Table of Contents for

Ubuntu: Up and Running

Figure 12-2 shows the left half of the Standard toolbar, which contains buttons for main features such as loading, saving, and printing files, and so on.

Figure 12-2. The left half of the Standard toolbar

The first small icon, made up of three horizontal lines, is the drag handle, which you can use to drag and drop the bar elsewhere within the program’s window. If you drag it to any of the four window edges, it will align with that edge, and if you drop it elsewhere it will be released from the main window so that you can move it to anywhere you like on your desktop.

The next icon, which looks like a printed page, is for creating new documents. By default, a new word processor document will be started, or you can click the downward-pointing triangle next to it to select from the many other types of documents supported by OpenOffice.org.

After that comes the Open button (which looks like a document in a folder), the Save button (which looks like a 3.5” disk and is highlighted only when there are changes to be saved), and the E-mail button (for sending the current document as an email attachment using the default email client).

Next, standing off on its own between two separators, is the Edit file button, which toggles between edit and read-only modes. When you open a read-only document and click this button, you can then edit the document if you have sufficient privileges or will be offered the option of editing a copy of the document. Or if you click the button while editing a document, you can place it into a read-only (or preview) mode (see Figure 12-3). In this mode the document becomes read-only, and items you cannot use, such as the Formatting toolbar, are hidden.

Figure 12-3. In Preview mode, the Rulers and Formatting toolbar are removed

The next three buttons are for outputting a document as a Portable Document Format (PDF) file, to a printer, or in Print Preview mode, which will show more than one page at a time if there’s enough space.

The two following buttons let you spellcheck a document interactively and enable automatic spellchecking as you type, respectively. If the latter is enabled, any unrecognized words will be underlined with a wavy line.

The next three buttons are for cutting, copying, and pasting, and are grayed out when they can’t be used (for example, if there is no highlighted text to cut or copy, or there is nothing in the clipboard for pasting). The final button, which looks like a paintbrush, allows you to paint a formatting style in the document by dragging the mouse over the portion to transform.

The right half of the Standard toolbar is shown in Figure 12-4, and starts with two curved arrows that provide undo and redo functionality. In lower resolutions or in a nonmaximized window, you may not see all these icons at once, but you can call up any hidden ones by clicking the >> icon that will appear on the far right of the toolbar.

Figure 12-4. The right half of the Standard toolbar

The next two icons, in turn looking like the world on a document and a spreadsheet, let you insert hyperlinks and tables. The next icon, which looks like a paintbrush drawing a rounded corner, calls up the drawing functions toolbar.

After these, the button that looks like a magnifying glass calls up a search (and optional replace) dialog, the four-pointed star brings up a handy navigator for moving throughout a document, and the button that looks like two photographs brings up a toolbar of graphic images.

The button following the photographs is for managing your data sources, and the one with a ¶ symbol toggles the display of nonprinting characters. The final two main buttons let you change the zoom level of the document and call up the help pages, respectively.

At the far right of the toolbar there’s a downward-pointing triangle you can use to customize the toolbar by adding and removing buttons or locking it in place.

The other main toolbar you’ll use in Writer is the Formatting toolbar, the left half of which is shown in Figure 12-5.

Figure 12-5. The left half of the Formatting toolbar

This part of the Formatting toolbar starts with another drag handle for moving the toolbar about. It works in exactly the same way as the Standard toolbar. After this, a button that looks like a finger pointing to a cell in a table brings up the Styles and formatting menu.

The rest of this part of the toolbar deals with the style, font name, and font size of text, and the three letter A buttons at the end are for toggling the use of bold, italic, and underlined text.

Figure 12-6 shows the other half of the toolbar.

Figure 12-6. The right half of the Formatting toolbar

The first four buttons in this half of the toolbar let you select left, centered, right, and full justification. The next two buttons turn numbering and bullets on and off, and the ones after those, with left- and right-pointing triangles, are for decreasing and increasing indents.

The multicolored button with several letters on it changes the color of a font. Clicking the button directly changes selected text to the currently selected color, which you can further change to another color by clicking the downward-pointing triangle to the button’s right. The next button, which looks like a highlighter pen, works in the same way but alters the highlighting, and the final main button also works in the same way but controls the background color.

Again, at the end there’s a button with a downward-pointing triangle with which you can customize the toolbar.

Although you can create your document’s various styles as you go along by pushing buttons for indentation, bullets, and so on, you may find it much easier to apply styles instead, which will change the look of a feature (such as a bulleted list) throughout an entire document.

To create or edit a style, select an area of text, and then click the Styles and Formatting button in the Formatting toolbar. A menu will appear in which you can select the type of style (out of character, paragraph, frame, page, and list).

You can then right-click a style to modify it, or click the “New style from selection” button (at the top right) to create a new one. Or you can simply double-click a style of your choice to apply it to the selection. Your most recently used styles are displayed in a drop-down menu next to the Styles and Formatting button so you can easily apply them.

