Free Typesetting Software for the Professional Document Preparation
Writing Scientific Literature, Word Processing, Book Creation, Graphical Desktop Publishing,
Web PDF Documents, E-Book Typesetting, and the Creation of Websites
Specialists guarantee optimum End Products

Typesetting programs offer an extremely wide range of design options, the effective use of which re­quires a longer familiarization period. Long-term stable free software proves to be advantageous here, since changes to operating and functional concepts occur within the framework of natural de­vel­op­ment, in contrast to proprietary software, in which a continuous purchase of new products and operating manuals is often artificially forced. (Operating system) platform independence as well as the mastering of a truly open document format suitable for archiving are further central criteria, in particular for the use in heterogeneous company computer networks and in the administration area. High-quality typesetting is even possible with old and very old computers thanks to specialized lightweight free operating systems and software.

This overview introduces you to widely used, free typesetting systems and basic document types. Ex­ten­sive link lists lead to further, also powerful free program alternatives.

To ensure the technical and content-related integrity of your document, it is recommended that you are familiar with the practical application of cryptographic checksums (electronic fingerprints). In ad­di­tion, you can use cryptographic signing with OpenPGP to provide your documents, messages and e-mails with a verifiable personal proof of authenticity. If you then publish the public key certificate on your official website, for example, every reader and correspondence partner can have a sig­na­ture verification process carried out in the background, e.g. via their e-mail program, fully auto­mati­cal­ly (protection against identity abuse and theft!). The OpenPGP encryption standard also allows you to send your messages and documents (e.g. manuscripts, negotiation correspondence, draft con­tracts) in encrypted form.

If you would like to publish your au­thor's website in other languages as well, you can make direct use of an incredibly powerful ma­chine translation sys­tem free of charge; read “Notes on the Use of Machine Translation Systems, by the Example of DeepL”, convince yourself of the natural language, copy any text ex­cerpts into the translation window on a trial basis.

Keep your readers up to date with news about your article or book with RSS news tickers, which are su­peri­or to e-mail newsletters and which anyone can subscribe to freely, without registration.


Table of Contents


Introduction
Source and license: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/Oxygen480-apps-fontforge.svg/500px-Oxygen480-apps-fontforge.svg.png

The choice of the appropriate type­set­ting system depends on your desired end product. Do you predominantly want to create letters, articles and forms? Do you intend to write articles, a clas­sic book or non-fiction book as well as scientific documents? Or are graphi­cal­ly accentuated typesetting documents the focus of your interest, such as richly illustrated magazines, il­lus­trat­ed books, calendars, posters, greeting cards and post­cards?

Today's typesetting programs are incredibly powerful and universally applicable. You can create letters, ar­ti­cles (including formulas), forms, tables, flyers, posters, post­cards, newspapers and even huge book projects with a single word processor. Many authors write and typeset their books with a classic word processor, and the final products have an appealing professional qual­ity. In addition to fillable, interactive PDF documents, it is even possible to design simply designed, illustrated web pages (HTML documents) for uploading to Internet serv­ers via ((S)FTP); and even a single, PDF-exported, illus-

trated document can combine the functionality of a large-size web page if it is richly linked with internal and external hyperlinks; the web pages then open separately in the browser, in “tabs”. Alternatively, you can create texts with your favorite word processor or with a text editor, and then import them into another typesetting system, e.g. Scribus; Text import and export functions are nowadays standard functions.

Due to its wide range of functions, the word processor is some­times also referred to as a “super typewriter”. Spe­cial­ized type­set­ting systems, on the other hand, con­cen­trate on cer­tain types of documents; they offer additional pos­sibil­ities for typographical finesse, which are usually not avail­able in word processing.

Learning the basic functionality of a free word processor, the most universal typesetting program type, is a worth­while time investment that will pay off all your life.

The program recommendations here are divided into four sections, although the subdivisions and designations are ar­bi­trary in various respects:

Nowadays, websites are mostly created with CMS sys­tems (website content management system), which al­low writing ar­ti­cles for a website and designing them even without knowl­edge of HTML typesetting. Section 13 describes the concrete steps to create your own web­site and de­scribes the legal obligations that every website owner must observe.

Further references to basic technical terms can be found at the end of each section. A basic understanding of how the style sheet (or template) works is essential for pro­fes­sion­al work with typesetting systems:


1 The Design with Templates or Style Files

You're working on a larger article or book and you've de­cid­ed to set chapter headings, section headings, and sub­sec­tion headings in a specific color, font size, and font. In the middle of your project, or towards the end, how­ever, you discard your original design and choose a different font size and font.

Without style sheets, you would have to laboriously go to each chapter heading, each section heading, and each sub-section heading and reformat them in­di­vid­ual­ly.

Style sheets work according to a more sensible prin­ci­ple: the properties (size, font, etc.) of each basic article or book design element (chapter heading, section head-

ing, subsection heading, etc.) are defined in a sepa­rate file, the style sheet. You can use predefined style files as well as your own templates.

Without style sheets, you can always see directly what the final result will look like. This working principle is also called the “What you see is what you mean”-​principle (WYSIWYM), and is only suitable for shorter letters and docu­ments.

For your section headings, for example, you have opted for a 12 pt serif font in black. Each time you now write another section heading, you must select it and format it again with the same properties. The result will look like this:

If you work with style sheets instead, you no longer need to laboriously format each individual text element (appearance of the section heading, etc.), you no longer need to manually number the sections. You only have to select the corresponding general outline element from a menu or even faster and more effectively: you use the

corresponding key combinations. The principle of selecting outline elements or layers and text elements in this way is also called the “What you see is what you mean” principle (WYSIWYM).

Schematically represented, your typesetting system then reads the following input internally:



Your typesetting program can see how to format the individual structure and text elements from the style sheet file. The advantage is obvious: All settings can be made centrally via a formatting file. The numbering of the outline levels is taken over fully automatically for you. If you delete individual sections, references, etc., your program will renumber and re-reference them for you. If you refer to individual text sections, then set markers beforehand, with self-selected designations. You do not write “See section 2.4.3 on page 57” because the section numbering as well as the page number can change in the course of the design, which would also render your referencing obsolete. Instead, write, as shown schematically, “See <self-chosen

marker designation>.” Your typesetting system then auto­mat­ical­ly adds “section”, the concrete section numbering, “on page”, and the concretely calculated page number.

With WYSIWYM systems such as LyX, you have a text input window in which the individual structuring elements such as sections, sub-sections, etc. are displayed clearly distinguishable from each other for input (use of different font sizes and strengths, all freely adjustable according to personal preferences). However, the final output of the actual document only takes place at the press of a button or mouse click.


A document created with LyX, together with the PDF output
A document created with LyX, along with the PDF output
(click on it for detailed view)

Virtually every typesetting system includes pre-installed style sheets that you can use and customize to suit your personal style preferences; many more pre-defined style sheets are freely available and free on the World Wide Web, including style sheets for creating books. When designing websites, the style files that define text and typography are called CSS files, referring to the under­ly­ing stylesheet language CSS (Cascading Style Sheets): The text itself and the structure are written into the HTML file, the text element design definitions are in the CSS file.

All functions of the programs presented here can be se­lected via graphical menus. For effective operation,

how­ever, it is recommended that you familiarize yourself with at least some of the associated key combinations from the outset. Shortcuts are sometimes displayed di­rect­ly in the graphical menus. You can also create your own key­board shortcuts. Example search queries for cor­res­pond­ing lists:

The search entry LibreOffice Short­cuts leads to, among oth­er things: “Shortcut Keys for LibreOffice Writer”, “Gen­er­al Shortcut Keys in LibreOffice”, to “Shortcut Keys for Spread­sheets”, “How to create your own shortcut with spe­cial keys?”, “Keyboard”, and to “Customize”.


2 Universal Word Processing with LibreOffice
Image source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oxygen480-categories-applications-office.svg
     Original image source: http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/kdesupport/oxygen-icons/scalable/categories/applications-office.svgz?view=log,
     License: http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/kdesupport/oxygen-icons/COPYING?view=markup

With a powerful range of func­tions and a worldwide user resp. sup­port community, organized in the Do­cu­ment Foun­dation (WP ar­ti­cle), including states and ac­cord­ing to a (German) Heise mes­sage also the company Intel, LibreOffice offers all the pre­requi­sites to meet pro­fes­sion­al requirements. Even DTP func­tions are possible. For details see the “LibreOffice Writ­er Features” page.

LibreOffice's user interface is available in dozens of lan­guages and dialects, to a comparable extent as the free soft­ware Abiword (WP article) supports languages .

Further information on the Open Document Format and on free word processing programs: “Open​Docu­ment For­mat Alliance”, “What is Open­Do­cu­ment?”, “Open­Do­cu­ment facts”, “We Can Put an End to Word At­tach­ments”, “Catego­ry:Free word pro­ces­sors”.

LibreOffice is subject to ongoing maintenance, further de­vel­op­ment and functional expansion, including op­er­at­ing concepts. Software and op­er­at­ing concept changes, however, take place on a natural development ba­sis; in contrast to artificial, forced changes to pro­grams and formats of some other manufacturers, for the purpose of the forced continuous purchase of new pro­grams and operating manuals, whereby a part of the ac­quired knowledge becomes unnecessarily obsolete prema­ture­ly.

Countless reader-friendly and appealingly designed books prove that nowadays you can also create high-quality, professional books with word processing pro­grams. However, the use of some typesetting subtleties is reserved for specialized typesetting and DTP software such as LyX and Scri­bus.

Image source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crystal_Project_kview.png,
     Original image source: http://everaldo.com/crystal/?action=downloads,
     License: http://everaldo.com/crystal/?action=license

The training in LibreOffice is a valu­able investment that pays off in the long term and is recommended to pupils, trainees, students, mer­chants, scientists, civil servants and people from all professional and interest groups. LibreOffice, with its many DTP functions, is also a powerful tool for book authors to implement their works.

Find out more about other free alternatives, for example the office application Cal­ligra Suite with its word processor “Words”, or about Abi­word (WP-​article).

