NeoOffice User Guide Volume 2: Hints, tips and techniques for ...

NeoOffice User Guide Volume 2

1

NeoOffice User Guide Volume 2: Hints, tips and techniques for power users for version 2.2, 3.0 and Onwards


2

Written and Edited by Jacqueline Gouguenheim-Desloy and Peter Mitchell Copyright (c) 2008 Peter Mitchell

Jacqueline Gouguenheim-Desloy and

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the Public Documentation License, Version 1.0 (the "License"); you may only use this Documentation if you comply with the terms of this License. A copy of the License is available at this address: http://www.openoffice.org/licenses/PDL.rtf. If you wish a copy of the original .odt document, please contact Peter Mitchell at [email protected]


3

Dedication This book is dedicated to the memory of Jacqueline GougenheimDesloy (jgd), my colleague and friend, who died before it was published. Jacqueline co-edited our Volume 1, then on this volume she took the lead and did almost all of the design, layout and formatting, along with writing much of the contents. Her most fervent hope would have been that users of NeoOffice find this book useful and stimulating: that it answer some of their queries and encourage them to get the most out of the software. Jacqueline passed away in July this year, after a brave struggle with illness. I would like to record our message of condolence to Jacqueline's husband Roland and her family. She was one of the 'heroes' of our open-source NeoOffice community, in her unstinting and generous support of NeoOffice users, be they beginners or more advanced users. Merci très beaucoup, mon amie

Peter Mitchell Adelaide, December 2008


4

Table of Contents Table des matières

1 Preface.......................................................................................................................9 1.1 Copyright.................................................................................................9 1.2 Support.................................................................................................. 10 2 How the Book Works............................................................................................ 11 2.1 Begin at the beginning.......................................................................... 11 2.2 Some conventions..................................................................................11 2.3 Using the guide......................................................................................12 2.4 Using abbreviations and shortcuts...................................................... 12 2.5 Highlighting and bolding..................................................................... 12 2.6 Using the index and contents pages.....................................................13 3 NeoOffice 2.2.3 New Features..............................................................................14 3.1 QuickTime video support (Mac OS X 10.4.x and higher only)........14 3.1.1 More media formats in QuickTime..................................................... 14 3.2 Menus available when no documents are open..................................15 3.3 Import images from scanners and cameras....................................... 15 3.4 Command-clicking on window titlebar.............................................. 16 3.5 Mac OS X grammar checking (Mac OS X 10.5.x only).....................17 4 NeoOffice 2.2.4 New Features...............................................................................18 4.1 Native floating tool windows................................................................18 4.2 Magnify and swipe trackpad gestures................................................ 18 4.3 Horizontal scrollwheel support............................................................19 5 Media Browser (from NeoOffice 2.2.3 >).............................................................20 6 General Tips for NeoOffice...................................................................................22 6.1 Languages..............................................................................................22 6.1.1 Known sources of third-party dictionaries.......................................... 23 6.1.2 Enabling writing tools for additional languages..................................23 6.1.3 Disabling writing aids for languages that aren't needed......................23 6.1.4 Selecting the dictionary to be used in a document or section..............24 6.1.5 Using a macro to change languages.....................................................25 6.1.6 Using styles and templates to change languages................................. 26 6.1.7 When language settings don't stick: troubleshooting...........................26 7 Writer Tips............................................................................................................. 28 7.1 Displaying and editing several pages in the same window................28 7.2 Line numbering in a Writer document...............................................28 7.2.1 Line numbering....................................................................................28 7.2.2 Line numbering in groups of paragraphs.............................................29


5

7.3 How to add page numbers................................................................... 30 7.3.1 How to number pages..........................................................................30 7.3.2 How to set a page other than the first page as page number 1.............31 7.3.3 Adapting the pagination extension to work in NeoOffice version 2.2.3 and above......................................................................................................31 8 Creating an Invoice Template...............................................................................35 8.1 Arranging the spreadsheet...................................................................35 8.2 The billing area..................................................................................... 36 8.3 Enter the formulas................................................................................36 9 Creating a Loan Amortisation Schedule..............................................................38 9.1 Preparing the interface.........................................................................38 9.2 Preparing the data sheet.......................................................................38 9.3 Preparing the schedule sheet............................................................... 40 9.4 Entering Data........................................................................................41 9.4.1 Functions to be used............................................................................ 41 9.4.2 Entering formulas in the data sheet..................................................... 41 9.4.3 Entering formulas in the schedule sheet.............................................. 42 9.5 Adding additional payments................................................................43 9.5.1 Modifying the formula giving the amount of paid principal...............43 9.5.2 Modifying the periodic payment calculation.......................................43 10 Computing and Graphing a Regression Line....................................................45 10.1 Computing parameters of the linear regression.............................. 45 10.2 Graphing the regression line..............................................................45 10.3 Modifying the chart appearance....................................................... 46 10.4 Graphing several regression lines on the same chart......................46 11 Adding Controls in Calc...................................................................................... 48 11.1 Displaying the toolbars.......................................................................48 11.2 Inserting a drop-down menu..............................................................48 11.3 Inserting a check box..........................................................................49 11.4 Inserting a group box and option buttons........................................ 49 11.5 Inserting a button................................................................................50 12 Inserting Macros in Calc.....................................................................................52 12.1 Recording a macro..............................................................................52 12.2 Inserting the current date.................................................................. 52 12.3 Multiplying the elements of a range with a same number..............52 12.4 Adjusting a row height....................................................................... 53 13 Automatic Colouring of Odd and Even Rows...................................................54 13.1 Creating the Style................................................................................54 13.2 Conditional Formatting......................................................................54 13.3 Three Different Colours.....................................................................55


6

14 Printing Spreadsheets..........................................................................................56 14.1 Using the page preview.......................................................................56 14.2 Setting the page breaks.......................................................................56 14.3 Manual or column breaks.................................................................. 56 14.4 Printing selected sheets.......................................................................57 14.5 Printing grid, column and row headers............................................57 14.6 Printing only a range of cells............................................................. 57 14.6.1 Defining a print range........................................................................57 14.6.2 Selecting a part of the sheet...............................................................57 14.6.3 Hiding the cells that are not to be printed..........................................57 14.7 Centering a table or a chart on a page..............................................58 14.8 Setting the page scale..........................................................................58 14.9 Limiting the number of pages to print..............................................58 15 Draw Exercises.....................................................................................................59 15.1 Making a floor plan in Draw............................................................. 59 15.1.1 Setting up: the grid.............................................................................59 15.1.2 Adding the bits and pieces.................................................................62 15.1.3 Making a door swing symbol............................................................ 64 15.1.4 Drawing internal walls.......................................................................68 15.1.5 Adding text........................................................................................ 70 15.2 Miscellaneous advice for Draw..........................................................71 15.2.1 Docking and undocking palettes........................................................71 16 Math Module........................................................................................................ 73 16.1 Fonts in Math formulas......................................................................73 16.2 Formatting and displaying formulas................................................ 73 16.3 Using the catalog.................................................................................75 16.4 Miscellaneous...................................................................................... 76 16.4.1 Alignment of elements in a formula or in several equations.............76 16.4.2 Avoiding gaps....................................................................................77 16.4.3 Using keywords ................................................................................78 17 Impress: Presentations with Class......................................................................79 17.1 Using a remote with Impress............................................................ 79 17.2 Using NeoOffice's built-in remote control support..........................79 17.3 Disabling NeoOffice's remote control support.................................80 17.3.1 Compatible devices............................................................................80 17.3.2 Compatible software..........................................................................80 17.3.3 NeoRemote........................................................................................ 80 17.3.4 Sailing Clicker................................................................................... 81 17.4 Opening a presentation directly in slide show mode.......................81 17.5 Printouts of your handouts................................................................ 81 17.5.1 To choose a six slides per page layout...............................................82 17.5.2 To define print options for the handouts master................................82 17.5.3 Printing the handouts.........................................................................83


7

17.6 Music transitions in Impress..............................................................83 17.6.1 To play music across multiple slides................................................. 83 17.6.2 If you wish the music to restart .........................................................83 17.6.3 Looping until escape..........................................................................84 18 Impress: Tips and Tricks.....................................................................................85 18.1 Swapping backgrounds in your presentations................................. 85 18.2 An alternative to default handouts....................................................88 19 Using Extensions with NeoOffice........................................................................91 19.1 Writer's Tools......................................................................................91 19.1.1 The tools in the kit.............................................................................91 19.1.2 Install or upgrade...............................................................................93 19.1.3 Writer's Tools manual........................................................................93 19.1.4 Register WriterDB ............................................................................ 93 19.1.5 Change browser................................................................................. 93 19.1.6 Tweak Convert To..............................................................................94 19.1.7 Writer templates.................................................................................94 19.1.8 Updating Writer’s Tools.....................................................................94 19.1.9 Updating Writer’s Tools from NeoOffice..........................................95 19.2 NeoOffice 3.x: Importing PDF files...................................................95 19.2.1 An example of the PDF import..........................................................95 19.2.2 Selecting a table.................................................................................96 19.3 Other extensions included in NeoOffice 3.0......................................97 19.3.1 Report Builder................................................................................... 97 19.3.2 Impress Minimizer.............................................................................97 19.3.3 Impress Presenter Console.................................................................98 20 OS X Services Menus Support............................................................................99 20.1 Text to speech...................................................................................... 99 20.2 Look up................................................................................................99 20.3 Spotlight.............................................................................................100 21 PUBLIC DOCUMENTATION LICENSE ......................................................102


8

1 PREFACE

T

his Guide is aimed at users of NeoOffice 2.2, 3.0 and above. It contains Tips and Hints to allow you, the power user, to get the most out of this powerful suite of programs. If you are a beginner, you may want to work with our first-up user guide, the NeoOffice User Guide to 2.0. Our first User Guide is available as a a free 15Mb download from the NeoOffice suite's trinity users forum, located at this URL address: userguide.neooffice.org [From the trinity forum, click on User Guide at the left of the page and you will get a free 15 Mb pdf download, in clickable format]. The tips in this second volume will help you get to grips with: •

Advanced techniques in Writer

•

Spreadsheet techniques in Calc

•

More detailed techniques for databases (Base) than in the User Guide

•

New tips and techniques for presentations (Impress)

•

Some projects and sample work in Draw

•

Advanced procedures in Math, the equations editor program

•

Miscellaneous operations of NeoOffice

These techniques may be helpful also for users of OpenOffice.org and OpenOffice.org for OS X, although there may also be differences that you will need to get around in each case. The document consists of original material created by the authors; adapted material taken from the NeoWiki, which is located at this address: http://www.neowiki.neooffice.org/index.php/Main_Page, which has been prepared over 2005-2008 by various contributors; and material adapted from free tutorials by various users of OpenOffice.org. We refer you to the copyright statement below, and the text itself, for attributions.

1.1

COPYRIGHT The contents of this Documentation are subject to the Public Documentation License, Version 1.0 (the "License"); you may only use this Documentation if you comply with the terms of this License. A copy of the Public Documentation http://www.openoffice.org/licenses/PDL.rtf.

License is available at:

The Original Documentation is “NeoOffice User Hints and Tips for 2.2, 3.0 and Onwards” Contributor(s): Jacqueline Gouguenheim-Desloy and Peter Mitchell. Portions created by Jacqueline Gouguenheim-Desloy and Peter Mitchell are Copyright © 2008. All Rights Reserved.


9

We have used some clipart from the openclipart collection at http://openclipart.org/media/downloads . In particular, we have used these images: architetto_francesco_ro_01, attenzione_architetto_fr_01, and cf-bulb_notlit_benji_park All trademarks within this guide belong to legitimate owners. [Note: a copy of the PDL is reproduced at the end of this User Guide, and is also available at: http://www.openoffice.org/licenses/PDL.rtf.] Feedback Please direct any comments or suggestions about OpenOffice.org document to: [email protected]

the

original

Acknowledgements We wish to recognise the work of the various contributors to the NeoWiki at http://neowiki.neooffice.org/index.php/Main_Page for what they have done over the past several years in developing an up-to-date set of instructions for users. Readers are advised to continually check with the NeoWiki for latest instructions. In particular, the work of editors sardisson, Lorinda, ovvldc, and contributors RoyFocker, K-9, yoxi and rays is acknowledged. Most screenshots in this book contain icons from the excellent Akua Iconset developed for NeoOffice 2.x Copyright © 2006-2007 Armando Nava, Daniel Pimley & Oscar Van Vliet Portions created by the NeoOffice editors and the creators of the Akua icons are Copyright © 2006, 2007, 2008. All Rights Reserved. With thanks to Patrick Luby and Ed Peterlin, to all the helpful and encouraging people on Trinity forum (for users of NeoOffice)

1.2

SUPPORT Support for users of NeoOffice is available from the friendly folk at Trinity forum http://trinity.neooffice.org/modules.php?name=Forums, from the Neo-Office User Guide (volume 1) available to download from the same site, and from the NeoWiki, which is accessible at this URL address: http://neowiki.neooffice.org/index.php/Main_Page . There is also a built-in help guide in NeoOffice.


2

10

HOW THE BOOK WORKS Project: We use this symbol in the left hand margin to show where we have a project for you to follow through. In carrying out the project, you will learn new techniques which should be useful in your own projects.

Note well: We use the exclamation mark to say “pay attention”. Either we are warning you about something that you need to take care about, or we are giving you a really important piece of information that you may not be aware of.

Tip: We use the light bulb as a symbol for a great idea, but in our case we've updated our light bulb to the new idea of the Noughties, the energy-efficient bulb.

We are using greyscale pictures and screenshots in the main, partly because that makes for a smaller file size, and partly because we feel that sometimes colour in images may distract from the message being conveyed.

2.1

BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING We want this book to be as practical as possible. We have designed it so that you can dip into it and use bits when you need them. We have taught ourselves about NeoOffice by using it, and we would like to think that others can learn from what we have found out.

2.2

SOME CONVENTIONS The User Guide Volume 2 updates Volume 1 by explaining a number of features available in 2.2.x and 3.0. But it has been designed more for 'power users' of NeoOffice. It attempts to provide answers to questions about advanced working with NeoOffice. It is focused on NeoOffice 2.x and 3.0 releases, but it should also be useful with NeoOffice 1.x releases. Graphics and screenshots, for the most part, use the newer style Akua icons rather


11

than the older default iconset. In addition, use of the NeoOffice Help window facility is also covered. Through Help, users can get detailed answers to all questions at any time by pressing F1, opening the Help menu or clicking the Help buttons. More information on using Help can be found in Chapter 1 of the first User Guide, the chapter entitled Working with NeoOffice. Other sources of support are available through the trinity forum for all of our Neo-Office users at http://trinity.neooffice.org/modules.php?name=Forums and also from the NeoOffice news page at the following URL address: http://trinity.neooffice.org/index.php Other possibly useful inks are the OpenOffice.org support newsgroups provided by gmane.org and the latest news about OpenOffice.org at www.openoffice.org.

2.3

USING THE GUIDE This User's Guide is designed for users who are already familiar with the basic functions of their Mac, and who have moved beyond areas covered in our original User Guide, now referred to here as Volume 1. Where there are differences in certain functions between the Mac and other OpenOffice.orgsupported operating systems, these differences are explained. . We will attempt to keep up with newer releases of NeoOffice by updating this guide and informing users via the trinity NeoOffice forum. This volume's first edition is aimed at users of NeoOffice 2.2, 3.0 and later.

