Documentation/OOoAuthors User Manual/Writer Guide/Introducing Writer

Статья в работе (ЧЕРНОВИК), и находится в процессе написания.

This page was created by converting ODT to Mediawiki using Writer2MediaWiki. The page needs cleaning up and figures added.

This is the first part of Chapter 1 of the OpenOffice.org 2.x Writer Guide (Third edition). This chapter is continued here:
Writer Guide: The Writer workspace
Writer Guide: Writer documents

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What is Writer?

Writer is the word processor component of OpenOffice.org (OOo). In addition to the usual features of a word processor (spell checking, thesaurus, hyphenation, autocorrect, find and replace, automatic generation of tables of contents and indexes, mail merge, and others), Writer provides these important features:

• Templates and styles
• Powerful page-layout methods (including frames, columns, and tables)
• Embedding or linking of graphics, spreadsheets, and other objects
• Built-in drawing tools
• Master documents—to group a collection of documents into a single document
• Change tracking during revisions
• Database integration, including a bibliography database
• Export to PDF, including bookmarks
• And many more

Styles are central to using Writer. Styles enable you to easily format your document consistently and to change the format with minimal effort. Often, when you format your document in Writer, you are using styles whether you realize it or not. A style is a named set of formatting options. Writer defines several types of styles, for different types of elements: characters, paragraphs, pages, frames, and lists. The use of styles is described in more detail in other chapters in this guide, including Chapter 6 (Introduction to Styles) and Chapter 7 (Working with Styles).

The other features of Writer listed above are also covered in detail in other chapters of this guide.

Starting Writer

If you are reading this document in OpenOffice.org, you already know how to start Writer. However, if this is a printed, PDF or wiki version, you may not know how to start Writer. So let's look at three ways to do that:

• From the system menu
• From an existing document
• From the command line

Starting from the system menu

Using the system menu is the most common way to start Writer. The system menu is the standard menu from which most applications are started. On Windows, it is called the Start menu. On GNOME, it is called the Applications menu. On KDE, it is identified by the KDE logo. On Mac OS X, it is the Applications menu.

When OpenOffice.org was installed, a menu entry was added to your system menu. The exact name and location of this menu entry depends on your graphical environment. This chapter looks at Windows, GNOME and KDE on Linux, and Mac OS X. The concepts should easily be applicable to another operating system.

Windows

On Windows, the OpenOffice.org menu is located in Programs > OpenOffice.org 2.x, where "2.x" corresponds to the version number of OpenOffice.org. Figure 1 shows a typical setup on Windows XP. Select OpenOffice.org Writer to start Writer with a blank document.

Linux/GNOME

GNOME installations differ from one distribution to the next. Most modern distributions come with OpenOffice.org already installed. You will find OpenOffice.org under Applications > Office, as shown in Figure 2.

Fedora/Red Hat Enterprise Linux comes with OpenOffice.org installed. On the GNOME desktop, OOo can be found under Main Menu > Office. If you have installed a newer version of OOo, you will find it under Main Menu > Office > More Office Applications.

If you installed by downloading OOo from the http://www.openoffice.org website, it is under Applications > Other.

Linux/KDE

On KDE, OpenOffice.org is installed in its own menu, called Office (see Figure 3).

Some Linux distributions install OpenOffice.org in the Office submenu. Mandrake is such a distribution. In this case, to launch Writer, choose Office > Word processors > OpenOffice.org Writer. Figure 4 illustrates the OOo menu with Math selected.

Mac OS X

Go to the folder where you installed OpenOffice.org. You should see its icon in the Applications folder (Figure 5). To start OpenOffice.org, double-click its icon.

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Starting from an existing document

If you installed OpenOffice.org correctly, all Writer documents are associated with the Writer application. This means that you can start OpenOffice.org automatically, simply by double-clicking a Writer document in your favorite file manager (for example, Windows Explorer).

You can spot an OpenOffice.org Writer document by its icon: inline:Graphic11.png .

For Windows users

File associations are used to open certain types of files automatically with OpenOffice.org. When installing OOo, you could choose to associate Microsoft Office file types with OOo. If you chose to do this, then when you double-click on a *.doc file, it opens in OpenOffice.org.

If you did not associate the file types, then when you double-click on a Microsoft Word document, it opens in Microsoft Word (if Word is installed on your computer).

You can use another method to open *.doc files in OOo and save in the *.doc format from OOo. See “Opening an existing document" on page 15 for more information.

Using the Quickstarter under Windows

The Quickstarter is an icon that is placed in the Windows system tray during system startup. It indicates that OpenOffice.org has been loaded and is ready to use. (The Quickstarter loads library *.DLL files required by OOo, thus shortening the startup time for OOo components by about half.) If the Quickstarter is disabled, see “Reactivating the Quickstarter" on page 6 if you want to enable it.