Libre­Office Writer Documentation and Help Pages

Background information on the his­to­ry of OpenOffice and the dif­fer­ences to OpenOffice.org can be found in the official ques­tions- and answers section. The help pages for LibreOffice Writ­er contain extensive information; use the search func­tion in the upper bar. “Getting Support” describes the pos­si­bil­ities of direct help by contact persons (mailing lists, fo­rum). The section The section “Get Help” is a starting point to get general overviews and information about the use of LibreOffice in various areas of application. The of­fi­cial documentation contains the “Libre Office Writ­er Guide”.

A list of free extensions for Libre­Office and for Open­Office informs about functional extensions. Search: LibreOffice Writer introduction • video search: LibreOffice introduction

Read essential articles on the subject of word pro­cessing: WP article “Word pro­ces­sor” • “Cat­ego­ry:Free word pro­ces­sors” • “Category:Word pro­ces­sors” • “List of word processors” • “Com­pari­son of word processors” • “Com­pari­son of office suites” • “OpenDocument software”


3 Classical Typesetting in Highest Quality for Writers and Scientists: TeX, LaTeX, LyX

TeX [tεχ] and the macro system LaTeX form the most widely used typesetting system in mathematics, physics and com­put­er science as well as in nu­mer­ous other disciplines. “The Beauty of LATEX” informs about its advantages. PDF example docu­ments can be found at the the “TeX User Group” and in a compilaton by the Association of American Uni­ver­sity Presses, presented on tsengbooks.com

For the majority of computer users, it might be unusual to create documents with a text editor and macro com­mands. With the cross-platform LyX graphical interface, LaTeX is as easy to use as a word processor and in­cludes a graphical formula editor. Of course, you can al­so mix the modes and enter LaTeX code directly at any point of your LyX document.

Text processing and graphical DTP programs are mainly based on the WYSIWYG principle, while LaTeX and LyX are based on the markup language principle (see also (“Page description language”). The formatting of text ar­eas, headings and other structuring elements is done in­di­rect­ly (WYSIWYM). Meanwhile, word processing pro­grams enable a comparable functionality via so-called style sheets. However, the typesetting quality of Tex or LaTeX and LyX remains unmatched, because TeX uses paragraph optimization criteria or procedures (al­go­rithms) that are not included in word processing pro­grams, and because the typesetting and professional-group specific subtleties and extensions are in­com­pa­rably comprehensive, comprising thousands of classes, packages and pack­age bundles.

Maximum reach and distribution of your written works: LyX prepares your document (article, book) for all three publishing worlds: Export to PDF format (classic pre-press), export to HTML (publication on the Internet) and export to e-book format EPUB (“What is new in LyX 2.4?”); official self-description of LyX.

Translation aspects: The user interface of LyX is main­tained in many language versions; if your language is not yet included, you can still create documents in all those languages that are supported by LaTeX. A factor not to be underestimated: LyX ( resp. LaTeX) is a 100 %

free (free software), high-end scientific typesetting sys­tem. This means that in a translation project, the author, the translator abroad and the local print shop in question all have access to a first-class typesetting system, which can be advantageous during the classic pre-press stage (clarification of design details, any queries, etc.); of course, the PDFs can also be prepared for print on de­mand (e.g. Kindle Direct Publishing).

It is best to install the complete TeX base before installing LyX. The LyX installation program already contains a TeX base system. However, if you install the complete TeX dis­tri­bu­tion with all packages beforehand, there is no need to re­load individual packages later.

Free-​BSD-, and GNU/Linux users install the base system TeX, (and sub­se­quent­ly LyX) via their package management system. MacOS users can get the MacTeX distribution from their own subpage on tug.​org. MacTeX di­stri­bu­ti­on from their on subpage on tug.org.

Instructions for MS-Win­dows users:


  1. Get the MikTeX distribution first. For example, it is recommended to download the the original MikTeX-distribution on miktex.org, or ProTeXt
  2. Now install MikTeX. Decide for the complete variant, for the installation of all packages.
  3. Then go to www.lyx.org, download the LyX installer and start the installation. LyX will either automatically detect the path of the MikTeX software already in­stalled, or ask for it.
  4. Familiarize yourself with LyX. As document class KOMA​Script, “article (KOMA-Script)” and “book (KOMA-Script)” are recommended, together with “Lat­in Modern fonts” as standard character set. Find your favorite fonts in the LaTeX Font Catalogue. Thou­sands of packages offer comprehensive pos­sibil­ities for numerous professions and areas of ap­pli­ca­tion; you can also develop your own templates, and all typographic subtleties are possible.


Text written in Calligra Calligraphy for LaTeX: Calligra Kalligraphie.

Calligraphy fonts, Fraktur fonts, Sütterlin and numerous other fonts and styles can be used universally, e.g. as artistically designed titles for websites, book covers, film and music albums, posters, greeting and gift cards. The openness of the TeX- and LaTeX-Basis enabled a momentum of its own, beauty, functionality and ex­pres­sive­ness, to which countless nations, professional groups and private individuals all over the world con­tin­uous­ly contribute. Donald Knuth’s TeX interpreter is one of the most powerful computer typesetting systems and is also the most archiving-secure and durable that has ever been created. Its cultural significance is rightly equated with Gutenberg's invention of printing – free software emphasizing the beauty and freedom of in­di­vid­uals and nations, descriptive linguistics, and edu­ca­tion­al equality.

The following list contains various search queries for type­setting examples of various professions, for which there are often several packages available (no claim to completeness, only a tiny excerpt overall); browse through the respective documentation to see examples, and also switch to the image category of your search engine service. Many official documentations are also available in other languages, and there are numerous freely available third-party guides:


4 Graphic Desktop Publishing with Scribus: Newspapers, Magazines, Books, Pictorials, Posters, Cards

Scribus is particularly suitable for creating main­ly graphic DTP products, such as news­pa­pers and magazines, books and non-​fiction books, including those with a tren­dy design, for picture and photo volumes, book cov­ers, calendars, catalogues, advertising leaflets and bro­chures, billboards, posters, cards and post­cards. Com­pre­hen­sive information is available on the official web-

site, scribus.net, and in the Scribus Wiki, http:​//​wiki.​scri​bus.​net. Illustrative example projects can be found under “Made with Scribus” and “Success Stories” (all success sto­ries from 2003 to 2017 can be selected on the right).

Inform yourself: Google search: Scribus • Scribus intro­duc­tion • Scribus tutorial • Scribus examples.



5 The Creation of E-Books
Basic Knowledge for the Creation of E-Books
grayscale converted image version.
     Image source of the image file in color: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kjots.svg,
     Project site: http://www.kde.org/applications/utilities/kjots/

An e-book is a chapter- or con­tent-structured document file that can be read on handy, specialized e-book readers as well as on or­di­nary computers. The big ad­van­tage of e-books lies in their adapt­abil­ity. With ordinary documents, such as PDF files, the document dimensions and the positioning of the content are geometrically exact and rigid: DIN A4, US-letter, A3, B5 etc. E-books, on the other hand, adapt dy­nami­cal­ly to the screen size of the existing output device, the text is displayed fluently, it is rearranged.

How much text appears on the monitor of a display device depends on the user's settings, e.g. the font size set. E-books therefore do not have page numbers, but book­marks can be set, and some devices also allow quasi-page numbers to be generated. E-books can be provided with copy protection, which not only makes it impossible to make a backup copy, but also excludes printing on paper.

The technical markup language ele­ments used to create e-book texts are essentially based on the same ele­ments used to create Internet pages (HTML).

The e-book format EPUB is the open standard for writ­ers and scientists. E-books created with it can be con­vert­ed into other formats. However, copy-protected e-books cannot be converted, and probably the majority of e-book titles currently on the market, including .epub files, are copy-protected.

Mathematical typesetting: The current e-book speci­fi­ca­tion is only conditionally suitable for writing extensive mathematical texts. Since EPUB 3, math fonts can be set natively in the markup language MathML and the graphics format SVG, is sup­ported, so that there is no need anymore to integrate formulas and equations as graphics files, or to convert vector graphics (or function graphics) into raster images, if the target device sup­ports Epub 3. However, mathematical typesetting with MathML is not as easy and elegant to create as with TeX or LaTeX, the required markup text for describing for­mu­las is much more extensive.

Mozilla's “MathML Tor­ture Test” page contrasts TeX type­setting with MathML (“As rendered by your browser”), where the TeX typeface is embedded as a screenshot only, thus naturally less brilliant than in PDF,

PostScript, or DVI format, and cannot be scaled as an image when resized. Go to this page and view the markup text file, open the page source in Firefox with CTRL + U to see how complicated it is to type with MathML. Apart from that, Firefox is probably the only browser to date (2019) that can correctly and completely display MathML, in­clud­ing this test.

Most authors set their math texts with LaTeX and probably convert them to MathML as needed using a program such as MathToWeb to insert the appropriate sections into their e-book (EPUB3) or HTML files, although there may not be a significant distribution of MathML.

PDF versus E-Books: PDF files are often referred to as e-books if they have true e-book functionality, such as a referencing table of contents and an index that allows you to jump directly to a specific section of the book, and ex­ter­nal hyperlinks that open your web page reader in the back­ground to load Internet pages when you click on them. However, the text of PDF files is not flexible, it does not flow and cannot be dynamically wrapped or re­ar­ranged. PDF documents therefore lack the ability to dy­nami­cal­ly resize to the given display device, they do not have a dynamic line break. The font can be enlarged, but the document is only enlarged like with a magnifying glass, the text does not rearrange itself, it remains rigid.

Apart from that, however, all the essential e-book func­tions are also possible with PDF: internal and external ref­er­ences (hyperlinks), re­fer­ence-sensitive tables of con­tents and keyword indexes, search functions, etc. In ad­di­tion, the PDF format enables the best possible print quali­ty.

Further information:: Criticism of proprietary e-book for­mats, digital rights management and copy protection mecha­nisms: DefectivebyDesign.org, criticism on Stall​man.org. DefectivebyDesign.org, criticism on Stall​man.​org.

