Hullo scientists, fellow researcher here with a question for peers:
Do you have any suggestions for closed-off writing software (no AI scraping, no school oversight, no cloud storage with mysterious and unknown security). As we are all aware, formatting an article can take as much effort as writing the damn thing some days, especially if you do not want to use Microsoft or Google for ethical and privacy reasons.
My peers and I work with a lot of students who want to study and work with vulnerable populations, the sort of populations that some companies and (shameful) universities are attempting to delete evidence of. I am attempting to address some concerns coming up in the classroom without putting my career at risk. What better way than with a lesson and a resource list for secure writing and storage tips?
The school doesn't pay for a Microsoft license, and some students have expressed feeling unsafe and uncomfortable supporting google. I have suggested Libreoffice as its what I use but some of the students are really struggling with formatting their papers to academic standards in this software. Admittedly, I agree, Libre takes 7-14 steps to do some things google can do in two clicks. I would like to look into alternatives.
Most of the writing applications I'm seeing both free and paid tend to be for creative writers or note taking and I am not seeing tools to make running titles or easily format your sources.
What are you all using, do you have recommendations? I
I can relate to their feeling. The same with with MS Word.
I see mention of LaTeX, imho forget about it. It's great but if your students already are complaining about clicking a few buttons and menus in LO Writer, I doubt they will enjoy configuring LaTeX at all as it's really complex to setup and it's also very, very technical. (It is also very much English focused by default, which means there will be a few more tweaks required to make it support other languages and where that turns out to be real fun is that said tweaks may vary depending the libraries you're relying on since you install various ones and, of course, the doc will not always be reflecting that exactly.)
Have you considered using templates (and Styles) with LibreOffice Writer?
You could have all your formatting be exactly like you need it to be and you (or anyone else) would only need to prepare it once and make it available to all your students. So, the template being 7 or 14 steps would not mean much since they would not need to do it at all and the one person doing it would doi it only once.
What they would need to (learn to) do is to use Styles, in Writer. Like they are supposed to (learn to) use them in Word, and like in a very limited way they can do in Google Docs too. Imho between the three word processors, Writer is the best at managing Styles but it wills till require some basic learning like showing them what styles are and why they're so useful, where they are and how to apply them in Writer.
Without using Styles in a word processor, you will need to rely on LaTeX or some lighter markup language (like Markdown combined with say Pandoc, which are way simpler than LaTeX but also much more limited in terms of page layout and notes management).
Also, there is no ready-made tool available that you 'simply use'. They all need to be tweaked in some way to meet expectations and the simplest way I can think of is by using Styles. What are Styles you may ask? Think one type of content (title, simple paragraph, notes, illustrations, ...) being associated to a set of formatting rules that are automatically applied to it whenever it is used).
It could help to share some real example of the type of setings you're looking for (what do you want to do?) so others may be able to tell you if and with what app it's doable ;)
In summary, Libre Office:
Is Libre software.
It use an open format, ODT, that is documented.
Can be used to write in many languages.
Works great with Styles, allowing documents to be (easily) precisely (or loosely) formatted.
Doesn't push AI crap, or any other type of connected crap.
Doesn't spy on anyone (you can even deactivate the little banner that pops up once in a while asking for a donation)
Can do Styles and use templates to create very neatly formatted documents.
Is preinstalled with most Linux distributions out of the box, and is easy to install on Mac and on Windows.
is NOT as precises as LaTeX, but is also much simpler to learn and use.
is NOT available for mobile, but I have yet to see anyone writing a full book or even an article on a phone screen ;)
is NOT as simple as using Markdown and Pandoc but offers all formating control 99% of users wil ever need AND offers a much easier way to work collaboratively between non-geek users.
Don't get me wrong, I framed my remark in regards to the context given by the OP: their students already have complained about too much configuration (clicking buttons/menus). So, in that context, I think telling them to use LaTeX even if using the Lyx or any other GUI (Lyx, which I would favor, is not bug free and has its own quirks, we should not forget that) or any simplified subset of LaTeX, well, that won't be fun for those student and I'm willing to bet most of them will even hate the experience. Something I would not wish to happen.
And then, always in that context, I suggested that maybe learning to properly use Styles and templates in LO Writer could be simpler since they already are using it... just not in the most optimal way, as it is so often the case since almost everybody think they already know how to use a word processor and there is nothing they need to learn. Not and instant and no-sweat solution but still should a less demanding one than starting to use LaTeX from scratch. At least, I think so.