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OpenOffice Writer

July 23, 2009 by Roy Johnson

The free alternative word-processor to Microsoft Word

OpenOffice is one of the big success stories of the Open Source Software movement – along with programs such as Linux and Apache. Open Source seeks to design software by voluntary collaboration, then makes it freely available for anyone to use . Writer is the word-processing package part of OpenOffice and, not to put too fine a point on the matter, it’s a free alternative to the costly and ponderous Microsoft Word.

OpenOffice WriterBecause the software comes free of charge however, there is no printed manual, so the ever-enterprising publishers O’Reilly have produced one as part of their Community Press series. The book comes complete with a CD-ROM containing the whole of the OpenOffice.org suite which you can freely install on as many machines as you wish. The full suite of programs includes packages for spreadsheets (Calc) presentations (Impress) and drawings (Draw) as well as file conversion facilities.

Jean Hollis Weber’s guide starts by showing you how to set up the interface to suit your style of working and your own personal preferences. This includes features such as page appearance, font options, multiple undo, spellchecking, custom dictionaries, and auto-correction.

Basically, Writer works in a very similar manner to Word, but it is more customisable, less intrusive, and less bossy. You don’t get the impression that it’s trying to take over the world, as you do with Word. And even if in the end you decide you don’t like it, you haven’t lost a penny, because it’s free.

She covers working with templates and shows you how to apply styles. For people working on long documents there are tutorials on tables of contents, indexes, bibliographies, footnotes and endnotes, and cross referencing.

Writer and other Open Source software offers an ideal solution for people who cannot afford Microsoft prices, but who wish to undertake professional quality work. This is why it is being taken up so rapidly in poorer countries and even some hard-pressed local governments in the West. (As a result of this incidentally, Microsoft have started to do secret cut-price deals with some big customers in order to keep their share of the market.)

Since most of her potential readers are likely to be migrating from Word, she ends her tour through the program with a useful series of comparison tables. These explain the small differences in how common commands and actions are performed in Word and Writer respectively.

If you need the reassurance of a manual, plus the convenience of a whole suite of programs on one ready-to-hand CD, this is a bargain. It’s sort of a version of O’Reilly’s ‘Missing Manual’ series.

© Roy Johnson 2004

artie shaw Buy the book at Amazon UK

artie shaw Buy the book at Amazon US


Jean Hollis Weber, OpenOffice.org Writer, Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly, 2004, pp.213, ISBN: 0596008260


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Filed Under: Open Sources Tagged With: Open Sources, Software, Word-processing, Writing skills

StyleWriter

July 19, 2009 by Roy Johnson

grammar, spelling, and editing software program

Lots of people don’t like spelling-checkers and grammar-checkers. It’s no fun having your weaknesses highlighted. Yet they can save you from many embarrassing mistakes – and you can learn good writing habits from them. STYLEWRITER tries to overcome this problem by offering a wide palette of distinctions and a selection of writing styles from which to choose. Its stated aim is to help users produce plain English. As the guidance notes say, “A low average sentence length and a low Passive Index makes your writing much more readable and interesting.”

StylewriterThe program is invoked from within your word-processor, and it works by splitting the screen in two. The top window reveals several lines of your text, with any problems highlighted. This has the advantage that individual items can be seen in their grammatical context.

The highlights are also colour-coded: dark red for suggested improvements, black for misused words, and bright red for spelling mistakes. The bottom window contains your original file, which can be edited. This editing function is commendably efficient: it takes the cursor to the exact spot in your text where corrections will be made. A full help system is available from pull-down menus, and this also includes tips on punctuation, grammar, and appropriate style.

At the end of the check, a full statistical report is available. This includes a word and sentence count, and a natty bar chart with encouraging comments on your results [Sentence-length ‘Excellent!’] There is also a summary which reveals the number of occurrences of features such as complex words, business clichés, foreign words, hidden verbs, and jargon. These can all be customised.

It is easy to observe that many great prose stylists would not pass the test of the forty word maximum sentence length which the program recommends. Henry James would only just be approaching the subject of his sentence after such a short preamble, and his verb would be still some way off. But for we lesser mortals the strictures are probably useful.

So – the program is well worth recommending. I ditched Grammatik in its favour, hardly without thinking. The publishers have recently dropped the price if you download it from their website.

It also allows you to choose the type of writing you wish to check and edit – so it copes with the various requirements for writing by lawyers, government officials, engineers, educators, or accountants. There’s even a setting for ‘creative’ writing that permits the bending of grammatical rules.

But on the whole it aims to produce witing which is shorter, clearer, and free from cloudiness and jargon. You even get a statistical summary of what you write (keep an eye on those long sentences) and if you don’t agree with a particular item of advice, you can remove it. On the other hand you can add rules and dictionary items.

The latest version has been completely re-vamped, and the best feature of all that’s been added is a free trial version which you can download here.

© Roy Johnson 2002


StyleWriter: the plain English editor – Version 4. Editor Software, 64 Woodmancote, Dursley, Glos, GL11 4AQ, England. Tel: 01453-548409


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Filed Under: Writing Skills Tagged With: Editing, Software, StyleWriter, Writing skills, writing software

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