by Dmitri Popov
In many respects, OpenOffice.org Writer looks like any other word processor. But behind its unassuming interface hides a slew of powerful features, which can help you to create and manage even the most complex documents with consummate ease and efficiency. One such feature is Styles that lets you work with character, paragraph, page, and list formatting properties. While other word processors have a similar feature, Writer is the only application that makes extensive use of styles and encourages the user to use them.
So, what is this Styles feature and how can it help you? The basic idea is simple: instead of using the formatting options available in the Formatting toolbar, you can define a style containing the desired properties. For example, if you want the headers in your document to use Bitstream Vera Sans 15pt font in bold and left-aligned, you can create a style that includes these properties instead of applying them manually every time you add a header. While using styles won’t save you much time and effort when you are working with short documents, they come to their own in long and complex documents like books and manuals.
Read on, mon cher! »
Posted by FA Editors at 9:41 PM PDT
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About 70,000 students and their 7,000 teachers in the Geneva school district will gradually be moving to Open Source.
“Moving to a complete Open Source system will cut the IT costs by a third.”
The decision to move to Open Source was taken by the Geneva Public School District (Département de l’Instruction Publique Genevois (DIP) in March 2006, says Manuel Grandjean, project leader for the Geneva district’s Open Source migration. “The district wants Open Source software to become the default.”
The migration to Open Source will begin after the next summer holiday with three projects. One school, the Candolle College in Geneva, will try out a complete Open Source desktop, using the GNU/Linux distribution Ubuntu. Next, OpenOffice will be installed on the 9,000 PCs in the school district that are used by teachers, replacing Microsoft Office. A third project is the migration to OpenOffice on the PCs used by the boards of all primary school.
Replacing Microsoft Office by OpenOffice saves the state some 300,000 SFr (about 186,000 euro) per year, says Grandjean. “Moving to a complete Open Source system will cut the IT costs by a third.”
Read more via IDABC
Posted by FA Editors at 9:30 AM PDT
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by Solveig Haugland April 2008
This is another article in my series that shows the similarities between OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office (pre-Office 2007).
Using a new product requires some re-learning. That’s unavoidable. But you rarely have to learn an entirely new set of skills—it’s just that the new stuff sticks out at us. This article is to emphasize the similarities between OpenOffice.org Calc and Microsoft Office Word; the things you don’t have to re-learn. I hope that not only will this show some of the similarities but will show you some shortcuts you might not have known about in either program.
Read on, mon cher! »
Posted by FA Editors at 6:42 PM PDT
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The South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) on Friday approved the Open Document Format (ODF) as an official national South African standard. The adoption of ODF by South Africa opens the way for the businesses and government to adopt ODF more widely in their processes. ODF is already an international standard, approved by the International Standards Organization, or ISO. And last week Brazil adopted ODF as a national standard through its national standards body.
The South African government has already adopted ODF as one of the standards for government communication.
Bob Jolliffe of the department of science and technology (DST) says that while the adoption of ODF as a national standard won’t have major significance for government - “this is a national standard not a government one” - it will make ODF as a standard more visible and accessible to South African citizens.
He says that while ODF had already been adopted by government, most users were not aware of the format. “This will assist with general awareness raising around ODF.”
Via tectonic.co.za
Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika
Posted by FA Editors at 2:31 PM PDT
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