Here, DTM recommend certain software for various tasks. For a more detailed analysis of how to choose software, see our wiki page titled Choosing the Software. Whenever possible, use free open-source applications instead of proprietary software, as this will maximize options for sharing data among our print centers.

Each software below is FREE unless otherwise noted. Click on the software name to visit the official project page on the Internet. But remember to install the software through your package manager (if you are running Linux).

LibreOffice Writer

This is a professional and sophisticated word processor that can be used for very simple tasks to more complicated tasks. We use it for a variety of purposes including typing and editing translated materials. Notably, its well-developed system of character styles, paragraph styles, and page styles, makes it an excellent choice for laying out books and managing chapters, indexes, etc. See HOWTO Layout a Book in Libreoffice.

AltSearch LibreOffice Extension

You can add this extension to LibreOffice Writer to add many new features to Writer's find & replace function. You can install it from the LibreOffice Writer interface by clicking …

Keyman Language Keyboards

Keyman is a handy utility that helps you type in over 2000 languages on your computer as well as on your phone.

A helpful tip for memorizing Scripture is to copy only the first letter of each word. This gives your brain a clue without reading the whole word. Here is a regular expression and how to use it.

1. Copy and then paste the chapter you want to process into a LibreOffice Writer document. You may want to clean up a few things that aren't part of the text (such as footnotes or other artifacts that aren't part of what you want to memorize.)
2. Select the text.
3. Edit –> Find and Replace (CTRL + H)
   • Find:

     ([[:digit:]]+|[[:alpha:]])(?:.*?)($| )

   • Replace:

     $1$2

Inkscape (Vector Illustrator)

Inkscape is a powerful, free design application that has a powerful text tool and many flexible drawing tools. It is great for designing book covers, drawing vector images, converting scanned pen drawings to vector format, and even designing fliers and posters. Many different file formats can be read.

Krita (Professional Painting Program)

Krita is a full-featured free digital painting studio for artists who want to create professional work from start to end. It is great for sketching original illustrations for books or tracts.

GIMP (Image Manipulation)

GIMP is a very capable image editor useful for a variety of graphics work including touching up photos or paintings. It features many plugins.

Affinity Designer (Vector Illustrator)

Proprietary software requires a $70 one-time payment. Available for Windows and Mac. No Linux version is available.

Affinity Designer is an excellent and capable professional vector graphics tool. We see no compelling reason to buy this, as Inkscape is a quite capable software.

Consider also that Affinity offers a Creative Suite bundling Affinity Publisher (Page Design and Layout) and Affinity Photo (Image manipulation), seamlessly through a single interface, and using the same file type. You can buy all three for a one-time payment of $165.

Affinity Photo (Photo Editor)

Proprietary software requires a $70 one-time payment. Available for Windows and Mac. No Linux version is available.

Affinity Photo is an excellent and capable professional photo editor tool. We see no compelling reason to buy this, as GIMP is a quite capable software.

Consider that Affinity offers a Creative Suite bundling Affinity Publisher (Page Design and Layout) and Affinity Designer (2D vector design), seamlessly through a single interface, and using the same file type. You can buy all three for a one-time payment of $165.

Blender (3D Modeling)

Blender is an advanced and complex 3D creation suite that can be used to render extremely realistic images. While this software is quite capable, it also has a very steep learning curve. We have used it only minimally to generate three-dimensional metallic book titles of different colors, or to add an interesting element here or there.

Scribus (Desktop Publishing)

Scribus is an excellent desktop publishing tool that uses a non-proprietary file format based on XML. It excels in exporting quality pdfs. In our experience, the user interface is not as polished, and there are a few “rough corners” in the software. We can definitely recommend this software for tracts and smaller projects, and design everything possible in Scribus to maximize access. But we recommend considering Affinity Publisher for more complex projects.

Scribus Generator (Scribus plugin)

This Scribus plugin replaces text with data dynamically. First, you must organize your data (in LibreOffice Calc, for example) and save it as a CSV file. Then you will be able to replace text, images, colors, fonts dynamically.

Inkscape (Vector Illustrator)

Inkscape is mentioned already in the 2D Graphics section above. It is mentioned here because it is very useful for page design and layout of posters, fliers, and advertisements. We have also used it for quick mock-ups of building projects, garden layouts, and web design.

Affinity Publisher (Desktop Publishing)

Proprietary software requires a $70 one-time payment. Available for Windows and Mac. No Linux version is available.

Affinity Publisher is an excellent and capable professional proprietary publishing tool. It is quite capable of handling larger or more complex projects when Scribus is not up to par. For example, we used Affinity Publisher for a full-color 80-page magazine on Daniel and Revelation.

Consider that Affinity offers a Creative Suite including Affinity Designer (2D vector design) and Affinity Photo (Image manipulation), seamlessly through a single interface, and using the same file type. You can buy all three for a one-time payment of $165.

jpdftweak (PDF Imposition)

jPDF Tweak is a Java Swing application that can combine, split, rotate, reorder, watermark, encrypt, sign, and otherwise tweak PDF files. We use it to make PDF booklets and to arrange/rotate multiple pages on a larger sheet to prepare for printing, folding, and cutting. Here is our Jpdftweak quickstart tutorial if you want a little help getting started.

pdfarranger (PDF Merging and Splitting)

This simple utility is very useful for merging or splitting pdfs, as well as rearranging or rotating the pages.

This package contains a number of useful command line utilities for getting information of PDF documents, converting them to other formats, or manipulating them. Here are a couple of our favorites:

• pdfimages - Image extractor. You can extract all the images from a PDF document.
• pdfseparate - Page extraction tool. You can extract individual pages or ranges of pages from a larger PDF document.

Inkscape (Vector Illustrator)

One easy way to work with or modify PDF documents is with Inkscape. Simply import the PDF. You have two options: one to import as text, and the other to import as an image. If you have all the required fonts, importing as text will make a smaller file. If you don't have the appropriate fonts installed on your machine, import as an image.

You can also use Inkscape to extract images from PDFs. Once the page from the PDF document is imported, un-group and you will be able to work with the image.

You may possibly discover old tracts or manuscripts that you would like to type in and either use or translate. Software can do this for you.

(works offine) If you have a pdf document that contains images of text (for example a scanned page), you can use this utility to convert the text in the image to actual text and overlay it onto the pdf.

(works online) You can take a picture of the text and upload it to an AI tool such as chatGPT and ask it to convert it to editable text for you.

• For a better understanding of the principles of backups and how we set up backups, see Setting up Backups.
• For the simple version, see Backups Handbook.