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Content Tagged with writer + User:conficio

Klaus Manhart has published an article about converting documents from and to MS Office, using OpenOffice.org. He tells it as it is, that simple documents are easier to convert than more complex ones.

In his article he gives two sets of cut and dry advice for text-documents used in OOo Writer/MS Word:

Basic rules for successful data exchange

• If you know that a Microsoft Office document will be opened in Openoffice.org later, don’t use complicated formatting and functions.
• Agree on the exact Microsoft Office file format to be used. If someone generates a document that’s going to be exchanged and uses a newer version of Microsoft Office, then RTF or another format up to and including Office 97 should be used, rather than anything more recent.
• Try to avoid round-trip conversion, where documents are edited alternately with Openoffice.org and Office. It’s not realistic to have a file that’s sometimes edited with Microsoft Word and sometimes with Open Office.
• If you’re going to send an Openoffice.org document to someone who just needs to read and print it, it’s probably simpler to export it to a PDF file.

and
Maximize Word compatibility in Openoffice.org Writer

• Enable Use printer settings for document formatting
• Enable Add spacing between paragraphs and tables
• Enable Do not add leading (extra space) between lines of text
• Enable Consider wrapping style when placing objects

Learn at Plan-B for OpenOffice.org, how to enable/disable OOo Writer compatibility options for compatibility with MS Word or OpenOffice.org Release 1.1

Plan-B for OpenOffice.org celebrates the milestone of 100 help topic screencasts for OpenOffice.org Writer.

This week we added some topics around paragraph formatting and using tab stops. The latest batch contains the following help topics:

• Insert new tab stop
• Remove tab stop
• Understanding tab stop types
• Change tab stop type of existing tab stop
• Change tab stop type for new tab stops
• Setting multiple tab stops
• Insert tab stop fill characters

If you are a Writer, using OpenOffice.org as you main tool, Dimitri Popov’s “Writer for Writers and Advanced Users” might be the book for you to read. And Dimitri does know his OpenOffice, as he also publishes the “WriterTools” extension. WriterTools in version 0.7.1 includes features such as:

• Lookup Tool - select text and lookup it up in several online references, including Cambridge Dictionaries, WordNet, and Google Define.
• Google Translate - select text and translate it to different languages using the Google Translate service.
• Email Backup - Backup your currently open document per E-Mail.
• Multi-format Backup macro - saves the currently open text document Writer) as Word, RTF, and TXT formats in one command.
• Open FTP Document - open a document stored on an FTP server and work on it locally.
• Convert to DokuWiki converts the current document into DokuWiki format.
• Start/Stop Timer - keep track how long you work on which document and save the data in the accompanying WriterDB database. Use it as you please, such as for billing etc.

This set of tools utilizes the new OpenOffice.org extension infrastructure. Which seems to gain momentum in general.

I find the DokuWiki macro real nifty. I bet, if it would be MediaWiki as output, a lot of Wikipedia authors would become OOo converts.

Bruce Byfield has published another article about “Desktop Publishing with OpenOffice.org.”

Bruce does make a point that when it comes to replacing mid level DTP applications like Microsoft Publisher® one does not need to look at Scribus. OpenOffice.org Writer in combination with Draw do the trick pretty well. He thinks Writer is especially suitable for long texts like books, manuals or thesis. Those documents tend to be text heavy with moderate variability of page design. In case you want to be more graphic heavy with little text, such as brochures, fliers or other marketing material, he recommends to try Draw.

I think Bruce should know, after all he is an accomplished book author and writes frequently articles.

Klaus Manhart has published an article about converting documents from and to MS Office, using OpenOffice.org. He tells it as it is, that simple documents are easier to convert than more complex ones.

In his article he gives two sets of cut and dry advice for text-documents used in OOo Writer/MS Word:

Basic rules for successful data exchange

• If you know that a Microsoft Office document will be opened in Openoffice.org later, don’t use complicated formatting and functions.
• Agree on the exact Microsoft Office file format to be used. If someone generates a document that’s going to be exchanged and uses a newer version of Microsoft Office, then RTF or another format up to and including Office 97 should be used, rather than anything more recent.
• Try to avoid round-trip conversion, where documents are edited alternately with Openoffice.org and Office. It’s not realistic to have a file that’s sometimes edited with Microsoft Word and sometimes with Open Office.
• If you’re going to send an Openoffice.org document to someone who just needs to read and print it, it’s probably simpler to export it to a PDF file.

and
Maximize Word compatibility in Openoffice.org Writer

• Enable Use printer settings for document formatting
• Enable Add spacing between paragraphs and tables
• Enable Do not add leading (extra space) between lines of text
• Enable Consider wrapping style when placing objects

Learn at Plan-B for OpenOffice.org, how to enable/disable OOo Writer compatibility options for compatibility with MS Word or OpenOffice.org Release 1.1