WP-​articles: “E-book”, “EPUB”, “Com­pari­son of e-book formats”, .

Since the EPUB 3 specification, e-books can also contain video films and audio files as well as interactive functions (via Javascript). The possibilities for an e-book have be­come so extensive that it is sometimes referred to as a “web­site in a box”. Literature recommendation for the intro­duc­tion to EPUB3: “EPUB 3 Best Practices[,] Op­ti­mize Your Digital Books”, Matt Garrish, Markus Gylling; O'Reilly.



Production: E-Book Editors and Quality Control

Creating e-books requires minimal typesetting skills, the technical aspects have been dramatically simplified, with the exception of book title page design, which re­mains as challenging from a design point of view as clas­sic books.

Texts and books in .epub format can either be written directly using an editor in .epub format, in the pure mark­up language, or they can be written using a spe­cial­ized graphical Epub editor, which makes them as easy to create as using a word processor. Sigil is re­com­mend­ed as a powerful, free e-book editor with a graphi­cal interface, alongside the free e-book editor Cal­lig­ra Author; search query for further information: Cal­lig­ra Author epub.

Also existing word processing files can be converted di­rect­ly into an EPUB file, for example with the Libre­Office extension Writer2epub or with Calibre.

EpubCheck, a syntax check, is recommended for quality control. There is no getting around Epub file validation, especially because some e-book reader models may be less error-tolerant than web browsers. For example,

there was already a model not mentioned here by name that aborts the display of the contents of a subfile (e.g. a chapter unit) as soon as a syntax error occurs or is read, i.e. the remaining text is no longer displayed.

Also the scaling (resizing) of certain image files for display on e-book readers may not work as desired. It makes sense to use a slightly larger image file with resolution re­serves, since users of high-resolution readers will then be able to view the images in better quality; the image di­men­si­ons displayed can be specified both pixel-precisely and as a percentage of the screen width. However, once a cer­tain file size has been exceeded, the illustration may no longer be displayed on some readers and a gap may ap­pear, so that in the end the only solution is to downsample the file to a lower resolution.

Both of the errors listed as examples did not occur with soft­ware e-book readers. However, they may even occur with multiple hardware e-book readers. Before publishing, an illustrated book should be viewed on e-book readers from various manufacturers.


E-​Book ​Reading ­ and Management Programs
Epub Extensions for Mo­zil­la Fire­fox and Chrome

There are several EPUB-reading-extensions for Firefox, including the Freeware EPUB­Reader. Excerpt from the official description of the official website, epubread.com (July 12, 2019): “[...] EPUB​Reader is a Firefox addon which lets you read ePub-files just in the browser. You don't need to install additional software!
  If you click on a link to an ePub-file, you are normally prompted by the Firefox 'save as' dialog. With EPUB­Read­er installed, the ePub-file is downloaded, pro­cessed and directly displayed ready to read.
  It runs on every operating system Firefox does (Win­dows, MacOS X, Linux) and is already used by more than 350,000 daily users.
  EPUBReader is available in 26 different languages: Cata­lan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Finn­ish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Ital­ian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Ro­ma­nian, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Swe­dish, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, Ukrainian, Viet­na­me­se. [...]”.

The manual and the “Frequently asked questions”-sec­tion contain detailed descriptions.

For the browser Chrome and its free variant Chromium the free (Open Source), EPUB3-capable e-book reader

Readium is offered. Instructions: official site readium.​org, Readium in the Chrome Web Store, on Youtube “Using the Readium Plugin for Chrome to Read EPUB and MOBI eBooks”.

The separation of words and syllables in e-books has not yet been satisfactorily resolved. In the past, many e-book readers (both hardware readers and reading programs) did not have hyphenation, which resulted in unattractive spaces in block typesetting. Some devices and programs circumvented the problem by formatting the text left-aligned (flatter typesetting), or book authors left-aligned the text from the outset. Some devices either ignored hy­phena­tion aids contained in the text or did not work prop­er­ly; EPUBReader has been considering such hy­phena­tion aids for many years.

Meanwhile, progress has been made in word and syllable hyphenation.

Cal­li­bre: Universal E-Book Management Program

Callibre (WP-article) contains extensive functions for the administration and conversion of e-books and is also suit­able as a reading program.



6 Free Text Editors and Recommended Reading on LaTeX, KOMA-Script & Co.

Text editors are the ancestors of typesetting and word processing programs. Nowadays they are mainly used in the scientific environment (mainly in computer sci­ence and pro­gram­ming), in IT-administration as well as in markup language-based typesetting, for example for LaTeX, HTML and CSS (for the conceptual delimitation read also the WP-article “Markup Language”).

The possibilities for editing and evaluating the text are great. In the Unix-world, Vim (cross-platform) and Emacs (or Xemacs) are probably the most popular edi­tors. Besides Vim, Emacs and Xemacs Notepad++ is a free editor for the Windows-world. Read the WP-article Text editor, to inform yourself about basic functionalities and get overviews on free text editors.

Besides the graphical desktop environments and ap­pli­ca­tion programs, GNU/​Linux-​distributions also contain text mode software. by default. Programs with text-based user interface are extremly powerful. Their huge num­ber of application programs forms a universe of its own. Their use gives you a high degree of system in­de­pend­ence, as numerous applications have been ported and maintained on a wide variety of operating system

platforms. Due to their low resource requirements, text mode programs still run high performance on old and very old computer platforms, both locally and via remote ac­cess to other computer systems. More detailed in­for­ma­tion can be found in the WP-articles “telnet” (historical), “se­cure shell”, and “OpenSSH”. The text mode offers you the greatest possible information technology (device) in­de­pend­ence, freedom and efficiency, very often also when using graphic-based programs, as the introductory ex­am­ple of “Put Yourself in Command” shows.

Web pages and recommended articles on text mode pro­grams: WP-articles: “Con­sole app­li­ca­tion”“Text-based (compu­ting)”“Text-based user interface” • “Shell (com­pu­ting)”“Command-line interface”“GNU Core Utilities”. An excellent introduction: Floss Ma­nu­al “In­tro­duc­tion to the Com­mand Line” • WP-article: “GNU Screen”“Ter­mi­nal (Com­pu­ter)” • a German website containing a huge list of links to English websites and resources. “au​to​ma​tisch.­cc :: freie Text­mode-Soft­ware” [free textmode soft­ware], its link list: “Web­sei­ten zum The­ma Text­mode” [websites on the theme text mode].


Literature Recommendations on LaTeX, KOMA-Script and PS-Tricks

The text mode represents the natural communication with computer programs and allows access to all their func­tions. Probably the majority of mathematicians, physi­cists and computer scientists prefer text input via mac­ros over graphical formula editors (conventions). Al­so scientific illustrations are in most cases easier to cre­ate using LaTeX- or PostScript-​macros than using a mouse-​based graphics program, thanks to the huge num­ber of packages that are specialized in the re­quire­ments of different professions and scientific disciplines (al­though there are also graphic editors with tpx and LaTeX​Draw etc).

The list of freely accessible LaTeX introductions is huge, as search queries for numerous languages show, here for example in English: LaTeX intro­duc­tion • creating draw­ings and graphics with LaTeX • draw­ing graphics with LaTeX • PSTricks introduction. Probably most packages and pack­age bundles already contain an ex­cel­lent documentation, and also in the internet very good overall introductions are freely accessible.

High-quality printed literature is recommended both as a de­tailed introduction and as a comprehensive reference work.

Herbert Voß' (interview in English) offers excellent, in-depth introductions to LaTeX, his books are available in Ger­man, some titles are also available in English. How­ever, the German editions are the most recent. “Ein­füh­rung in LaTeX [,] un­ter Be­rück­sich­ti­gung von pdfLaTeX, XLaTeX und Lua­La­TeX” The book introduces all essential areas and aspects of typesetting with LaTeX in depth. This stand­ard work is not only suitable for beginners. Due to its de­tailed overviews, tables and references, it is also a ref­er­ence work for experienced users and thus remains a long-​term worthwhile investment.

Two more of Voss' standard works, which are of central im­por­tance for mathematicians in particular, go into great depth and contain numerous subtleties and ramifications: “Ma­the­ma­tik­satz mit LaTeX” and “PSTricks [,] Gra­fik mit Post­Script für TeX und LaTeX”. The official PS-Tricks-​website (English) contains numerous illustrations and ap­pli­ca­tion examples. PSTricks is not only relevant for the sci­en­ti­fic creation of functions and graphics, but also for the classical typesetting of formulas; read the table of con­tents on the Internet, look for the title in the (online) di­rec­tories of libraries, or go to a scientific bookshop to look at the book in leisure.



LaTeX file in Kate and its PDF-output.
Macro typesetting with LaTeX and KOMA-Script, file opened in editor Kate, PDF-view with Evince (click on it for details). The introduction to indirect mathematical reasoning (PDF A4, PDF US-Letter) contains information on the common mathematical proof notation as well as concrete typesetting information on quantity notation, in footnote 13 on page 5. All formats are available on the title page.

Read Utroff.org to keep up to date with the latest Troff news and information.

Suche: Gnu Groff example documents




7 Free Fonts and an Introduction to Basic Concepts of Typography

The “Libertine Open Font Project” offers high-quality font files (character sets) for MS-Windows and GNU/Linux, among them the Linux Libertine, which also contains the capi­tal ẞ (WP-article), and the Li­nux Biolinum, which can even be used to depict keys for the description of key­board shortcuts (WP-article on the Linux Libertine).

Self-description on the title page, July 21, 2016, “Linux​Libertine.org – About us”, by Philipp H. Poll: “Glyphs and fonts are basic elements of our com­mu­ni­ca­tion and fun­da­men­tal to our culture. But on the other hand they are also software products and consumer items, which are commonly copyrighted and are intellectual property of large American corporations.

