Customer Reviews

OpenOffice.org Writer: The Free Alternative to Microsoft Word (Community Press)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a well written and organized book that covers all of the essentials of Writer. You won't find information about how to write well, or organize your document effectively. This has a manual style, loaded (but not overwhelmed) with screenshots, which covers all of the functions of the application.

I've read (or looked over) a lot of books on Microsoft Word. I find the book a lot more pleasing. It doesn't treat you like an idiot. It understands that the common case is that you understand the basics of the application and you are just looking for how to do one particular thing.

I recommend this book for anyone using Writer.

If you're ready to make a serious attempt at moving your word processing needs off of Microsoft Word, check out OpenOffice.org Writer - The Free Alternative to Microsoft Word by Jean Hollis Weber (O'Reilly). This is a no-fluff how-to book that will help you figure out how to work with Writer.

Chapter list: Setting Up Writer to Work Your Way; Writing, Editing, and Reviewing Documents; Controlling Page Layout; Using Templates and Styles Effectively; Getting the Most from Fields; Tables of Contents, Indexes, and Bibliographies; Working with Large or Complex Documents; Working with Graphics in Writer; Miscellaneous Tips and Tricks; Moving from Microsoft Word; Index

This is one of those books that falls outside the normal expectations for tech books. It's published by O'Reilly Community Press, which is described this way:

Unlike classic O'Reilly animal books, O'Reilly's role in the series is limited to providing manufacturing and distribution services rather than editorial development, so that each Community Press title reflects the editorial voice and organization of the community that has created it.

As a result, it doesn't have the same polish and finish as what you'd expect from an O'Reilly title. But don't let that deter you from the excellent content contained within. There's a three page preface stating the target audience, conventions in font, and all the other standard preface stuff. After that, it's all practical content on how to do specific tasks in Writer. The target audience is for intermediate to advanced users, so if you're competent around Word, you'll quickly catch on to what steps are required to produce the same time of reports you normally create in Word. And if you're just getting exposed to Writer, you'll be amazed at how much power you'll have at your fingertips. And of course, free is a very good price.

The other thing I appreciate about the book is the section on converting to and from Word documents. That's obviously the biggest concern since Word is nearly a standard in the business place. The author doesn't try to gloss over and hype the conversion process. Some things (simple documents) will convert with no problems at all. Other more complex documents may not convert well at all. This could lead to some manual tweaking once the document has been moved to the other platform. But still, you get a good idea as to what you're up against.

No fluff, plenty of meat, and highly practical... A definite winner.

OpenOffice.org is the Open Source competitor to the Microsoft Office suite. Part of the suite, OpenOffice.org Writer is the word processor component and the only one covered in this book. The book does include a CD-ROM with a copy of OpenOffice.org for various operating systems including Linux, Mac, Solaris, and Windows. This book is a thorough introduction to the Writer software and includes configuration, writing, editing, review, page layout, templates, styles, fields, table of contents, indexes, bibliographies, and working with graphics. Basically, just about everything that you are likely to use in a business environment is covered. Some things are easier done in OpenOffice than in Word, and some are easier in Word. I did find that after spending about an hour with the software I was able to do everything I normally do in Word plus create a much more efficient interface to merge data from a dbase file into a template for a mail merge. I was a pleasure working with a product that interfaced well with other programs, something Microsoft products are not generally known for doing well, if at all. My experience with the software was very positive and the book a tremendous help at greatly lowering the learning curve. OpenOffice.org Writer is a highly recommended book for anyone thinking about looking at this product as an alternative to Microsoft Office.

O'Reilly made a great choice in picking up this previously self published book, "Taming OpenOffice.org Writer," and adding it to their collection. The author has a great style which is very easy to read.

For someone already familiar with word processing applications this book is a great help in showing how OpenOffice.org Writer accomplishes the task. It is written for someone who has experience in this type of software. As the subtitle is "The Free Alternative to Microsoft Word" you can imagine that much of the differences she shows are differences between Writer and Word.

The author does a great job at showing what can and cannot be done with OOo. She does not pretend that OOo Writer is perfect and is quick to show how to avoid some common pitfalls. The book is refreshing in that it does admit some weaknesses of the software, but also provides ways around the problems.

Because it is written for current users of word processors, it gives few examples of what can be done with the features. If you already know what you want to accomplish but are unsure of how it is done in Writer, then this book is a great help.

One of the strengths of OOo is "Styles." The author explained how to use styles in a very concise manner. The only thing lacking was a thorough explanation as to why someone should use styles. Other word processors handle formatting on a paragraph to paragraph, or word to word basis. OOo handles its formatting through styles, though you can do it the wrong way if you like. Styles are document wide formating and is much more powerful. But the book lacked the convincing paragraph or two as to why one should try to learn to use the Stylist.

There are lots of screen captures. Of which 183 are dialog boxes or menus. The other 8 show something other than those 2 items. Precisely two, and only two are an example of actual text being formated. The problem I have with this is if I go through the steps that are given in the book, I can, without fail, end up at the same dialog box as the book references. What would have been more to my liking would have been to see more examples of how you can use OOo to put text on a page.