Using the Quickstarter icon

Right-click the Quickstarter icon in the system tray to open a pop-up menu from which you can open a new document, open the Templates and Documents dialog box, or choose an existing document to open. (See Figure 6.) You can also double-click the Quickstarter icon to display the Templates and Documents dialog box.

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Disabling the Quickstarter

To close the Quickstarter, right-click on the icon in the system tray and then click Exit Quickstarter on the pop-up menu. The next time the computer is restarted, the Quickstarter will be loaded again.

To prevent OpenOffice.org from loading during system startup, deselect the Load OpenOffice.org During System Start-Up item on the pop-up menu. You might want to do this if your computer has insufficient memory, for example.

Reactivating the Quickstarter

If the Quickstarter has been disabled, you can reactivate it by selecting the Load OpenOffice.org during system start-up checkbox in Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Memory.

Using the Quickstarter under Linux

Some installations of OpenOffice.org under Linux have a Quickstarter that looks and acts like the one described above for Windows (the checkbox on the Memory page is labeled Enable systray quickstarter). The Linux Quickstarter is disabled in other installations, but it will be operational in future releases.

Preloading OOo under Linux/KDE

In Linux/KDE, you can use KDocker to have OOo loaded and ready for use at startup. KDocker is not part of OOo; it is a generic “systray app docker" that is helpful if you open OOo often.

Starting from the command line

You may want to start Writer from the command line (using the keyboard instead of the mouse). Why? Well, by using the command line, you have more control over what happens when Writer is started. For example, using the command line, you can tell Writer to load a document and print it immediately, or to start without showing the splash screen.

Note

Most users will never need to do this.

There is more than one way to start Writer from the command line, depending on whether you have installed a customized version or the standard download from the OOo web site.

If you installed using the download on the OOo web site, you can start Writer by typing at the command line:

soffice -writer

or

swriter

Writer will start and create a new document.

To see a list of options you can use when starting Writer at the command line, type:

soffice -?

If you have a customized version of OOo (such as the one provided by Linux Mandrake or Gentoo), you can start Writer by typing at the command line:

oowriter

Note

Although the command syntax differs, the effect is identical: it starts OOo with an empty Writer document.

Creating a new document

Creating a blank document

You can create a new, blank document in Writer in a number of ways:

• Press the Control+N keys. A new empty document opens. If you already have a document open, the new document appears in a new window.
• Use File > New > Text Document.
• Click the New button on the main toolbar inline:Graphic14.png .

Creating a document from a template

You can use templates to create new documents in Writer. Templates serve as the foundation of a set of documents, to make sure they all have a similar layout. For example, all the documents of the Writer Guide are based on the same template. As a result, all the documents look alike—they have the same headers and footers, use the same fonts, and so on.

Unfortunately, a brand-new OpenOffice.org installation does not contain many templates. It is possible for you to add new templates to your installation and use them for new documents. This is explained in Chapter 10 (Working with Templates). Many more templates can be downloaded from the Internet.

Once you do have templates on your system, you can create new documents based on them by using File > New > Templates and Documents. This opens a window where you can choose the template you want to use for your document.

The example shown in Figure 5 uses a template called “book" in the My Templates folder. Select it, then click the Open button. A new document is created based on the formats defined in the template.

For more about templates, see Chapter 10 (Working with Templates).

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Opening an existing document

Here is one way to open an existing document in Writer:

1. Click File > Open (or press Control+O).
2. In the file chooser, you can reduce the list of files by selecting the type of file you are looking for. If you choose Text documents as the file type, you will only see documents Writer understands.
3. Select the file you want, and then click Open.

Note

This method opens Word (*.doc) files, as well as OOo files and other formats.

You can also open an existing OOo Writer document using the same methods you would use to open any document in your operating system.

Saving a document

There are three ways to save a document in Writer:

• Press Control+S.
• Select File > Save.
• Click the Save button on the main toolbar.

You also can tell Writer to save your document automatically at regular intervals. To enable this, you must configure OpenOffice.org to save all documents automatically.

1. Select Tools > Options. The Options window appears.
2. Select Load/Save > General.
3. Click on Save' AutoRecovery information every'. This enables the box to set the interval. The default value is 30 minutes. Enter the value you want by typing it or by pressing the up or down arrow keys.

Saving as a Microsoft Word document

You may need to share your documents with other people who do not use OpenOffice.org, but use Microsoft Word instead. Fortunately, OpenOffice.org can read and write Word files. To save a document as a Microsoft Word file:

1. First save your document in OpenOffice.org's format (*.odt). If you do not, any changes you made since the last time you saved will only appear in the Microsoft Word version of the document.
2. Then click File > Save As. The Save As dialog box (Figure 6) appears.
3. In the Save as type drop-down menu, select the type of Word format you need.
4. Click Save.

