StarOffice Writer (also known as “StarWriter”) is the word processor module included as one of six key components of StarOffice. StarWriter is a state-of-the-art software application, designed in look, feel, and function to be familiar to users of Microsoft Word. Yet StarWriter offers surprising new stability and flexibility. It allows you to create or import and edit text documents and publish them to a number of widely accepted file formats, including open standard XML and some new formats for small handheld devices.
Like JDS itself, StarOffice is distinguished by its stability on the system. Its other hallmark is the tight integration of its word processor, spreadsheet, and all other modules, which leads to a strong consistency in features, menu placement, and ease of use. The StarOffice modules are listed in Table 7-1. Covering modules in separate chapters (as we do for simplicity) risks giving the impression that they feel or behave like separate applications. In fact, the opposite is true: the modules work smoothly and consistently together as a holistic set of desktop tools.
We cover StarWriter exclusively in this chapter, and StarCalc and StarImpress together in Chapter 8. We omit the remaining modules because they are less frequently used, and their features and functions are well supported in the leading reference texts and online documentation.
This section focuses on the most commonly used features and may be sufficient for most users to get their work done on StarWriter. But you are also encouraged to read Section 7.2 to increase your repertoire of features for creating and handling more complex and larger documents.
Start StarWriter from the Launch menu by clicking on the StarOffice 7 button, second from the top. This brings up the “Templates and Documents - New Document” window, where you can select the New Document icon in the left-side index, then Text Document from the list in the central pane. (See Figure 7-1.)
You can also launch StarWriter directly if you have created a dedicated launcher icon on the desktop, task bar or both. See “Adding a Home Directory to Your Desktop” in Chapter 3, where the process for adding a launcher icon is demonstrated. It’s possible to create a dedicated launcher icon for each module of StarOffice (StarWriter, StarCalc, etc.), which is especially useful to do for the modules you use often.
The first time you launch StarOffice, the application runs a setup wizard to take you through a few steps for initial setup and configuration. Because this is a one-time procedure, we placed the initial setup instructions toward the end of this chapter in the section Section 7.3
There are two ways to open a file:
From the desktop or from within a folder, click on an icon that represents a StarOffice or MS office file. This will open StarOffice and display the file for editing.
In StarOffice, select File → Open. In the Open window, browse through the filesystem and select the desired folder and filename, then click the Open button.
After editing a document, select File → Save. A new file is saved to the user’s /home/[user]/Documents directory by default. You can also save a file to its current or the default directory with one click of the Save Document icon on the Function bar.
If you need to select a different target directory or change the filename or file type, select File → Save As. The Save As window, shown in Figure 7-2, appears. Here you can make the appropriate selections and click the Save button. This window is explored further in the following section.
If you open an existing document, it is saved by default in its original format. Thus, if you receive an MS Office file from a colleague and edit it, you get an MS Office file in return. That’s usually what you want, so you can exchange documents with everyone and not force your word processing choice on them (as new versions of MS Office itself are wont to do as a form of planned obsolescence).
Sometimes, however, you need to save a document in a different format; we describe some of those situations in Section 7.2.1. The most common reason to change the file type is when you create a new StarWriter document and want to save it in MS Word format. By default, new documents are saved in StarWriter’s native format (although that default is easy to change; we show you how later). The formats supported by StarWriter are listed in Table 7-2. To choose a new file type, select File → Save As to open the Save As window. Here, you can make the appropriate selections and click the Save button.
Table 7-2. Save files in many formats or file types
File format |
File extension (suffix) |
---|---|
StarOffice 6.0/7 Text Document * |
.sxw |
StarOffice 6.0/7 Text Document Template |
.stw |
MS Word 97/2000/XP |
.doc |
MS Word 95 |
.doc |
MS Word 6.0 |
.doc |
Adobe PDF |
|
Rich Text Format |
.rtf |
StarWriter 5.0 |
.sdw |
StarWriter 5.0 Template |
.vor |
StarWriter 4.0 |
.sdw |
StarWriter 4.0 Template |
.vor |
StarWriter 3.0 |
.sdw |
StarWriter 3.0 Template |
.vor |
Text |
.txt |
Text Encoded |
.txt |
HTML Document (StarOffice Writer) |
.html;.htm |
AportisDoc (Palm) |
.pdb |
DocBook (simplified) |
.xml |
Pocket Word |
.psw |
Note that most of the file types in Table 7-2 are available as a save option in the Save As window. (See Figure 7-2.)
When saving a document, you may notice that StarWriter displays a progress bar at the very bottom edge of the program window to indicate where in the save process you may be. The progress bar comes and goes very quickly when saving small documents, so its principal benefit comes with large documents that take more than a few seconds to save. The indicator is reassuring when StarWriter becomes inactive while performing a long document save.
One of the most common complaints lodged by new users—or by people trying to delay a forced migration to a new office suite—is, “It doesn’t have [my favorite] feature. It’s missing the one thing I need to get my work done!”
The truth is that StarWriter has most of the features offered by MS Word—plus a few significant ones Word lacks and that make StarWriter more suitable for large and multichapter documents. It’s just that the corresponding features may be located in a different place or labeled under a different name in StarOffice.