2.4

USING ABBREVIATIONS AND SHORTCUTS Throughout this Guide, we commonly use these OS X shortcuts and abbreviations: ○

The “control” key is referred to as Ctrl

○

The “command” key is referred to as Cmd. This is the key labelled with the command symbol and the apple symbol .

○

The alt/option key is usually referred to as Option.

○

The Apple Mac keyboard is the basis for our instructions. Those using a non-standard Mac keyboard may wish to note that, especially in relation to keys such as Esc, delete, Return

○

Where a right-click is referred to, users of a single-button mouse may use Ctrl-click.

○

Keystrokes to be carried out simultaneously are linked by a dash, not by a plus sign (e.g. when in Windows one might put Ctrl+F9, here we would put Ctrl-F9)

Unlike Volume 1, this Volume has been prepared using UK/Australian spellings throughout e.g. colour, theatre, metre. The Guide has been prepared in A4 size, the most popular size outside North America. The pathway Tools > Options is exactly the same as selecting


12

Preferences.... This is a carry-over from Windows/Unix. Feel happy doing either. The result will be the same.

2.5

HIGHLIGHTING AND BOLDING The approach used in the Guide is as follows:

2.6

●

Bold is used for instructions which appear on menus, tabs, toolbars (e.g. File; Format; A14-F12)

●

Helvetica font is used to show entries in tables or the words quoted (e.g. Heading1, Default)

●

Italics are used for buttons or keys (e.g. OK; Cmd-F7)

USING THE INDEX AND CONTENTS PAGES At the beginning of the book we have contents pages. This should work with clicks in pdf form. So you can click on a reference in the contents page and be taken to that page. You should also find that search functions work in the pdf: if you search for a word, you should then be able to click on each of the references brought up by that search and be taken to a page. Below is a screenshot to demonstrate that: from our first publication, the NeoOffice User Guide for 2.0. If I call up “Find” with Cmd-F or via the Edit menu, and enter the word “formula”, I am given a large number of references and in this case a likely relevance. I can scroll down the list to the reference I was seeking, and the view in the window to the left will change to the page for each reference as I scroll.


3

13

NEOOFFICE 2.2.3 NEW FEATURES From NeoWiki

O 3.1

n 17 March 2008, NeoOffice 2.2.3 was released. While this release was still based on the OpenOffice.org 2.2.1 code, there were several significant new features in this release.

QUICKTIME VIDEO SUPPORT (MAC OS X 10.4.X AND HIGHER ONLY) Previous releases of NeoOffice did not support display of video files in documents and only supported playing a video file's soundtrack. But starting with the 2.2.3 release, NeoOffice could display any QuickTime-compatible video files in your documents. The only limitation is that your machine needs to be running Mac OS X 10.4.x or higher. This is due to some conflicts between Apple's QuickTime and Java technologies. NeoOffice can only support playing a video file's soundtrack on machines running Mac OS X 10.3.x. Also, please note that protected video files (such as those purchased through iTunes) can only be played in the iTunes and QuickTime Player application and Mac OS X will not allow such video files to be played in NeoOffice, Safari, or other applications. Later in this book, we have an exercise which demonstrates the potential of Quicktime videos in your presentations and documents.

3.1.1

MORE MEDIA FORMATS IN QUICKTIME

From NeoWiki NeoOffice uses Quicktime to play sound and video in documents and presentations. Quicktime has native support for a large number of media formats, but a number of free components exist that allow you to play many more popular formats on your Mac. These include: ●

Flip4Mac (www.flip4mac.com) have developed a set of free components to allow the playback of the Windows Media Audio (v7-v9), Windows Media Video (v7-v9 and unprotected VC-1) and MS-MPEG4 media formats, and the AVI, ASF and ASX container formats. Exporting to Window Media formats requires an extended, non-free version of these components.

●

The Xiph.org Foundation (www.xiph.org) has developed a free and open source component to allow playback and (with some limitations) exporting of the Vorbis, Theora and FLAC media formats, and the OGG container format.

●

Perian (www.perian.org) have developed a free and open source component to allow the playback of the DivX, Xvid, MPEG1, MPEG2 (DVD), Flash Video (FLV) and other media formats, SSA and SRT subtitle formats, and the AVI, Matroska (MKV) and FLV container


14

formats. Installing all three components is free, and should enable NeoOffice to play the bulk of available video media.

3.2

MENUS AVAILABLE WHEN NO DOCUMENTS ARE OPEN Previous releases of NeoOffice had only a very minimal set of menu items available if no documents were open. But starting in 2.2.3, menus are now available even when no documents are open. This new feature allows users to access some of the frequently used menus such as the Recent Documents and NeoOffice Help menu items that previously were not accessible unless you opened a document first.

3.3

IMPORT IMAGES FROM SCANNERS AND CAMERAS A new menu - Tools > Add-ons > Paste Image from Camera or Scanner has been added. Selecting this new menu allows you to directly import images into NeoOffice from any device (such as digital cameras or scanners) that Apple's Image Capture application supports. If you have any devices attached to your machine that Image Capture recognises, selecting this new menu will display the Mac OS X Image Capture dialog. Using this dialog, you can import an image from any of the recognised devices into your current document. In addition, the imported image will also be copied to the system clipboard so that you can paste additional copies of the imported image in NeoOffice or any other application. The way this works is a little counter-intuitive. This is illustrated in the screenshot below. First, you need to outline the area on the screen that your scan will occupy. You may want to press Overview [the button labelled Aperçu in jgd's screenpic here] first, to do an initial scan. Now, locate the item within the scanned area, then click and drag your mouse to outline just the the region you would like to be scanned, as below. When you are happy with that, press Scan [Numériser].


3.4

15

COMMAND-CLICKING ON WINDOW TITLEBAR In most Mac OS X applications, whenever a previously saved document is opened, a small icon will appear in the window's titlebar. Command-clicking on this icon will display a pop-up menu that lists the file name and the nested folders that the file is in. Clicking on any of these items will open the that folder in the Finder [see an example below]. Due to NeoOffice's use of Java to create document windows, this feature was not available in previous releases of NeoOffice. However, the developers have successfully implemented this feature and so it will be available in all NeoOffice 2.2.3 and above document windows.


3.5

16

MAC OS X GRAMMAR CHECKING (MAC OS X 10.5.X ONLY) In Mac OS X 10.5.x, Apple added grammar-checking support for a small number of languages. Releases of NeoOffice from 2.3.3 take advantage of this new Mac OS X feature by including several new menu items in the Tools > Add-ons menu. These new menu items allow you to use Mac OS X Leopard's grammar checker to recommend grammatical corrections for either selected text or your entire document (note that sometimes selecting a section can be more effective than trying to check a whole document). Please note that as grammar checking is new to Mac OS X 10.5.x (Leopard), this feature is not available on Mac OS X 10.3.x (Panther) or 10.4.x (Tiger).


17

4 NEOOFFICE 2.2.4 NEW FEATURES

N

4.1

eoOffice 2.2.4 introduced yet further features, and these are described below.

NATIVE FLOATING TOOL WINDOWS Previously, many NeoOffice floating tool windows such as the Styles and Formatting and the Color windows looked and behaved like document windows. Also, other floating tool windows such as the Bullets and Numbering and the Table windows looked and behaved like Windows floating tool windows. Starting with NeoOffice 2.2.3 Patch 3, all floating tool windows appearing in NeoOffice are native floating tool windows. This means that they should look and behave like floating tool windows in most other Mac OS X applications. They will have the small window titlebar, all of the floating tool windows will float above the document windows, and when NeoOffice is not the active application, all of the floating tool windows will automatically be hidden until NeoOffice becomes the active application again [see below].

4.2

MAGNIFY AND SWIPE TRACKPAD GESTURES Starting with the some of Apple's recent Mac laptops, the trackpad supports magnify and swipe gestures that were first seen in the iPhone. Starting with NeoOffice 2.2.3 Patch 3, Mac laptops that have a trackpad that supports new gestures should be able to zoom the content in their document using the magnify gesture and should be able to move up or down a page using the swiping gesture.


4.3

18

HORIZONTAL SCROLLWHEEL SUPPORT Previously, NeoOffice only responded to vertical scrollwheel events and only in document windows. Horizontal scrollwheel events were not handled, and neither horizontal nor vertical events were handled when a pop-up menu or window was displayed. Starting with NeoOffice 2.2.3 Patch 2, NeoOffice handles both horizontal and vertical scrollwheel events, and handles both events in all pop-up menus and windows.


19

5 MEDIA BROWSER (FROM NEOOFFICE 2.2.3 >)

M

any Mac OS X users have found Apple's iLife Media Browser very useful, and the NeoOffice developers Patrick and Ed received many requests to include the same feature in NeoOffice. Fortunately, the generous people at Karelia Software had concurrently developed the open-source iMedia Browser. Following NeoOffice 2.3, that browser is now integrated into NeoOffice. You open the Media Browser by clicking on the new Show Media Browser toolbar button or selecting the new Tools > Add-ons > Show Media Browser menu. A floating window will appear from which you can drag your images, movies, sound files, or links directly into a NeoOffice document. The Browser makes links to your iPhoto collection, and your iTunes and Movies files, along with Desktop Pictures etc. In the screenpic below, the Media Browser is shown floating at bottom right.

You can include in your Media Browser any folder of images, sounds, movies etc. held elsewhere on your hard drives by dragging the icon of the folder to the Media Browser window. The icon should change to a green circle with a plus sign, and the list box will be bounded by a darker line. At


20

that point, you will know that the folder is now accessible via the Media Browser.

In addition, you can drag files from the Finder or your desktop directly into a NeoOffice document and, if NeoOffice understands the format of the file, the contents of the file will be inserted into your document. The proviso about formats is important. It is difficult to make any program recognise all possible media formats. In particular, some proprietary formats and protected formats [like protected iTunes files] will not be accessible via the Media Browser.


21

6 GENERAL TIPS FOR NEOOFFICE

T

hese tips are generalised across all the programs in the NeoOffice suite. Some of them are new to NeoOffice 2.2.3 or 2.2.4, others are newly found ways of working with the program. They have come to light through the support users on trinity forum and the NeoWiki.

6.1

LANGUAGES From NeoWiki This information is supplementary to the NeoOffice User Guide (Volume 1) Chapter 2. In particular, that chapter gives important introductory information about installing dictionaries and the Dictionary Wizard. If Mac OS X does not have a spelling dictionary for your language, then NeoOffice will use an OpenOffice.org dictionary, if installed. To download OpenOffice.org spelling dictionaries and other writing tools, choose Install new dictionaries… from the Wizards submenu of the File menu, then follow the steps in the wizard. Note: this function can be broken by new releases of OpenOffice.org – and therefore, by new releases of NeoOffice. For instance, OpenOffice.org 3.0 broke it, so it was broken in NeoOffice 3.0 In that case, you may use an alternative process for installing dictionaries, such as is described in Volume 1 of the User Guide. Or – and this would be my preferred method - you can get to this OpenOffice.org address and download the required dictionaries files: http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/dictionary?cid=926385. You can very easily do this by following this route: Tools > Language > More Dictionaries Online... This should automatically install your required dictionaries. Note that hyphenation and thesaurus dictionaries may be installed by this process [if you don't install them, you can't use those functions]. Be careful to follow the instructions to not install too many dictionaries, or you risk slowing down NeoOffice. You will need to re-start NeoOffice to use your newly installed dictionaries. See the section 6.1.4 below re selecting the dictionary to be used in a document. Because the OpenOffice.org writing tools authors and their communities are always updating these tools, you should attempt to run the Dictionary Wizard each time you upgrade to a new version of NeoOffice. This has the added advantage that it will tell you whether the function is broken for that release. To install the downloaded dictionary (in .zip format): ●

Go to the File menu, click on Wizards and choose Install New Diction-


22

aries... ●

Choose an interface language (e.g. English)

●

Click on Start DicOOo

●

Check the Off-line language pack installation box

●

Click on the Browse... button to select the downloaded zip file for the desired dictionary

●

Click on Open then on Next>>

●

Select the chosen language, and click on Next>>

●

You will have to repeat this last step in each of the next two panes to install a thesaurus and hyphenation dictionary.

●

If you do not want to replace the existing dictionaries, check the Do not extract dictionary archives that are already installed.

●

Click on Next>>

●

When the installation is finished, click on Finish

●

If you are done installing dictionaries, close the DicOOo file.

6.1.1

KNOWN SOURCES OF THIRD-PARTY DICTIONARIES

●

Foolab: Arabic (‫[ )ﻋﺮﺑﻲ‬early version, only 71,000 words]

●

Ivrix Project: Arabic (‫[ )ﻋﺮﺑﻲ‬very large list, based on Buckwalter but converted by a non-Arabic speaker; reported to be slow and consume 200 MB of RAM]

●

Hunspell SourceForge Project: Amharic, Azerbaijani, Bengali, Kashubian, Persian, Hindi, Mongolian, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Uzbek, Vietnamese. Note that only the downloads labelled "pack" appear to work with the steps listed above.

●

OOoWiki: Assorted (many of the tools listed there are already available using the Dictionary wizard, but if your language is not in the Dictionary wizard, check the OooWiki.)

●

Linguistico: Italian (better quality than those available from the Dictionary Wizard)

●

Antidote Very complete French set of writings tools. Antidote installs easily in NeoOffice 2 (Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw). Antidote is share-ware (about $70US in 2007).

6.1.2

ENABLING WRITING TOOLS FOR ADDITIONAL LANGUAGES

To install and activate writing tools for additional languages in NeoOffice 2.x, simply repeat the steps in the previous section for any additional languages you wish to use.


6.1.3

23

DISABLING WRITING AIDS FOR LANGUAGES THAT AREN'T NEEDED

●

Under the NeoOffice menu choose Preferences.

●

In the dialog that appears, double-click on Language Settings

●

Click on Writing Aids

●

In the panel that appears, highlight (but don't uncheck) NeoOffice Mac OS X Spellcheck with Hunspell and click the Edit button to the right of the this item.

●

In the dialog that appears, select a language from the drop down list and uncheck NeoOffice Mac OS X Spellcheck with Hunspell.

●

Repeat this step for all languages that you want to disable and click Close when you are finished.

●

To save your changes, click OK and the dialog will close.

6.1.4

SELECTING THE DICTIONARY TO BE USED IN A DOCUMENT OR

SECTION

If you have multiple languages and dictionaries enabled, you can control which dictionary is used in a document (or section thereof) by setting the appropriate preferences. To set the language of an entire document, select Preferences from the NeoOffice menu, then click the disclosure triangle next to Language settings to expand that section. Next select the Languages item and set the Default languages for documents as desired (either for all new documents, or for the current document only, with the appropriate checkbox). To set the the language of a particular section of text, select the text and choose Format > Character...; select the Font tab, and from the Language


24

drop-down menu in the centre of the dialogue [see below], choose the appropriate language. In this screenpic, English (USA) is selected.

Be sure to set the language of the document and/or each section of text appropriately or spell-check will not work. Note: Make sure that Check in all languages is not checked. To find this preference setting, click on the NeoOffice menu, choose Preferences. In the resulting dialog box, click on the triangle next to Language settings and then select Writing Aids. In the bottom box labelled Options, scroll down to the option Check in all languages. Due to an apparent bug, if this box is checked, even "words" like jksdfhgskzjhgf will be marked as correct.

