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OpenOffice is
a complete office suite: word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program,
drawing program, graphing module, and editor for mathematical equations.
It sports the best, and the most feature-packed word processor and spreadsheet
for Linux. Highly recommended. OpenOffice is included on the
more recent Linux distribution CDs (Nov.2002). The latest version can be
downloaded (free) from http://www.openoffice.org/
(large, ~70 MB download, probably not practical with a modem). The current
(non-developer) version of OpenOffice is 1.0.1 (Oct. 2002). OpenOffice
is cross-platform: it runs on Linux, MS Windows, Solaris, and Mac OS X,
with full file-level compatibility.
Brief
history. StarOffice used to be a commercial program ("Star Division",
Germany). It was purchased by Sun Microsystems and the source code donated
to the open source community under General Public Licence (Aug.2000).
It is being rapidly developed by programmers many of whom are still associated
with / paid by Sun. The open-source version is called "OpenOffice.org".
Sun occassionally releases its own product based on a recent stable built
of OpenOffice and calls it "StarOffice". Thus "OpenOffice.org" and "StarOffice"
are basically the same products, with some (minor) feature additions in
StarOffice. OpenOffice is officially called OpenOffice.org because of
some trademark issues.
Description.
OpenOffice looks and acts very much like MS Office for Windows. This includes
richness of features, large size (requires considerable amount of disk space,
memory, and processor speed), and well-burried features (may require some
careful mouse-clicking to access some items). OpenOffice may not be
worth your trouble without at least 64 MB of physical memory; the more memory
the better. Open Office is very stable, although it sometimes displays weird
artefacts ("ghosts") on my screen. It has a good file-level compatibility
with MS Office: read and write MS Word, MS Excel and MS PowerPoint file
formats. Natively, it uses a ground-breaking xml open file format: the
text and pictures are zipped together into one file. When I unzip the file
(unzip my_file.sxv), I can extract the original pictures--something
MS Office cannot possibly do (with sometimes serious consequences for document
management).
OpenOffice
does not look as "sexy" as some other Linux office alternatives. Yet,
it is a real productivity workhorse and its polish is rapidly improving.
In brief, we highly recommend StarOffice/OpenOffice to cover even demanding
office needs. Feature-for-feature, it matches almost anything found in
MS Word or MS Excel, and adds some extras (long missing in MS Office).
Best of all,
OpenOffice sports an open and beautifully designed file format which is
rapidly becoming a standard (only unimaginative or corrupt decisions makers
would insist on storing their data in a file format that can be read exclusively
by a product of one company). This file format is suitable for serious
uses because it can be parsed with third-party tools.
Installation.
The installation of OpenOffice/StarOffice can be confusing. It goes like
this:
-
Make sure you have enough hard drive space. To check the space use the
df (="disk free") command:
df
-h
This
displays a report on the used and available hard drive space in a human-legible
form (option -h). At minimum, you need some 350 MB of free disk space
(of which, ~100 MB you can release after installation).
-
Decompress the downloaded file. I did it as root in the /usr/local
directory for "local server" installation, but you may also choose /home/your_login
for "personal" installation:
cd
/usr/local
tar -xvf StarOffice5.2.tgz
Substitute
the filename "StarOffice5.2.tgz" with the name of the file you downloaded.
- As root,
run the setup program for a "local server" with the DOS-style /net
switch:
cd
/usr/local/OpenOffice641
./setup /net
[Without
the "/net" or "-net" switch, OpenOffice will perform a personal installation
(into your home directory!), and then only one user will be able to run
it, plus your home directory will be clogged.]
- After
this "network" installation, each user has to perform her own installation
to put some personal files into their "home" directories. This is done
by running (as a user, without the /net switch):
cd
/usr/local/OpenOffice641
./setup
To run any
of the OpenOffice component from the command line (in X terminal), I could
use:
ooffice&
(word processor)
oowriter& (same as above)
oocalc& (spreadsheet)
oodraw& (vector drawing program)
ooimpress& (presentation program similar to
MS PowerPoint)
oosetup& (installation program)
oopadmin& (printer administration utility)
oomath& (equation editor, it is not typical
to run it stand-alone)
Hints.
ooofice comes with a extensive, contex-sensitve help (press ).
Here, we are going to collect some quick reference on using oowriter (just
started Nov.2002).
- Consider
using "styles" for formatting documents. Unless you are writing a very
simple document, avoid "physical formatting". Press for
a full style list. Inspect the drop box on the toolbar (left-hand side)
for a list of paragraph styles used in the current document.
