Saturday, January 19, 2013

Genkou Youshi Template for OpenOffice / LibreOffice

Writing assignments on genkou youshi are a staple of Japanese language classes. Tradition and the need to practice Kanji writing often dictate that such works be handwritten, but there's no reason one couldn't first compose the text on a computer (where editing, revision and indeed writing itself are much easier) and only reach to paper and pencil when the final version is ready.

Experience has taught me that hand-copying texts from a computer screen is much quicker and less error-prone when both digital document and paper share the same layout, and of course it's best if I can print genkou youshi sheets at my own leisure, rather than go out and buy them (not many stationery shops this side of the world have them, anyway). Searching the web it is relatively easy to find a genkou youshi template for Microsoft Word, but Open Document Format equivalents are harder to come by – and while it's possible to use the Word templates on OpenOffice / LibreOffice, rendering problems such as misaligned grids and hidden hanging punctuation are often present, which is kind of frustrating for a die-hard Linux user like me.

Today as I sit down to try and create a genkou youshi template on LibreOffice, I decided to try and look it out one last time – and there I found a genkou youshi Open Template on the OpenOffice Templates web site. I'm kind of baffled as to how I didn't come across it earlier (apparently it was uploaded in 2009), so I thought I'd link to it here, so others who might also be looking for it have a better chance of finding it. So there.