Table 7-3 can help you acclimate to the new terminology and layout of StarWriter.
Table 7-3. Features in MS Word 2000 and StarOffice 7
Feature name |
MS Office2000 |
StarOffice 7 |
---|---|---|
AutoCorrect |
Tools → Autocorrect |
Tools → AutoCorrect/AutoFormat |
AutoNumbering |
Format → Bullets and Numbering |
Format → Numbering/Bullets... |
Compare Documents |
Tools → Track Changes → Compare Documents |
Edit → Compare Document... |
Envelope |
Tools → Envelopes and Labels |
Insert → Envelope... |
Go To |
Edit → Go To |
Edit → Navigator |
Header and Footer |
View → Header and Footer |
Insert → Header, chk `default’Insert → Footer, chk `default’ |
Insert Clip Art |
Insert → Pictures → Clip Art |
Tools → Gallery |
Labels (create) |
Tool → Envelopes and Labels |
File → New → Labels |
Master Document |
View → Outline |
File → New → Master DocumentFile → Send → Create Master Document |
Mail Merge |
Tools → Mail Merge |
Tools → Mail MergeView → Data Sources |
Page Numbers |
Insert → Page Numbers |
Insert → Fields → Page Number |
Record Macro |
Tools → Macros → Record New Macro |
Tools → Macros → Record Macro |
Styles |
Format → Styles |
Format → Styles → CatalogFormat → Styles → LoadFormat → Stylist |
Table (insert) |
Table → Insert → Table |
Format → Autoformat . . . Insert → Table |
Track Changes |
Tools → Track Changes |
Edit → Changes → chk ‘Record,’ chk `Show’ |
Word Count |
Tools → Word Count |
File → Properties → Statistics |
The important toolbars of StarWriter—to which we refer often—are the Main menu, the Function bar, the Object bar, and the Main Toolbar. (See Figure 7-3):
Contains File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Tools, Window, and Help; this is where you go with the mouse to execute most commands in StarWriter. You can view the menus, also, by using the Alt key, along with the first letter of the menu name (Alt-F for the File menu, for instance). The function-key (F-key) alternatives to many common commands are listed in Table 7-6.
Contains the Open a Recent Document drop-down menu, Open New Document, Open File, Save, Document, Edit File, Export to PDF, Print File and other icons that are handy for one-click execution of the most common functions.
Contains the Document Styles drop-down menu, Fonts & Font Size drop-down menus, Bold, Italics, Underlines, indents, bullets & numbering, and character coloring, all available with a few clicks.
Contains Insert Table, Insert Fields, Insert Objects, Spellcheck, Data Sources, and other tools. This toolbar lies along the left edge of StarWriter.
These are merely the default toolbars that are visible out-of-the-box. Others can be invoked by customizing the toolbars. See the section just below. The additional toolbars available include:
Table Object Bar
Numbering Object Bar
Frame Object Bar
Draw Object Bar
Control Bar
Text Object Bar/Graphics
Bezier Object Bar
Graphics Object Bar
Objects
Text Object Bar/Web
Frame Object Bar/Web
Graphics Object Bar/Web
Object/Web
User-defined no.1
You can hide any of the toolbars (except Main menu) by unchecking their names in the top half of the context menu that opens when you right-click in the empty space within any of the toolbars. (See Figure 7-4.)
You can further rearrange elements and redesign toolbars to your personal preference by choosing any of the other four choices in the bottom half of the contextual menu:
Check off or uncheck (to hide) which buttons/icons appear on that Bar
Customize and allocate which toolbars are available
Calls the Customize Toolbars dialog, offering a grand array of buttons to add to any toolbar in the list
Restore the default configuration for all toolbars
Changes made using these commands apply to the specific toolbar on which you right-clicked to call the context menu.
This section covers basic formatting techniques for short and simple documents. The later “Power Formatting” section covers formatting techniques generally employed for larger, more complex documents.
When most word processor users think of document formatting options or styles, they think of bold, italic, underlining, fonts, font sizes, indentations, and other visible effects on text. If you’re experienced with word processing, you know to look on the Object bar for the basic character formatting buttons, and you know these buttons can help you execute quick formatting changes in one click.
Figure 7-6 illustrates the available buttons for creating direct effects, which include such fancy changes as coloring text and creating bulleted or numbered lists. In addition to font-change Object bar buttons such as B, I, and U, you can use familiar keystroke combinations (Ctrl-B, Ctrl-I, and Ctrl-U) after selecting text that you wish to change.
When you apply manual formatting changes, whether from the Object bar buttons or the Format drop-down menu (Figure 7-7, StarWriter changes the format of the whole word when the cursor is simply located somewhere within the word at the time you invoke the change. There’s no need to highlight the whole word. This saves extraneous mouse maneuvers or keystrokes. Direct changes can be made one at a time to sequences of characters or to whole paragraphs.
The Object bar shown in Figure 7-5 contains the most often used operations for altering text. If you have more unusual needs, such as applying a different font, highlight the character or characters you want to change using the mouse or arrow keys, and then select Format → Character . . . from the main menu at the top of the window. This reveals the Character window shown in Figure 7-7.
