What is Writer?

Apache OpenOffice 4.1 Writer Guide

Chapter 1: Introducing Writer

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• What is Writer?
• Parts of the Main Writer Window
  • Title Bar
  • Menus
  • Toolbars
  • Floating Toolbars
  • Customizing Toolbars
  • Statusbar
  • Sidebar
• Changing Document Views
• Starting a New Document
• Opening an Existing Document
• Saving a Document
• Password Protection
• Closing a Document
• Closing OpenOffice
• Using the Navigator
• Getting Help
• What Are All These Things Called?
• Undoing and Redoing Changes
• Using Writer on a Mac

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What is Writer?

Writer is the word processor component of Apache OpenOffice (AOO). It provides the usual features of a word processor: enter and edit text, check spelling, thesaurus, hyphenation, autocorrect, find and replace, automatic generation of tables of contents and indexes, mail merge, and others.

In addition, Writer provides these important features:

• Templates and styles
• 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. Using styles, you can easily format your document consistently and change the format with minimal effort. 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. Often, you are using styles whether you realize it or not. The use of styles is described in more detail in Chapter 6 (Introduction to Styles) and Chapter 7 (Working with Styles).

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