6.1.5

USING A MACRO TO CHANGE LANGUAGES

One of our most prolific support people, yoxi, provides this tip for creating a macro to automate the process of changing between languages: ●

Select some text, then select Tools > Macros > Record Macro. (If you have a Record Macro button on your toolbar, simply press that.) A Stop Recording floating button will appear.

●

Select Format > Character and then choose the Font tab in the panel that comes up. In the Language drop-down, choose your first language, e.g. English (UK), and then click on OK.

●

Now click on the Stop Recording floating menu – the Macro dialog will appear. Enter a meaningful name in the Macro Name field, top left,


25

such as LangEnUK, and click on Save. This will save that choice as Module1. ●

Repeat the steps above, but choosing your second language, e.g. German (Germany), and assigning the second macro another name e.g. LangDeDE or whatever. ●

Now to assign the keys: select Tools > Customize... and then click on the Keyboard tab. Scroll down to the keystroke you want to assign, e.g. Cmd-shift-G for German (I know -D makes more sense, but that's already being used – though you can overwrite this assignment if you don't need a shortcut for right-to-left typing).

●

In the Category panel bottom left, scroll down to NeoOffice Macros, then click the little triangle to open the folder. You may need to select the appropriate folder/document. Then do the same with Standard within that folder, and click on Module1 within Standard. Then in the Function panel to its right, click on the macro you named, i.e. LangDeDE, then click on the Modify button above right to assign that macro to the keystroke you highlighted earlier.

●

Repeat the above step with the second keystroke and the second macro, and then click on OK.

●

You are done! Now, when you select text and do Cmd-shift-G, that text will be assigned German (Germany) language - ditto with Cmdshift-E and English (UK).

If you use more than two languages, you could write a more sophisticated macro with a list of language codes/numbers (the OOo BASIC uses numbers for language codes), so you could hit e.g. Cmd-shift-L on the selected text and just enter a language code in a pop-up box and it would do the rest.

6.1.6

USING STYLES AND TEMPLATES TO CHANGE LANGUAGES

Another prolific supporter, rays, offers an alternative solution using styles and the default template styles: Working in a multi-lingual international office, we've set up a single document template with multiple paragraph styles which share all the same font choices (e.g. Times, 9pt, space before or after, as you like) except for the associated language. So we can now have Text Body FR, Text Body ES, Text Body IT, Text Body DE etc. available in the same document as the original Text Body in which we have set language as English. So, subject to the supported language dictionaries being installed, it is now as simple to create a multi-language document as it is to create a document in any one of the supported languages. Just choose the appropriate language paragraph style for each paragraph as you go... Spell checking is automatically associated with the appropriate dictionary by the language setting in the paragraph style.

6.1.7

WHEN LANGUAGE SETTINGS DON'T STICK: TROUBLESHOOTING

Sometimes this process gets convoluted; there is a trinity thread that at-


26

tempts to walk through troubleshooting why language (and thus dictionary) settings "don't stick" sometimes. If Auto Spellcheck doesn't work in .doc files: .doc files (from MS Word) often don't include a setting for the language of the document. If autospellcheck is not working in a Writer file, there are two options: ●

Select the entire text of the document;

●

Ctrl-click or right-click in the selection and choose Character from the contextual menu.

●

Click on the Font tab and set the language drop-down to the correct language.

●

Go to the NeoOffice menu and choose Preferences

●

Click on Language Settings and then Languages

●

Set the Default Language for document to the correct language

●

If necessary, check For the current document only

Or


27

7 WRITER TIPS

I

7.1

n this chapter, we group together a number of tips for using Writer. We assume that you have read the section on Writer in our NeoOffice User Guide for 2.0

DISPLAYING AND EDITING SEVERAL PAGES IN THE SAME WINDOW From NeoWiki Some office suites allow you to display several pages of a document in the same window and to edit the pages while so displayed. Currently that's not possible in NeoOffice, but the following method provides you a workaround: ●

Choose the File menu and then the Page Preview item, or click on the Page Preview icon in the toolbar.

●

In the preview window, click on the Page Preview: Multiple pages icon in the Page Preview toolbar, and choose the number of pages you want to display at the same time. You can choose the number of rows and columns of the preview. For example, you can display six pages in two rows and three columns.

●

You can click on Book Preview as well, to display the whole document.

You can't directly edit the document while you are in the page preview. To make changes, proceed as follows: ●

Choose the Window menu and click on the New Window item.

●

The window that opens is editable and all the modifications that you make in it appear automatically in the preview.

N.B. You can open several editable windows by clicking on the New Window item repeatedly. If you have enough screen real estate, you can move the open windows around to display a number at once. With the latest Intel iMac, screens became big enough to display two pages side by side at about 90% view.

7.2

LINE NUMBERING IN A WRITER DOCUMENT From NeoWiki NeoOffice allows you to number the lines of your document in several ways. You may want to restart the numbering at the beginning of certain paragraphs, or groups of paragraphs, or you may want to exclude some paragraphs from numbering altogether.


7.2.1

28

LINE NUMBERING

●

Go to the Tools menu and choose Line Numbering….

●

In the Line Numbering window that opens, check the Show numbering box.

●

Choose the options you wish, especially the Interval.

●

Click OK.

7.2.2

LINE NUMBERING IN GROUPS OF PARAGRAPHS

●

Number the lines of the document by applying the method described above.

●

Click at the beginning of the group of paragraphs where you want to number the lines without selecting these paragraphs.

●

Go to the Format menu and choose Paragraph….

●

In the Paragraph window, click on the Numbering tab.

●

In the Line Numbering section, check the Include this paragraph in line numbering and Restart at this paragraph boxes.

●

Set the option Start with to 1.

●

Click OK.

The lines are now numbered from 1 at the beginning of the document to x at the beginning of this group of paragraphs, then from 1 at the beginning of


29

this group of paragraphs to … at the end of the document. ●

Now click at the start of the second group of paragraphs, again without selecting them, and apply the method described above.

The line numbering restarts at 1 at the beginning of this group or paragraphs and continues until the end of the document. ●

Apply this method until the end of the document.

If you want to exclude a paragraph or a group of paragraphs from numbering, uncheck the Include this paragraph in line numbering box.

7.3

HOW TO ADD PAGE NUMBERS From NeoWiki

7.3.1

HOW TO NUMBER PAGES

If you only want to insert the page number at a particular place in the document (but not in the header nor the footer), simply follow this path: Insert >Field >Page number. The page number will appear at the location of the cursor. If Field Shadings has been checked under the View menu, then a grey box will also appear around it. [Make sure you click off Field Names under the View menu, otherwise you will get the word “Page Numbers” instead of the number itself.] If you want a page number to appear only on one page, or you want certain pages to be numbered and others not, you must use page styles. Consult the Using Page Styles section in this book for more information on page styles. When creating the page style, do not forget to activate a header or footer for the page. If you have created a page style and you want to edit it to include a page number, you must place the cursor on the style name (in the Styles and Formatting window) and right-click or control-click. Then choose the option Modify in the contextual menu that appears. Choose Header or Footer and activate it. Click OK. Then go to the page where you have applied the corresponding style and place the cursor in the header or the footer, then in the Insert menu, choose Field and click on Page Number. Then you can select the page number in the header or the footer and apply the format you prefer: size, effects, colour, etc. (by going to the Format menu and choosing Character...). The formatting that you have defined here will be applied to all the other pages using the same style. Remember that you must verify the relationship between the various page styles (that is to say the style that will be applied to the following pages) by placing the cursor on the name of the style in the Styles and Formatting window and right-clicking or control-clicking. Then choose the option Modify... in the contextual menu that appears. Go to the Organizer tab and


30

verify that the correct style is listed in the Next Style box.

7.3.2

HOW TO SET A PAGE OTHER THAN THE FIRST PAGE AS PAGE NUMBER 1 Sometimes you don't want the first page (or pages) of your document to have a page number, but instead want page numbering to start on a later page. To do this, you can separate the un-numbered pages or add a page break and use Page Styles. The pages that are to have page numbers must have their own style (distinct from those pages that are not to include page numbers). After you have created a header or a footer, you must go to the Insertion menu and choose Fields > Other.... Select the Document tab and in the Type column on the left, choose Page, then in the Select column choose Page Numbers and in the Format column select the desired page numbering, for example Arabic (1 2 3).

In the Offset box at bottom right of the menu, enter the number of pages that are not to be numbered, with a negative [minus] sign in front of it. (For example, if the first page is a title page, and you want the second page of the document to be page number 1, set the offset for -1.)


31

7.3.3

ADAPTING THE PAGINATION EXTENSION TO WORK IN NEOOFFICE VERSION 2.2.3 AND ABOVE From NeoWiki The extension called Pagination by Charles Brunet provides for a simpler way to handle page numbering. It is found at the OpenOffice.org Extensions pages: http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/node/374 Adjusting the Version Number This extension is written for OpenOffice version 2.3. If you have an earlier version of NeoOffice, some relatively simple "hacking" can get the extension to work for say NeoOffice 2.2.x. Here are the required steps: ●

Use Stuffit Expander to unzip the oxt file.; A Pagination-1.3.1.oxt Folder is created.

●

Inside the folder is a file called description.xml. Control click or right-click on the file and open it with NeoOffice.

●

There is a box that comes up [ASCII Filter Options] asking what settings you want to use to open it: leave all the settings as they are and click Yes. It opens as a text file called “description” in NeoOffice.

●

On the third line from the bottom, you will see two mentions of “2.3” located in there. In each case, change the 3 to a 2 so that you have it as 2.2. This line now reads

●

Save the file [accept the format as is] and close.

●

Zip the entire content of the unzipped folder, i.e. everything that was unzipped as the Pagination-1.3.1.oxt folder, by control-clicking or right-clicking on the folder and choosing Create Archive ... or Compress. Your file is now called “Pagination-1.3.2.oxt Folder.zip” or similar. Remove the word “Folder” from the title [this renaming is not essential, but makes sense when you see the extension name later].

Installing the Extension ●

Open NeoOffice and open a new Writer document.

●

From the Tools menu, choose Extension Manager.... My Extensions is highlighted in blue or graphite; click Add. It is now possible to add the extension to NeoOffice Extensions.

●

Navigate to where the newly zipped folder is and hit Open and you see a little run/install progress bar appear.

●

Click the triangle to the left of My Extensions and there is a new triangle with the newly added Paginator zip file. Ours says enabled.

●

Click on the Paginator triangle and the other two subfiles also show


32

enabled.

●

Click Close.

●

Quit NeoOffice

Accessing the Extension Because the Paginator extension uses a feature only available in OpenOffice.org 2.3 or higher to create the menu, a Page Number menu will not be displayed. The extension can still be accessed, however. ●

Open NeoOffice again and create a new blank Writer document

●

Go to the Tools menu and choose Macros and then Run Macro.

●

In the dialog that appears, expand My Macros and then Pagination and select Pagination.

●

Select Main in the right-hand pane and click Run. You should be confronted with a menu like this:


33

It is also possible to assign the Macro a keyboard shortcut. Please be aware that we are now essentially hacking the author's extension so be kind and don't complain to the author if you are having problems with these workarounds.


34

8 CREATING AN INVOICE TEMPLATE

I

n this first project, we are going to create an invoice template. It will allow you to easily and quickly make out invoices.

You will be able to insert addresses from your addresses data source, to enter the information concerning hours worked and goods supplied, if any. Of course, all the calculations (amount before taxes and amount including taxes) will be automatically done. You might want to consult Chapter 4 of the NeoOffice User Guide, which you can download from the trinity forum: userguide.neooffice.org

8.1

ARRANGING THE SPREADSHEET Open a new Calc document. ●

In the cell A2, enter company name. Choose the font and the font effects you wish.

●

In the cell A4 you might wish to insert a logo. Here, the logo is merely a little drawing, but you can insert any image you like, if NeoOffice recognises its format.

We will need the columns A to G. ●

In the cell A6, enter Sell to:, and in the cell E6, enter Ship to:.

●

You will use your addresses data source. To do that, click on the Data Sources icon in the Standard toolbar.

●

Choose the appropriate addresses data source and drag the first name, then the last name of the addressee in the cell A8. In the cell A9 drag the address of the addressee, and in the dialog which opens, choose Fixed width in the Separator options section. Enter in the same way the other components of the address: zip code,

● ●


● ●

8.2

35

town, state, etc. If necessary, use the same steps for the delivery address. Provide cells for the invoice reference and for the date.

THE BILLING AREA We need a first part for hours worked and a second one for goods supplied. Make up your spreadsheet, as shown in the screenshot below:

The cell ranges A6:G11, A17:G18, A21:G36 and E37:G42 have been framed by a thin blue line. To do that, select the cell range, then go to the Format menu, and choose Cells… In the dialog which opens, click on the Borders tab and set up the parameters: Line, Color, and Line arrangement as you wish. Give the cell C13 a date format, and give the cells D18, E18, G18, G38, G40, G42 as well as the ranges D22:D36, E22:E36, G22:G36 a currency format.

8.3

ENTER THE FORMULAS You will enter the appropriate values in cells C18, D18 and F18. If there is no charge for hours worked but only for goods supplied, we need the cells E18 and G18 to remain empty. To do that, we are going to use the logical test: IF ●

In the cell E18, enter the formula: IF(C18="";"";C18*D18)

●

In the cell G18, enter the formula:


36 =IF(C18="";"";E18*(1+F18))

We set up the same way the area assigned to the supplies. ●

In the cell E22, enter the formula: =IF(C22="";"";C22*D22)

●

Fill the range E22:E36; select this range, then go to the Edit menu and choose Fill > Down.

●

In the cell G22, enter the formula: =IF(C22="";"";E22*(1+F22))

●

Fill the range G22:G36 as you did for the range E22:E36.

●

In the cell G38, enter the formula: =SUM(G22:G36)

●

In the cell G42, enter the formula: =SUM(G18;G38;G40)

You might wish to add a Text Box below the tables. In this box, you will be able to enter a default text. However, this text will be modifiable afterwards, if necessary. ●

Go to the View menu and choose Toolbars > Form Controls.

●

In the toolbar that appears, click on the Design mode On/Off icon. It's the second icon from the left, which shows a triangle.

●

Then click on the Text Box icon (it shows the letters AB and a cursor). Draw the text box in your spreadsheet, and click on the Control icon, to the left of the Design mode On/Off icon.

●

The Properties: Text Box opens. Click on the General tab.

●

Enter the default text you want to be displayed in the invoice, then afterwards click on Multi-line with formatting in the drop-down menu Text type.

●

Click again on the Design mode On/Off icon.

Now, you can test your invoice. If all works fine, save it in your template folder.


37

9 CREATING A LOAN AMORTISATION SCHEDULE

C

alc allows you to perform many simple calculations, but it provides very powerful functions too. Thanks to these functions you can create complex templates, such as a loan amortisation schedule. That is what we are going to do now. The schedule which we are going to create must allow the user to know the amount of each payment depending on the loan amount, the annual interest rate, the loan period and the number of payments per year. Further, the payment date, the current balance, and the interest paid at each payment are calculated by the spreadsheet. It provides a comparison table according to the frequency of payments and the loan period. You enter the data and the program performs the calculation. You might want to consult the Chapter 4 of the NeoOffice User Guide, which you can download from the trinity forum: userguide.neooffice.org

9.1

PREPARING THE INTERFACE Let us start by thinking about the information we want to get: the amount and the date of payments. For each payment, we would like to know the amount of principal and interest which we have paid, and the current balance. We would like to compare the different situations according to the length of the loan and the frequency of the payments. To do that, we have to provide Calc with the following data: the loan amount, the annual interest rate, the period of the loan and the frequency of the payments. We will restrict the loan length to 25 years. The frequency will be annual, biannual, quarterly, bimonthly or monthly. Open a new Calc document. We shall use two sheets. Rename the first one Data and the second Schedule.

