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Special Edition Using Star Office 6.0
First, PC makers rarely have financial inducements to preinstall open source applications, especially when it eats into their upsell margins. Second, people have a misconception that documents produced in MS Office can only be read by MS Office (a fact which leads Richard Stallman to call for an end to all Microsoft Word attachments ). Third, subsidized prices and the wide availability of instructional material ensure that teachers use these commercial products for class and give assignments requiring them. Finally, consumers switching to an open source product need confidence that the open source application has equivalent functionality and adequate documentation to reduce the learning curve.
Fortunately, a first-class user guide on OpenOffice.org/StarOffice has been written, and that book is Michael Koch's Special Edition Using StarOffice 6.0. This book, actually a second edition, covers the new version and gives fuller treatment to StarOffice writer and the HTML editor. Despite the use of "StarOffice" in the title, this book actually covers both StarOffice and OpenOffice.org in depth.
An an aside, let me compliment Que editions for the legibility and usability of layout. (Que also produced the excellent Ed Bott's Special Edition Using Microsoft Office XP). Nice readable texts, lots of boxes, tips and cautions. Every chapter finishes with a helpful troubleshooting section.
Two immediate reactions: 1) Gosh, I didn't know OpenOffice/StarOffice could do all that! I was pleasantly surprised, for example, to learn the number of graphic capabilities the program has. 2) This book covers functionality in considerable depth, with enough content to satisfy the newbie as well as the advanced user. In addition to documenting the office software, the book also includes reference sections on StarOffice Basic, using data sources, building forms and macros. It also includes a chapter on Adabas, the database that comes as part of the StarOffice package (but not with OpenOffice.org).
Koch benefits from the fact that users already start with a good conceptual framework of what MS Office products are supposed to do. The biggest conceptual challenge in moving from MS Office to Star/OpenOffice is getting used to the idea of applying styles to text instead of just clicking on an icon for formatting. MS Office actually has terrific styling capabilities (and a usable interface for managing styles),but Microsoft's friendly GUI discourages users from thinking about document structure. Contrast that to OpenOffice.org, which nudges the user more firmly towards styles. Managing the different layers of styles in OpenOffice.org can be tricky and confusing, so Koch spends a considerable amount of time and space on that. Another chapter on sharing and exchanging information with MS Office users goes into exquisite detail about compatibility and formatting losses when converting documents, as well as the StarOffice XML file format.
Cordelia of Buffy the Vampire Slayer once said, "There are books about computers? Isn't that the point of computers, to replace books?" Perhaps I am just cheap, but when evaluating a user guide, I often ask whether the online help isn't good enough. Or whether newgroups/websites/forums are adequate. Or whether the user interface is intuitive or allows you to discover a solution by just playing around. Dozens of heavy thousand-page books clutter my apartment, leading me to wonder whether the convenience of a gigantic dead-tree reference guide outweighs the increase in clutter. Every time I move to another apartment, I keep lugging those gigantic SQL and C++ books I haven't consulted for years, but feel compelled to keep around. (Contrast that with the very portable and handy Oreilly's Linux Server Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips and Tools, (reviewed on Slashdot), which covers most sysadmin tasks AND can be stashed in a backpack without causing whiplash).
For the last two months (in which I used OpenOffice.org thoroughly), I performed a little experiment. Where was the best place to find answers to my OpenOffice.org questions? I tried consulting the online help, then the book, then the newsgroups and openoffice websites. Here are the results:
- Adding page numbers. The book had the best information, though what do you look under in the index? I eventually found it under "Numbers, Writer" (?!). Online help was useless. (The answer is to insert a footer and then insert a page number field in the footer).
- I just created a hyperlink in the HTML editor. But the underlined style is bleeding to the text after the link. How do I stop that? Neither the book nor online help provided the answer, although the newsgroup did after 24 hours. (The answer is to press the End key or to select Format >> Default)
- How do I create an HTML style with the stylist which specifies the background color of a table cell? (No answer from anywhere, although Koch admits that that the StarOffice HTML editor is "temperamental").
- While drawing a flowchart on the Draw program, how do I save the entire image as a jpeg and not just the highlighted part? (By grouping the components together, the book helpfully advises. The online help offers nothing).
- On a spreadsheet, what is the keyboard shortcut for bringing the cursor back to the left column? (Keyboard shortcuts are easy to find in the book. Couldn't find it in the online help).
Generally, the book had the most reliable and in-depth information. That was especially helpful when trying to perform a complex action (like creating a table of contents). But the majority of my inquiries had to do with using the interface, not functionality. Often the sheer size of the book made daunting the simple task of finding a function on a dialog or a keyboard shortcut.
