor. You can pay someone large bucks to do it or you can do it yourself. You’ve just finished your soon-to-be-best-selling novel and now you need to produce the interior of your novel in PDF format so you can ship it off to Amazon and become famous, not to mention, rich.