While in former times one used to write his letters by one’s own hand, we nowadays com­mu­ni­cate digitally and thus require fonts for displaying of what we want to read or tell. But you will find copyrights and patents even on the most elementary fonts and often there is no sup­port for minority languages or scientific special char­ac­ters. We thus founded this project to provide you with high quality libre fonts, which can be supplemented and kept up to date by the public community.

An older excerpt from a section of the start site of the Open Font Project, as of July 27, 2011: “[...] It is our aim to sup­port the many western languages and provide many spe­cial characters. Our fonts cover the codepages of West­ern Latin, Greek, Cyrillic (with their specific en­hance­ments), Hebrew, IPA and many more. Furthermore, ty­po­graph­ical features such as ligatures, small capitals, dif­fer­ent number styles, scientific symbols, etc. are im­ple­mented in this font. Linux Libertine thus contains more than 2000 characters. In this huge amount of glyphs, there still may be small mistakes that we ask you to report for the improvement of the Libertine Font Family. You may al­so write us, if you would like to see a new feature added (see the section “Contribute” for details). [...]”

Study the easy-to-understand information of the Libertine Open Font Project to acquire the most elementary basic knowledge of typography: “Open Type” • “Specialties” • “Styles”.

Inform yourself about other free fonts and basic terms: “Cat­ego­ry:​Open-source type­faces” • “Category:Writing sys­tems” • “Category:Typefaces”

Nations/countries/regions and their prevailing paper format: “Paper Types” • “Paper Size”


8 Free Software for the Creation of professional PDF-Documents,
Free PDF-Viewers
PDF-Symbol von pdfreaders.org.
      Image source and license for this PDF-symbol: http://pdfreaders.org/graphics.de.html

PDF (Por­table Do­cu­ment For­mat) and Post­Script (GS-View-Be­trach­ter) form the docu­ment standard in prepress. Books and maga­zines are mainly handed over to printers as PDF files.

Moreover, PDF serves as the standard format for letters, forms, invoices and other documents sent by e-mail in business, administration and science.

Its advantages lie in its platform independence. In the past, the viewing of a document by the recipient often re­quired the software with which it was created (e.g. a cer­tain word processing program), but today you only need a PDF viewer.

Besides the proprietary freeware Adobe Reader, there is a comprehensive set of free PDF-viewers listed at pdf​readers.org (comprehensive list), including the following pro­grams also available for MS-Windows:

Oku­lar (WP-article) is one of the most powerful free PDF-viewers. It can also be used to annotate PDF docu­ments and can handle numerous other formats, in­clud­ing Post­script, EPUB, and Open­Do­cu­ment. MS-Win­dows-user can obtain the software via KDE on Win­dows.

Sumatra PDF WP-article is an excellent lightweight PDF viewer for MS Windows. It is also suitable for older hard­ware and supports other document formats, in­clud­ing the epub format. Quickstart Manual Official manual.

Evince (WP-article) is another free PDF viewer for the MS Windows world, developed from the GNOME-desk­top-project for GNU/Linux.


Creating PDF-Files
Image source and license: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oxygen480-apps-acroread.svg

Many free programs have PDF ex­port functions as standard. In ad­di­tion, many offer the option of ISO-​normed PDF/A-ex­port export to create PDF documents suitable for long-term archiving.

PDF-export under Libre­Office (word processing): “File” → “Ex­port as PDF...”. Detailed official information: “Export as PDF”.

Under LyX (typesetting program): “File” → “Export” → “PDF (pdflatex)”. Further PDF-export variants are pos­sible. Official LyX-FAQ on PDF.

Under Scribus (typesetting program): “File” → “Export” → “Save as PDF...”.

Scri­bus- and Scri­bus-Wiki-information: “Help:Ma­nu­al PDFx3”, “Ca­te­go­ry:PDF”.

PDF-creation with Abiword (word processor) under MS-Win­ dows requires a PDF printer driver.

PDFCreator

The universal, powerful PDFCreator (freeware, (WP-ar­ti­cle) is suitable as a PDF converter. It can also be used to cre­ate long-term archivable PDF/A files (“Features”). Vid­eo films on PDFCreator.

According to the section “Adware toolbar con­tro­ver­sy” of the English WP-ar­ticle “PDFCreator” there was a con­tro­ver­sy regarding the bundling of the software with an ad­ware toolbar. Originally it might have been sufficient to pre­vent the installation of a tool­bar by deactivating a pre­set option during the installation process, or to remove the toolbar from the browser afterwards.

Other PDF print­er drivers are also available: List of virtual printer software • List of PDF software.


Split PDF Files, merge, edit Metadata

The PDF Tool­kit, pdftk, enables comprehensive editing of PDF files and PDF metadata. Detailed instructions and ex­am­ples in German are freely available, e.g.: “PDFtk Serv­er Examples” • “How To Ma­nipu­late PDFs with PDF Chain [Linux]” • “pdftk(1) - Linux man page”. PDFTK Builder is a graphi­cal inter­face to pdftk, others are listed in the WP-ar­ti­cle “PDFtk”.

A Python-based PDF-editor: PDF-Shuffler.


Check hyperlinks of PDF files for functionality

In the past, the Firefox add-on “Linkchecker” was very use­ful for checking the hyperlinks of a PDF file. All you had to do was open the PDF document (or drag it into a browser tab) and select the link check function, the pro­gram marked valid links with green, broken links with red and other links with yellow.

Unfortunately it doesn't work anymore since the “Quan­tum”-Firefox-​version. Maybe there are alternatives that fol­low a similar principle. The website alternativeTo, Crowd­sourced soft­ware recommendations lists alternatives to Link​Checker, where both the platform and the license can be selected.


More PDF-programs: “Category:Free PDF software” • “List of PDF soft­ware”.


9 Typesetting and Hyphenation

We write for the reader: Careful punctuation ensures that the writer's thoughts and concepts are clearly struc­tured and easy to read, and that his information and mes­sages are correctly reproduced (recommended read­ing on German spelling: schriftdeutsch.de).

Hyphenation lines create a harmonious text image in jus­ti­fi­ca­tion and ensure an effective reading flow. In the natu­ral­ly developped written language rule, they ensure that the correct accents of the words to be separated are preserved as far as possible.

The naturally-grown supra-regional written German (Schrift­deutsch) is based on a set of rules that is always self-renewing, which was deliberately smashed to rob the language of its expressiveness, to deform and de­stroy it. Thereby among other things many thousands of words were directly destroyed, words, in which the sepa­ration and compound spelling have completely dif­ferent meanings, although the conditions of language de­struction will not last in the long run. Proven regu­la­tions that had previously reformed in a natural way were de­clared “outdated”, whereas the highly deformed writ­ten language, which was deprived of its expressiveness and thrown far back in its development, was and is praised as “new” and “modern”. The “renewed” rules and hyphenation rules, however, lead to countless er­rors and misunderstandings, make it difficult to read texts, despite the fact that the underlying, self-contra­dic­tory “rules” have been formally implemented correctly in com­put­er programs (no programming errors). Thanks to free software, everyone is free to choose which hy­phena­tion rules and dictionaries they use, free software em­pha­sizes the freedom of the individual, the people and the nation. More information will be published in a sepa­rate article, until then a mini article with more gen­er­al aspects (cur­rent­ly only in German); detailed MP-article on the German Language, “Deut­sche Spra­che”:
https://de.metapedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Sprache

Classical written German will continue to be written, and the language packages associated with LibreOffice and Open­Office will also undergo ongoing maintenance, ex­pan­sion and updating. Extract from the official de­scrip­tion (11 March 2018), published on the “German (de-DE-1901) old spelling dictionaries” -project and -down­load page of the “Libre­Office Extensions & Templates”: “[...] This extension published by Karl Zeiler integrates dic­tion­aries in accordance with the old rules of German spelling and hyphenation. Classical spel­ling rules are still valid but do no longer apply to government agencies and schools where the new ones are mandatory. This ver­sion – derived from new spelling frami and igerman98 dictionaries – has been modified by Rüdiger Brün­ner according to the classical spelling rules. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he enlarged the word list by many scientific tech­ni­cal terms. [...]”.

Under LyX, select “Document”→ “Settings...” and select “Ger­man (old spelling)”. in the “Language” section.

LaTeX/LyX: General information on “german / ngerman” (in German).

9.1 The Soft Hyphen

The word separation systems of modern word pro­cess­ing and typesetting systems are powerful and work as er­ror-free as possible. However, it may happen that a type­set­ting system does not recognize a compound word as such or that a word protrudes beyond the edge, or that the author wishes for a different separation. For such cases you give clear guidelines.

Separation points can be set centrally in a separate ref­er­ence word list or directly in the text. The soft hyphen ex­plic­it­ly tells the typesetting system where a word can be hyphenated. One possibility, for example, is to copy it for larger texts via Crtl + C to the clipboard and then paste it via Crtl + V into the syllable or word joints.

Read the WP-article “Soft hyphen”. It contains detailed in­for­ma­tion for operating systems as well as for word pro­cess­ing and typesetting systems, the table in the section “Re­pre­sen­ta­tion on computer systems” contains an ex­ten­sive list of key combinations for different programs.

9.2 Separation Points without Hyphens, protected Spaces and Words

Some text components, such as hyperlinks or directory paths, can extend over several lines. To ensure that the source information is correct, you must prevent (non-exis­tent) hyphens from being inserted.

Use the Zero-width space to mark your word or text com­po­nent with hyphens that remain free of hyphens during wrap­ping. The hyphenation can be disabled for parts of a word as well as for the whole word. Read the following ar­ti­cles to familiarize yourself with the different scenarios:

9.3 The Problem of Hyphenation in E-Books and HTML-Docu­ments, and its partial Solution

Separation aids and optional predetermined breaking points increase reading comfort. However, an optional auto­mat­ic hyphenation feature either does not exist in to­day's Web page readers and e-book readers, or it does not work satisfactorily.

Partly the problem can be solved, so that at least the wide gaps disappear.