9.2

PREPARING THE DATA SHEET Prepare the ground for later by leaving a space at the top and on the left side of the sheet to give you a better layout. ●

Enter a title in cell D1, for example "Loan Amortisation Schedule". You might want to be able to record the borrower's name. Enter "Borrower" in cell D4. Thinking ahead, you should insert a little frame which will contain the instructions for use. Also enter "Data" in cell B17.

●

In cells C18 to C24 enter the following text: Amount, Annual rate, Number of years, First payment date, Number of payments per year, Periodic rate,Total number of payments.


38

In cell C26 enter "Payment per period". Save your document. ●

Now you have to put the appropriate format into the cells where you will enter data. To put a format into cells, select them. Next, go to the Format > Cells… menu. Click on the Numbers tab. In the Category list select the appropriate category (Currency, Date, Percent). Then in the Format list, choose the format you wish. Cell

●

Text

Cell

Format

C18

Amount

D18

Currency

C19

Annual rate

D19

Percent

C21

First payment date

D21

Date

C23

Rate per period

D23

Percent

C26

Payment per period

D26

Currency

As we want to be able to compare immediately the different options, let's enter "Comparison table" in cell G17. Fill the ranges G18:I18 and G19:G23 as in the table below. Give the range H19:I23 the Currency format you desire. Frequency

Payment

Total payment

1

Currency Format

Currency Format

2

Currency Format

Currency Format

4

Currency Format

Currency Format

6

Currency Format

Currency Format

12

Currency Format

Currency Format

Save your document. To make it easier to write formulas, it is useful to give some cells a descriptive name. Select the cell D18 and go to the Insert > Names > Define… menu (or press Cmd-F3). In the window that opens, enter "amount" (without quotes) in the Name field, click on Add then on OK. Now when you select this cell you see its "name" shown in the drop-down menu at the top left of the document window. Name the other cells the same way, as described in the table below.


39

Cell

Name

D18

amount

D19

annrate

D20

length

D21

fpdate

D22

frequency

D23

rate

D24

nbpayments

D26

payment

These names are absolute references to cells. We use them in formulas on any of the two sheets. Save your document. You may wish to add some instructions for use by inserting a text box.

9.3

●

Choose View > Toolbars > Form Control.

●

Click on the design mode icon (the second from the left. It shows a triangle). Now all the controls are available.

●

Click on the TextBox icon. Come back into the spreadsheet. The cursor changes to a plus sign. Draw a rectangle which will contain your explanatory text.

●

Right-click or Ctrl-click on this rectangle and select Control… in the contextual menu.

●

Click on the General tab.

●

Give your text box a name. Enter the instructions for use in the Default text field. You can change the font and choose a background colour that you like.

●

Close the Properties: Text Box window.

PREPARING THE SCHEDULE SHEET This sheet has to display all the payments, their date, the interest and the principal amounts already paid, and the current balance. We need six columns. Leave some space in the top of the sheet to enter possible notes. Fill the range A4:F4 as below:

NeoOffice User Guide Volume 2 No

40 Date of Payment

Payment

Paid

Paid

Interest

Principal

Current Balance

The total number of payments is less than or equal to three hundred (25x12). Select the range B6:B306 and give it the "Date" format you wish. Then give the cell F5 and the range C6:F306 the "Currency" format you have chosen. Save your document.

9.4

ENTERING DATA We are going now to enter the formulas necessary to perform the calculation of the desired results.

9.4.1 ●

FUNCTIONS TO BE USED The PMT function : this calculates the periodic amortisation for an annual payment with constant interest rate. It can take five parameters, the two last being optional. We will use it with only the three required parameters. They are: the periodic rate (displayed in the cell called "rate"); the number of payments (displayed in the cell called "nbpayments"); and the loan amount (displayed in the cell called "amount"). PMT(rate;nbpayments; amount)

As it returns a negative number, we will use -PMT ●

The ROUND function: this returns a number rounded to a given precision. It takes two parameters: the number to be rounded and the number of decimals you want. ROUND(Number_to_be_rounded;Decimals)

●

The IF function: this performs a test. It takes three parameters IF(test;Value_if_true;Value_if_false)

●

The EDATE function : this allows you to get a date which is a number of months away from the start date. It takes two parameters EDATE(start_date;number_of_months)

9.4.2 ●

ENTERING FORMULAS IN THE DATA SHEET In the cell "rate", enter =IF(frequency="";"";annrate/frequency)

●

In the cell "nbpayments", enter =frequency*length

●

In the cell "payment", enter


41

=IF(frequency="";"";ROUND(-VPM(rate;nbpayments;amount);2))

The formulas to be entered in the cells of the comparison table are given in the table below:

●

Frequency

Payment

Total payments

1

=ROUND(-PMT(annrate/1;length*1;amount);2)

=H19*1*length

2


=H20*2*length

4


=H21*4*length

6


=H22*6*length

12


=H23*12*length

Enter some data in order to test the comparison table before entering formulas in the Schedule sheet.

●

9.4.3

ENTERING FORMULAS IN THE SCHEDULE SHEET

●

In the cell A6, enter 1

●

In the cell A7, enter =IF(A6>=nbpayments;"";A6+1)

●

Copy this formula in the range A7:A306. To do that you can, for example, select the range, then select the menu Edit > Fill > Down

●

In the cell F5, enter =amount

●

In the cell B6 enter =fpdate

●

In the cell B7 enter =IF(A7="";"";EDATE(fpdate;12/frequency*A6))

●

Copy this formula in the range B7:B306

●

In the cell C6, enter =IF(A6 Chart….

●

In the window that opens, make sure that the selected range is the right one and click Next. Choose the chart type called XY chart then click Next.


10.3

45

●

In the new window, you have to choose the variant you prefer. For our purpose, the best one is symbols only. Click Next and choose the chart and the axes titles.

●

Click Create. A chart appears in your spreadsheet. All the points of the statistical series are displayed. Now we are going to graph the regression line.

●

Double-click the chart to be able to edit it. It must be framed with a grey line with eight black squares. Go to the Insert menu, and select Statistics….

●

In the Regression curves section, click the Linear regression icon, then click OK.

●

You may wish to choose another regression type (logarithmic or exponential especially), to display an error category and an error indicator by clicking on the indicator you need, in the right part of the window.

MODIFYING THE CHART APPEARANCE It is possible to change the chart appearance in several ways. You may wish to change the colour and the width of the line, to add a background to the chart, etc. To make any of these modifications, you have to double-click the chart first. ●

To modify the line appearance, double-click on it. The Line window appears, in which you can choose the line style, colour and width. Click OK.

●

Follow the same steps to modify the chart area ( with no background by default), the chart and the legend where you may wish to replace the sad grey with a more pleasant colour.

If the origin of the axes does not belong to the interval of your data, you can increase the X axis by double-clicking on the chart and choosing Format > Axis > X Axis… > Scale. Then, deselect Automatic in Scale axis, Minimum and enter the value you need. Repeat those operations with the Y axis.

10.4

GRAPHING SEVERAL REGRESSION LINES ON THE SAME CHART If you have several series of data, you can graph the corresponding regression lines on the same chart. Let's suppose, for instance, that you have three sets of values. Enter all the X values in column A, then the Y values in columns B, C and D. The corresponding values of X and Y must be on the same line. Select the whole series of data: in the example below you have to select the range A1:D14. Then use the same process as before when you had only one line. The three lines are each of a different colour on the chart. Usually, if you have several series, the X values are not sorted. In this case, a warning window opens, with the following message: X axis values must be sorted. Sort them now?

NeoOffice User Guide Volume 2 Click Yes.

46


47

11 ADDING CONTROLS IN CALC

I

n this section, we are going to insert form controls in a spreadsheet. They provide you with many opportunities to add custom or advanced features to your spreadsheets.

For instance, you might add a text box as we did in two previous projects. You might wish to assign values to cells by using a check box, selecting an item in a drop-down menu or checking an option (or radio) button. You might also wish to add a button which will run a macro

11.1 DISPLAYING THE TOOLBARS Choose the View menu, select Toolbars and Form Controls. Click on the Design mode On/Off icon. The icons in the toolbar are now available. When you click on More Controls, you have access to additional controls.

11.2 INSERTING A DROP-DOWN MENU ●

In the Form Controls toolbar, click on the Combo Box icon. Be sure that the wizard is disabled (last icon in the toolbar, which looks like a butler's uniform).

●

Draw a rectangle in the spreadsheet. Right click or Control-click, then select Control in the drop-down menu. You can also select the Control icon, on the right side of the Design mode On/Off icon.

●

In the Properties: Combo Box, click on the General tab. Give your


48

control a name. The name must not contain any spaces or punctuation marks. ●

In the List entries field, enter the list you need. Separate the items by pressing Shift-Return.

●

Choose No in the Read-only drop-down menu.

●

Choose Yes in the Dropdown dropdown menu. If necessary, increase the number of lines in the Line count field.

●

Click on the Data tab and choose the cell which will show the selected item.

●

Close the Properties: Combo Box window.

●

Click on the Design mode On/Off icon.

You can now select an item in the drop-down menu and see the corresponding text in the linked cell. Note: you can also insert a List Box by following the same steps.

11.3 INSERTING A CHECK BOX ●

In the Form Controls toolbar, click on the Check box icon.

●

Draw a rectangle in the spreadsheet. You will see Check Box displayed in the rectangle, but you probably will not see the check box because it's hidden by the anchor symbol.

●

Right click or Control-click, then select Control in the drop-down menu. You can also select the Control icon, on the right side of the Design mode On/Off icon.

●

In the Properties : Check Box window, click on the General tab. Give your control a name. The name must not contain any spaces or punctuation marks. Give it a label: this is the text which appears near the check box.

●

Click on the Data tab and choose the cell to be linked to this check box. Set the values you want in the Reference value (on) and Reference value (off). These values are the values assigned to the linked cell. Afterwards, you can use this cell as reference in formulas.

●

Close the Properties : Check Box window.

●

Click on the Design mode On/Off icon.

11.4 INSERTING A GROUP BOX AND OPTION BUTTONS Option (or Radio) buttons are used when you want to display a list of options which are mutually exclusive. To do that, you have to put those buttons together in a Group Box. ●

In the Form Controls toolbar, click on the Wizards On/Off icon in order to activate the Wizard. In the same toolbar, click on the More Controls icon.


49

●

In the More Controls window which appears, click on the Group Box icon. Draw a rectangle in the spreadsheet. The Group Element Wizard : Data window appears.

●

Fill the field Which name do you want to give the option fields? with the label of the first option button and click on >>. This label appears now in the Option fields area. Repeat this process for each option button.

●

When it's done, click on Next>>. In the next window, you can choose to select an option button as a default. Click on Next>>.

●

In the next window, choose the values you wish to assign to each button. Click on Next>>. In the window which appears, choose the caption to be given to the group box.

●

Click on Finish. Now you have to link a cell to the buttons.

●

Select the group box, and go to the Format menu. Choose Group then Enter Group.

●

Select the first button and click on the Control icon in the Form Controls toolbar.

●

In the Properties: Option Button window, click on the Data tab. In the next window, choose the Linked cell. Repeat this process with each button. Close the Properties: Option Button window.

●

Choose the Format menu, select Group then Exit Group.

●

Click on the Wizards On/Off icon. When you check a button, the assigned value now appears in the linked cell.

11.5 INSERTING A BUTTON ●

In the Form Controls toolbar, click on the Push Button icon. Draw a rectangle with the appropriate size in your document.

●

Right click or Control-click, then select Control… in the drop-down menu. You can also select the Control icon, on the right side of the Design mode On/Off icon.

●

In the Properties: Button window that opens, click on the General tab and specify the properties of the button. In the Label field, enter the button name.

●

Click on the Events tab, then click on the … button beside the button action that you want to run the macro.

●

In the Assign macro window, click on the Macro… button, and select the macro you want to run.

●

Click OK.


50

12 INSERTING MACROS IN CALC

M

acros are little programs which add features to NeoOffice. They allow you, for example, to automate processes that you must repeat. In this section, we are going to add some macros to a Calc document. We will be satisfied with adding recorded macros. Learning to code in NeoOffice Basic is far beyond the scope of this guide. The method for recording macros is described in detail in this article of NeoWiki: http://neowiki.neooffice.org/index.php/Using_Macros

12.1

12.2

RECORDING A MACRO ●

Go to Tools > Macros > Record Macro.

●

Perform the series of operations which the macro needs to do automatically.

●

Once it's done, click on Stop Recording.

●

In the window that opens, give the macro a name.

●

Choose the Library and the Module where you want save the macro (cf. NeoOffice User Guide 1 chapter 10 fore more information).

●

Click on Save.

INSERTING THE CURRENT DATE ●

Select the cell in which you want to insert the current date.

●


●

In the formula bar, enter =TODAY()

and press Return.

12.3

●

Click on Stop Recording.

●

Give your macro a name, for example DATE.

●

To display the date in a cell, you'll only need to select that cell, to choose Tools > Macros > Run macro…, then to choose the DATE macro.

MULTIPLYING THE ELEMENTS OF A RANGE WITH A SAME NUMBER ●

Enter the multiplier value in a cell.

●

Select that value then copy it by choosing Edit > Copy.

●

Select the range you want to multiply the values by the chosen multiplier.


12.4

51

●

Go to the Edit > Past special… menu.

●

In the dialog that opens, click on Multiply in the Operations area.

●

Click on OK.

●

Save your macro.

ADJUSTING A ROW HEIGHT ●

Select a row where you want to change the height.

●


●

Go to Format > Row > Height….

●

In the Height window that opens, change the height as you want. Click on OK.

●

Click on Stop Recording.

●

Give your macro a name. Afterwards, you will be able to select several rows and to change their height by running this macro.

You can use the same method to assign a background, a border, a font, etc. to a cell range. Remember that you can assign a macro a shortcut, or link the macro to a button. To link a macro to a button, see the Adding controls in Calc section.


52

13 AUTOMATIC COLOURING OF ODD AND EVEN ROWS From NeoWiki, an idea proposed by yoxi and developed by jgd

Y

ou can format a spreadsheet to alternate the background colour in the rows of a cell range. To do that, you need to create a style for each colour and then use conditional formatting.

13.1

13.2

CREATING THE STYLE ●

Open a new spreadsheet.

●

Select a cell.

●

Go to the Format menu and select Cells….

●

In the Format Cells window that appears, click on the Background tab.

●

Choose the colour you desire and click OK.

●

While this cell is still selected, go to the Format menu and select Styles and Formatting.

●

In the Styles and Formatting window, click on the New Style from Selection icon (the second icon from the right).

●

In the dialog that opens, give this style a name, for example OddRow.

●

Repeat these steps with a second cell and call the style EvenRow.

CONDITIONAL FORMATTING Note: Conditional formatting is only available if the AutoCalculate function is enabled. ●

Go to the Tools menu, select Cell contents then check AutoCalculate if necessary.