There’s a clever feature in Writer that can help you auto-complete words you frequently use. Enabled by default, it’s called Word Completion, and it can help experienced users be more productive. However, many people find this feature intrusive and annoying, particularly when learning the ins and outs of Writer.

If you feel the same way, you can disable Word Completion by selecting Tools → AutoCorrect Options, and then click the Word Completion tab. Finally, uncheck “Enable word completion,” and the feature will be turned off. Or if you prefer, you can set Word Completion to accept the Tab key instead of Enter (matching the Nick Completion setting of the Pidgin program). To do this, click the “Accept with” drop-down menu in the AutoCorrect settings window, and then select Tab.

The first thing you should notice is that the Standard and Formatting toolbars are quite similar to those in Writer, so I don’t need to explain them to you again in detail. This is the great thing about the integrated suite; the look and feel and functionality transfer between the various parts. Once you’ve learned one of the programs, you already know most of the other parts, too.

However, a few of the buttons do work slightly differently from their effects in text documents, and there are a couple of additional or replacement buttons as well, as shown in Figure 12-8.

So, for example, in the Standard toolbar the Table button in Writer is now replaced with two buttons in Calc that feature the letters A and Z, which are for sorting in either ascending or descending order, respectively. There is also a new button that looks like a pie chart and calls up the Chart Wizard (see Figure 12-9), and the nonprinting characters button is removed, as it’s not applicable to spreadsheets.

Figure 12-7. Editing a spreadsheet in Calc

Figure 12-8. The righthand icons are slightly different in Calc than they are in Writer

Figure 12-9. The Calc Chart Wizard

In the left half of the Formatting toolbar, the style field has been removed, but styles can still be selected by clicking the very first button, which calls up the Style and Formatting menu, so there’s not a lot of change there.

However, there are a few differences in the right half, as shown in Figure 12-10.

Figure 12-10. There are several differences in the right half of the Formatting toolbar

The first icon in the right half of the Formatting toolbar is for merging and centering cells. The next four buttons, starting with a pile of coins, select the number format, with the choices being currency, percent, adding a decimal place, and deleting a decimal place (which automatically rounds a fraction to the nearest whole number).

After the decrease and increase indent buttons, which are the same as in Writer, there’s a new button for placing borders around cells. The very last main button toggles the display of grid lines.

The functions in the Standard toolbar are mostly the same as the rest of the suite, but a new Presentation toolbar is available to its right, as shown in Figure 12-12.

Figure 12-12. The Presentation toolbar

There are three buttons in the toolbar, the first of which inserts a new slide in the current location with the currently selected slide design. The second calls up the Slide design window for selecting other designs, and the third button starts a presentation slide show.

Instead of placing the Formatting toolbar underneath the Standard toolbar, Impress gives you the Line and Filling toolbar, which looks like Figure 12-13.

Figure 12-13. The Line and Filling toolbar

After the grab handle, the next button is the familiar Style and Formatting button, followed by the Line button, which calls up a window with which to select a line style. Following that is the Arrow style button, which is a drop-down menu. After that come the Line style, Line width, and Line color drop-down fields.

The next button, which looks like a can of paint, is the Area button for handling a wide range of area fills, followed by the area Color and Styling fields. Finally, the button with a shadowed rectangle represents toggling shadows on or off. Like all the other toolbars, you can customize this one by clicking the downward-pointing triangle at the far right.

A mini toolbar, called the Slide Sorter, is placed to the right. Its two buttons either select objects or start a slide show. Underneath the toolbars, the Impress program is divided into three main frames: Slides, Workspace, and Tasks.

This frame contains a scrollable view of all the slides in a presentation. You can use the scroll bar or middle mouse wheel to move backward and forward through the stack of slides and click one to display it in the center frame.

This is where you do all of your slide designing and editing. Every object in a slide is smart so that clicking on it will call up the correct toolbars for editing it above the frame, including some toolbars I haven’t detailed.

Right-clicking an object element will also bring up a context-sensitive menu with additional options.

This frame features a variety of tasks, such as Layouts, Table Design, and so on. Click one of the headings to expand its contents, which are then selectable. Just as with toolbars, you can drag and drop this and other frames into the main window, after which you can then leave it floating over your content or move it out and onto your main Ubuntu desktop.

Underneath these frames is the Drawing toolbar, which provides a range of shapes, lines, fonts, and many other tools with which you can fully customize your presentations to their best effect.

One way to develop slides is to lay out the first one exactly the way you want it, including font, size, layout of elements, and so on, and just duplicate it over and over, changing what you want on each slide.

However, every presentation has a master slide that can be used as the default for slides in the presentation. You view the master by selecting View → Master → Slide Master, which opens up the master view, in which only that slide is edited. Now you can edit the header, footer, background, and any other constant features to use throughout a presentation.

Every new slide you make will then have these attributes. When you have finished editing the master, click Close Master View in the Master View toolbar.