Hyphenation Aids that cause a Hyphen:
  1. First write your text and then open it in HTML mode, using an editor such as Note­pad++
  2. Write the so-called soft hyphen for HTML (WP-ar­ti­cle: “Soft hyphen” and copy it to the clip­board: &shy;
  3. Now copy this HTML-entity continuously from the clipboard into the corresponding syllable joints.

The browser program thus has enough syllable separation joints to avoid unattractive gaps. Certain hyphenation cases, such as the retransformation of the double con­so­nant (from “ck” to “kk”) in German, cannot be handled with this, so that no simple hyphenation option is available: In “Zuk-ker”, the short “u” is retained, but “Zu-cker” leads to a long, incorrectly emphasized “u”.

Optional Text Breaking Points without Hyphen Triggering:

Some words urgently need to be separated, but must not be hyphenated as this would distort their content. Ex­am­ples are e-mail addresses and hyperlinks where it would no longer be clear whether it is a hyphen or a part of the ad­dress itself.

Here, the space character of the length zero helps: &#x200b; (Zero Width Space). For URLs, it is best to in­sert it between each character of your word, if necessary.

While popular browsers take these separators into ac­count correctly, some e-book read­ers and e-book software readers either ignore the hyphenation help completely, or they bypass the problem by left justify, or they use the soft hy­phens separator, but do not display hyphens. Or worse, they display hyphens wherever hyphens are built in.

In general, at least a subset of the official Epub standard should be implemented bindingly on all e-book readers in or­der to guarantee a reliable text representation and a tidy read­ing comfort.



10 Free Image Editing Software and Vector Graphics Software

Images and graphics are handled in different formats. Ras­ter images, such as photos, consist of many in­di­vid­ual dots, each of which has a specific color. The dot struc­ture becomes visible at high magnifications.

Image source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crystal_Project_package_graphics.png,
        Original Image source: http://everaldo.com/crystal/?action=downloads,
        License: http://everaldo.com/crystal/?action=license

Vector graphics consist of geo­met­ric objects, gradients and other com­po­nents. They can be resized, i.e. the image is recalculated or re­drawn when it is enlarged, so that there is no loss of quality (block graph­ics). Company logos are often created as vector graph­ics. Of course there are also limits: A vector graph­ic, which is to be applied on a house wall, is usu­al­ly created separately. Vector graphics can be converted in­to pixel graphics / raster images. Apart from il­lus­tra­ti­ons, technical applications (construction plans, circuit dia­grams, dia­grams, etc.) are the main field of ap­pli­ca­tion of vector programs.

The possible color depth of a program determines how fine­ly shaded colors and color gradients can be dis­played within an image, the higher the possible color depth, the better. Depending on the application, a high col­or depth can also be advantageous if the output is

only at a low color depth: When performing extensive im­age processing steps, fewer calculation errors (rounding er­rors, etc.) may occur if complex calculations have to be car­ried out.

Hyperlink on image source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crystal_Project_colors.png,
       Original image source: http://everaldo.com/crystal/?action=downloads,
       License: http://everaldo.com/crystal/?action=license

Each device (monitor, printer, etc.) has its own col­or space. Imagine it as a col­or palette that defines which col­ors can be displayed and which can­not, and how the colors are displayed. Col­or spaces are standardized. A clas­sic problem: You have an image with many color tones (large color palette), and want to output it on a device with only a limited color range (small color palette). The fol­low­ing questions arise: How should a color of the original im­age be displayed that cannot be displayed on the output de­vice? Should the next similar color of the target color space be selected? Should a mixed color be selected? Or should the color simply be omitted completely? Another ex­am­ple: You want to convert a color photo into a black and white photo, in this case, grayscale tones must be as­signed to the respective hues of the original image.

Software for the Raster Image Editing

For the image editing of photos and graph­ics the powerful, cross-platform free paint­ing and image editing programs Krita (krita.​org) and GIMP are recommended. Both are suit­able for the image preparation of professional pre­press products as well as for the editing of graphics for the Internet and e-books.


Krita
JPEG-file, opened in Krita 2.9
(click for detailed view)



Essential image processing software:


Various Themes on Image Editing

The Internet offers numerous high-quality, step-by-step in­struc­tions on the huge subject of image editing. Think about which words or which word combinations could be contained in the information you are looking for and vary these search term combinations.

The WP-article “Comparison of raster graphics editors” con­tains a comprehensive overview on all free image edit­ing programs (left column)



Vector Graphic Editors

General overview on vector graphics software: “Com­pari­son of vector graphics editors”

Drawing Diagrams

DIA, official website • WP-article “Dia (soft­ware)” • Docu­men­ta­tion • Google search: DIA software introduction, DIA soft­ware Tutorials; Google image search: Dia soft­ware dia­grams; Google video search: DIA soft­ware Introduction, DIA software tutorials


3D Graphics

Blender is one of the most popular, widely used and pow­er­ful free 3D graphics and animation applications.

WP-article Blender (soft­ware) • Google search: Blender soft­ware, Blender introduction, Blender tutorials, Google image search: Blender software landscape; Google video search: Blender software landscape, Blender software introduction • Category:Free 3D graphics software


Various articles

WP-overview “Category: Free graphics software”, with subcategories.

Im­age editing and photography: “Category:​Photographic tech­niques”, “Category:​Pho­tog­ra­phy”, “Category:​Digital pho­tog­ra­phy”

“Ca­te­go­ry:Free mul­ti­me­dia soft­ware”



11 The sovereign Use of the Key­board, Language Acquisition

Use the opportunity to write with 10 fingers, learn the ten-finger system. This results in several advantages:

A big time saver, since you write down your thoughts in words blindly and directly, immediately, work on texts with highest efficiency and productiveness

No more distractions by unnecessary glances at the keyboard, continuous reading of telex dialogs on the screen, fast reaction times, calling of program functions by key combinations instead of time-consuming mouse clicks.

If necessary, you will also learn the original keyboard

layout and the ten-finger system for an additional lan­guage of your choice. Example: The keyboard layout(s) for French or the layout for German or the Russian PC key­board(s) in Cyrillic. You can switch the keyboard layout in a flash by pressing a key combination or clicking the mouse. Newly learned words and phrases are written down several times in the ten-finger system of the original key­board layout, in a word processing file, for the purpose of memorization. This also ensures immediate, fast written communication with language learning partners during di­rect written communication (telex dialogues, chatting).

11.1 Free Software for learning the Ten-Finger System, Teaching Articles

People of all professions write in the ten-finger system, for sig­nifi­cant time savings and increased responsiveness, and for maxi­mum concentration on content. Your attractiveness as a lan­guage learning partner is simply greater if you can an­swer your lan­guage tandem partner directly in writing in tel­ex dialogues.

In the WP article “Touch typing”, various aspects are ex­plained and in the German article ver­sion a com­prehen-

sive list of free software for the touch system and online help is referred to. Among the free programs, the free cross-platform writing trainer TIPP10 [English website ver­sion] (German WP-article) stands out. It offers a so­phis­ti­cated, interactive and self-adaptive writing course.

In the Internet, countless information is available free of charge and directly. Examples: Google search for “touch sys­tem typing”, Google video search for “touch system”.

11.2 Language and Keyboard Layout

Acquire the ten-finger system not only for your mother tongue, but also for the other lan­guage you wish to acquire. There are usu­al­ly several (country-specific) keyboard lay­out variants available for each lan­guage. The English Wikipedia article “Keyboard layout” offers a very comprehensive overview. The article itself is offered in different lan­guages (menu on the left), other Ver­sions may not be as comprehensive as the English ori­gi­nal. The article contains numerous hyperlinks re­ferring to national and country-specific Keyobard in­for­ma­tion; These subarticles can provide you with a lot of in­for­ma­tion, also in languages other than English. Al­ways look (in each [sub] article, category, etc.) on the left for other language versions.

Modern operating systems support all common world­wide assignments. Switching is done either by mouse click or via a self-defined key combination (short­cut).

The following procedure is recommended for learning the keyboard layout of your target language:

Find the corresponding information in the WP-article “Keyboard layout” (or in one of its other language versions)

Example for German, French, and Russian: German: Jump to the section “QWERTZ”, from there follow the link “Main article: QWERTZ” (German article version: “QWERTZ-Tastaturbelegung”). The section “Austria and Ger­ma­ny” contains the hyperlink “Main article: German key­board lay­out”. This article, “Ger­man key­board lay­out”, provides comprehensive country-specific in­for­ma­tion (German article version “Tastaturbelegung”). Now click on the keyboard shown there, whereupon the WP page German keyboard layout "T1" according to DIN 2137-1:2012-06 appears. Press “More details” at the bot­tom right, which will take you to the File:KB Ger­many.svg. French: Go to the “AZERTY” section and se­lect “Main article: AZERTY”. In this article (French ver­sion: “AZERTY”) you will find the relevant information. In the “French” section, click on the keyboard shown there, where­upon the WP page “AZERTY layout used in France” appears. Press “More details”, at the bottom right to go to the Wikimedia Commons page „File:KB France.svg“. Rus­sian: In the Cyrillic section “6.4.2 Rus­sian”, several keyboard layouts for Russian are shown. The separate article “JCUKEN” provides more in­for­ma­tion about the Russian standard keyboard layout.

Now click on the keyboard shown there, whereupon the WP page “ЙЦУКЕН key­board la­yout” appears. Press “More details” at the bottom right, which will take you to the Wikimedia Commons page „File:KB Russian.svg“.

There are now two ways to print the keyboard: You click on the original-SVG-​vector graphic file (German: “original file”, French: “Original file”, Russian: “Ori­gi­nal file”) and it opens in your web browser. Afterwards, go to the print pre­view in the browser menu: “Print” → “Print pre­view”. Now select “Landscape” for the orientation and then click on “Print”. Alternatively, you can also use a precalculated PNG-​file (different resolutions) for prin­ting. The table with the PNG versions is located under the respective SVG file.

As long as you have not yet mastered the key­board layout of your target language, proceed as follows: 1. Print the key­board. 2. Stick it on a firm cardboard base that you can cut or fold. 3. Attach the keyboard to your workplace so that it is always in your field of vision, or make a stand-up dis­play.

