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OpenOffice.org Resource Kit
With a stable 1.0 release and spectacular cross-platform functionality, it's finally time to seriously consider putting this software to work in your company. Whether you are completely new to OpenOffice.org or just moving from its predecessor StarOffice, you'll want to take a look at OpenOffice.org 1.0 Resource Kit from Prentice Hall PTR.
The "kit" consists of a well written tutorial book and a companion CD-ROM. The book's authors (Solveig Haughland and Floyd Jones) are salty veterans in the technical training field, and it shows in the quality of the text. The CD contains the OpenOffice.org release itself, as one might expect. It provides builds for every supported platform, to include the Mac OS X developer alpha version. At the time this review was written, two minor upgrades have been made available since my book's CD-ROM was pressed. These are, naturally, available for free via the OpenOffice.org web-site. In addition to the releases, the CD includes templates, macros, and examples from the developer community. The authors provide additional templates and resources at http://www.getopenoffice.org
The first five chapters of the book are devoted to basic issues such as installation, migrating existing data, printer issues, and global setup tips. Special guidance is given to users switching over from StarOffice, or even that Redmond company's office suite. Speaking of that company, OpenOffice.org is superb at converting Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files into its own open formats. The book shows how to use the handy "AutoPilot", which can perform batch conversions of your existing data for use with OpenOffice.org's equivalent applications. Originals are kept safely intact-- AutoPilot produces converted copies. This could make a large office transition much easier, if not completely seamless.
The next six chapters cover the creation of written documents in fantastic detail. The organization of this section is quite intuitive; you'll easily learn how to create a simple letter. When you're ready to write your memoirs, you won't need to buy another book--it's all there: complex formatting options, page layout functionality, object manipulation, linking cross-references, and indexing. And don't forget office goodies like mail merges, label printing, and business cards.
Chapters 13-17 focus entirely on web-page development. Serious web designers may find this section bordering on useless, but the casual user will be able to create a home page without learning a single tag of HTML.
The next several chapters deal with Calc (a spreadsheet program), Impress (for creating presentations), and Draw ("the best drawing program you've never used," say the authors). The layout of each section follows the comprehensive example from the earlier chapters detailing OpenOffice.org's word processor, Writer. Basic topics are organized neatly along with the more advanced ones, and neither seem to get in the way of the other. Both the novice and the expert will find very little lacking from this material.
Organizations who deal frequently with databases will not be disappointed with OpenOffice.org, either. The final three chapters of the book explain how to incorporate data from any flavor database you're likely to be using in your network. Throw in an appendix on macros, and you've got one very complete tutorial masquerading as an all-in-one reference. I'm very picky when it comes to my geek shelf space, and this one gets high marks in all the important areas: comprehensive, well organized, and with a great signal-to-noise ratio.
We have learned that superior open source software alone isn't always enough to supplant the existing closed source way of doing things. However, "document it, and they will come!" The OpenOffice.org 1.0 Resource Kit will go a long way toward fulfilling that prophecy.
Reader Marcus Green sent in a review of this book as well. Here are some of his thoughts:
In addition to the document management features the book covers the more "Page Layout" style features of StarOffice such as the ability to manage columns and to place vertical text running up the page. These are features I was not even aware existed in StarOffice before I read this book.The StarOffice companion has over 1030 pages, but it is really bigger than it sounds because it is very dense. Although it has many screen shots, plenty of use is made of text based instructions. Instead of repeating instructions, the text will often point you to the page where a concept was first explained. This does break up the flow of instructions but it also means that the book contains more information than if they had repeated the text every time it was needed.
I found the section on the graphics module useful because I had not realised how StarOffice has some slightly non-standard ways of working with menus and selections. For example I spent quite a bit of time trying to get the 3d shapes menu to pop out and show all the possible shape options. It was only on a closer reading of the text of this book did I appreciate that you need to click and hold down the mouse for a few seconds before the menu pops out.
The tone of the book comes across as being created by people who like the program rather than a creation of a faceless corporation. Thus in the graphics section they have included the amusing Moose with moving fly graphic that is used for the logo of the JavaRanch website. Here is an example of the text style from the section on macros. "Macros can do things like open a file when you do a particular task, process data, or take your grandmothers' credit cards and buy $3000 worth of cat toys." It also features a section titled "Turning Off Annoying Features," which of course is about the autoformatting and word completion.
You can purchase the OpenOffice.org Resource Kit from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
With release 1.1 on the way, wouldn't it make sense to wait until after that release to buy a book about it?
