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Main toolbarAlong the left side of the window is the main toolbar. Each icon in this seriesrepresents a different functionality. If a button isextensible(it has a littlearrow on it), you can click it to open a tiny dialog box containing the optionstherein. Each icon is described in Table 17-1; for an example of what you seewhen you click an extensible button, see Figure 17-2. If you determine thatyou want to remove this toolbar, choose View.Toolbars.Main Toolbar. Figure 17-2: TheOpenOffice. org Writer sShow FormFunctionsbutton onthe maintoolbar, expanded. Figure 17-1: The OpenOffice.orgWriterlayout. 319Chapter 17: Word-Processing and More with OpenOffice.org24_

Other office suites available for Linux users are the OpenOffice.org relativeStarOffice (www.sun.com/staroffice), Applixware Office (www.vistasource.com/products), KOffice (www.koffice.org), and GNOME Office(http://www.gnome.org/gnome-office/). Word-Processing with OpenOffice.Org WriterWord processors are almost required equipment these days. Kids use themto write letters to their grandparents. Grandparents use them to write lettersto their grandkids. Whether you re working on the great American novel or aschool book report, OpenOffice.org Writer has all the best features you dexpect to find these days in a word processor. Starting it upTo start OpenOffice.org Writer in the distributions covered in this book, dothe following: Fedora Core: Choose Applications.Office.OpenOffice.org Writer. Oryou can click the OpenOffice.org Writer button on your upper panel. Knoppix: From the main menu, choose .Office.OpenOffice.org Writer. Linspire: From the main menu, choose .Programs.Business & Finance.OpenOffice.org 1.1.0.OpenOffice Writer. Mandrake: From the main menu, chooseOffice.Wordprocessors.OpenOffice.org Writer. SuSE: From the main menu, choose Office.Word processor. Xandros: Choose Launch.Applications.OpenOffice.org.WordProcessor.Xandros users who purchased the product also have theoption to install StarOffice through Xandros Networks (see Chapter 12), which is the commercial version of OpenOffice and contains additionalfonts, templates, and more. When you first open OpenOffice.org Writer, you may see a Paragraph Stylesdialog box. Click the X in the upper-right corner to close this box and to get itout of the way for now. Taking a tour of OpenOffice.org WriterBefore you proceed, take a look at the GUI layout shown in Figure 17-1.318Part IV:Getting Things Done

Chapter 17Word-Processing and More with OpenOffice.orgIn This Chapter Installing the OpenOffice.org suite Word-processing with OpenOffice.org Writer Spreadsheeting with OpenOffice.org Calc Presenting with OpenOffice.org Impress Drawing with OpenOffice.org Draw Formulating with OpenOffice.org Math Configuring printing for the OpenOffice.org suiteWords fly, writing remains. Spanish proverb, from Dictionary of Proverbs,by Delf n Carbonell BassetThese days, just about everyone who has a computer has at least oneoffice suite at their fingertips. If they re Microsoft Windows users, thissuite is probably Microsoft Office, although it may be another worthy con- tender, such as Corel WordPerfect Office. In Linux, typically the suite isOpenOffice.org. This suite comes with Calc (a spreadsheet), Draw (diagramsand figures), Impress (for presentations), Math (a word processor for writingmathematical formulas), and Writer (for word-processing). After you figure out how to use one of the programs in this suite, you may behappy to find that the others are designed to look and work in very similarways. You can even open and save files in Microsoft Office format, if you needto share them with people using it and you can edit the Office files peoplesend you, too. That s enough aboutOpenOffice.org. In this chapter, you can actually useit!

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2.If you see the dialog box, click Save to save your work or click Don tSave to abandon it. The program closes, unless you have more than one file open, in whichcase you see the Question dialog box for each file you have altered butnot saved. Taking a Quick Look at KateKate (see Figure 16-3) is the default editor in KDE and works much the sameway as geditdoes. However, Kate is actually a bit fancier than gedit, offer- ing features such as exporting to HTML (choose File.Export), filtering vari- ous types of markup and coding to help spot errors (choose Tools. Highlight Mode), and more. Figure 16-3: The Kateeditor inSuSE 9.2.315Chapter 16: Putting the X in Text23_

7.If the Configure Plug-In button becomes active for the plug-in you justselected, click the button to open the tool s plug-in configurationdialog box. This dialog box will be different depending on which plug-in you reusing. 8.When you re finished with the individual plug-in s configuration, clickOK to return to the Preferences dialog box. 9.If you want to examine more plug-ins, return to Step 3.10.When you re finished selecting plug-ins, click Close to close thePreferences dialog box. You can now access the plug-ins from your geditmenus. Each one is placedin its appropriate location: for example, Change Case appears on the Editmenu. Saving your workAs with most programs, you have two choices for saving your work. You cansave your work and keep going or save it and then close the program. To justsave the file and keep going, follow these steps: 1.Click the Save button. This button looks like a floppy disk. If you haven t ever saved this file, clicking it opens the Save As dialog box. 2.Click the right-facing arrow toward the bottom left. The filesystem browser opens. 3.Browse through the directories in the left or right pane until you re inthe directory where you want to save the file. Double-click the name of a directory to enter it or click the ..in the leftpane s listing to move up a level in the directory tree. 4.Type the file s name in the Selection text box. 5.Click OK to save the file. The dialog box closes. To close gedit, follow these steps: 1.Choose File.Quit. If you haven t saved this file since the last time you changed it, theQuestion dialog box appears. 314Part IV:Getting Things Done

