Software recommendations

[liv]

Can anyone suggest to me:

A text editor / word processor that runs under Linux and handles Hebrew and bidirectional text?

A period and menstrual cycle tracking app where all the data is local only and never transmitted to the cloud?

Text editor:
Must have:

• Copes with Unicode Hebrew, including vowels and other punctuation.
• Allows Hebrew keyboard input rather than having to paste in one letter at a time
• Works on Ubuntu 20
• Does the right thing with mixed Roman and Hebrew text in the same document.
• Displays words in the order I type

Desirable:

• Saves in a file format that other people can open including on Windows and Mac computers
• Free Software (as in freedom, don't mind paying money for it)
• Copes with different sized text within the same document
• If not a full GUI, at least the ability to navigate through the document with a mouse and select text to delete, edit or move. I'm used to WYSIWYG but I can live without if the other features are present

The problem I have right now is that most things I've tried apart from LibreOffice can't cope with Hebrew text at all, or if they can just about manage plain letters, can't deal with punctuation. But LibreOffice has some really bizarre bugs: no matter how often I manually set the language to Hebrew, every time I actually type in Hebrew it reverts to Hindi, and uses a font that, well, I'm amazed it works for Hebrew at all since it's meant for Devanagari, but it doesn't work for pointed Hebrew very well.

And more seriously, it just randomly changes the text direction mid typing, even for a block that is entirely in Hebrew. That means I have almost no control over the word order, if I try to type a sentence or a list, there's a good chance that it will randomly move the fifth word to the beginning of the sentence, or start a new line above instead of below the last item, and even copying and pasting text into the right place doesn't work. Also, whenever I save the file and reopen it, it moves a bunch of words around. Not just in position on the screen, which is annoying but I can live with it, it changes their order within sentences. Even copy-pasting from a high quality Unicode source doesn't work reliably.

My current workaround is a) reformat everything and if necessary move words back to the right place every time I open the document and whenever the weird direction bug shows up b) keep saving multiple versions as PDF, which at least doesn't mess up the formatting and word order, even if it's essentially not editable. This is really frustrating!

Period tracker
Must have:

• Runs on Android or Linux
• Has the option to store all data offline and never ever put it on anybody else's computer. It's not like my period data is super top secret, just I feel uncomfortable with advertisers getting hold of it. So I don't need high security, just local storage.

Desirable:

• Not overly cutesie wootsy
• Gender inclusive if possible; I am in fact a cis woman so I'm not going to be hurt personally by being assumed to be one, but I would rather support an option that doesn't harm non-women who have periods.
• Doesn't insist on tracking, or otherwise nag me about, my weight.
• Allows me to ignore fertility-related inferences. I just want to track my periods as health data for my own use, I'm not trying to get pregnant, and in as far as I'm TTA cycle tracking isn't the major part of my strategy. I want something that reminds me I'm close to ovulation, without assuming, yay, now is a great time to have sex and make babies! nor, danger danger you might get pregnant!

Current solution: just a spreadsheet. This is probably good enough but if anybody has knowledge of something else more convenient that would be great. I'm happy with any business model except selling medical data, and specifically don't mind paying money for this.

I don't mind social bonding by chatting generally about related software, but I am mainly looking for actual suggestions that meet my requirements. Please don't bother telling me I should use a different operating system though. I'm not really interested in opinions about Ubuntu, Linux or Android.

Comments

[sporky_rat]

Everybody raves about Clue, and when I needed to use one, it did a reasonably good job.

[ephemera]

I'm also a happy Clue user, but it is explicitly in the business of sharing data with the developers - for the purposes of medical research, in a context that I'm personally ok with, but seems like it would be counter to what Liv is requesting. Unfortunate, as it's certainly rhe front runner I'm aware of for all the secondary "nice to have" features listed.

[liv]

Thanks for pointing that out. If I wanted a cloud-based system that one seems a lot more ethical than most; they're sharing the data for research or as an opt-in social network thing, and they make money from subscriptions, not from selling data. I might end up using this one as most of my objections to cloud-based don't apply, but also it's significant overkill for what I want, so I will start by seeing if I can find something with local data.

[mathcathy]

I hated Clue. It was complicated to use and really pushy about all manner of characteristics I wasn't interested in tracking.

I use Natural Cycles, for its simplicity (although over the years I've been using it it has layered in features that I now ignore), but since it requires you to take your temperature every day, it might not be what Liv is looking for (and it is cloud stored data).

Liv - your question reminded me of this article:

https://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/g26787041/best-period-tracking-apps/

There are some here aimed at children learning to track, so maybe you can find what you need.

[liv]

Thank you, I really appreciate your sharing your personal experience as well as a useful link with several options. I am ambivalent about temperature measurements; I realize it's very useful for actually predicting ovulation rather than just guessing, but it's also a hassle I don't really need. I definitely don't want complicated to use, so that's a mark against Clue.

[mathcathy]

Temperature checking doesn't predict ovulation. It confirms that ovulation had happened, after the fact.

The thing that temperature checking is really good for is knowing exactly when bleeding is going to start. My temperature invariably drops on the day I will start bleeding. I haven't been surprised by my period in three years.

And it isn't really a hassle. Once you've worked out your rhythm, you only really need to check for a few days before and after ovulation and a few days before bleeding. Once your temperature shifts, there is really only minor variance within the lower or upper range.

Not saying to do it, but a minute each morning isn't a massive effort and over time I've found that I can get a decent guide without sticking harshly to the "rules".

