Writing Text

Getting Started with OpenOffice 4

Chapter 6: Getting Started with Draw

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• What is Draw?
• Parts of the main Draw window
• Choosing and defining colors
• Positioning objects with Snap functions
• Positioning objects with guiding lines
• The basic drawing shapes
  • Drawing a straight line
  • Drawing an arrow
  • Choosing line endings
  • Drawing a rectangle or square
  • Drawing a circle or ellipse
  • Drawing curves
  • Writing text
  • Gluepoints and connectors
• Drawing geometric shapes
• Selecting objects
• Moving and dynamically adjusting an object’s size
• Editing objects
• Using styles
• Special effects
• Combining multiple objects
• Aids for positioning objects
• Inserting and editing pictures
• Working with 3D objects
• Exporting graphics
• Adding comments to a drawing

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Writing Text

Use the Text tool to write text and select the font, color, size, and other attributes. Click at the location where you want to position the text or click and drag to create a larger text frame. Press  ↵ Enter  to move the cursor to the next line.

When you have finished typing text, click outside the text frame. Double-click on the text at any time to edit it.

When you use the Text tool, text formatting panels appear in the Sidebar and the Text formatting toolbar is visible; they include the usual paragraph attributes: indents, first line, and tab stops.

You can create Graphics styles that you can reuse for other text frames. Select the Styles and Formatting deck of the Sidebar, the menu Format → Styles and Formatting or press  F11  to open the Styles and Formatting window. Graphics styles affect all the text within a text frame. To style parts of the text, use direct formatting with the Sidebar or toolbar.

Text frames can also have fill colors, shadows, and other attributes, just like any other Draw object. You can rotate the frame and write the text at any angle. These options are available by right-clicking on the object.

Use the Callout tool , located on the Sidebar or the Drawing toolbar, to create callouts (also known as captions or figure labels).

If you double-click on an object or press  F2  or click the Text icon when an object is selected, text is written in the center of the object and remains within the object. Nearly any kind of object contains such an additional text element. These texts have slight differences to those in text frames concerning position and hyphenation.

For more about text, see Chapter 2 (Drawing Basic Shapes) and Chapter 10 (Advanced Draw Techniques) in the Draw Guide.