I wouldn't want to miss out on all the yummy 1.1 goodies and it sounds like it will be a pretty significant change.
lysergically yours
I'd be happy with soem simple tips on scripting a setup so that "open file" points by default to a user's network drive and so that the display and toolbars are uniform within our firm. I do not relish setting up a dozen computers to make the settings match.
Basically, scripts or config tools would be cool.
Heres all the possible trolls, rolled up into one mod point.
1) OpenOffice is slow
2) No font config support
3) Ugly paper clip clone (the lightbulb)
4) Uses a non standard printer library
5) Won't work on my 386SX running Slackware 1.0
6) I don't wan't to start a holy war here, but my linux box is taking 20 minutes to.....
7) join the GNAA
8) Mirror
9) Openoffice has no footnote support
10) My Mom says linux dosen't have any decent solitare games
11) ???
12) -12, troll.
A bunch of coders release an entire office package, yet can't get an import routine to work properly. That must be entirely their fault.
Are you kidding?
MS Word doesn't import MS Word documents properly...
luugi -
What problems have you had with opening MS Word docs? I've been using OO.o for a while, using myself as a test subject to see if we could replace all/some of our MS Office suites with something comparable. I haven't noticed any problems, but I'd like to hear what other people have issues with.
"Bugger this, I want a better world." - Jenny Sparks
While we're on the subject of StarOffice/OpenOffice, I'm going to post a question about it here because Slashdotters are more likely to be able to anwer than those kids over at the OO forums.
.gtkrc and .gtkrc-2.0 files and relateds are all configured correctly for my color preferences... but OO doesn't seem to see these either (I haven't checked to see if OO is a GTK app at all).
OpenOffice is able to inherit and use the toolkit/widget colors that I select in Linux/KDE. i.e. if my widgets are all brown in other apps, they are also brown in OpenOffice. However, when I am using WindowMaker or another simple managed environment rather than KDE, OpenOffice comes up in Windows NT gray and I can't seem to change that.
I've done an "xrdb -all -edit myrsrcs.txt" from within KDE to grab all the krdb stuff and then an "xrdb myrsrcs.txt" from within WindowMaker, but that didn't help. All of my GTK/GTK2 apps look the way I want them to at this point because my
I even tried "kfmclient file:/opt/OpenOffice.org/progrms/swriter" to see if I could get the KDE colors into OO that way without actually having to be logged in to KDE, but it didn't help.
Does anyone know how to change the widget colors in OpenOffice without having to simply log into KDE or GNOME?
P.S. final hint: using the Tools menu is not the right answer, it contains color options for a great many things, but the menu and toolbar widgets are not among them.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
So we have two choices to what we can do.
I'm not much of a defeatist, so I'm going with option 2.
Besides, it imports simple word docs fine. And really, Word is a word processor, not a page layout program. If you really want to do some fancy stuff neither word nor OOo are good. Go get pagemaker or quark.
i don't like my old sig.
Worst snack food ever.
Don't judge OpenOffice besed on 1.0.
for our OpenOffice.org training classes and it is quite good. The customers/students have really given posotive feedback about it not only as a classroom textbook, but also as a reference for ongoing use. For what it's worth.
ER
And even if you don't...does anybody EVER read documentation on something as boring as an office suite? If it isn't intuitive, it should be fixed to begin with.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I used to work for Kinko's way back when, and companies would send us documents created in Word 97, We'd open them in Word 97, and I'll be damned if Word couldn't format the stupid thing correctly. Bottom line is that people have been joking about MS Word not opening MS Word documents correctly, and they're not joking.
My experience with OO is that it will open a good 95% of what MS Office docs I throw at it. Haven't tried pivot tables or Docs with TOC's yet, though.
The party's over
http://avi.alkalay.net/software/msfonts/
for a solution. Hint, just get Microsoft fontpack.
One more thing, Microsoft supplies free viewers for Word, Excel and Powerpoint. They even run inside Wine. Google for them. I run OO with Windows 2000 and have these viewers installed, plus the fonts. What can i say? It works.
If you're looking to get OpenOffice.org for the Mac, you should get the GM from the official download site and not use what's on the CD with this book. As the "GM" implies, there were lots of bugs fixed between the "Final Beta" and "GM", and definitely lots of serious issues were fixed since the alpha.