●

Select the whole page by pressing the Cmd-A keys, or select only the range you want to be formatted this way.

●

Go to the Format menu and select Conditional Formatting….

●

In the Conditional Formatting window, in the Condition 1 section, choose Formula is in the drop-down menu and enter ISODD(ROW())

in the text box. ●

Enter OddRow in the drop-down menu of the Cell Style section.

●

Check the Condition 2 box.

NeoOffice User Guide Volume 2 ●

53

Choose Formula in the drop-down menu and enter ISEVEN(ROW())

in the text box. ●

Enter EvenRow in the drop-down menu of the Cell Style section.

●

Click OK.

Note: This will apply automatically if you insert or delete rows in the cell range. However, if you copy/paste cells from outside this range, you will override the formatting. Besides, as the ROW() function relates to the absolute row number, if you hide a row, or apply the AutoFilter function, you'll get two adjacent rows of the same colour. If you want to use this format in other spreadsheets, save it as a template, by applying the method described in Editing Default Styles and Using Templates in NeoWiki.

13.3

THREE DIFFERENT COLOURS Conditional formatting allows you to set three conditions. Thus you can apply this method to three rows. Let us suppose that you have created three styles called Row1, Row2 and Row3. ●

Select the whole page by pressing the Cmd-A keys, or only the range you want to be formatted this way.

●

Go to the Format menu and select Conditional Formatting….

●

In the Conditional Formatting window, in the Condition 1 section, choose Formula is in the drop-down menu and enter the formula MOD(ROW();3)=1

●

Enter Row1 in the drop-down menu of the Cell Style section.

●


●

Choose Formula is in the drop-down menu and enter the formula MOD(ROW();3)=2

●


●


●

Choose Formula is in the drop-down menu and enter the formula MOD(ROW();3)=0

●


●

Click OK.


54

14 PRINTING SPREADSHEETS

I

n a Writer document, each page on the screen is printed on one page of paper, but a Calc document can contain several sheets, and each sheet can be bigger than a sheet of paper. You may want also print only a part of the document or of a sheet. To do so, you have to set up the printing options. To adjust some of these options and to see the output, you need to use the Page Preview.

14.1

14.2

USING THE PAGE PREVIEW ●

Go to the File menu and choose Page Preview.

●

In the window that opens, you can see the whole document by using the browsing buttons in the Page Preview toolbar.

●

Click on the Format Page button; the Page Style: Default window opens.

●

Click on the various tabs to access to some formatting options: orientation, borders, background, header, footer, scale, etc.

●

Close the Page Preview by clicking on the Close Preview button.

SETTING THE PAGE BREAKS Choose the View menu, then select Page Break Preview. Blue lines show the page breaks. You can move a blue line with the mouse to set the page break to a new position. To return to the usual display of the sheet, go to the View menu and click on Normal.

14.3

MANUAL OR COLUMN BREAKS You can also insert manual column or row breaks, either in Normal View or in Page Break Preview. To do that: ●

Select a column, a row or a cell.

●

Go to the Insert menu and Manual Break sub-menu, then choose Column Break or Row Break.

A thin light blue line appears to the left of the selected column, or above the selected row. These lines show new page breaks. In the Page Break Preview, they are light blue while the page breaks created by NeoOffice are dark blue.


14.4

55

PRINTING SELECTED SHEETS ●

Select the sheets you want to print by clicking on their tabs while holding the Cmd key.

●

Go to the File menu and click on Print…, or press Cmd-P.

●

In the window that appears you can choose your printer and set up some options. Click Print...

●

In the Printer Options window, check the Print only selected sheets box and click OK.

You can set that option as the default option for all print jobs, by choosing NeoOffice, then Preferences…, NeoOffice Calc and Print.

14.5

PRINTING GRID, COLUMN AND ROW HEADERS ●

Go to the Format menu, choose Page….

●

In the Page Style: Default window which opens, click on the Sheet tab.

●

In the Print section, check the desired options: Column and row headers, Grid.

You can also print notes, formulas, etc. by checking the appropriate boxes.

14.6

PRINTING ONLY A RANGE OF CELLS Several methods are available:

14.6.1

DEFINING A PRINT RANGE ●

Select the range you want to print, e.g. a part of a table or a chart.

●

Go to the Format menu and choose Print Ranges, then Define.

●

To add other print ranges, select them, go to the Format menu and choose Print Ranges, then Add.

You can also select the print range(s) in the Page Break Preview, then right-click or Ctrl-click on the selection and choose Define Print Range or Add Print Range in the contextual menu.

14.6.2

14.6.3

SELECTING A PART OF THE SHEET ●

Select the range you want to print.

●

Go to the File menu and click on Print…, or press CmdP.

●

In the Printing Selection dialog which appears (after the Printer Options window), click on Selection.

HIDING THE CELLS THAT ARE NOT TO BE PRINTED


14.7

14.8

56 ●

Select the rows and the columns to be hidden.

●

Right-click or Ctrl-click on the headers of these rows or columns.

●

In the contextual menu, click on Hide.

●

To show these rows and columns again, select the whole sheet by pressing Cmd-A, and choose Format then Row or Column and Show.

●

In each case, the Page Preview allows you to verify that only the selected ranges will be printed.

CENTERING A TABLE OR A CHART ON A PAGE ●

Select the table or the chart.

●


●

Click on the Page tab.

●

In the Layout settings, check Horizontal or Vertical (you can check both of them). A little preview area allows you to see the print output.

●

Click OK.

SETTING THE PAGE SCALE If your sheet is small and you want it to occupy a larger part of the page, use the following method : ●

Go to the File menu and click on Preview.

●

Click on the Format page button.

●

In the window that opens, click on the Sheet tab.

●

Increase the scaling percentage.

●

Click OK.

Repeat this step until you get the size you want.

14.9

LIMITING THE NUMBER OF PAGES TO PRINT ●


●

In the Sheet tab, in the Scaling mode, choose Fit print range(s) to width/height, and set the width and height in pages in the appropriate fields, as you wish.

●

If your document contains many rows, set the Height in pages to a large value.

●

Click OK.


57

15 DRAW EXERCISES

D

raw is actually a very powerful program within the NeoOffice suite. Our first guide gave basic instructions for using Draw to create illustrations. In this chapter we describe how Draw can be used to create a floor plan of a house or other building.

15.1

MAKING A FLOOR PLAN IN DRAW Doing a floor plan in Draw is a useful exercise in getting to know the program. It's not very hard, and will reward patience. One of the writers used it recently, and was able to use the resulting floor plan with tradespeople and suppliers. You may want to make reference to Chapter 6 of our previous NeoOffice User Guide, a free 15Mb download from the trinity forum at userguide.neooffice.org

15.1.1

SETTING UP: THE GRID

The first task is to measure up, and use some graph paper to do our scale drawing. If you have loaded up the collection of templates from kami's excellent package, you will have a template called “A4 linear-linear 2 millimeter graph paper”. You can find it by this route File > New > Templates and Documents. In the screen that appears, you should be able to click on “Templates” and double-click Education to open the folder of education-related templates. This particular one is a Draw template for graph paper:

Note that the grid is actually an overlay, which you will delete later in the process, to demonstrate your superb drafting skills! You'll be able to do that,


58

because the whole grid in this template is one image, which can be selected and deleted simply. Our project will be a very small one, but the same principles can be easily adopted for a much larger drawing. I recently used this process to draft up a floor plan for an apartment, which made it easy for tradespeople and suppliers to make their estimates and plans. One last tip: always remember the key combination Cmd-Z – it undoes your last move, and it's important when you make a slip. Just a note of warning before we start. This is not meant to be an architectural level drawing. Different countries have different rules, regulations and laws about official building sketches, so we make no pretence that this will serve as official legal documentation in your country. It is more for the purpose of planning layouts and colour schemes, or working with tradespeople. OK, we will start by making a floor plan of a simple cabin, 5 metres by 5 metres. We will have a scale of 1cm to 1 metre. North is at the top of our plan, and the cabin faces directly south. You are going to need the Drawing tools, so turn them on by this path: View > Toolbars > Drawing. Select the Line tool by clicking on it at the bottom left of your page. As you move your cursor back to the page, it will be replaced by a cross-hairs. Use this to draw in your walls. When you have drawn a line, right-click on it to bring up the contextual menu and select Line:


59

In the menu that opens. make the Width of the line 0.10 cm. That should be wide enough to show up on the grid of your graph. Your drawing should now look like this:


15.1.2

60

ADDING THE BITS AND PIECES

Now, we are going to draw in the openings, doors and windows. Windows first. There is a window in the front [southern] wall, two metres wide and a metre away from the eastern wall, and one of the same size on each of the western and eastern walls, in these cases equidistant from each corner. We will represent windows by a rectangle, evenly spaced on either side of our external “wall” line. We remove the wall where there is a window. You can do that by selecting the wall line and drawing tis dimensions back to the edge of the window. Here's how that looks for the front [southern] wall. I've selected the line of the wall first and dragged it back to the point where the window starts. I'll have to draw in another line from the window to the corner later (I'll need to remember to make this 0.10 cm wide). I've drawn in my rectangle shape by selecting the rectangle tool and placing my crosshairs in position, then dragging it out to the position I wanted.

Next, I'm going to have to make the rectangle transparent. While it's selected, I can right-click on it and select Area from the contextual menu that appears. From here I select Area > No Fill


61

Proceed in the same way to insert the side windows. What you should have then is this:

Your drawing is starting to look more like a floor plan. Now we put in some doors. We can do these in Draw [see below] but frankly I'd rather make use of someone else's labour. You can find some useful symbols for floor plans at various sites, but I am quite happy with those provided in the very useful collection of architectural drawing item clipart called Maison – Menuiserie at http://fr.openoffice.org/Documentation/Gallery/indexgal.html. These are unfortunately already bundled in a format for placement into the gallery by those confident to do so. If you know what you are doing, the files go into Contents > share > gallery. If not, it's probably safest to look elsewhere.


62

(An easier way is to install the collection (the free collection, without “nonfree” elements)) as an Extension [.oxt] at OxygenOffice Professional http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=170021. Download the .oxt file. On the main NeoOffice toolbar, select Tools > Extension Manager... highlight where you want them placed – usually NeoOffice extensions – and select Add...,then navigate to the .oxt file and click on Open).

This is a door swing symbol. Rotate it and resize to suit.

An alternative is to use the door swing symbol from various other sites on the web. You will need to copy the symbol and import it into your gallery, especially if you intend to use it more than once. You will also have to reduce it in size: this could be done by right-clicking to bring up a contextual menu. Select Position and Size, click on the Size tab and and the Keep ratio button, and reduce the size to about 2 cm.

15.1.3

MAKING A DOOR SWING SYMBOL

If you really want to make your own door symbol, here's how. Start a new Draw document. Begin by drawing rectangles. Make a long one for a door and a small (square) one representing the jamb. You may need to change the fill colour by right-clicking on each and selecting Area, then the Area tab and “none” for Fill.

Draw another small square for the other door jamb. This obviously needs to mark out an opening which is the width of the door from the other jamb. That's the easy part. To draw the “door swing”, as it is called, you need to draw an arc. This takes a little practice. First, from the Ellipses and Circles toolbar, select “Arc”. Practice opening the ellipse. You need to draw an arc which touches the edge of, and has its centre at the hinge of, your open door (as below). The way to do it is begin at a point the same distance away


63

from the hinge as the outside edge of the door is. At this stage it's not important whether your figure looks like an arc of a circle or an arc of an ellipse, since you can fix that later.

Release your finger from the mouse. You will find that a radius appears for your ellipse (as in the screenshot above). Move the radius to the edge of the door and click. That sets one end of your arc. Release the pressure on the mouse button and move your mouse so that the arc tracks around to the jamb and click again. Your arc should appear, as below.

If your ellipse doesn't quite line up with the jamb, you should be easily able to click and drag it to fit. Now you have your door swing. To put it into your gallery, you need one more step: that is to “group” all four elements of your drawing so that they move as one. This quite easy. Just position your cursor next to the figure and draw out a rectangle which covers it entirely, as below.


64

Click, then from the Modify menu, select Group. That's it. To put the symbol in your gallery, do a screen capture with Cmd-Shift-4 and move the cross-hair over your drawing. Click. That takes a pic of your door swing and places it on your Desktop with the name “Picture n” where n is the number of your most recent screen capture. Most of the following explanation refers to instructions from the bottom of page 421 of the NeoOffice User Guide. In the Gallery area, select the Theme where you wish to place your picture of a door swing. Click once on the Theme name to highlight, then rightclick to bring up a contextual menu. Select Properties...

In the menu that appears, select Add and navigate to your picture. Click on OK and you've added your door swing to your gallery. Now you can drag and drop it into a floorplan when you need to. OK, now we have our door swing symbol, let's insert the doors. In the case of our cabin, it has doors front and back, half a metre in from the south-west corner in the case of the front door and directly in the middle of the rear [northern] wall. The doors are 800mm in width. Both open inwards. Let's


65

take the rear door (north, or top of the page in our floor plan). You'll need to remove a length of the wall as before and drag a door swing symbol down. Let's assume that you then have this:

Now you need to rotate, then position your door. To rotate it, right-click on it to bring up a contextual menu, select Flip and on that menu select Vertically. (You could also select the Position and Size option from the contextual menu and then select 270 degree Rotation, or you can go to the Modify menu, and choose Flip > Vertically).

Now you can manoeuvre your door into position. The front door is then similarly placed in position. At this point, we have a simple cabin.


15.1.4

66

DRAWING INTERNAL WALLS

Let's make the internal measurements more accurate now, by inserting an internal wall line. We will use a line that is .40 cm wide and Gray in colour. Start by inserting a line along one of the external wall lengths: select Line from the Drawing toolbar and draw it in. Right-click on the line you have just inserted, select the Line tab on the menu and then select Gray for colour and .40cm for Width.


67

Repeat this around the walls of the cabin. We are now almost finished.

You could add schematic internal furnishings from the “Architecture” clipart galleries, from OxygenOffice Professional. Or you can find the originals at http://fr.openoffice.org/Documentation/Gallery/indexgal.html in the various Maison collections there. And you could use the opportunity now while the grid is still in place to add outside features like a yard, veranda, pergola or shed.


68

Now we can remove the grid. Simply click outside the drawing but inside the area of the graph paper to highlight it. Press Delete. Add any further text you wish. While this looks - and is - quite basic, the same techniques may be used to draw plans for a large residence or other building/s.

15.1.5

ADDING TEXT

However, the real finishing touches could come from the use of an appropriate typeface. See how professional our drawing looks below, with the free typeface “Architect” from http://www.webpagepublicity.com/free-fonts.html Beware: we found that this Architect typeface doesn't handle accented characters, so if you are doing plans which involve accented characters in either descriptions or names, you will need an alternative. Bradley Hand ITC is a typeface that you are likely to have in even a basic collection. You can add text by selecting the Text option from the Drawing toolbar. A text box appears which you can place where you wish. Begin typing and the box fills with your text. Drag to highlight the text and you may change to Architect font.


15.2

69

MISCELLANEOUS ADVICE FOR DRAW Actually, this tip is relevant not only for Draw, but also for other programs in the NeoOffice suite.

15.2.1

DOCKING AND UNDOCKING PALETTES

From NeoWiki If you have ever had problems with a Gallery menu which is floating and refuses to dock, or remains stuck on the side of your screen when you want it at the top [see picture below], remember these tips.