To learn new (chapter episode) words, open a word processing file. Write down each new word to be learned in the ten-finger system, at least over several lines. Proceed word by word, paragraph by paragraph. Writing down entire texts is also useful for memorizing them.

Use the numerous instructions on the Internet to select the appropriate keyboard layout. For example, use the search que­ry Russian keyboard or generally the search com­bi­na­tion [target language] keyboard layout [operating sys­tem]. Keyboard layout graphics can also be found directly via the image search, for example via the Google image search for Russian keyboard, or for Russian keyboard lay­out.

Your language learning partner will be amazed if suddenly you can write just as fast or even faster than them. In the physi­cal world, language is the key to the culture of peoples and to the hearts of your peo­ple. Read the com­pre­hen­sive article on free, powerful online and offline dictionaries, language learning and translation projects: Free­ly accessible Language Resources: Dic­tion­aries, Ma­chine Translation, Language Courses.

Seriously striving to speak the national language of a local peo­ple involves a fundamental respect. The local people will be aware of this and, no matter how advanced your lan­guage skills are, you will be met with a correspondingly open-minded attitude.

11.3 Your National Keyboard Layout and the US-American PC-Keyboard-Layout, EFI and BIOS

Take a look at the English WP-​article “Keyboard lay­out”, whi­ch contains de­tailed information about your national key­board lay­out as well as hyperlinks to further articles about each individual keyboard character; WP-SVG graphics are also offered, e.g. on the the German PC-keyboard-lay­out. On the left side of the “Keyboard lay­out”-article, you can look up the language version that contains the re­le­vant information for your national keyboard version.

Keyboard lay­out and EFI: In rare cases the EFI and pos­sibly also the predecessor system BIOS or another pro­gram require an input with US-American keyboard map­ping. Confirmations with “Y” (for “Yes”) and the re­con­struc­tion of already set system passwords can only be made if the US mapping is known. It is therefore essential that you file a printout of the US keyboard layout in your physical com­put­er folder (WP-article on the US-keyboard layout, over­view on the WP graphic file versions [various reso­lu­tions]).

11.4 Mechanical Keyboards

Frequent writers, authors and programmers prefer me­chani­cal keyboards, for example the timeless, world fa­mous Cherry G80-3000 LSCDE-2 (black version). There are worlds between PC foil circuit board keyboards and the right ones, the so-called mechanical keyboards, both in terms of writing comfort and touch precision, as well as in terms of consistent writing quality, robustness and durability of the keyboard.

An articles about this keyboard class and its different types: “Best Mechanical Keyboards For Typing – 2018 Edi­tion”.



12 Notes on the Use of Machine Translation Systems, by the Example of DeepL

DeepL (deepl.com) represents a quantum leap in ma­chine translation. Test the functions and fine functions, write individual sentences, copy text blocks and com­plete texts or upload documents to be translated and ex­am­ine the results. Click on individual words in the trans­la­tion text. Depending on the text, alternative for­mu­la­tions are also listed outside the windows.

Changes in the source text or in the translation text dy­nami­cal­ly lead to (partial) new translations, the system con­tinu­ous­ly and directly takes into account changes and extensions made by the user. This also applies to the correction of any translation errors that may occur: If you start to reformulate something (partially) in the trans­lated text, DeepL immediately dis­plays suggestions for sentence changes or re­for­mu­la­tions when you write the first word, including the actually correct translation if this has not been selected by the system or if the source text has not been formulated clearly enough. The sys­tem is extremely user-friendly, even with regard to in­cor­rect input, such as typos or omitted words.

For its translations, DeepL accesses the huge data treas­ure of the context-sensitive dictionary Linguee, which it has acquired since 2007. The following lan­guages are currently supported for translation: German, Eng­lish, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Po­lish, Russian. The lan­guage of the user interface fol­lows your browser's identification, but it can also be set ex­plic­it­ly in the menu at the bottom left.

Machine translations can never be taken over unchecked by computers, since more complex texts may have room for manoeuvre and more subtle interpretations. However, the machine translation standard that has now been achieved is shocking. Since the translations proposed for fac­tual texts are absolutely ready for printing, it is no longer possible to speak of raw translations. Para­graph by para­graph, polished diamonds are supplied, absolutely natu­ral-language texts; from time to time there are rough diamonds among them, which require minimal post-pro­cessing. This system is also excellent for checking the flu­en­cy of formulations, partially verifying the grammatical cor­rect­ness of individual phrases, sen­tences and sen­tence constructions, fine-tuning and displaying trans­la­tion al­ter­na­tives.

Inform yourself: WP-​article „DeepL Translator“, DeepL Blog, „Über­set­ze Do­ku­men­te mit DeepL“.

Modern translation systems such as DeepL work context-based, analysing the contextual frame of reference to se­lect the right terms and phrases. Once they have identified the subject area or sub-discipline in which the text is to be lo­cated, they can precisely encircle, compile and arrange the required translation elements, drawing on huge data­bases of subject-vocabulary-specific (man-made) trans­la­tions, whereby the jargon-specific phrases, idioms and for­mu­la­tions of the target language are accurately selected and assigned.





If an entire, complete document is loaded for translation, as much reference frame information as possible is trans­ferred. If individual sentences or paragraphs are en­tered for translation, the user must, depending on the case, add additional information for reference frame rec­og­ni­tion, or subsequently make corrections himself, ei­ther by overwriting (partially) the translation result, re­writing or supplementing it, or by clicking on individual words in the translation to select alternative proposals. In both cases, the rest of the text may be dynamically re­trans­lated by the system, or new suggestions may be presented in windows that appear.

Translations can also be saved as text files.

Example: We are in the field of mathematics and our title or section title to be translated is: “Ein­füh­rung in den in­di­rek­ten Be­weis”.

If we leave it at this single sentence, the system has too few points of reference or orientation to be able to de­ter­mine in which subject area or in which sub-discipline the text is to be located, so that a more general frame of ref­er­ence may be chosen which results in a translation that is not appropriate.


text

Translation of a document title without further frame of reference information.


By clicking on a translated word, alternative suggestions appear:



If we write the discipline, mathematics, before the individual sentence, the correct translation appears from the outset:


text

By explicitly naming the subject area, department or (sub)discipline, it is possible to provide support for sentences with little reference frame information.


However, it probably requires only in the fewest cases of such extra references, the contentwise paragraph in­for­ma­tion delivers mostly already sufficient in­for­ma­tion.

When translating, it is recommended that you keep a sec­ond tab window of the translation system open so that you can enter individual sentences or formulations sepa­rate­ly if required.

Recommendation:

Repeated note: If the appropriate translation is not dis­played, it is usually already available as an alternative in the selection menu. Click with the mouse pointer on any emp­ty space in the text, at the beginning of the sentence or in the middle, or click on any words to display al­ter­na­tive sentence introductions, (partial) formulations and word al­ter­na­tives.

Until now, many people could not produce print-ready trans­la­tions without prior checking by native English speak­ers if the text was too large or complex. And still po­et­ry (classical literary English, French, etc.) is a separate field.

For factual texts, however, a completely new starting point is given: Highly complex texts can now be translated into the respective target language ready for printing, even with­out a native speaker of the target language. Even though many people may not be able to do this without the ma­chine help of DeepL, they can still reliably recognize whether a text is in natural English and wheth­er or where a machine translation needs to be corrected. Years of con­sum­ing English texts enable them to do this, and any cor­rec­tions that may be necessary can usually be done alone, if necessary by evaluating search engine statistics.



13 Introduction to the Creation of Websites

Internet sites are hosted in data centers, in air-con­di­tioned and elaborately secured halls. Service computers, so-called computer servers, which are specialized in pro­vid­ing and sending data, keep thousands of web pages ready for retrieval and wait for page requests from In­ter­net users.

Web pages are written in the markup language HTML. A sin­gle HTML file or page can vary in size or length, simi­lar to short, medium and long rolls of text paper displayed in a storefront window. Internet pages used to be created clas­si­cal­ly on the computer at home and then uploaded to the personal user account in the web host's data center for publication, using an SFTP transfer program such as File­Zilla.

In the meantime, editorial systems, so-called content man­age­ment systems (CMS) for the creation and main­te­nance of websites have established themselves; these are server-side running programs (software) with which HTML documents (e.g. articles) can be created and pub­lished via a graphical user interface. The operation is com­pa­rably simple as with a word processing system, there­fore no typesetting knowledge, no HTML knowledge is required. Every web­site has a title page or start page, the so-called homepage.

As a (future) site owner (see also domain owner) you have various options. First of all, you have to decide on a web­hoster in whose computer center your website will be

hosted and kept accessible. Make sure that the notice periods are as short as possible. Furthermore, you must de­cide on a domain or an internet address where your website will be accessible. The naming should be well con­sid­ered, the registration of the domain is usually done by the web host. Existing Internet addresses can of course be transferred for administration purposes, e.g. to another web host, for example in the context of a web host pro­vid­er change.

You can either install and maintain CMS software yourself, or you can use a system pre-installed by the web host. In this case it is advantageous to choose such a webhosting prod­uct option, where the webhoster completely takes care of the installed CMS software and all (optional) ex­ten­sions (plug-ins), i.e. maintains all up­dates and security updates for the CMS and the extensions; otherwise you have to take care of it yourself or hire expensive external ser­vice providers.

After logging in (login via your user account) to your user di­rec­tory and after the first initial basic design (pre-se­lec­tion of a design template or here: selection of a “theme”) you can create articles or texts (HTML pages) from your com­put­er at home and release them for publication. In CMS systems, the entire website is managed by a com­put­er program that runs on a server computer in the data cen­ter.

13.1 Popular free CMS Systems, additional Functionalities, Creation of Online Shops

CMS systems enable the creation and design of various types of websites, including web diaries, so-called blogs. The free WordPress is one of the most widespread CMS systems and is used, among other things, also for online shops for which special extensions exist, which are maintained in parallel as country-specific adapted versions, for the legal requirements on site.

