linuxurious's Journal: Openoffice.org - The 5 pillars

Copyright (c) 2002 William Ku
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Part 2 of 3

Openoffice.org 1.0
------------------
There are 5 main components in Openoffice.org 1.0. They are Writer,
Calc, Impress, Draw and Math. Writer is a word processor; Calc is a
spreadsheet application; Impress is a presentation application where
you can create slides like in MS PowerPoint(R); Draw allows you to
express your creativity as a digital graphic artist; Math makes the
construction of mathematical equations look almost as good as
handwritten ones.

Writer
------
Used to Microsoft(R) Word? Its universal loved look-and-feel has been
adopted and adapted by most of its successful alternatives such as
StarWriter (from StarOffice(R)), KWord (from KDE's KOffice) and Abiword.
In this "attack of the clones", Openoffice.org's Writer is no different
and its look-and-feel will immediately set you in ease; you can start
using it immediately!

The usual features are all there: popular fonts, style formatting,
tables, spellcheck and others-you-name-it-they-should-have-it. If you
found that your favourite feature is missing, you can actually visit the
Openoffice.org website and make a request for this particular feature
and the chances are that it will get implemented if this feature is also
being requested by other users. Found a bug? Report it too and get it
crushed.

For those who are worried about document inter-compatibility, the
support for Microsoft(R) Word documents is reported to be better than
before (as in Staroffice(R) although there are still a few Microsoft(R)
Word features that Writer could not decipher. You can save in
Microsoft(R) Word 97/2000/XP, 95, 6.0 formats although
Openoffice.org-specific features will be lost. In addition, there is no
support for WordPerfect documents.

Calc
----
Microsoft(R) Excel is yet another Microsoft(R) killer application for
which Calc, Openoffice.org's spreadsheet component, is a good
substitute. Plot pie-charts, define functions to compute consolidating
figures.

Support for Microsoft(R) Excel documents is just as good. There are no
problems opening some of my important Excel files; no losses in format
too. Calc can save in Microsoft(R) Excel 97/200/Xp and 95 format.

Impress
-------
Impress your peers with a non-Microsoft(R) PowerPoint presentation. The
usual transition animation and effects are included along with a host of
other unique ones. An integrated drawing tool (Draw) complements
Impress, Openoffice.org's presentation component, well and allows the
creative user to draw specific clip arts for the presentation. Functions
for some fancy font design and 3D effects & animations are also
available.

Draw
----
Draw is Openoffice.org's drawing tool to churn out 2D clip art. 3D
animations and effects are also possible. While Draw is meant as a
complementary tool to Writer, Calc and Impress, it can be used as a
standalone. However, there is no provision to save in any graphics
format which clearly reduces the reusability of the masterpieces that
the user has created.

Draw cannot compete with digital graphics applications such as Adobe(R)
Photoshop(R) and GIMP but it would suffice for simple drawing. For
those who wanted to dabble in digital art, Draw might be the initil
stepping stone that you are looking for.

Math
----
Anyone who needs to prepare documents containing mathematical equations
would know that it is not easy to find an application that combines the
required presentation of word processing and the representation of
mathematical equations to look like as if they are hand-written. Even
Microsoft(R) Word and its companion Maths Equation Editor do not fully
satisfy this requirement. As such, many have turned to typesetting
software such as LaTex but at a tradeoff of complexity and the power of
word processor software.

Math, Openoffice.org's mathematical equation editor, can be helpful in
this aspect. As with LaTex, the user will input commands to specify the
type of equations that are needed. In Math, each equation can be saved
as an embedded object to be used with the other Openoffice.org
components and thus allowing for an integrated presentation. However,
the reusability of these Maths objects is restricted to within
Openoffice.org (and Staroffice(R)).