Free Software - (Mostly for Windows PCs)
For the Office
Microsoft Office 2010 will no longer be supported after October 2020 and they are pushing people to adopt the subscription model. If you don't like to rent for your software, why not go for a freebie instead?
Do you need a pdf reader? It depends on whether you want to edit pdfs (use Libre Office) or just read them. For most purposes, you can easily read pdf files in Windows10 with no need to install anything first. Another handy thing is that you can save most web pages to pdf very easily using the 'Print' option and just save to file as a pdf. That's if the web page had been formatted properly.
Key W = Windows, M = Mac, L = Linux.
- Ableword - (Windows XP to 10)
AbleWord can read and write the following file types: Microsoft Word (doc, docx), Adobe Acrobat (pdf), Rich Text Format (rtf), Plain Text (txt) and HTML (html, htm). It is often used as an editor to open, edit and save pdf files. Not often updated; the most recent version being March 2015.
- Bookletimposer (Linux only)
One of those little programs that does a big job, to 'print as booklet.' When printing from a DTP such as Scribus, the linear way you compose it (pages 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) is no good for printing a booklet. Pages need to be 'imposed' into the correct order (Eg. 8, 1, 2, 7, 6, 3, 4, 5) so that they are in the right order for printing. Some versions of Acrobat Reader might have 'Print as Booklet' but not everyone likes 'bloatware.' This method is better. For an A5 booklet (on A4 paper) in your DTP, save it as 'continuous pages' pdf. In Bookletimposer, Open file > 'Produce a booklet out of Linear Document' > '2 pages width' > '1 page height' > Convert. A new pdf miraculously appears in the same folder with '-conv' at the end of the filename. Now you can print it like a pro. What a shame there isn't a Windows version.
- FreeOffice 2018 - (W, M, L)
Another one from Computer Active magazine. As with the more mainstream Libre Office (below) this one will read and save in the usual Microsoft formats and is supposed to look a bit similar to Office. It also supports touch-screen and has the option for traditional or ribbon menus. There is really no reason for a small business to waste money on Microsoft Office with all these freebies abounding. The latest version has direct support for scanners.
- Libre Office (All Windows versions, Mac, Linux) - Everyone's favourite.
A near-replacement for Microsoft Office (sans 'Outlook') and without that ribbon feature. Libre Office supports 'OpenType' fonts and 'font embedding' which reduces font substitution when swapping files with MS users.
It can read and write most MS Office formats and a few obsolete formats and both can export 'pdf' files. Loads of 'extensions' (plug-ins) are available for foreign dictionaries, clipart, thesauruses and so on. Compared to MS Office, there will be slight layout differences but it will be near enough. According to PC Pro magazine, Libre office will correctly display just about any MS Excel file thrown at it, while its weak point is its Powerpoint equivalent which might look different. Versions for Windows, Mac and Linux. New Linux distros usually include one suite or the other. Be careful to install from the right download file which will be about 350MB (such as this one for ver 7.6.2), check it after downloading. You might otherwise download an msi of the same name but only a few MB, which Microsoft defender objects to.
- Open Broadcaster (W, M, L)
For recording PC screen events as a video file, to make 'How To' presenteations. Like Camstudio but more polished. It gives clean results and the resultant file sizes are surprisingly small but high quality. Take a look at: 'Top 5 Screen Recorders For Windows (Free Software)' on Youtube. You can also use VLC media player to capture on-screen events but it looks fiddly to use. This one gets my vote.
- Open Office (W, M, L) - Now Deprecated.
This
is very similar to Libre Office and comes from the same original source. They both originated as the paid-for Star Office in the nineties, then Sun Microsystems acquired Star Office office suite in 1999. Microsoft and Sun had a fall-out and Sun decided to stuff them by releasing it as Open Source in 2000, for anyone to work on and improve. Open Office developers branched off to produce Libre Office, while the Open Source community continued with OO. Unfortunately, OO is lagging behind and not being updated. That makes it a security risk.
- Scribus (W, M, L)
Something like MS Publisher or InDesign this DTP has vector graphics and might be handy for newsletters, ransom demands, etc. It is intended for high-quality printing, rather than the internet, so pdf file sizes might become very large. It also has CYMK colour and ICC colour management for professionals to get good colour-matching. Plenty to learn but it does a neat job. I used it to design the 'Royal Jubilee Street Party' and 'Penistone Folk Festival' posters in 2012 (I hope you saw them). The Linux version looks identical to Windows and its project files are interchangeable between platforms.
- Speed Tester - Se if your internet speed is what it is supposed to be.
- Techjunkie PDF Tool - An online tool to extract photos from Acrobat (pdf) files. This one looks legitimate and it works well. Just drop your pdf into the webpage from your file explorer, comply with a capcha and it offers the content as individual files or as a zip file. Almost an office must-have.
- TTSReader - After failing to make any sense of the Windows 'Narrator' this one proved to be a simpler alternative. Simply Copy-Paste text into the box and click the 'Play' button for this online reader to do its stuff. One wonders why Windows couldn't do it as easilly. Very useful for long pages of text instead of getting eyestrain.
Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
The police use Automatic Number Plate recognition (ANPR) systems to 'capture' vehicle number plates, which their computer (a 'PC'?) then checks up to see if the vehicle is insured or the driver disqualified, etc. That works by translating a camera view into machine-readable text as a limited form of OCR.
If you have a printer, it is highly likely that the installation disc or whatever has included an OCR app, such as Abbyy Finereader, an excellent OCR app which you normally would have to pay for. A good system would let you scan pages of a book and combine them into a single PDF file, with correct pagination. Other systems might only work with single photographs or scans which include printed text. The good part is that you don't have to pay for them.
- Free OCR - (Windows XP to 10)
This is quite old and is not being updated. A compact utility to extract text from images (such as a magazine scan) or acrobat pdf file, to save as text or to Windows clipboard. Easy to use and works well on my laptop. Pictures should be the right way up and of sufficient resolution (probably 200 upwards) but not huge file-sizes. It works with two panes, image on the left and derived text on the right. Just import a graphic which contains text, drag a rectangular selection area out with the mouse (with handles you can then adjust) then click the OCR tab. The processing takes a few seconds. You would usually make a few corrections in the text pane. Then there are buttons to save to a text file, to the clipboard or you could clipboard any highlighted text in the text pane with Control + C. Once clipboarded, you can paste the text into another document. Intuitive and dead easy to use. XP users would need to download and install .Net Framework V2.0 from Softpedia for Open OCR to work on their systems.
- Google OCR - Via Google Drive.
Extract text from images by following the instructions on the page. You will need a Google Drive account to get going, so registration will be mandatory. According to PC Pro magazine, it is very effective and even works with cursive handwriting. The resulting PDF will be word-searchable, which is always a neat trick. Not tried, and not sure how much of your personal data Google will demand for you to get a Google Drive account with them.
- On-line OCR - Via a web-page.
Free utility to generate text from a picture/scan file containing text. Limited to 15 files per hour. The saved formats are limited to (Word) docx, (Excel) xlsx or plain text - txt files. Not tried but reviews look happy.
- Text Extractor (Part of Microsoft Powertoys) - Install 'Microsoft Powertoys' from Windows Store (Win 10 or 11). Open a suitable graphic (I clicked on an old poster picture using XnView), press: Windows key, Shift and 't' (the three buttons together) to operate it and you can pull a rectangle over any image on the screen to enclose the area of interest containing text. The derived text is silently placed on the clipboard, unannounced (there ought to be a beep). Paste it into your document in the usual way, press Ctrl and 'v' together. It only does one image at a time so you can't capture a book in one go. I thought that Free OCR worked slightly better.
PDF Tricks
1. Don't Install a PDF Reader
They are nearly always bloatware. You can create your own PDFs from other documents from such as Libre Office.
Repeating from above, web browsers now seem to all display and print PDF files. Edge does a good job and you can 'Print' to file if you want to just save the pages of interest as a new PDF. It also reads out the text (narrator) if you want to do something else at the same time.
2. Shrinking the PDF
You find yourself with a large document such as Yorkshire Archaeological Journal - Volume 82 at Archive.org but you only want to keep part of it. You first download the PDF (right-click and 'save as') from the list and save it to your PC. Having completed the download, you double-click the saved file and it will probably open in Edge or another web browser, depending on what's installed on the computer.
The clever bit is to locate the section you found interesting, for example 'The Re-building of Cusworth Hall' which is pages 304 to 306, right-click the start page and, instead of printing it out' you choose to 'Print to File' as a new PDF but insert the page range '304 - 306.' Now you will have saved just that section as a new file without destroying the original. Useful, what?
3. Saving Pictures from PDF
Someone has sent you a PDF with embedded photos and you want to extract the photos. One simple method is to maximise the photo in 'Edge' or whatever is used to view the PDF then do a screen capture - Press the 'Prt Sc' (Print Screen) button on the keyboard. That saves a screengrab to the clipboard. You open up a simple graphics editor such as '3D paint' which comes with Windows, or I would use XnView. Now you crop the image to get rid of anything around the photo then save the image as something like a JPG or PNG.
Another way to save pictures from a PDF is a bit hit-and-miss. This was tested in Libre Office 6 but failed in Libre Office 7. The trick is to make the PDF editable to extract the picture. Open the file in Libre Office and, hopefully, you will be able to edit or move its component parts. It won't work with every document, especially if it is more than a few MegaBytes or if you used PDF Trick No.1 above which carves up the graphics. Find the photo of interest and drag a corner to maximise it on the page, then Control+C to save it to clipboard. Of course, if the document is a 'Word' file, you can simply open it in your usual editor, maximise the picture and clipboard it from there.
Website Resources
General
Style Guides
Special Characters
You can copy-paste these symbols into your social media or webpage. The HTML code (such as ½) does need the semi-colon.
- é - é such as Café Crème
- © - ©
- Umlauts ä - ë - ö - ü
- Umlauts Ä - Ë - Ö - Ü
- German beta ß (ss) - ß
Maths
- ½ - ½
- ¼ - ¼
- ¾ - ¾
- ± - ±
- ° - °
- × - ×
- ÷ - ÷
- ∞ - ∞
- ∴ - ∴
Albert Einstein: "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