Photographers and models also benefit from their own network presence. When publishing on third party platforms, e.g. on image services, social network sites, etc., there is a risk that these services may claim exploitation licenses for themselves or even grant themselves the right to license photos to third parties; the terms of use may change to this effect at any time. Please read the following article dealing with this issue (17.12.2020), “What Instagram's New Terms of Service Mean for You”, as an example; the attempt at that time was rejected, but companies can change their terms of use at any time. In addition, it already happened that user photo galleries of formerly publicly accessible picture services suddenly only showed thumbnails and the viewing of the pictures was only possible after creating a user account.

The choice of a suitable CMS system depends on various factors, depending on the company and the existing IT infrastructure (see also “Enterprise resource planning”) Get overviews: “List of content management systems” • “Cat­ego­ry:​Content management systems” • “Cat­ego­ry:​Web development” • “Category:Website management”.

13.2 Shared Web Hosting vs. own Server Computer

As a customer, you can either rent your own entire server computer from your web hoster or take advantage of a shared web hosting offer.With the latter, several customers share one server computer.

If a customer rents an entire server computer for himself, the entire computing power is also available to him. With shared web hosting, on the other hand, the computing power of the server is shared among all account holders. For the majority of site owners, a shared web hosting offer is perfectly adequate. Very large companies, organizations and web sites with an above-average highly frequented web presence and a huge data stock or with a very large computing power requirement, usually rent their own server. If necessary, an in-house move to an own server is possible at any time.

In the case of shared web hosting offers and so-called managed server offers, data center employees maintain the operating system and software required to operate the server computer. In addition, there are also offers where the customer must take care of the configuration and maintenance of the server operating system and associated program components himself.

Make sure that you can move with your site at any time if necessary, and that a complete and up-to-date backup of your website is always available on your home computer, this should in turn be backed up on several USB sticks, with date information. Example search for source articles: WordPress backup. Some web hosters offer website building systems (also available offline) for a fast, uncomplicated website creation. However, if there is no export and backup function for pages created in this way, this could make it difficult to move to another web host. Detailed, illustrated overview article: “Web Hosting Basics Explained In Detail For New Site Owners”.

13.3 Web Typography

Most typographical refinements and subtleties are also possible in the design of Internet pages (web design), but depending on the web browsers of the respective computer users and their preset preferences. For example, entire character sets can be loaded, but if the user excludes this or if his program cannot display the character set, an alternative must always be available; always make sure that your site also works without scripts, test it also with free text-based browsers.

Get overviews: “Web typography” • “Category:Free typography software” • “Category:Typography”.

For hyphenation of HTML texts, the same notes apply as for e-books (Section 9.3).

13.4 Additional Functionalities, Scripts

You can add numerous additional functionalities to your world wide web page, via extensions (plug-ins) or via separately created computer programs (written in [script]programming languages such as JavaScript, PHP or Python), for example a contact form evaluation. Python and PHP programs are usually executed on the server computer. JavaScript programs, on the other hand, run in the browser of the Internet user; they are executed on the user side, so-called “client” side. However, additional executable program code could theoretically contain security gaps that could possibly be exploited by input from the Internet user or by malware in general.

With editorial systems (content management systems, list) such as WordPress and Drupal, the complete website is managed as described above by a computer program which is executed on the server side and delivers static or dynamically prepared Internet pages when the pages are called up. The continuous input of security updates is therefore absolutely necessary.

13.5 Legal Aspects of Operating a Website

The legal framework and specific laws differ from country to country, no general statements can be made here, please inform yourself locally.The following information reflects the current situation in occupied Rest-Germany (“FRG”/“BRD”)

[The following sections marked in green will be translated into English at a later date.]
13.5.1 The Imprint Obligation

If you operate commercial sites, you must publish a legally compliant imprint (search term web imprint) and a legally compliant data protection declaration (privacy statement) from the outset, and depending on the activity, also general terms and conditions. Otherwise you run the risk that competitors or specialized lawyers will issue a warning, for which even small formal errors can be sufficient.

Texts for the legally compliant Website Imprint

Please enquire about the legal situation in your country.

13.5.2 Privacy Policy and Cookies, Data Protection Officer

The privacy statement in its current form is supposed to be due to the tapping of data for AI systems (German interview). Legally secure data protection provisions must nevertheless be formulated extremely carefully. Depending on the law, a company may also need a data protection officer and, depending on the number of employees, it may not be sufficient for the company owner to declare himself/herself as such, which has already led to warnings. Two searches: Who needs a data protection officer • GDPR data protection officer.

If possible, deactivate all preset cookie-setting functions of your CMS, search the Internet for corresponding articles, e.g. for WordPress, search: Deactivate cookies in WordPress. Check whether and if so, which cookie files your CMS or website building-system sets. Call up your website and open the corresponding cookie display function in your web browser program (Chrome, Firefox, Edge), then you will see the cookies that have been set. Also ask your web host directly whether the respective CMS system sets cookies by default and how to deactivate them.

Articles about the privacy statement: search: WordPress without cookies • website privacy statement •

Translated excerpt from one of the readers' comments under the recommended basic article (written in German) “Blog oh­ne Coo­kies! Da­ten­schutz im Word­Press-Blog Teil 1” [“Blog without cookies! Privacy in the WordPress Blog Part 1”]: “[...] with this topic you should not forget that every theme change and every newly installed plugin could set cookies again. Even 3rd party plug-ins. Every site operator should consider this [...]”.

13.5.3 Business E-mails: E-mail imprint and legally recognized, Audit-proof E-mail Archiving

The content form of business electronic messages is partly regulated by legal requirements. In many countries, the e-mail signature text must contain legally required business information, similar to legal notices on Internet sites. Article references: [Hyperlinks to corresponding English-language articles will follow here; use the pos­sibil­ity to find introductory articles by using appropriate search term combinations.] WP-Ar­ti­kel „Sig­na­tur (E-Mails im Ge­schäfts­ver­kehr)“ • „Pflicht­an­gaben in ge­schäft­li­chen E-Mails“ • „Pflicht­lek­tü­re: Was in die ge­schäft­li­che E-Mail ge­hört“ • „Abmahn­si­che­re Ge­schäfts-​E-Mail“.

In some sectors of the economy, e-mails that lead to business transactions/orders are legally considered commercial letters. For their archiving, simply saving or printing them out is no longer sufficient. Instead, they must be archived in an audit-proof manner, in a technical manner that excludes subsequent, undetectable unnoticed manipulation of the e-mail data.

The technical implementation is probably carried out in most programs with the help of cryptographic checksums. Electronic fingerprints are created from all incoming and outgoing e-mails and stored in encrypted form. If, for example, a certified public accountant would like to gain insight into a certain e-mail, the saved e-mail file

is loaded into the corresponding e-mail archiving program, e.g. from a CD- ROM. When the file is read in, the cryptographic checksum of the e-mail file is formed again and compared with the originally archived corresponding checksum to ensure that it matches.

Only very specific software and/or hardware solutions from specific manufacturers are legally recognized within the scope of the legal requirements.

Numerous high-quality introductory articles on this topic are available in the Internet, written by specialized lawyers and IT experts. A small selection: [Hyperlinks to cor­re­spond­ing English-language articles will follow here; use the pos­sibil­ity to find introductory articles by using ap­pro­pri­ate search term combinations.] WP-Artikel „E-Mail-Ar­chi­vie­rung“, „Grund­sät­ze zum Da­ten­zu­griff und zur Prüf­bar­keit di­gi­ta­ler Un­ter­la­gen“ • „FAQ der IT-Recht Kanz­lei: zu den The­men E-Mail-Ar­chi­vie­rung und IT-Richt­li­nie“ • „Rechts­si­che­re E-Mail-Ar­chi­vie­rung – Teil 1[,] Ein­füh­rung und Rechts­vor­schrif­ten“ • „Man­gel­haf­te Ar­chi­vie­rung elek­tro­ni­scher Post hat Kon­se­quen­zen[,] Ge­setz­li­che Vor­ga­ben für die eMail-Ar­chi­vie­rung“: Teil 1, „Teil 2“ • Bei­­spiel für ei­­ne kom­­mer­­ziel­­le soft­­ware­­ba­­sier­­te Lö­­sung, mit ei­­nem „Leit­­f­aden zur rechts­­si­­che­­ren E-Mail-​Ar­­chi­­vie­­rung (PDF)“, je­weils für Deutsch­­land, Öster­­reich und die Schweiz er­­hält­­lich, „Mail­­store Ser­­ver“: „Vor­tei­le der E-Mail-Ar­chi­vie­rung“.

Click on image to enlarge.

Proof of authenticity for human and computer files. Most audit-proof e-mail archiving systems probably work according to the following principle: 1. an electronic fingerprint (cryptographic checksum) is created from every incoming e-mail message, all fingerprints are stored in encrypted form by the system. 2. when checking the integrity of a
stored e-mail message, it is retrieved and its fingerprint is recreated. 3. the fingerprint is then checked
against the stored fingerprint.



13.5.4 Embedding external Media Content

Nowadays, a lot of media content is integrated from external sources (servers) into your own website, for example web videos from video portal providers and documents including document viewers. Technically, script programs are mainly used for these embedding functions. The permission of the (video) copyright owner for embedding external content is one decisive factor, another is data protection compliance: Internet video portals, document platforms and similar service providers may not “only” create cookies and supercookies. Technically, it is also possible that these external service providers additionally store and evaluate IP addresses. This could easily lead to a legal minefield for website owners. The storage of IP addresses requires the explicit consent of the site visitor, depending on the legal situation in the country concerned and the current tendency of the prevailing legal situation.

The inclusion of Internet videos enhances the value of web pages and creates added information value; it is an indispensable part of today's Internet.

However, due to the data protection problems and legal uncertainty described above, the integration of external videos has become less practical in some countries, without a complex data protection declaration comparison. Only classic references (hyperlinks) to Internet videos are currently still practicable and possible without risk, as long as they point to (“politically correct”) sources of information whose contents are in conformity with the propagated views and political agenda of the ruling powers (search: permissibility of and liability for hyperlinks).