That is the paradox of super-sized application manuals. Surely one doesn't read them from cover to cover. But after an application reaches a certain level of complexity, the software interface is no longer intuitive, and you pretty much need a book just to find things in the interface. As one who does technical writing, it may sound funny to say, but often my favorite thing about these super-size manuals are the screenshots. I can't tell you how many times I've browsed through a book and come across a dialog box I never knew existed. On the other hand, when application manuals reach a certain size, navigating through "book interfaces" becomes almost as difficult as navigating through the software interface or help system.
Online help is good when you know what you're looking for (i.e., when you have a specific search term to look for). Books are good when you don't know what you're looking for. With books, the reader can flip through pages in the general vicinity of a topic and randomly stumble upon the right information. Books allow the user to bypass the outlined hierarchy of online help and learn the appropriate terminology for describing the task (which then makes it easier to find things in the online help).
A recent visit to a technical bookstore and a large chain bookstores showed no books on the shelf for StarOffice, but dozens of books on Microsoft Office, That is too bad, because Using StarOffice 6.0 provides much-needed in-depth coverage on an application whose user base will grow as tight budgets cause companies and public sector agencies to examine open source alternatives.
* PDF conversion (as well as docbook and Flash) export are available on the OpenOffice.org 1.1 Beta 2 build.
Other OpenOffice.org Resources:
Kaaredyret has the best English language OpenOffice links page . ooodocs.org has a lively Forum for OO users. Or if you want, you can look at a PDF of the official Staroffice Documentation (400 pages)
ROBERT NAGLE (aka idiotprogrammer )is a technical writer, trainer who doesn't think that open source documentation sucks . He works for Texas Instruments in Houston, Texas. You can purchase the Special Edition Using StarOffice 6.0 from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
I will say that in my experience StarOffice does mangle a good percentage of Word files...but the plain-jane files that high school students make are usually done just fine. I'm in the process of piloting about 25 machines with SO instead of Office. We'll see what the kids and teachers think...
The main problem (from a print shop's perspective) with Word is that it is printer dependent. People compose a document, print it out on their inkjet and expect it to print out exactly the same on any other printer. (It almost never does.)
Is OO any better at this? Or does it mimic this "feature" for compatibility?
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
We used OOo to write a 1,000+ page software documentation. It worked very well, except for a few bugs that caused crashes or being unable to edit tables at the tops of pages. But that was in the 1.0.1 days. I think these bugs are fixed now. The thing was, when we tried to convert it to Word it went to total, unreadable shit. In fact, every time I have tried to save anything but the most trivial OOo doc in word format, it has failed horribly. It made files that hung Word upon opening. So, in our experience, OOo is great as long as you never have to share your documents with someone using MS office.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I don't know what the status of OpenOffice is right now, but for those looking at StarOffice, I say wait!
6.1 is in its second beta refresh, which from Sun generally means that the next release will be final.
6.1 has two features that make it VASTLY better than 6.0: antialiased fonts (no more disappearing text in a window!!!) and substantial speed/performance gains. There are, of course tons of other features--much better MS office support, export to PDF, etc. etc.
6.0 has been my office package for the last year or so, out of necessity. 6.1 will be my package out of choice.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
See, there's a difference between people who like to tinker with their computers, installing ghostscript, cygwin and the like in order to output a PDF file in "12 Easy Steps!" and the people who have more important things to do so they love a simple "Print to PDF" option.
... when they build in the "reveal codes" feature that WordPerfect has. I think that the market share that WordPerfect lost to Word is one of the greatest tragedies of the computer world; WP is a far superior product, and the "reveal codes" feature is a big reason why. And it looks like OO.o has a sub-project going to build in this ability, although the link to give more information on its status seemed to be broken so I can't say how far along it is.
This post is dedicated to all of those
Has anyone tried exporting documents with bullet points to .doc yet?
Viewing it under word, you would find that the bullet points are plain wrong, sometimes it has embedded numbers in the bullet points.
This is one of those problems that makes it a no-no while exchanging documents with your customers(who use MS Office).
Hi;
I offer myself as a contradicting example. Daily I use OpenOffice in a business setting. I am CEO of a successful 100 employee company. On a daily basis I use Writer, the Presentation Manager and Calc. The only problem I have had is font differences between platforms: I use OO on FreeBSD on a Thinkpad and most of my employees use Microsoft Office on Dells. Some times when they prepare parts of a presentation and send them to me for integration, I find the differences in fonts create minor problems. I was thinking of asking them all to switch to OpenOffice, but there was some resistance.
I do admit to being a farmer in my off-hours. However, I wouldn't touch Linux if I could avoid it.... I also have already ordered a copy of Using StarOffice 6.0 in response to this review.
thanks,
fletcher kittredge