- The styles
are divided into the following groups:
- Character
styles (applies to a letter or a group of letters)
- Paragraph
styles (a paragraph extends from to )
- Frame
styles (a frame a box containing text, graph, picture, etc.)
- Page
styles
- Numbering
styles (for bullet and numbered lists)
The
most important are the paragraph styles. I use them to format chapter
headings, captions, table headings, etc. To apply a style to a paragraph,
I place the cursor in the paragraph to be modified, and then double-click
on the name of the style in the "Stylelist". To modify a style (or create
a new one), I use the menu "Format"-"Style-"Catalog".
- For numbered
chapter headings, I set the numbering system under the menu "Tools"-"Outline
Numbering".
- To insert
a caption (for a table, figure, etc.), I position the cursor over the
table (figure, etc) and use the menu "Insert"-"Caption". I can modify
the caption numbering level with the button "Options" in the dialog
box. It can also be modified later in the dialog box which appears when
I click on the caption number.
- To update
all the fields (numbers for heading, captions, table of contents, etc.),
I press a and then . This select
the entire document and then updates the fields. Alternatively,
I can use the menu "Tools"-"Update"-"Update All".
- To display
an outline of the document, I press .
- To modify
a default document template, make a "default" document and save it as
"Default" ("File"-"Templates"-"Save").
- To spell-as-you-type,
enable it under menu "Tools"-SpellCheck"-"AutoSpellCheck". To spellcheck
of a word, position a cursor over it and press .
- For "type-ahead"
autocompletion, I may press to accept the selection when
it appears.
- Cells
in tables can be split. (If you are coming from MS Word, you can now
start using split cells again.)
- Pressing
produces a "formula bar". In tables, you can calculate results
based on the numbers in other cells. The status bar shows the cell references.
Outside of tables, one can use the formula bar to make simple "on-the-spot"
calculations.
- You can
insert a pre-formated and numbered "dummy equation" into the document
by typing fn at a beginning of a paragraph and pressing .
(This uses the "auto text" feature of the word processor.)
Some useful keyboard shortcuts (most apply across the entire OpenOffice,
not only the wordprocessor):
x
Cut
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Help
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Non-breaking space
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c
Copy
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Formula bar
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-
Non-breaking hyphen
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v
Paste
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Autotext completion
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Manual (hard) page-break
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a
Select All
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Data source view on/off
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Line-break without paragraph change
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f
Find (and replace)
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Toggle asolute-relative references in a spreadsheet formula.
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Manual column break (in multi-columnar document)
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z
Undo
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Navigator on/off
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Insert/overwrite mode on/off
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p
Superscript
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Spellcheck
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Go to beginning of the line
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b
Subscript
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Update fields (or recalculate spreadsheet)
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Go to end of the line
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Stylist on/off
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Go to beginning of the document
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Numbering on/off
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Go to end of the document
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Selection with mouse:
Select text, cells, etc.
Extend the current selection.
Dragging with Mouse:
Drag the selection to move it.
Copy the selection to
the dragged location.
Some codes used inside equations:
Element
type
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Example
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Fractions
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1
over {2+3}
{a + b} over {d + e}
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Superscripts
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a^2
+ b^c = c^2
a^n a^m = a^{n+m}
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Subscripts
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a_1,
a_2, ... a_n
K_r=K_0 e^{-E_a over {kT}}
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Roots
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sqrt
{a+b}
nroot 3 {a+b}
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Greek
letters
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%alpha
%beta %gamma %delta %epsilon %varepsilon %zeta %eta %theta %vartheta
%iota %kappa %lambda %mu %nu %xi %omicron %pi %varpi%rho %varrho %sigma
%varsigma %tau %upsilon %phi %varphi %chi %psi %omega newline
%ALPHA %BETA %GAMMA %DELTA %EPSILON %ZETA %ETA %THETA %IOTA %KAPPA
%LAMBDA %MU %NU %XI %OMICRON %PI %RHO %SIGMA %TAU %UPSILON
%PHI %CHI %PSI %OMEGA
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Common
relationships
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=
approx equiv def sim simeq prop
<> < <= << > >=
>> <> dlarrow drarrow dlrarrow
towards parallel ortho leslant geslant transl
transr
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Common
operators
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+
- +- -+ cdot times and or
in notin
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Arrows
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lefarrow
rightarrow uparrow downarrow
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Other
common symbols
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infinity
emptyset
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Sum
and product
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sum
X_n
sum from 1 to n X_n
prod X_n
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Integrals
and derivatives
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int
f(x) dx
int from 1 to 2 f(x) dx
{partial x} over {partial t}
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