70

●

To dock (stick) your Gallery, Navigator or Stylist window palettes: make sure that the palette is the active part of your window. Cmddouble-click on the grey part of the menu. It will stick to the main window frame and remember its position and size when hidden using toolbar button.

●

To arrange its position: Cmd-drag and you should see the grey frame appear. Holding down the Cmd key, continue dragging until the toolbar appears where you want it.

●

Using this technique, you can then have the Stylist and Navigator tiled on a single column on the same window. (Command-dragging only works when a palette or toolbar are docked or attached, not when they are floating.)

●

To detach toolbars or un-dock palettes: Detach toolbars in the same manner you un-stick palettes: Cmd-double-click on the grey frame. Toolbars and palettes then become floating windows.


71

16 MATH MODULE

T

he Math module in NeoOffice allows you to easily write mathematical, or more generally scientific, formulas. You will find in NeoOffice User Guide Volume 1 the elementary rules for using this module. We add here some additional information which will allow you to get the most out of these features.

16.1

FONTS IN MATH FORMULAS Three default types of fonts are used in writing formulas: Arial, Times New Roman and Courier New. You get these fonts by using the commands font sans, font serif and font fixed respectively. You can easily change these fonts by following these steps: ●

Select Insert > Object > Formula.

●

In the Format menu, choose the Fonts sub-menu.

●

Click on Modify to show the pop-up menu. Choose the items where you want the font to be changed. If you want to modify the font for all the new formulas, click on Default, then on OK. Otherwise just click on OK, and the formula you are writing will be the only one affected by the modification.

●

You can change the font size the same way by choosing the submenu Format > Font Size…

If you need to use different fonts inside the same formula, you have to use one of the above-mentioned commands. These commands have to come before the variable they apply to. For example, enter "widevec font sans AB" (without quotes), if you want to display vector AB in Arial. Be careful: a mixture of fonts may be not very successful, and you have to observe the usual typographic rules. You can change the size of characters within the same formula. In order to do that, you need to use the command size x where x refers to the size value you wish. For example, enter the following command: a = {b times c} over size 10 {{d_0 cdot e} over {f}}

to get

a=

b×c d 0⋅e f

where the fraction

d 0⋅e f

is in size 10 and the rest of

the formula in size 12.

16.2

FORMATTING AND DISPLAYING FORMULAS Several options allow you to alter the format and display of the formulas. You may want to set up the space between the formula and its frame, between the formula and the text, to highlight the formula, to add a border to it, etc.


72

●

To highlight a formula select it, then right click or press Ctrl-click. In the contextual menu that appears, choose Object, then click on the Background tab. Choose the colour you wish and click OK.

●

To add a border to a formula, select that formula, then right click or press Ctrl-click. In the contextual menu that appears, choose Object, then click on the Borders tab. Choose the arrangement, the style of the lines, and the spacing to content. Click on OK.

●

You have five colours available: blue, green, yellow, red, cyan, white. To use different colours in the same formula, enter the commands just before the characters they apply to: e. g. to get a square matrix of order two whose four elements are each of different colour*, enter: M=left(matrix{color red a#color green b##color blue c#color cyan d}right)

 

a b You get M = c d

* Note that the command “color” is spelt in the US way, without a “u”, ●

To set up the spacing between a formula and the border, doubleclick on the formula to open the command window. Then select Format > Spacing… In the dialog window that appears, click on the Category button and select Borders. Set up the spacing as you wish. If you want that the changes to apply to all new formulas, click on the Default button, then click on OK. Otherwise just click on OK: the formula you are writing will be the only one affected by the modification.

●

To set up the spacing between a formula and the text, select that formula, then right click or press Ctrl-click. In the contextual menu that appears, choose Object, then click on the Wrap tab in the dialog window. In the Spacing section, change the values as you wish. These modifications will apply only to the current formula.

●

You may want to number the formulas. An Autotext embedded in NeoOffice allows you to do that. Start a new line, enter "fn" (without quotes) and press F3 (on a laptop, press fn-F3). A table with one row and two columns is inserted. The first column contains the default formula: E =mc^2. By double-clicking on the formula, you open the command window and you can write the formula you need.

E=mc

2

It's possible to number a group of formulas, for example

(1)


73

{

E=mc2 F =ma 1 E= mgh 2

(2)

You may want to reference numbered formulas in your text. ●

Place the cursor at the location you want to insert a reference to the formula, and choose Insert > Cross-reference…

●

In the dialog window, select the References tab, then in the Type section, select Text.

●

In the Selection section, choose the formula number.

●

In the Format section, select Reference.

●

Click on Insert.

●

Close the dialog.

If you want that the formulas inserted in a text line to have a compact format, you may want to use the Text Mode. To do that:

16.3

●

Double-click on the formula, the command window opens.

●

Choose Format > Text Mode. This modification applies only to the formula you are writing.

USING THE CATALOG Double-click on a formula to edit it. Select the Catalog sub-menu in the Tools menu. A dialog window opens and you have access to Greek letters and symbols which don't appear in the Selection window. ●

Choose the symbols set Greek or Special in the pop-up menu.

●

In the list to the left, select the Greek letter or the symbol you want to insert in your formula. Click on Insert.


74

You can modify or delete symbols from the Catalog. ●

Open the Catalog window as described above.

●

Choose Special in the Symbol set pop-up menu.

●

Select the symbol you want to modify and click on Edit.

●

In the window that appears, you can choose another character or another name for the symbol. When you are happy with your modifications, click on Modify then on OK.

●

If you wish to delete this symbol, click on Delete, then on OK.

You may want to add customised symbols to the Catalog. Let us assume that you want to add the implication and logical equivalence arrows. ●

Open the Catalog window as described above.

●

In the dialog window, click on Edit.

●

Give your new symbols set and your new symbol a name, e.g. Arrows is name of the new the symbol set, and Impl (for the implication symbol) is the symbol name.

●

Choose the font and the character you wish.

●

Click on Add then on OK.

●

The new symbols set is created. You can add other arrows and insert these symbols the same way as those embedded in the original Catalog.

One of the most interesting features of this Catalog, is to allow you to write binary operators with the same format as a sum or an integral symbol. For example, let us write the union of a family of sets. ●

Add to the Catalog a set of personal symbols as described above.

●

Enter the union symbol in this personal set of symbols.

●

To use this symbol, you'll have to enter oper%union in the command window. For example, write: oper%union from i in I A_i

to get the union of a family of sets, where the union symbol has the appropriate size.

16.4

MISCELLANEOUS Let us add here some rules you need to observe to prevent errors. In NeoOffice Math, you will find that errors are marked with a red reversed question mark "¿", in writing some formulas. That's a symbol you will be striving to avoid!


75

16.4.1

ALIGNMENT OF ELEMENTS IN A FORMULA OR IN SEVERAL EQUATIONS. To correctly align the elements of formulas or equations, you may want to use various commands: matrix, stack, binom, newline, alignl, alignr

You can add spaces which are written ~ and, if you wish, you can put them between brackets {~}. The number of spaces which are to be added is not easy to calculate, and sometimes you will have to proceed by trial and error to get a good result. Note : In writing matrices, a +, - or = symbol must be placed between quotes, if it's an element of the matrix, i.e. if it's placed between two # characters. Here are some examples in this table: Command

Formula

lleft lbrace binom{a+b+c+d=f+g}{alignr h+k=i{~}{~}{~}{~}} right none

f g {abcd= hk =i

matrix{alignr a*(b+c)#"="#alignl ab+ac## alignr (a+c)*(b+d)#"="#ab+cb+ad+cd}

a∗bc  = abac ac ∗ bd  = abcbad cd

""x+y+z=t newline ""~~~x+y=t-z newline ~~~~~~~ x=t-z-y

x yz =t x y =t−z x=t− z− y

a=\[b+c+g+h+j+i+k+l+m+dotslow newline ""{~~~}{}{} d+f\]

a=[bcg h jik lm d f ]

16.4.2

AVOIDING GAPS.

If you leave a location empty where Math is waiting for "something", you get an error message, i. e. a red reversed question mark "¿". ●

In a matrix, if you want a box to remain empty, you need to place a space: ~, `, or {}. Example:

Command M=left(matrix{A_n#{}#{}##{}#dotsdown #{}##{}#{}#A_m}right )

Formula M=



An ⋱ Am




●

76

A term must be present on both sides of binary operators, and on both sides of union and intersection symbols.

Command

Formula

x+y={}

x y =

{}intersection_{i in I} %omega_i

∩i ∈ I i

16.4.3

USING KEYWORDS

Using keywords in NeoOffice Math can generate the usual error massage "¿". To avoid that behaviour, you need to place the % character before the keyword, or to place the keyword between quotes. Examples : Command LM over LN , LM over %LN newline IM over IN , %IM over%IN , "IM" over "IN"

Formula LM LM , ln LN ℑ IM IM , , ¿ IN IN

Note: If you place the keyword between quotes, NeoOffice gives it the text format. If you place the % character before it, NeoOffice gives it the variable format and the font can be different in both cases. There are a lot of keywords. You will find the keyword list by going into the Help menu, then clicking on NeoOffice Help sub-menu. Choose NeoOffice Math in the drop-down menu [top-left], then click on Formula Reference Tables in the How to work with NeoOffice Math section on the right hand side of the window.


77

17 IMPRESS: PRESENTATIONS WITH CLASS

S

17.1

ince our NeoOffice User Guide Volume 1, there have been a number of suggestions worked through on trinity forums and which now have become part of the NeoWiki. Here are some favourites.

USING A REMOTE WITH IMPRESS From NeoWiki and trinity forum Presenters often desire to use some sort of remote-control device to advance slides or perform other functions while giving their talks. Unfortunately, the underlying OpenOffice.org code knows nothing about the Apple Remote that comes with newer Macs, so prior to NeoOffice 2.2.4, there was no NeoOffice solution. However, a number of other remote-control solutions exist that do work with NeoOffice. Beginning with NeoOffice 2.2.4 Patch 3, NeoOffice supports using the Apple Remote or the Keyspan Front Row Remote to start, stop, and move through a slideshow in NeoOffice Impress. (NeoOffice uses the Remote Control Wrapper open source framework from Martin Kahr to provide integration with these remotes.) If you do not have one of these remotes or a supported Macintosh, one of the older remote-control solutions may still enable you to control Impress remotely.

17.2

USING NEOOFFICE'S BUILT-IN REMOTE CONTROL SUPPORT If your Mac has support for Front Row or you have the Keyspan Front Row Remote, starting with NeoOffice 2.2.4 Patch 3 you can use the Apple Remote or the Keyspan Front Row remote controller to start, stop, and move through a slideshow in NeoOffice Impress. When an Impress window is the active window in NeoOffice, pressing the Start/Pause button on your Front Row remote controller will start a slideshow. When a slideshow is already running, the following actions are available: •

Pressing the Track Forward button

•

Pressing the Track Backward button

•

Pressing the Start/Pause button

will move forward a slide will move back a slide will end the slideshow

NeoOffice will respond to remote control commands when it is the frontmost application, and when NeoOffice is no longer the frontmost application, other applications (e.g. iTunes) will respond to the remote control as usual.


17.3

78

DISABLING NEOOFFICE'S REMOTE CONTROL SUPPORT If, however, you do not want to use the the remote control with NeoOffice and want other applications (e.g. iTunes) to respond to the remote control even when NeoOffice is the frontmost application, you can use the following Terminal command to disable the remote control support in NeoOffice completely: defaults write -app NeoOffice remoteEnabled -bool NO

If NeoOffice is running when you make this change, you will need to quit NeoOffice and restart for the change to take effect. If you have previously used the above Terminal command to disable NeoOffice's remote control support and then need to use the remote control with NeoOffice, you can re-enable the support by using the following Terminal command: defaults write -app NeoOffice remoteEnabled -bool YES

If NeoOffice is running when you make this change, you will need to quit NeoOffice and restart for the change to take effect. (Note that if you have never disabled the remote control support in NeoOffice, you do not need to use this command.)

17.3.1

COMPATIBLE DEVICES

●

Bluetooth phone when using Sailing Clicker (see below)

●

Keyspan Presentation Remote Pro

●

Wireless Presenter with Laser Pointer

●

Apple Remote when using iRed Lite, Remote Buddy, or NeoRemote (see below)

The Kensington Pocket Presenter Wireless Laser: although the link doesn't mention it, according to what Kensington says, this presenter is compatible with Mac OS X 10.4. It doesn't work in Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.5.1 Leopard (it causes a kernel panic). However, the problem was resolved starting with Mac OS X 10.5.2.

17.3.2

COMPATIBLE SOFTWARE

●

Sailing Clicker

●

iRed Lite (in beta; contact the author for Impress additions)

●

Remote Buddy

●

NeoRemote (free) http://www.jfedor.org/neoremote/


17.3.3

79

NEOREMOTE

●

NeoRemote from http://www.jfedor.org/neoremote/ is a little tool that allows you to control your NeoOffice presentations using Apple Remote. It will also work with any other application that happens to use the same keyboard shortcuts. That is because NeoRemote doesn't use any application-specific scripting, instead it just translates the from the buttons on the remote to the appropriate keys: NeoRemote doesn't have any user interface, it just sits quietly in the Dock, doing its job. When you're finished with your presentation, and would like to go back to using your remote with Front Row etc., just right-click on NeoRemote's icon (or Ctrl-click, or click and hold, if you only have one mouse button) and choose Quit.

●

If you have any problems running NeoRemote, or, even better, if you find that it works perfectly on your Mac and would like to say thanks, please contact the program's writer, Jacek Fedorynski at [email protected]. He would be especially grateful for any reports on whether NeoRemote works on Leopard. Do not hesitate to drop him an email if you have any other comments or questions.

●

You don't need to know that to use it, but in case you are interested: NeoRemote is written in Python and is a really thin layer above Martin Kahr's library Remote Control Wrapper.

17.3.4

SAILING CLICKER

Some trinity users have Sailing Clicker and have tested it with NeoOffice and running slideshows. There are no Sailing Clicker modules for the use of NeoOffice per se, but you can use the Mouse Mode to, for example, click between slides and move back and forward and it does work.

17.4

OPENING A PRESENTATION DIRECTLY IN SLIDE SHOW MODE From NeoWiki There is currently no way to open a presentation document directly in slide show mode. However, there is a workaround to overcome that issue: Select the .odp or .pps file in the Finder, then double-click it. As soon as you see the grey bar in the top of the window, press quickly the F5 key (or fn-F5 on a laptop), and keep the key pressed until the slide show starts.

17.5

PRINTOUTS OF YOUR HANDOUTS This should be seen as additional and complementary to the NeoOffice User Guide (Volume 1) chapter 5. You can choose from several options to print an Impress presentation. ●

Slides – this prints only the slides, as seen on screen

●

Notes – this prints slides and speaker notes


80

Handouts – this prints one to six slides per page with header and footer

17.5.1

TO CHOOSE A SIX SLIDES PER PAGE LAYOUT

●

Open your presentation (which consists of six slides or more).

●

Click the Handout tab.

●

On the Tasks pane, click the little triangle next to the Layouts tab.

●

You see layouts of one to six slides per page. Those preview icons only show the number of slides on a page, but not their shape and position.

●

Click the Layout preview icon with six slides.