[liv]

Thank you, this is really helpful advice! I borrowed a digital thermometer in the early days of the pandemic in order to make sure I didn't have a fever (later on we learned that fever doesn't necessarily indicate infectiousness, but this was back when it was the best indicator we knew about). And I just couldn't get a sensible reading from it, I don't know if I'm somehow incompetent at taking sublingual temp, or if the thermometer is broken, or what, but I'm a bit put off by that experience. I think checking my temperature for a minute each morning is not a major hassle, but having to wake up at exactly the same time each day would be inconvenient.

As for predicting bleeding, well, my periods are scarily regular, I can predict pretty well by just looking at the calendar. Which is why I found it hard to believe that I actually have PCOS, and that in turn is a big part of the motivation for why I want to track. I have a feeling that somehow my menstruation is regular but my ovulation isn't, and I'm not actually sure if that's medically plausible, so I want data.

[mathcathy]

That's not medically plausible. The second half of your cycle (the luteal phase) is the consistent bit. Even in the most variable cycles, the luteal phase rarely varies more than a day or two and is almost always 13 or 14 days. Anything other would be some kind of medical issue.

There's a great book called the fifth vital sign.

And I don't take my temperature at the same time each morning. I have a view of how it changes according to whether I get up earlier or later than normal and adjust my interpretation of the reading. (it's always low or high anyway, just less consistently low or high)

[lovingboth]

Yes, if human biology was designed, ovulation would be reliably 13-14 days after the previous period started, not reliably 13-14 days before the next one.

Instead, we get the one that makes it a bit harder to predict.

[liv]

Thank you, good to know. It looks really slick and full-featured, so that could be an option.

[theandrewhickey]

For the word processor, I'd suggest LyX from lyx.org, which in fact I generally suggest to everyone anyway. It's Free Software, in the repo of almost every distro, full GUI, uses LaTeX as a back end as a default but can save stuff as .txt, RTF, HTML and PDF with no problems and as other formats like docx fairly well.
I haven't tried doing Hebrew in it, but everything I know about it suggests it's easy. https://wiki.lyx.org/LyX/HebrewOnLinux gives instructions for setting LyX up for Hebrew in various distros, while http://www.ma.huji.ac.il/~sameti/tex/lyxhebrew.html (about using it on Windows rather than GNU/Linux), seems to suggest that it's easy to switch between English and Hebrew in the same document.
There's a bit of a learning curve with LyX, but once you get past the initial unfamiliarity it's a very powerful, user-friendly, well-documented tool.

[seekingferret]

The last time I needed to mix Hebrew and English in a document, I used LaTeX + extensions, so I was going to suggest trying out LyX as well, though I likewise don't have specific experience using LyX for this purpose. And doing it in straight LaTeX was for my purposes effective but annoying.

[liv]

Thank you, that's good to know. I'm not scared of mark-up, I hand-code the HTML here on DW, but if there's a decent GUI for LaTeX that seems at least worth trying.

[lovingboth]

It's a sign of the joys of many open source projects that "easy" means 'only fourteen steps' :) but yes, this was going to be one of my suggestions.

It's DTP rather than a word processor, but Scribus has users doing things like combining English and Hebrew in the same document without too much pain.

[liv]

Scribus, thank you for the rec. What I'm doing may in fact be closer to DTP; eventually I want to put all my documents together in ebook format.

I did spot the irony of 'easy – only 14 steps' but honestly those guides look pretty clear and if following those steps actually works it will be more than worth it to never have to tear my hair out over words moving around within sentences.

[theandrewhickey]

Scribus isn't any good for ebooks other than PDF -- it's designed for laying out physical paper pages, and is excellent for, for example, creating zines, but it would be awful for creating ebooks. To create an ebook you want to use a word processor and export to either HTML or RTF (if you do go with LyX, I'd install the latex2html package and use that), and then if you're going to give the book away for free or just read it yourself, use calibre ( https://calibre-ebook.com/download ) to convert it into a serviceable epub/mobi file. If you're planning to sell the ebooks, then Draft2Digital.com will, as well as putting the ebooks on all the non-Amazon stores, format the ebook files for you and do a better job than you're likely to be able to do yourself.

[liv]

Aha, thank you. I feel that the distinction between WP and DTP has been blurry for a couple of decades now, but that gives me a clear idea of the use cases for the different software. And yeah, I'm thinking Calibre will need to be in my work flow at some point. At the moment my priority is to get the content written, and after that I want to get it proofread by native speakers of Hebrew (who at the moment can't reliably open my files, *sigh*), and tested by the intended users. Turning the work into publishable format is quite a long way down the line, and LibreOffice is really painful for turning out even basic drafts.

[liv]

I think you recommended it to me when I first installed Linux. The frustration of working with inadequate tools has mounted to the point where I think the learning curve of a new system may well be worth it. Thank you, particularly for searching on my behalf for links on how it handles Hebrew. Will report back!

Android period trackers

[womump]

F-Droid lists a couple of plausible-looking Android menstrual trackers (but you don't need to get them from F-Droid, it looks like). I have no relevant experience and don't know of anyone who has used them, but I hope the pointers are useful.

• drip (on F-Droid and the Play store) seems to tick most of the boxes
• Periodical (on F-Droid and the Play store) seems more explicitly fertility-oriented

Re: Android period trackers

[liv]

Aww, thank you, it's really kind of you to search for software for me :-) Drip sounds very promising, I think I will install that and have a play.

[lovingboth]

I totally get the 'not overly cutesie wootsy' aspect, having helped someone else look earlier this year!

+1 for Drip.