We’ll begin in the obvious place with a run through the core applications in the Open- Office.org (OO.o) suite beginning with Writer, and then moving on through Calc, Impress, Draw, and Base.
If you have two hours to prepare for a seminar presentation, feel free to leap into the Impress section straight away. However, it might be a good idea to read through the following annotations that explain the user interface conventions used in OO.o. Although the screenshot is from Writer, most of the interface elements are consistent across applications (see Figure 1-1).
Menu Bar
The menu bar (see Figure 1-2) is standard across most desktop applications. Almost all of Writer’s tools are accessible via these menus, and most of the options available have keyboard combinations assigned to them. For example, to quickly save a document, you could choose File --> Save or simply press Ctrl+S.
Figure 1-2. The menu bar
The menu system in OO.o is configurable via Tools --> Customize, so you can redesign the whole application to look like your favorite package. The menus are described here:
- File: Deals with file operations such as opening, saving, and closing documents, but also contains the document properties section and print options.
- Edit: Allows you to cut, copy, and paste as well as find and replace particular words or phrases.
- View: Provides options for setting the view in the main window and also opening and closing Writer’s various toolbars.
- Insert: Allows you to add things to the page, including frames, images, headers, footers, and breaks in the text.
- Format: Allows you to make changes to everything from pages and paragraphs to individual characters.
- Table: Provides options for adding tables to a document. Tables can be used to present data like a spreadsheet and also to position elements when it comes to building web pages.
- Tools: Enables you to configure OpenOffice, configure the user interface of Writer (or another of the applications), perform a word count, and set up options for the spell checker.
- Window: Allows you to manage multiple documents or multiple views of the same document.
- Help: Provides access to the OpenOffice.org documentation.
Toolbar
The toolbar contains a range of commonly used shortcuts for opening, saving, and adding various elements to your documents. The toolbar is divided into logical regions, which, from left to right, are file operations, output, spelling, clipboard features, formatting, inserting, and searching (see Figure 1-3). As with the menus, these are completely customizable from Tools --> Customize.
Although the default view of Writer displays two toolbars, many more toolbars are available that contain tools for performing specific tasks such as designing forms, adding rich media to web pages, or offering more control over elements such as line spacing and bullets or numbers. These can all be accessed using the View --> Toolbars menu entry.
Once added to a page, they can be dragged from the edge of the page and either left as a floating toolbar (which means they will have a standard Close icon in the top right of the window) or docked to another edge of the window. Docking a toolbar to the top or bottom of the screen renders it as horizontal, whereas docking to the left or right edge positions the icons vertically.
Formatting Toolbar
The Formatting toolbar is a specialized toolbar used to make changes at either the character or paragraph level. This element is actually context sensitive, so in most cases, a version similar to this will be displayed. However, if you were editing a picture, configuring a frame, or drawing a shape, the Formatting toolbar would display a toolset relevant for that task.
The Formatting toolbar in Figure 1-4 is the standard text model, which has options for changing the font, font size, style, justification, indents, and color options. The disclosure arrow to the far right of the toolbar offers quick access to customization tools for that particular toolbar.
Rulers provide a visual guide to your page (see Figure 1-5). By default, the rulers are set to increment in centimeters; however, you can change this to inches, millimeters, and even points and picas through the application preferences (see Figure 1-6).
To access these preferences, choose Tools --> Options, click the OpenOffice.org Writer disclosure arrow on the left edge of the window, and choose General. Alternative measurements are available in the drop- down list. You should notice the Tab stop value (i.e., the distance the Tab key will move your cursor across the page) updates automatically to reflect the measurement change. Select the appropriate value, and click OK.
