QtBrief

Qt Brief is a GUI program to easily write high-quality letters. It uses LaTeX as typesetter.

• loading, saving, editing in an easy to use GUI window
• previewing, printing
• spell check
• easy insertion of special characters (such as accented letters) which might not be on the keyboard
• sending Faxcimiles
• creation of LyX documents (sometimes helpful for further editing)

QtBrief is intended to allow even people with very little computer knowledge and skills, who even cannot deal with text programs like OpenOffice, to write high quality letters. (Actually, it was my grandmother for whom the program was originally written.) Standard setup can be done through a configuration wizard.

For advanced setup the LaTeX templates and configuration can be adjusted manually, though some computer and LaTeX knowledge is required for this procedure. The idea behind this is that a computer-skilled person once sets up the system and then it is easily usable.

Details about configuration and installation can be found here.

Platforms

QtBrief works with Qt2 and Qt3 on Unix platforms and on MS Windows.

Limitations on MS Windows:

• No fax support and no direct printing. Use the previewer to print and to send faxes.
• No configuration wizard
• No remarkable testing (short tests with Qt2 Free Edition and Visual C++ 6.0)

To do

• extract the document language from the template to use it in the spell checker (currently, the spell checker always uses the language defined by the system environment)
• fully implement GUI configuration (currently, only a first document template can be created with a GUI, e.g. when QtBrief is started for the first time)
• use C++ locale class instead of C library functions
• port to Qt4
• fully support Windows version (low priority)

Copyright