Differences between version 16 and predecessor to the previous major change of OpenOffice.org.
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| Newer page: | version 16 | Last edited on Thursday, March 30, 2006 7:30:24 am | by PeterHewett | Revert |
| Older page: | version 11 | Last edited on Friday, February 24, 2006 3:15:21 pm | by IanMcDonald | Revert |
@@ -1,23 +1,24 @@
The name of the organisation that maintains the codebase for the identically named OfficeSuite.
-!
OpenOffice.org is [Free] and CrossPlatform, running on many [Unix] variants (including [Linux], of course) MicrosoftWindows, and [MacOSX].
+[OpenOffice|OpenOffice.org] is an office suite, providing WordProcessor, SpreadSheet, presentation, DataBase and other tools.
+
OpenOffice.org is [Free] and CrossPlatform, running on many [Unix] variants (including [Linux], of course),
MicrosoftWindows, and [MacOSX].
Some features:
* It is pretty good at importing MicrosoftWord documents (other than VisualBasic macros).
-* Version 1.1 and later
can export to [PDF] natively, so you can type up documents and then make nice PDF files with TrueType fonts in it. (The [PDF] page lists some good reasons why emailing PDF files around is better than emailing word-processor files around).
+* It
can export to [PDF] natively, so you can type up documents and then make nice PDF files with TrueType fonts in it. (The [PDF] page lists some good reasons why emailing PDF files around is better than emailing word-processor files around).
* The Debian package of version 1.1 uses native [GTK2] widgets, so it fits nicely into a [GNOME] desktop. (There is a subproject of openoffice to use native widgets on all platforms - see http://people.redhat.com/dcbw/. GTK and Win32 are already supported but it is not yet in the main [CVS] branch. Good on Debian for including it already!)
* Redhat, Novell and Debian are all using the same CVS server on gnome.org which includes these additions.
* Open file format - it uses [XML] so you will never be in the situation where you have old documents but can't extract any information out of it. In version 2.0 it changed to another format called OpenDocument which is also XML based but is designed to be used by multiple applications.
-* Version 1.1
is much improved over version 1.
, especially in terms of start-up time
.
+* Version 2
is much improved over version 1, and includes improved database functionality
.
[OpenOffice.org] is included on [TheOpenCD], which is an easy way for windows users to try this great OpenSource software without having to commit to a large change.
----
!!Installing and Setting up NewZealand English Dictionary
By default, OpenOffice includes support for English (US), and unfortunately none of the add-on language installers supports English (New Zealand). So, here is one way
-to manually get support for it. The following instructions will change the configuration globally, and may require administrator privileges.
+to manually get support for it. The following instructions will change the configuration globally, and may require administrator privileges. (This proceedure isn't necessary with OOo version 2 and later, as the NZ dictionaries are included. Check at menu > Tools > Options > Language Settings > Languages and look in the pull down menu for Default languages for documents. If English (New Zealand) has a little abc next to it, the NZ dictionary is installed already.)
__1.__ OpenOffice uses "myspell" dictionaries. Download the dictionary .zip file for en_NZ from
[their ftp site|http://ftp.services.openoffice.org/pub/OpenOffice.org/contrib/dictionaries/en_NZ.zip].
(This is based on the en_GB (Great Britain) dictionary but updated with NZ placenames, etc). It is about 220kB in size.
@@ -44,11 +45,14 @@
then you can add:
THES en NZ th_en_US
HYPH en NZ hyph_en_GB
to the "dictionary.lst" file as above.
+
+Alternately, for OpenOffice.org >= 1.1.1, go to "File -> Wizards -> Install new dictionary" to use the OOoDic Autopilot. Click on "English", press the "Start DicOOo" button, and use the dialog to download any needed dictionaries, hyphenations, or thesauri. Note that you don't need root privileges (useful if you are the only OpenOffice user on your machine) or to mess with symlinks or dictionary.lst. The default behavior is to install in the current user's .openoffice/1.1.1/user/wordbook or .openoffice.org2/user/wordbook (depending on OpenOffice version) directory.
+** ''This doesn't seem to work for the openoffice in Ubuntu 5.10 - the 'install new dictionary' menu item does nothing?'' -- JohnMcPherson
More verbose instructions for manually installing dictionaries under linux are
available [here|http://homepage.ntlworld.com/garryknight/linux/oodict.html].
---
* [OpenOffice CD art|http://marketing.openoffice.org/art/galleries/cdart/]