The saving grace of this though is the one huge example that the book shows of what can be done with OOo...the entire book was written in and typeset from OOo Writer. Anything you see in the book can be done with the OOo Writer program. That is a testimony to the power of the tool. Because of this, the author goes into great detail as to how to manage large documents with Writer. This is something that OOo does very well. With its Stylist to help manage the uniform formatting and the Navigator to help manage a large document, OOo not only competes for MS Word's secretarial market, but WordPerfect's dominance in the legal and governmental fields.

I look forward to the release of OpenOffice.org 2.0. I hope that O'Reilly will work with the author to produce a new version of the book in line with the new version and features of the software. As well, I would like to see O'Reilly do a book on each of the components in the OpenOffice.org suite.

The author has done a superb job of explaining how to use OpenOffice.org Writer to get the job of Word Processing done. Clear, concise explanations are combined with plentiful screen shots, guaranteeing a rewarding experience for the reader looking for an intelligent answer on how to accomplish a task in Writer. This book is not a reference manual, per-se, but it can be used as such - the index is more than adequate for such a purpose.

The only criticism that I have is that it is too short. I read the book in about two hours and was left wanting more. At a little over 200 pages, it is still amazing how much information that the author covers:

* Writer Customization
* Using Writer to create and edit documents
* Formatting
* Templates and Styles
* Fields
* Indexes, Table of Contents, Bibliographies
* Master Documents, Footnotes, Endnotes
* Graphics
* Cool Tricks - PDF, Docbook XML, Hyperlinking
* The Migration from Word to Writer

I highly recommend this book for readers that have recently begun to use Writer, are considering using Writer or who are just plain curious what all the hubub is about.

I have used OpenOffice.org since before it was called OpenOffice.org and I was surprised at how much I learned when I read this book. Most of the sections stand alone, which means that you can read the sections that interest you at the moment.

This book is very readable and accessible to beginners, and it contains content that some advanced users do not know. If you want to learn how to use styles, for example, this book is amazing. I also learned how to use fields to count my figures and other items. I consider this book a must have.

Jean Hollis did a good job of explaining how to do certain advanced things like styles and creating tables of contents.
I was really floundering until I got hold of this book.
I had always used Word but have not used it since.
I am a software developer and we are writing documentation for our software.
OpenOffice has been a good tool to have and this book was the key to understanding some really handy things.
It also covers some more mundane things like optimizations.

After routine basics, Chapter 3 reads like it was written for some other piece of software. Menu item "Catalog" doesn't exist on my version. Left me totally in the dark about this key feature of Writer. I'm still at a loss how to use the advanced features of the program. Very disappointed
Marty Cahill

Even though the book emphasizes a version of OOo before the current one, this book will get you proficient on the basics of Writer enough to get you off and running. The majority of the basic tasks you will do with a word processor are covered. I would recommend some previous experience with word processors and GUIs in general, but its not completely necessary. For someone switching over from Word to Open Office Writer, this book would more than meet your needs.

It used to be that if you bought a new PC it came with useful software such as word processing and spreadsheet programs. Lately, the pernicious practice has arisen of bundling "trial versions" of Microsoft Office that expire in a few days if you don't pay to buy them. I would certainly prefer the old way, where you may not get the most powerful word processor around, but at least you get one you can USE without it suddenly going dead if you don't pay for it. I wouldn't even want to TRY it, and risk the possibility that I'd get used to the software. So when I recently bought a new notebook PC and found this stupid trial version, I quickly uninstalled it and went to get hold of word processing and spreadsheet software so I had the functionality on my machine.

To the rescue: [...], a software package that includes nearly all the functionality of Microsoft Office (certainly all the functionality that I needed!) and even a few things that Office doesn't do (like creating PDF files directly without a separate program like Adobe Acrobat!) I downloaded the software, and immediately had a package of Office-like software free.

The only problem was that it is not well documented. Searching through a help file when you're trying to figure out how to do something is NOT fun to me. So I wanted a book, at least on the word processor, Writer. (The spreadsheet program, Calc, is pretty intuitive to me, but then I'm not trying to do things as fancy with it as I want to do in Writer!) And this book seemed the one to go with.

It has proved useful to me; I'm not sorry I bought it. But it has at least two shortcomings: (1) It describes an old version of Writer, version 1.1 while 2.4 is the current version, and (2) it has a woefully inadequate index. The first is not the author's fault; I'm sure she wrote about the version that was current when she wrote the book, but it does mean that sometimes it describes some feature that does not operate as she describes it, and I'm left trying to figure out how to do what I want to. But the second certainly IS her fault; I simply cannot expect to find what I'm looking for in the index and I'm usually forced to go trying to guess what chapter is likely to have what I want, then flipping through the chapter to find out if she discusses the topic I want to look up.

On the plus side, only two days after getting the book, I've succeeded in doing several things I never could figure out how to do before I had the book, so it has clearly proved useful to me.