To enter text in gedit, just click within the big white space and start typing. You have access to the standard collection of editing tools, such as cut, paste, and copy. To use these, select the text you want to work with and thenclick the appropriate button on the gedittoolbar (or right-click and choosethe appropriate command from the context menu). The really interesting thing about this particular text editor is its plug-ins. To use these features, you need to follow these steps: 1.Choose Edit.Preferences in gedit. This action opens the Preferences dialog box. 2.Click the Plug-Ins tab. The Plug-Ins tab s contents appear. 3.Click an item you re interested in within the Plug-Ins tab. 4.Click the About Plugin button to get more information. The information is contained within the small About window thatappears. 5.Click Close to get rid of the About window. 6.If you want to use this plug-in, click in its check box. The plug-in is activated if a check appears in the check box. Figure 16-2: The geditwindowwith a blankfile. 313Chapter 16: Putting the X in Text23_

A prompt appears toward the bottom of the screen, asking whether itshould save the modified buffer. This question is a fancy way of askingwhether you want to save your changes. 2.Press Y to save your changes or press N to not save them. If you press Y, you re asked for the name of the file and offered the cur- rent name as the default option. If you press N, nanoclosed and exited, so you re finished with these steps. 3.If you want to use the same name, press Enter. If you want to changethe name, make your changes and then press Enter. The nanoeditor closes, and your file is saved. Going with geditYou re not stuck with just command-prompt-based text editors in Linux. Lotsof graphical options are available. In this section, I cover geditbecause it isthe default GUI text editor for Fedora, which is on the DVD included with thisbook. The default GUI editors for the full range of distributions covered are asfollows: Fedora: Access geditby choosing Accessories.Text Editor (see Figure 16-2). Knoppix: Access KWrite or Kate by choosing Editors.KWrite orEditors.Kate. Linspire:Access KWrite by choosing Programs.Business & Finance. Text Editor, or KWrite in Programs.Software Development.AdvancedText Editor. Mandrake:Access Kate or KWrite by choosing More Applications. Editors.Kate or More Applications.Editors.KWrite. SuSE:Access Kate by choosing Utilities.Editor. Xandros:Access KWrite (very similar to geditand Kate) by choosingApplications.Accessories.Text Editor. Entering and editing text in geditgeditis strictly a text editor,in that you use it to generate raw text, whereasa word processorcreates marked-up text that can be opened only by pro- grams that can read that word processor s file formatting. If you want to addbold, italics, underlines, or any other special features to your document, pro- ceed to the next chapter. 312Part IV:Getting Things Done

Saving your work as you goTo save your file s contents without closing it (so that you can keep workingon it): 1.Press Ctrl-O to Write Out. A prompt appears toward the bottom of the screen, asking for the nameof the file and offering the current name as the default option. 2.If you want to use the same name, press Enter. If you want to changethe name, make your changes and then press Enter. The lower part of your screen now displays that it wrote (saved) a cer- tain number of lines. 3.Get back to work! Saving and moving on with your lifeTo save your file s contents and close it (because you re done working on itfor now) or to close the file and not save the changes do the following: 1.Press Ctrl-X to Exit. Figure 16-1: The filefile1open in thenanoeditorin FedoraCore 3.311Chapter 16: Putting the X in Text23_

Of course, if the file contains more than a screen s worth of information, catspews it all out at one time like a big hairball, and all but the last screen oftext scrolls off the screen. It s a good thing that you have some otherchoices. The one you re likely to choose is less, which displays the contentsof a file a full screen at a time. Then you press the spacebar to continue tothe next screen. You can also use the arrow keys to move up and down oneline at a time, if you want. An alternative to lessis more. The main difference between the two is thatwith more, you can move only forward through the file and see only ascreen s worth of information at a time. You can t back up. To use either lessor more, the format is similar to the format used with thecatcommand: less filenameor more filename. When you finish readingthe document, press Q to exit. Editing Text Files with nanoIf you aren t using (or can t use) the GUI, then you have numerous text edi- tors available to you. The most powerful of these are viand emacs, whichyou ll hear many people go on about. However, both these programs requirea learning curve. For beginners who want to just edit the dang file and moveon, I recommend nanoand pico. These two editors are very similar, and oneor the other is typically included with most Linux distribution (but, unfortu- nately, not all). The friendly text editors included with the distributions dis- cussed in this book are Fedora:nano Knoppix:None. Linspire:None; see Chapter 12 add one Mandrake:None; see Chapter 12 to add one (jedand joeare both available) SuSE:pico Xandros:editor, which has a menu of function keys at the bottom of itsscreenTo open a file in nano, type nano filename, such as nano file1. This actionopens the file in the nanoeditor, as shown in Figure 16-1. You can then edit or type in that file as much as you need to. 310Part IV:Getting Things Done