Article references: [Hyperlinks to cor­re­spond­ing English-language articles will follow here; use the pos­sibil­ity to find introductory articles by using ap­pro­pri­ate search term combinations.] „11 il­le­ga­le Din­ge, die fast je­der Web­ma­ster macht“ • „Wie Ih­re IP-Adres­se Ih­re Pri­vat­sphä­re ge­fähr­det“ • „IP-Adres­se als per­so­nen­be­zo­ge­ne In­for­ma­ti­on“ • „Was Web­ma­ster in Sta­ti­sti­ken le­sen“

Various Topics on the Operation of a Website
[Hyperlinks to cor­re­spond­ing English-language articles will follow here; use the pos­sibil­ity to find introductory articles by using ap­pro­pri­ate search term combinations.]

„Zum Umgang mit E-Rechnungen“ • „Erste Hilfe: Kostenlose Taschenfibel zum Thema Abmahnung“ • „Abmahnung erhalten? Beachten Sie die Checkliste der IT-Recht Kanzlei!“ • „ BGH: Verwendung fremder Marken in html-Metatags nicht zulässig “

Parasitic business models are also flourishing on the Internet. Complete web pages and blogs have already been copied (“cloned”) to generate profits through advertising. In such cases, not only is plagiarism carried out, but also identity abuse. The fraudsters register a new domain under the name of the affected website owner and even use original address data from the imprint, where only the e-mail and telephone details are changed, 3 articles from 2014, in German: “Ak­tu­el­le Ma­sche: Kri­mi­nel­ler 'Blog-Klau' ver­är­gert vie­le Be­trei­ber ” • “Con­tent-Klau: Deut­sche Blogs wer­den ge­ra­de mas­sen­haft ko­piert” • “Blog ko­piert, ge­klont und ge­klaut – was kann ich da­ge­gen tun?”.


14 Further Information on Document and Book Creation
Small Caps Usage for Name References

Names are often written out in small caps, for example Forename Surname, often also when names are part of adjectives.

Chapter Endnotes

Thanks to chapter endnotes, additional information and source references can also be placed at the end of each chap­ter in a reader-friendly manner. The use of footnotes re­mains unaffected by this, but may require switching the foot­note indexing style (e.g., use of symbols instead of num­ber­ing). The counters for footnotes and endnotes can be adjusted if required.

Upper and Lower Case in English Title, Chapter and Section Headings

The upper and lower case of English-language headings fol­lows certain conventions. Example article on the theme: „Capi­tali­za­tion in Ti­tles and Head­ings“.

Library and Book Basics

Cor­nell University Library: „Library Pre­ser­vation and Con­ser­vation Tu­to­rial [...]“, Table of Contents.

WP-Articles: “Cat­ego­ry:Books” • “Cat­ego­ry:Publications” • “Cat­ego­ry:​Documents” • “Cat­ego­ry:Antiquarian booksellers”.

Can you make Money from Writing Books or Texts?

Can you make money from writing books? Probably not, writing can hardly be considered a viable business model or income opportunity. Probably the absolute majority of all authors (99.99 %) cannot even begin to make a living from it. The income, if there is any substantial income at all, is disproportionate to the time invested. In the mass media, the non-representative exceptional cases are usually highlighted when reporting on successful authors.

Perhaps it behaves as follows: Book writing is a) ideal­is­ti­cal­ly or honorary motivated: Someone wants to impart knowl­edge. b) Reputation care: A professor, for example, is often expected to write a book in addition to numerous scientific articles (academic publication pressure, “publish or perish”). c) Advertising: Through the presentation of competence by means of a specialized textbook, new or­ders could be placed in the professional world.

Sometimes the time is also not yet ripe for certain topics and at present only a numerically vanishingly small read­er­ship exists, so that some authors experience their greatest sales successes only after their physical death from the hereafter, they then often nevertheless hold on animatedly to their book projects, because of course the appropriate knowledge must be available already in advance, so that it will be callable when the interest in it will awaken.

An example on a complex of topics, a pres­en­ta­tion of impressive literature, film and TV works, which will have their largest readership and viewership only in the distant future, perhaps even only in 300 or 400 years: “Chapter 5, Inner Levels of Communication and Reality Structures”.

Quite a few book or text authors started out with the hope of earning money directly (by selling books) or indirectly (e.g. by placing advertisements on a website). However, many of them were disillusioned to find that no substantial income was generated at all, that writing was rather to be

classified as a honorary activity, and that, from the point of view of the possibility of earning money, it was the biggest misinvestment of time in their lives, the biggest waste of life time, of years of life: What is the use of being able to formulate facts routinely if no money can be earned at all, and writing remains a purely honorary activity?

After years of evaluating visitor log files, after years of vainly hoping for a turnaround, even­tu­al­ly getting more readership or more web page visitors, many writers even­tu­al­ly stop writing. Mostly it is service providers around writing (writing course providers etc.) who earn money. Perhaps it is similar to the classical music industry, where, according to the statements of various musicians, the least money is left over for the musicians. For quite a few authors it is clear: Writing is a honorary activity and is not suitable for earning money, certainly not for con­trib­uting substantially to a living income.

Three highly recommended, key articles on these aspects: “Knowing when to quit: Why I decided to stop writing fic­tion” • “How much does the average author earn pub­lish­ing their book?” • “The horrible hidden truth about self-pub­lish­ing that nobody wants you to know”

For many authors, writing is a purely money-losing busi­ness. In the case of extensive articles and books for Inter­net sites, there is also the permanent maintenance of hyper­links, a job that remains extremely time-consuming despite supporting add-ons (such as the Firefox extension Simple Link Checker). If then the readership is missing and the years of work are not even enough for pocket mon­ey and do not increase the job chances, one can come to the following conclusion: “Writing is absolutely useless for earning money, it was the biggest mis­in­vest­ment of time in my life and the stupidest idea ever to try to earn money with it. If only I'd invested all those years in developing another skill, I could be making money at it now.” This is all the more bitter when one has tried in vain to create the financial prerequisites with writing (securing the living costs) in order to be able to devote oneself to one's actual vocation, to be able to study and develop it privately in preparation.

Written language enables the communication of facts. How­ever, writing is not sustainable; it remains an un­prof­it­able art, an honorary hobby that one must be able to af­ford both financially and in terms of time.

However, if your inner self (your guardian angel) should recommend you to hold on to your writing or book proj­ects, then you should follow this path, even if only part-time. Then you will find a way to earn/secure your live­li­hood and be able to write. Every physical being is born into the physical world with missions and only you can find out what yours are.

When the basic ability to formulate facts or tell stories is developed, you have the possibility to instruct your inner self to create complete books or partial texts for you and dic­tate them to you. Some authors have repeatedly re­port­ed in detail on how they received or transcribed fully com­plet­ed books. Watch interviews with Richard Bach, the author of “Jonathan Livingston Seagull on YouTube.

Another very revealing and highly informative con­ver­sa­tion about the creative aspect of book writing: “Meet the Author: W. Bruce Cameron”.

15 Aspects of Copyright Protection
Creation of a central Overview of all Buying Sources and Publication Platforms

Publish a comprehensive overview of all publication plat­forms on your central book presentation page, for ex­am­ple in tabular form and organized by book title and lan­guage. In addition to the official and only authorized book purchasing sources, your website platforms (your own Internet presence, possible third-party platforms such as YouTube, etc.) should also be listed; readers must always know where you publish and therefore where you do not. Emphasize that these are your only publication platforms, emphasize the exclusivity, this has a positive effect on the integrity of your overall work.

Proof of Identity for Business Communication

Your e-mail correspondence partners must be able to be sure that they are really communicating with you, the author (e-mail addresses and sender data are easy to forge). Not all countries allow digital signing and en­cryp­tion of e-mail correspondence, but there is an excellent al­ter­na­tive method that is pre-installed by default on all com­put­er platforms (operating systems) worldwide: cryp­to­graph­ic checksums.

Write your message in a file (e.g. .txt, .pdf), attach this text document to the e-mail and publish the checksum of the sent text file on your official checksum list, which can be viewed on your official website, before or immediately after sending. A very simple text file (.txt) is sufficient for this list of published checksums: At the top is the most recent entry, dated. Read the article „Practical application of cryptographic checksums“.

Unauthorized Translations

One should not focus on undesirable situations, as this makes their physical occurrence more likely. However, knowl­edge of theoretically possible dangers is an ad­van­tage. In some countries, unauthorized translations of books have been and are being printed, and sometimes even translations of translations appear. As the crowning chutz­pah, some of these pirated translations, pro­fes­sion­al­ly prepared for printing and sold on the regular book mar­ket, are then given the “seal of approval” “authorized trans­la­tion”. Articles on the subject:

Unauthorised translation and piracy of foreign books thrive in Nepal” • “Five Persian translators working sepa­rate­ly on Paula Hawkins’ 'Into the Water'” • “Why Iran has 16 different translations of one Khaled Hosseini novel” • “India: Unpacking Copyright And Moral Rights In Trans­la­tions” • “Un­author­ized online translation of foreign media news shut down” • “French teen charged for posting un­author­ized Harry Potter translation” • “Berne Convention” • “My Shadow Library: A Chinese Author on Book Pi­ra­cy” • “JK Rowling novel withheld from foreign publishers over pi­ra­cy fears” • “Russian Government Figures Put Book Piracy at 25 to 30 Percent” • “Steal My Book!

Protect your work: Publish a continuously updated over­view that lists all book publication places, book titles, lan­guage versions (translations) and sales sites.

A successful author reports on the aspects of becoming known and on challenging situations: “11 Reasons Not to Become Famous (or ‘A Few Lessons Learned Since 2007’)





Copyright 2008–2024 by Peter Jockisch, webmaster@peterjockisch.de

All listed brand names, trademarks and work titles are the property of their respective owners.
For this translated article version DeepL (DeepL.com) was used extensively.

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