You can indent, align, set borders, and generally manipulate paragraph formats via Format → Paragraph . . . on the Main Menu, shown in Figure 7-6. The Paragraph window is shown in Figure 7-8. If you use the mouse or arrow keys to highlight multiple paragraphs first, changes are applied to all selected paragraphs. If you don’t highlight anything, paragraph changes affect the paragraph in which the cursor is currently placed.
Unlike characters and paragraphs, invoking page format control through Format → Page . . . (Figure 7-10 lands you in the realm of general Styles, which we cover later. To create a page format or style that you can reuse repeatedly, see Section 7.2.3.6
Headers and footers are the textual (or other) content that you want to repeat at either the top (header) or bottom (footer) of every page of a document or section. Before you fill in any information, headers and footers appear as empty banners or frames at the top and bottom (respectively) of each page.
To insert a header, go to the Main menu, select Insert → Header and check Default in the drop-down menu. This opens a header frame into the current document where you can type or enter the appropriate content that appears at the top of every page of the document.
Inserting a footer is the same as inserting a header, but select Insert → Footers and check Default.
To change headers or footers in the middle of a document, see the section Section 7.2.3.8
Most documents show page numbers in a header or footer. To generate automatic page numbers, insert a header or footer (depending on where you intend the page number to go, at either the top or bottom of each page) and place the cursor inside the live header or footer frame by clicking once there. Then go to the Main menu and select Insert → Fields. This invokes a drop-down menu with the following choices:
Date
Time
Page Number
Page Count
Subject
Title
Author
Other
Selecting the Page Number choice inserts the page number automatically at the location of the cursor. (See Figure 7-10.)
Sometimes it’s appropriate to create page numbering
in a header or footer that states the page number as well as the
total number of pages in the document. Such a format would read
“Page 16 of 96,” for example. In
this case, place the cursor in the target location in the header or
footer and type Page
followed by a space,
insert Page Number as shown above, type of
followed by a space, and insert Page Count from the same drop-down
menu.
To change or restart page numbering at a certain point in a document, see the section Section 7.2.3.7
Sometimes it’s useful to have a document’s filename, or even the whole path with slashes, entered into a header or footer. This helps identify—especially in the document’s printed form—the location of the digital source of the document for subsequent retrieval.
To insert a filename, first insert a footer as described earlier.
Then press Ctrl-F2. Alternatively, place the cursor in the footer, select Insert → Fields, and choose Other in the drop-down menu. This invokes the Fields window.
Next, in the Document tab, in the Type column, click on File name. This will invoke the Format column on the right side of the Fields window.
Finally, click on Path/File name (or any desirable variation offered) and click the Insert button at the bottom of the Fields window.
Templates and Styles are the advanced document formatting tool sets of StarWriter. While we cover their use below in the “StarWriter PowerTips” section, it may be helpful to prepare you here with an overview of what they can do.
A template is a preformatted file or document that is used as the basis for creating other similarly formatted documents. Using a template saves the effort of formatting documents the same way over and over again. What we call “Templates” in context of StarWriter is the whole tool set for storing and managing templates, as well as creating new documents from template files.
A StarWriter template file is distinguished by its suffix or file extension, .stw, while StarWriter text document has the .sxw extension.
Template files are linked to the documents that are created with them. It may help to imagine the template file, or the source file, as the “parent” and the derived document as the “child.” Parent-to-child linkage is one of the principal benefits of using Templates. What’s powerful is when you have a large number of “child” documents in your Documents folder, for example, you have the ability to update the formatting of all those files in one stroke by altering the formatting of the “parent” template file.
We cover the Templates tool-set in the section Section 7.2.4
Styles refers to the strong formatting features of StarWriter that permit you to maintain a growing catalogue of stock and custom compound formats for characters, paragraphs, and pages that you can use over and over across all your documents. Like Templates, Styles brings power to your desktop repertoire by helping you eliminate repetitive tasks.
The Styles tool set is accessed when you open the Stylist palette simply by pressing the F11 function key or via Format → Stylist from the Main menu. Try opening the Stylist just to see what’s there. It generally takes a lot of use to become familiar with Styles, so don’t be put off by the complexity at first.
In one example, a style applied throughout a document—a certain type of heading for instance—can be altered in one stroke when you modify that particular style in your Styles Catalog. The modification to the style will ripple through your document, saving the repetitive tagging of possibly many instances of that heading. Such features are most useful with large and heavily formatted documents such as chapter works, technical documentation, research reports, and white papers.
We cover Styles in the section Section 7.2.3
You can print the current document in one stroke by simply clicking the printer icon on the Function bar. (See Figure 7-11.)
Alternatively, you can gain additional control of printing via the Print window. Select File → Print from the Main menu, or simply press Ctrl-P. Here, you can choose a non-default printer (if one is set up), a limited page range, or a different number of copies for the current print job. You can also elect to print to a file. (See Figure 7-12.)
Instructions on setting up your printer(s) in JDS are located in Chapter 3.