If you're on another platform, you should probably check the version on the CD as well. Even though it's now being called a "legacy build", the latest stable version is 1.0.3.1 which fixes nasty printing errors in 1.0.3 on other platforms (didn't happen on the Mac! woo hoo!). The "RC" in 1.1 RC stands for "Release Candidate", so if you're thinking of going the whole way to 1.1 you may want to wait until the RC is dropped from the name.
I guess, in short, don't buy this book just to get OpenOffice.org on a CD since you'll probably have to download a newer version anyway.
For instance, the version that was realized around the time of Windows 3.11 did not by default install the filters needed to load Word files from many other versions of word, particularly DOS and Macintosh. Even when the filters were installed, corruption of data was common.
More recently certain versions and installations of Word 2000 seemed to chew up my Word 95 files. Headers went missing, text was garbles, all sorts of stuff.
The reality is that MS is so obsessed in keeping monopoly though the closed and convoluted Word format, that they do not seem to care if inter-version file can be moved perfectly. Likewise, they are so obsessed with all user upgrading with every version, they do not seem feel responsible about full support of older formats.
What we need is a really inclusive formatted text file format. If companies like Sun, IBM, Redhat, and Thinkfree would just get together to come up with something, then there could be a competitive force. RTF just does not seem good enough. At this point MS is no longer selling the tool, but the file format. The competition needs to be on that basis.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
...we use OpenOffice to repair hopelessly munged-up Microsoft Word documents - which happens more often than anybody is willing to admit. I used to fix all the formatting fubars with WordPerfect but the two products have diverged so much in the last two years that we've discontinued using WordPerfect for anything. Anyway, everytime I get a user who asks me why she can't get her headers and columns to do such-and-such I snarf a copy off his/her server, import it into OO, undo the hideousness (sp?) and export it back out. And it generally stays fixed, even after subsequent exposures to MS Word, plus it's a lot smaller.
Thanks to Microsoft, OpenOffice looks pretty damned good.
Please respond to the OpenOffice team with your problems. Often they are already fixed, and updating your installation is all you need. However, you cannot expect them to fix something you never tell them about.
I like open source software. I like how it works. I like how I work when I'm using it. But using open source software is a bit of a social contract. Either pay back the developers with bug reports, or it shouldn't be important enough to complain about (to anyone).
Sometimes the bugs won't get fixed. Now THATS when you should REALLY complain!
This review, in particular, almost seems like it was copied straight off of Amazon or something. Some of the quotes seem to come from a marketing firm rather than an independent critic:
Whether you are completely new to OpenOffice.org or just moving from its predecessor StarOffice, you'll want to take a look at OpenOffice.org 1.0 Resource Kit from Prentice Hall PTR.
If only there were some sort of meta-moderation for book reviews...
OpenOffice.org Resource Kit Review (Score: -1, Uninformative)
50 seconds to load on an Athlon 1900+? Well, there's your problem. I'm using an Athlon 2000+ and it takes me about 4 seconds, again without quickstart. I think you need a faster processor.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
I have a similar (but lower in hardware) setup:
Athlon 1400
512MB RAM
10GB Quantum Fireball IDE HD
Gentoo Linux "-march=athlon-tbird -O3 -pipe"
OOo takes about 5 or 6 seconds to load for me. It's a bit laggy if I leave it for a while, but it picks up to speed as I use it. I think that something is wrong with your configuration/setup since mine _should_ be about 20-30% SLOWER than yours and it's 900% faster.
BTW, my memory usage is about 75MB with OOo loaded, not including cache or buffers.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
I have spent more years of my life working with Microsoft Word than I care to contemplate at this juncture. I assure you that the problems you're describing are not inherent to porting documents from Word to OO. They're problems which you will see whenever you open a document with a word processing program which is not configured the same as the word processing program which originated the document.
Most people don't notice this problem because most people never bother to change the default Word configurations. If Mary makes a Word document and sends it to Steve, and they're both using Word's defaults, it will look exactly the same when Steve opens it. However, if Mary then sends her Word document to Bob (who has spent many hours configuring Word to his liking) Bob's instance of Word will "translate" Mary's document into Bob's preferred formatting. Or rather, it will attempt to do so, with varying degrees of success.
I have personally had to tackle the problem of importing Word documents into Word more times than you can possibly imagine. I've also had to import Open Office documents into Open Office. The problem isn't that "Word sucks" or "Open Office sucks." The problem is that both programs need to find a way to properly import formatting rules on a per-document basis.
(Of course, that's easy for me to say, isn't it? I'm not the one trying to program it, am I?)