This prepares Impress to print up to six slides on each sheet of paper. However, when actually printing, you must tell Impress to print using the handouts master: if not, Impress will print only the slides by default. We'll do this in a moment, but first let's fill in the header and footer texts.

17.5.2

TO DEFINE PRINT OPTIONS FOR THE HANDOUTS MASTER

●

Choose the menu Insert > Page Number... to open the header and footer dialog box.

●

Click the Notes and Handouts tab to enter the header and footer text for handouts.

●

You see four areas on this dialog with check boxes for Header, Date and time, Footer, and Page number. These four areas correspond to the four areas in the corners of the handout master view.

●

Enter text for header, footer, and date. Check the Page number box, if you want to number the handout pages. Ensure the Header check box is enabled if you want your header text to be printed.


81

Click Apply to All.

The fields in the handout master view on screen are not updated, but the text that you entered will be printed.

17.5.3

PRINTING THE HANDOUTS

●

Choose File > Print to open the Print dialog box.

●

Click the Options button in the Print dialog box. Note: with some printers, you need to first go through the print dialog for your printer.

●

In the Contents area, only check Handouts and remove any of the three other checkmarks.

●

Click OK and OK to start the printer.

A warning message box may ask you how to proceed if transparent objects are to be printed. You may want to print without transparency, which can reduce printing time considerably on some printers. Note: On the Print dialog box, you can choose to print only some slides. To print a handout page of the six slides number 2 to 7, click the Pages radio button and enter 2-7 into the text box. This will print the slides 2 to 7 on one handout page. If you want another layout of the slides on the printed paper pages, use the mouse to move the slides around on the Handout view.

17.6

MUSIC TRANSITIONS IN IMPRESS Many users of NeoOffice 2.x have found, when transferring a slide show with music from Powerpoint to Impress, the music cuts off after one slide. Basically, this is a “feature” of OpenOffice.org, and a quick peek around online will uncover similar complaints from OpenOffice.org users. However, there is a workaround.

17.6.1

TO PLAY MUSIC ACROSS MULTIPLE SLIDES

Insert the music as a slide transition effect following these simple steps: In the task pane on the right hand side of the screen select the Slide transition tab. In the Modify transition section select the drop down menu next to Sound and select the file containing the desired music. You may need to select Other sound... in the drop down menu and browse the contents of your hard disk – or use your Media Browser! Unfortunately, you won't be able to use AAC or mp3 files, unless you convert them to WAV or another format supported by OpenOffice.org. And you can't get continuous music, or music synchronised with your slide transitions.


17.6.2

82

IF YOU WISH THE MUSIC TO RESTART

Check the Loop until next sound box. If you want to stop the music at a certain slide, create a new transition selecting no sound. Do not select the Apply to all slides button, otherwise the music will re-start at every slide change.

17.6.3

LOOPING UNTIL ESCAPE

You may ask, can I do the "loop until escape" function in Impress? Yes, you can do this with Impress. You have to do two things to set it up. First, the slides themselves need automatic transitions defined. To set that up, switch to to Slide View, and select all the slides. Then, choose Slide Show > Slide Transition from the menu. In the Slide Transition window, click the Extras button. On the Extras page that appears, click Automatic Transition and then use the spinner to set the length of time each slide should appear. Then, click the green checkmark to apply the setting. Close the Slide Transition window. Next, from the menu, choose Slide Show > Slide Show Settings. In the dialog, choose Auto and set the spinner for the period of time to elapse between the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next. If you want continuous viewing, set it to 0.


83

18 IMPRESS: TIPS AND TRICKS

M

ost of this section owes its origin to Solveig Haugland's advice for using OpenOffice.org. You will find that much of her work can be adapted to use with NeoOffice quite readily. We highly recommend a look at her site, OpenOffice.org Training, Tips, and Ideas at http://openoffice.blogs.com/

18.1

SWAPPING BACKGROUNDS IN YOUR PRESENTATIONS Sometimes you have just the format for your presentation, but you don't like your back ground. Or, you prepared a presentation some time ago, and now find your background lacks the fizz that people expect these days. It's quite easy to swap the background for another. Be aware that what we are about to do will change the background for every page of the presentation. First, open your presentation. Let's say we have prepared a presentation on “Generating New Business”. We'd like to re-use the content of the presentation, but now we don't like the mauve design, and we are doing a presentation in a room suited to dramatic dark slides.

Choose Format > Slide Design


84

In the window shown above, click Load... A Load Slide Design window appears. Use this to navigate to the design that you would like to replace your mauve design. In this case, we have decided to use Blue Circles, one of the designs from the OxygenOffice collection.

Note: if you click on the More button on that screen, you will be able to select Preview to check the design. Click OK. In the Slide Design window, check the Exchange Background Page box. This will remove the currently applied mauve master page in your presentation.


85

Click OK. The imported master page will now be in your presentation. The master page will be applied to all slides.

You have now swapped the backgrounds of your presentation. If you had wanted to change only some of the slide backgrounds, you can do that too. In this case, don't click on Exchange Background Page. Simply select the slide or slides (hold down the Cmd key while selecting to choose more than one at a time) and right-click or Ctrl-click on it. This brings up the Slide Design menu. Check Exchange Background Page and click OK to apply to the selected slides only.

18.2

AN ALTERNATIVE TO DEFAULT HANDOUTS This tip comes from veteran trinity member “yoxi” (padmavyuha). The default handout display from OpenOffice.org and NeoOffice provides small slide pics with a lot of white space around them, like this:


86

Now, this sort of layout can be useful when you want your users to have lots of space to write notes under the slides. However, it is not much use when you want users to be able to read the words on each slide. In that case, what you can do is to use the features built into OS X itself. Simply go to the Print... command on your menu. As the screens present themselves, use the Layout > pages per sheet selection to pick 6 pages. like so:


87

This time, you end up with a much more legible result! You will note that there is one slight disadvantage with printing this way, and that is that the first slide ends up top right on your printout, instead of top left, the second then is bottom right and so on. This could be solved by temporarily rearranging slides for printing.


88

19 USING EXTENSIONS WITH NEOOFFICE

T

19.1

here is a growing number of useful extensions for OpenOffice.org, many of which work quite happily with NeoOffice. In this chapter, we will examine a couple of them, and how they can work for you.

WRITER'S TOOLS Most of this documentation has been adapted from text written by Dmitri Popov [dmpop], the developer of the extension, either from the OpenOffice.org Extensions page, or from the html file in the folder accompanying the extension when downloaded.

19.1.1

THE TOOLS IN THE KIT

Writer's Tools is a set of utilities designed by Dmitri Popov to help OpenOffice.org users (and hence hopefully NeoOffice users as well) perform a wide range of tasks. Writer's Tools will not work with NeoOffice 2.2, and it not guaranteed that all functions will work under NeoOffice 3.0, but is included here anyway in the knowledge that at least some will. Try it and see. Using Writer's Tools, you can back up documents, look up and translate words and phrases, manage text snippets, and keep tabs on document statistics. Writer's Tools includes the following utilities:


89

●

Lookup Tool allows you to look up the currently selected word in several online references, including Cambridge Dictionaries, WordNet, and Google Define.

●

Google Translate tool allows users to quickly translate selected text fragments between different languages using the Google Translate service.

●

Show on the Map tool allows you to select a city, a street name, or a post code and map it using Google Maps.

●

Email Backup tool can be used to quickly send a backup copy of the currently opened document to a specified email address.

●

Multi-format Backup tool saves the currently opened Writer document in the Word, RTF, and TXT formats. The backup files are stored in a separate folder with a date stamp.

●

Remote Backup allows you to quickly save a backup copy of the current document on an FTP server.

●

Wikify Word tool links a selected word or text fragment in the current document to a Writer document, which is created on the fly. For example, if the word “Monkey” is selected, the macro automatically links it to the created on the fly Monkey.odt document.

●

Start/Stop Timer tool can be used to keep tabs on the time spent on the currently opened document and save the time data (the document name, used time, and date) in the accompanying WriterDB database.

●

Quick Converter lets you perform conversion between the metric and imperial systems. The default conversion rules can be easily expanded.

●

Bookmarks tool allows you to bookmark often-used documents, so you can access them with a few mouse clicks.

●

Word of the Day tool picks and displays a random word and its definition from the accompanying WriterDB database. As a writer, you may often come across a new word or an interesting expression. The WriterDB database allows you to store your language findings in one place, while the Word of the Day tool helps you to keep them active in your memory.

●

Add to Basket tool is designed to quickly add text snippets, links, and notes to the supplied database.

●

Database tool opens the WriterDB database, where you can use the available forms to manage notes and tasks.

●

Convert To tool can convert Writer documents in a selected folder into a specified format. These tools can come in handy when you need to convert multiple Writer documents in one go.

●

Visual Word Count tool shows the current word count and lets you monitor your writing progress.

●

Tasks tool is a no-frills to-do manager that allows you to quickly add, view, and purge tasks.


90

●

Writer Templates is a separate extension that contains an article and a book template.

●

miniInvoices is a customisable invoicing solution for writers. miniInvoices is built with OpenOffice.org Base and relies on the Sun Report Builder extension. The solution features support for multiple currencies and basic reporting capabilities. The latter allows the user to generate print-ready invoices and earning reports. miniInvoices is available as a separate download.

19.1.2

INSTALL OR UPGRADE

To install the Writer’s Tools extension, download the latest release from http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/writertools. Then unzip the downloaded file and place it in a location where it can remain. Launch NeoOffice, and choose Tools -> Extension Manager. Select the My Extensions section, and press the Add... button. Select the downloaded extension (the WriterTools.oxt package), and press OK. Restart NeoOffice, and you should see the Writer’s Tools menu in the Main toolbar. Voilà!

19.1.3

WRITER'S TOOLS MANUAL

A comprehensive Writer's Tools manual is available in both printed and PDF formats at the Lulu bookstore. The manual covers all the important topics, which can help you to get the most out of the Writer's Tools extension.

19.1.4

REGISTER WRITERDB

Some Writer's Tools tools rely on the WriterDB database, which must be registered as a NeoOffice data source. To do this, place the “writertools” folder in a location where it can remain, launch NeoOffice and choose Tools -> Options. Select NeoOffice Base -> Databases and press the New button. Navigate to the WriterDB.odb file in the “writertools” folder you placed earlier. This will give the new connection the “WriterDB” name. Press OK and OK, and you are finished.

19.1.5

CHANGE BROWSER

On Windows and Linux, the Writer's Tools extension uses your system's default browser. On Mac OS X, the extension assumes that you are using Firefox as your default browser. If this is not the case, you have to adjust Writer’s Tools settings. To do this, launch NeoOffice and choose Tools -> Macros -> Organize Macros -> NeoOffice Basic. Select then WriterTools -> Tools -> LookupTool and press the Edit button. Locate the following line: Global Const DefaultMacOSXBrowser="open -a /Applications/Firefox.app/"

Then specify the browser you want to use, for example:


91

Global Const DefaultMacOSXBrowser="open -a /Applications/Safari.app/"

Save the changes, and you are finished. Instead of Firefox, you can use whatever browser you like (provided it's installed on your machine), for example "opera.app" or "flock.app".

19.1.6

TWEAK CONVERT TO

By default, the Convert To tools supports only the MS Word 97, Rich Text, Plain Text, and PDF formats. But you can easily add any other supported format by modifying the ConvertTo macro. Open NeoOffice and choose Tools -> Macros -> Organize Macros -> NeoOffice\Basic. Select WriterTools -> Convert -> Convert To and press the Edit button. Locate the following code: FormatArray=Array(".doc", ".rtf", ".txt", ".html", ".pdf")

Add the ".xls" file extension to the array, so it looks as follows: FormatArray=Array(".doc", ".rtf", ".txt", ".html", ".pdf", ".xls")

Next, locate the following array: FilterListBox=Array("MS Word 97", "Rich Text Format", "Text", "HTML", "writer_pdf_Export")

Add then the "MS Excel 97" entry to the array, so it looks as follows: FilterListBox=Array("MS Word 97", "Rich Text Format", "Text", "HTML", "writer_pdf_Export", "MS Excel 97") closeclose otherseditmorefieldssyncingpermalinkreferencesjump

19.1.7

WRITER TEMPLATES

The WriterTemplates.oxt extension contains two NeoOffice Writer templates: generic article and book. To install the extension, launch NeoOffice, and choose Tools -> Extension Manager. Select the My Extensions section, and press the Add... button. Select the downloaded WriterTemplates.oxt extension, and press OK. To create a new document from the desired template, choose File -> New -> Templates and Documents. In the Templates and Documents dialog window, click on Templates – the two new templates should be in My Templates. Select the template you want, and press Open. Note: given the availability of so many other templates especially those in OxygenOffice-Professional [see NeoWiki here http://trinity.neooffice.org/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=30833#30833], most NeoOffice users will not bother with this installation.

19.1.8

UPDATING WRITERʼS TOOLS

To update the existing version of Writer’s Tools, install the new version as described above. During installation, NeoOffice displays a warning message asking whether you want to install a newer version. Press OK to overwrite


92

the installed version with the new one.

19.1.9

UPDATING WRITERʼS TOOLS FROM NEOOFFICE

Starting with version 0.9.7, the Writer's Tools extension can be updated directly from NeoOffice using the Update feature in Extension Manager. To update the extension, choose Tools -> Extension Manager... and press the Check for Updates... button. If a new version of Writer's Tools appears in the Available extension update list, press the Install button to install it. Note that this installs the latest development version of Writer's Tools extension from the Subversion repository. If you prefer to use the stable release of the extension, you should update it manually.

19.2

NEOOFFICE 3.X: IMPORTING PDF FILES NeoOffice 3.x onwards brings with it the possibility of importing PDF files. This has been a feature that many have looked forward to for some time, and comes courtesy of the Sun PDF Import Extension [Beta] by Sun Microsystems, Inc. The extension is available from the OpenOffice page here: http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/pdfimport You need to know that this import feature opens the PDF document in a Draw screen. This brings with it some quirks. First of all, the document is seen by the program as a series of visual elements, e.g. while images are seen as images, each line of text is like a text box inserted in Draw. At first, this may seem a “deal-breaker” in terms of the program's usefulness. You might be tempted to think that, if you have to work through each line by line in a long PDF document, it's not worth the effort. Fortunately, there is a way around that.

19.2.1

AN EXAMPLE OF THE PDF IMPORT

Let's use a page or two from the NeoOffice User Guide to demonstrate (don't be concerned about the quality of these screenpics: the originals look fine). When we first import, we find that highlighting by clicking on a paragraph only selects one line, as below:

However, there is an easy fix. Either hold down the Shift key and keep clicking line by line, or hold down the Shift key and drag from the top left to the bottom right of the paragraph, beginning and ending your drag outside the area of the paragraph itself. Now you can deal with the whole paragraph


93

at once.

You will find that you can use the same technique to select more than one paragraph at once:

Note: you will see from the section above that there are some issues of formatting in this import (for instance, some word spacing has mysteriously disappeared from the original): we are hoping that as the extension matures, these issues will be ironed out. Ultimately, the extension should be seen as an aid to editing, rather than one which can allow you to edit and save a modified version of the original pdf ready for re-publication.

19.2.2

SELECTING A TABLE

It is quite easy to select a whole table and copy it from your pdf import. Use the same Shift-click-and-drag technique to draw a rectangle around the table. You will find that what Draw does is a multiple selection: it sees the selection as a series of Draw elements i.e. a number of text boxes inside graphic boxes. The above table could be inserted into a Writer document and edited there, in each of its elements e.g. the words can be edited individually.