From this point on, all changes you make to the document will occur only in the Microsoft Word document. You have actually changed the name of your document. If you want to go back to working with the OpenOffice.org version of your document, you must open it again.

Tip

To have OOo save documents in a default Microsoft Word file format, go to Tools > Options > Load/Save > General. There is a section named Default file format. Under Document type, select Text document, under Always save as, select your preferred file format.

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Printing a document

For more information about printing documents, see Chapter 5 (Printing, Faxing, Exporting, and E-mailing).

Quick printing

Click the Print File Directly icon inline:Graphic10.png to send the entire document to the default printer defined for your computer.

Controlling printing using the Print dialog box

For more control over printing, use File > Print to display the Print dialog box (Figure 7).

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On the Print dialog box, you can choose:

• Which printer to use (if more than one are installed on your system) and the properties of the printer—for example, orientation (portrait or landscape), which paper tray to use, and what paper size to print on. The properties available depend on the selected printer; consult the printer's documentation for details.
• Which pages to print, how many copies to print, and in what order to print them.
• Use dashes to specify page ranges and commas or semicolons to separate ranges; for example, 1, 5, 11-14, 34-40.
• Selection is the highlighted part of a page or pages.
• Which items to print. Click the Options button to display the Printer Options dialog box. For details about print options and setting defaults for Writer, see Chapter 5 (Printing, Faxing, Exporting, and E-mailing).

Previewing pages before printing

The normal page view in Writer shows what each page will look like when printed, but it shows only one page at a time. If you are designing a document to be printed double-sided, you may want to see what facing pages look like. OOo provides a way to do this in Page Preview.

1. Click File > 'Page Preview', or click the Page Preview button inline:Graphic15.png .

The Writer window changes to display the current page and the following page and shows the Page Preview toolbar (Figure 8) in place of the Formatting toolbar.

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1. Click the Book Preview icon inline:Graphic20.png to display left and right pages in their correct orientation (facing pages).
2. To print the document in this page view, click the Print page view icon inline:Graphic17.png .
3. To choose margins and other options for the printout, click the Print options page view icon inline:Graphic18.png to display the Print Options dialog box. For more information, see Chapter 5 (Printing, Faxing, Exporting, and E-mailing).

Exporting to PDF

OpenOffice.org can export documents to PDF (Portable Document Format). This industry-standard file format for file viewing is ideal for sending the file to someone else to view using Acrobat Reader or other PDF viewers.

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PDFs can now be created with bookmarks—a table of contents with clickable links to take readers directly to the page containing the heading.

Quick export to PDF

Click the Export Directly as PDF icon inline:Graphic21.png to export the entire document using the default PDF settings. You are asked to enter the file name and location for the PDF file, but you do not get a chance to choose a page range or the print quality.

Controlling PDF content and quality

For more control over the content and quality of the resulting PDF, use File > Export as PDF. You are asked to enter the location and file name of the PDF to be created, and then the PDF Options dialog box opens.

Here you can choose which pages to include in the PDF, the type of compression to use for images (which affects the quality of images in the PDF), and other options. For more information, see Chapter 5 (Printing, Faxing, Exporting, and E-mailing).

Getting help

Writer provides several forms of help. In addition to a full Help file, you can choose whether to activate tooltips, extended tips, and the Help Agent.

Placing the mouse pointer over any of the icons displays a small box, called a tooltip. It gives a brief explanation of the icon's function. For a more detailed explanation, select Help > 'What's This?' and hold the mouse pointer over the icon you need more help with.

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The extended tips option in OOo 2.0 can no longer be accessed from the Help menu. Tips and extended tips can now be turned on or off from Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > General. What's This? help is a new feature in OOo 2.0.

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Closing a document

To close a document, click File > Close.

You can also close a document by clicking on the Close icon on the document window. In Windows XP, this button looks like the red X shown in Figure 10.

If more than one OOo window is open, each window looks like the sample shown on the left in Figure 10. Closing this window leaves the other OOo windows open.

If only one OOo window is open, it looks like the sample shown on the right in Figure 10. Notice the small black X below the large red X. Clicking the small X closes the document but leaves OOo open. Clicking the large red X closes OOo completely.

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If the document has not been saved since the last change, a message box is displayed. Choose whether to save or discard your changes.

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• Save: The document will be saved and then closed.
• Discard: The document will be closed, and all modifications since the last save will be lost.
• Cancel: Nothing will happen, and you will return to the document.

Caution inline:Graphic2.png

Not saving your document could result in the loss of recently made changes, or worse still, your entire file.

Closing Writer

To close Writer completely, click File > Exit',' or close the last open document as described in “Closing a document" on page 9.

If all the documents have been saved, Writer will close immediately. If any documents have been modified but not saved, a warning dialog box like the one shown in Figure 11 will appear. Follow the procedure in “Closing a document" to save or discard your changes.