19.3

94

OTHER EXTENSIONS INCLUDED IN NEOOFFICE 3.0 NeoOffice 3.0 introduced a number of extensions from Sun Microsystems extensions repository. The following summaries have been taken from the Sun Microsystems repository at http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/:

19.3.1

REPORT BUILDER

With the [Sun] Report Builder, you can create stylish, smart-looking database reports. The flexible report editor can define group and page headers as well as group and page footers and even calculation fields are available to accomplish complex database reports. Along with the flexible database client of StarOffice it is possible to create database reports from HSQL, Oracle, or almost any other database type. The Sun Report Builder uses the Pentaho Reporting Flow Engine of Pentaho BI.

19.3.2

IMPRESS MINIMIZER

The [Sun] Presentation Minimizer is used to reduce the file size of the current presentation. Images will be compressed, and data that is no longer needed will be removed. The Minimizer can optimize the image quality size. The reasoning behind this extension is that presentations designed for screen or projector do not require the same high quality as presentations designed for print. Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) objects are useful during the presentation design phase but they are up to twice the size of a regular image. The Minimizer can replace these OLE objects with images without any quality loss. In addition to reducing the file size, the Minimizer can remove speaker notes and hidden slides so that you do not publish confidential information by mistake. The wizard summarises of all of the changes that will be made to your presentation, and gives you an estimate of the file size reduction. The Minimizer shows up as a floating menu, as shown:


95

Clicking on Minimize Presentation leads you to this Wizard menu:

19.3.3

IMPRESS PRESENTER CONSOLE

The Presenter Console Extension provides more control over your slide show presentation, such as the ability to see the upcoming slide, the slide notes, and a presentation timer, whereas the audience see only the current slide. To avoid confusion by displaying a large number of presentation elements, the Presenter Console displays the elements on three different easily changeable views. ●

The first view displays the current slide, including the effects and the upcoming slide;

●

The second view shows the speaker's notes in large, clear and scalable type plus the current and upcoming slide;

●

The third view shows a slide sorter view with the slide thumbnails.

Note: this extension will only work if you have at least two displays e.g. a monitor and a projector.


96

20 OS X SERVICES MENUS SUPPORT

F

rom NeoOffice 2.2.5 patch 3, OS X Services menu support has been provided. If you use the Services menu, this will please you. If not, you may be interested in what it does. First of all, you can access the Services sub-menu from the NeoOffice menu.

Notice in this picture that many of the selections are greyed out. If you were to select any of the options of those left, you would find that all the selections are indeed greyed out. Selections only become available when a section of text is selected.

20.1

TEXT TO SPEECH One of the commonly used services is to convert text to speech. Select a section of text, go to NeoOffice > Services > Speech > Start Speaking Text and you will hear the text read back to you. You can then select Stop Speaking to end the reading.

20.2

LOOK UP Another common usage of Services is the Look Up feature. Select a word


97

or short phrase and go to NeoOffice > Services > Look Up in Dictionary. You will be presented with a definition of the word. You can select from a number of sources for your definition, or simply leave the selection at All.

The same process works for phrases (or at least the sort of phrases that might be defined in a source such as Wikipedia), as below:

20.3

SPOTLIGHT The Services function can be used to search your hard disk for other inst-


98

ances of the same term. Simply highlight the word/term you wish to search for, and go to NeoOffice > Services > Spotlight and voilà, there you have your search.


99

21 PUBLIC DOCUMENTATION LICENSE Version 1.0 1.0 DEFINITIONS. 1.1. "Commercial Use" means distribution or otherwise making the Documentation available to a third party. 1.2. "Contributor" means a person or entity who creates or contributes to the creation of Modifications. 1.3. "Documentation" means the Original Documentation or Modifications or the combination of the Origin al Documentation and Modifications, in each case including portions thereof. 1.4. "Electronic Distribution Mechanism" means a mechanism generally accepted for the electronic transfer of data. 1.5. "Initial Writer" means the individual or entity identified as the Initial Writer in the notice required by the Appendix. 1.6. "Larger Work" means a work which combines Documentation or portions thereof with documentation or other writings not governed by the terms of this License. 1.7. "License" means this document. 1.8. "Modifications" means any addition to or deletion from the substance or structure of either the Original Documentation or any previous Modifications, such as a translation, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which the Original Documentation or previous Modifications may be recast, transformed or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, and other modifications which, as a whole represent an original work of authorship, is a Modification. For example, when Documentation is released as a series of documents, a Modification is: A. Any addition to or deletion from the contents of the Original Documentation or previous Modifications. B. Any new documentation that contains any part of the Original Documentation or previous Modifications. 1.9. "Original Documentation" means documentation described as Original Documentation in the notice re quired by the Appendix, and which, at the time of its release under this License is not already Documentation governed by this License. 1.10. "Editable Form" means the preferred form of the Documentation for making Modifications to it. The Documentation can be in an electronic, compressed or archival form, provided the appropriate decompres sion or de-archiving software is widely available for no charge. 1.11. "You" (or "Your") means an individual or a legal entity exercising rights under, and complying with all of the terms of this License or a future version of this License issued under Section 5.0 ("Versions of the Li cense"). For legal entities, "You" includes any entity which controls, is controlled by, or is under common control with You. For purposes of this definition, "control" means (a) the power, direct or indirect, to cause the direction or management of such entity, whether by contract or otherwise, or (b) ownership of more than fifty percent (50%) of the outstanding shares or beneficial ownership of such entity.


100

2.0 LICENSE GRANTS. 2.1 Initial Writer Grant. The Initial Writer hereby grants You a world-wide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, prepare Modifications of, compile, publicly perform, publicly display, demonstrate, market, disclose and distrib ute the Documentation in any form, on any media or via any Electronic Distribution Mechanism or other method now known or later discovered, and to sublicense the foregoing rights to third parties through mul tiple tiers of sublicensees in accordance with the terms of this License. The license rights granted in this Section 2.1 ("Initial Writer Grant") are effective on the date Initial Writer first distributes Original Documentation under the terms of this License. 2.2. Contributor Grant. Each Contributor hereby grants You a world-wide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, pre pare Modifications of, compile, publicly perform, publicly display, demonstrate, market, disclose and distrib ute the Documentation in any form, on any media or via any Electronic Distribution Mechanism or other method now known or later discovered, and to sublicense the foregoing rights to third parties through mul tiple tiers of sublicensees in accordance with the terms of this License. The license rights granted in this Section 2.2 ("Contributor Grant") are effective on the date Contributor first makes Commercial Use of the Documentation.

3.0 DISTRIBUTION OBLIGATIONS. 3.1. Application of License. The Modifications which You create or to which You contribute are governed by the terms of this License, including without limitation Section 2.2 ("Contributor Grant"). The Documentation may be distributed only under the terms of this License or a future version of this License released in accordance with Section 5.0 ("Versions of the License"), and You must include a copy of this License with every copy of the Documentation You distribute. You may not offer or impose any terms that alter or restrict the applicable version of this License or the recipients' rights hereunder. However, You may include an additional document offering the additional rights described in Section 3.5 ("Required Notices"). 3.2. Availability of Documentation. Any Modification which You create or to which You contribute must be made available publicly in Editable Form under the terms of this License via a fixed medium or an accepted Electronic Distribution Mechanism. 3.3. Description of Modifications. All Documentation to which You contribute must identify the changes You made to create that Documentation and the date of any change. You must include a prominent statement that the Modification is derived, directly or indirectly, from Original Documentation provided by the Initial Writer and include the name of the Initial Writer in the Documentation or via an electronic link that describes the origin or ownership of the Documentation. The foregoing change documentation may be created by using an electronic program that automatically tracks changes to the Documentation, and such changes must be available publicly for at least five years following release of the changed Documentation. 3.4. Intellectual Property Matters. Contributor represents that Contributor believes that Contributor's Modifications are Contributor's original creation(s) and/or Contributor has sufficient rights to grant the rights conveyed by this License. 3.5. Required Notices.


101

You must duplicate the notice in the Appendix in each file of the Documentation. If it is not possible to put such notice in a particular Documentation file due to its structure, then You must include such notice in a loc ation (such as a relevant directory) where a reader would be likely to look for such a notice, for example, via a hyperlink in each file of the Documentation that takes the reader to a page that describes the origin and ownership of the Documentation. If You created one or more Modification(s) You may add your name as a Contributor to the notice described in the Appendix. You must also duplicate this License in any Documentation file (or with a hyperlink in each file of the Docu mentation) where You describe recipients' rights or ownership rights. You may choose to offer, and to charge a fee for, warranty, support, indemnity or liability obligations to one or more recipients of Documentation. However, You may do so only on Your own behalf, and not on behalf of the Initial Writer or any Contributor. You must make it absolutely clear than any such warranty, support, indemnity or liability obligation is offered by You alone, and You hereby agree to indemnify the Initial Writer and every Contributor for any liability incurred by the Initial Writer or such Contributor as a result of warranty, support, indemnity or liability terms You offer. 3.6. Larger Works. You may create a Larger Work by combining Documentation with other documents not governed by the terms of this License and distribute the Larger Work as a single product. In such a case, You must make sure the requirements of this License are fulfilled for the Documentation.

4.0 APPLICATION OF THIS LICENSE. This License applies to Documentation to which the Initial Writer has attached this License and the notice in the Appendix.

5.0 VERSIONS OF THE LICENSE. 5.1. New Versions. Initial Writer may publish revised and/or new versions of the License from time to time. Each version will be given a distinguishing version number. 5.2. Effect of New Versions. Once Documentation has been published under a particular version of the License, You may always continue to use it under the terms of that version. You may also choose to use such Documentation under the terms of any subsequent version of the License published by Jacqueline Gouguenheim-Desloy and Peter Mitchell. No one other than Jacqueline Gouguenheim-Desloy and Peter Mitchell has the right to modify the terms of this License. Filling in the name of the Initial Writer, Original Documentation or Contributor in the notice de scribed in the Appendix shall not be deemed to be Modifications of this License.

6.0 DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY. DOCUMENTATION IS PROVIDED UNDER THIS LICENSE ON AN "AS IS'' BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, WARRANTIES THAT THE DOCUMENTATION IS FREE OF DEFECTS, MERCHANTABLE, FIT FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR NON-INFRINGING. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY, ACCURACY, AND PERFORMANCE OF THE DOCUMENTATION IS WITH YOU. SHOULD ANY DOCUMENTATION PROVE DEFECTIVE IN ANY RESPECT, YOU (NOT THE INITIAL WRITER OR ANY OTHER CONTRIBUTOR) ASSUME THE COST OF ANY NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION. THIS DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY CONSTITUTES AN ESSENTIAL PART OF THIS LICENSE. NO USE OF ANY DOCUMENTATION IS AUTHORIZED HEREUNDER EXCEPT UNDER THIS DISCLAIMER.


102

7.0 TERMINATION. This License and the rights granted hereunder will terminate automatically if You fail to comply with terms herein and fail to cure such breach within 30 days of becoming aware of the breach. All sublicenses to the Documentation which are properly granted shall survive any termination of this License. Provisions which, by their nature, must remain in effect beyond the termination of this License shall survive.

8.0 LIMITATION OF LIABILITY. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES AND UNDER NO LEGAL THEORY, WHETHER IN TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), CONTRACT, OR OTHERWISE, SHALL THE INITIAL WRITER, ANY OTHER CONTRIBUTOR, OR ANY DISTRIBUTOR OF DOCUMENTATION, OR ANY SUPPLIER OF ANY OF SUCH PARTIES, BE LIABLE TO ANY PERSON FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OF ANY CHARACTER INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF GOODWILL, WORK STOPPAGE, COMPUTER FAILURE OR MALFUNCTION, OR ANY AND ALL OTHER DAMAGES OR LOSSES ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE USE OF THE DOCUMENTATION, EVEN IF SUCH PARTY SHALL HAVE BEEN IN FORMED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

9.0 U.S. GOVERNMENT END USERS. If Documentation is being acquired by or on behalf of the U.S. Government or by a U.S. Government prime contractor or subcontractor (at any tier), then the Government's rights in Documentation will be only as set forth in this Agreement; this is in accordance with 48 CFR 227.7201 through 227.7202-4 (for Department of Defense (DOD) acquisitions) and with 48 CFR 2.101 and 12.212 (for non-DOD acquisitions).

10.0 MISCELLANEOUS. This License represents the complete agreement concerning the subject matter hereof. If any provision of this License is held to be unenforceable, such provision shall be reformed only to the extent necessary to make it enforceable. This License shall be governed by California law, excluding its conflict-of-law provisions. With respect to disputes or any litigation relating to this License, the losing party is responsible for costs, includ ing without limitation, court costs and reasonable attorneys' fees and expenses. The application of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods is expressly excluded. Any law or regu lation which provides that the language of a contract shall be construed against the drafter shall not apply to this License. Appendix Public Documentation License Notice The contents of this Documentation are subject to the Public Documentation License Version 1.0 (the "Li cense"); you may only use this Documentation if you comply with the terms of this License. A copy of the License is available at http://www.openoffice.org/licenses/PDL.rtf

The Original Documentation is NeoOffice User Guide Volume 2: Hints, tips and techniques for power users: for version 2.2, 3.0 and Onwards. The Initial Writers of the Original Documentation are Jacqueline Gouguenheim-Desloy and Peter Mitchell Copyright © 2008. All Rights Reserved. Initial Writer contact: [email protected] Contributor(s): Jacqueline Gouguenheim-Desloy and Peter Mitchell. Portions created by Jacqueline Gouguenheim-Desloy and Peter Mitchell are Copyright © 2008. All Rights


103

Reserved. (Contributor contact(s): [email protected]). NOTE: The text of this Appendix may differ slightly from the text of the notices in the files of the Original Documentation. You should use the text of this Appendix rather than the text found in the Original Docu mentation for Your Modifications.

NeoOffice User Guide Volume 2: Hints, tips and techniques for ...

NeoOffice User Guide Volume 2: Hints, tips and techniques for ...

Suggest Documents

NeoOffice User Guide, based on OpenOffice.org User Guide

Proposal tips and hints

Hints and tips

Proposal tips and hints

Hints and Tips: BMW

Tips and Hints for Record Types - Salesforce

Hints and Tips - Artizan Designs

Volume 2 IMPRINT Pro User Guide

Using User Hints to Guide Resource Management for ... - CiteSeerX

2018 CATEGORIES HINTS & TIPS RULES

TIPS AND TECHNIQUES FOR STITCHERIES

Double integrals: Hints, tips, and practice problems

103105 Deloitte Hints and Tips 2015.indd

Tracklaying tips and techniques

Hints and tips for booking your coach or minibus - Scouts

Hints and Tips for Writing a Letter of Motivation

Wouxun KG-UVD1P Tips And Hints For Eyes-Free ... - W0mg.net

PL/SQL Tips and Techniques - New York Oracle User Group

Dfine 2 User Guide

Animation Tips & Tricks Volume 2

Tips and Practice Guide for

Expressive Painting; Tips and techniques for ... - WordPress.com

Hints and tips in revision hip surgery - Orthopaedics and Trauma

Mixing Guide: Principles, Tips, and Techniques | iZotope, Inc.