ICDL Module 3

The Open dialogue will appear. In general, this will point to your home directory.

In this case, the Open dialogue is pointing to the directory /home/david.

If you wish to open a file contained on your floppy, navigate to the directory /mnt/floppy.

On the top right of the Open dialogue, there are three important icons: Up one level. Pressing this icon will move you to the parent of the current directory. Create new directory. This option allows you to create a new directory in the current directory. In order to be able to do so, you will need the appropriate user rights. Default directory. Pressing this icon will move you to the default directory. This is useful if you have moved through several directories and wish to return to your starting point in the directory tree. This will be different for each user.

If you are running Writer under Windows, the Windows Open dialogue will be displayed.

If you click in the Look in window, a drop down box will display your current directory and available drives. You can switch to another drive by double clicking on it in this window. You can also use the navigation icons to move around your directory structure.

If you wish to open a file on your floppy disk, first double click on Floppy A: in the Look in window.

The first two icons in the Open dialogue are the same as under Linux.

The third icon allows you to display the contents of the Open dialogue in a number of ways as shown on the following screen.

The Details option displays important information such as file type, size, created or last edited and attributes.

	Terminology
	We will use the terms document and file interchangeably. Document is the more commonly used term when working with Windows while file tends to be used more commonly when working with Linux.

Templates are predefined layouts for creating documents. Writer has a number of templates. It also allows you to create your own templates.

When you select File->New, a number of Writer templates are displayed.

For example, to create business cards:

To create a document based on a template you have created you would use:

If you have opened a document and made some changes, the process of saving it is very simple:

This will change the contents of the stored version so that it is identical to the version that is displayed on your screen. In this case, the previous version on disk is overwritten.

If you use File->Save in a newly created document, Writer will automatically assume that you wish to use File->Save as .

When you create a document from scratch, there is no version stored on disk. To save the file to disk:

Linux

The Save as dialogue will appear. In general, this will point to your home directory. It is very similar in appearance and functionality to the Open dialogue.

1. If necessary, navigate to the directory in which you wish to save the file.

2. Enter a name into the File name window.

3. Click Save.

   For the moment we will not be concerned with all the options in the Save as dialogue.

There are many different word processors and applications that can read text documents. One of the very important aspects of working with information technology is the ability to exchange documents between different systems.

Each application has its own way of storing information in electronic form. This is known as the format of the application. For example, Microsoft Word stores documents is a different electronic format to OpenOffice.org Writer.

Another issue we need to contend with is that as software develops in sophistication, the format of the documents will change to cater for the increased sophistication. We also need to be able to store a document in a format that could be read by an earlier version of an application package.

There are also a number of generic formats that can be used. These are formats that are not specific to a particular application but which have been designed by the information technology industry to form a common basis for all documents.

Each format has its own file extension. Sometimes we refer to the format by its extension. For example, Writer creates sxw files while Microsoft Word creates doc files. Rich text format, a generic format, uses the rtf extension.

Web browsers can only read documents created in Hypertext Markup Language or html.

Apart from its own format, Writer allows you store documents in a wide range of formats.

To save a file in a particular format (the method is the same in both Linux and Windows):

Notice that the Save as type window lists both formats and versions of formats.

The following table provides a reference to some common file types.

Once you have worked with Writer for a while you will want to create your own templates on which to base your documents. Often these templates only contain formatting features such as margin settings, page orientation, fonts similar features. They can, however, also contain text.

You may for example have to create invoices on a regular basis. Invoices have certain formatting features, but they also contain a lot of text which is the same on each.

Create a template

1. Create the document you wish to use as a template. This may consist only of formatting or formatting and text.

2. File->Save as.

3. Enter the name of the template into the File name window.

4. Click on the Save as type window and select Text Document Template as shown in the following window.

5. Select the directory in which you wish to store the template.

6. Click Save.

   This will save the contents of your workspace in template format with an stw extension.

Although the method of creating templates is the same, you need to take care of where you save them so that you can access the templates when you need them. The following are some suggestions.

Saving templates in Linux

In Linux, save your templates in the subdirectory called Documents in your home directory.

Saving templates in Windows

A good place to store templates initially is in My documents.

If you save templates in these directories, you can access them when you create a new document as follows:

1. File->New->Templates and documents.

2. Click My documents.

3. Select the template and click Open.

The Contents tab is the same as the table of contents at the front of the book. This organises entries by function.

The Index tab functions in the same way as the index at the back of the book. This provides an alphabetic listing of topics.

The right hand pane contains the details of the topic you have selected.

Within the details of the entry you will also see a number of hyperlinks. These are underlined in blue. These are references to related topics. To jump to one of these entries, double click the hyperlink.

OpenOffice.org provides yet another method of searching for information. Whereas both Contents and Index are based on an alphabetic listing of topics, Find allows you to search within the text of the entries for topics using a keyword.

Suppose you did not find the previous description of the term hyperlink adequate and you wish to find all topics in OpenOffice.org that make reference to this term.

The occurrences of the search word are highlighted in the details window.

When you read a book you may sometimes turn the corner of a page to mark important pages for easy later reference. A bookmark is the electronic equivalent.

A list of bookmarks you have created will be displayed.

If you wish to work with a document without having the object bar, toolbar, menu bar or scrollbars displayed, use Full screen mode. In this mode, the document will be displayed as it will be printed.

To return to normal viewing:

An alternative method of viewing the document as it will appear in printed form is to use Page preview.

In Page preview mode, a context sensitive toolbar is displayed.

If you let the cursor hover over the icons, a bubble will be displayed indicating the function of each.

	You cannot edit a document in Page preview mode, but you can print it by clicking on the print icon, .

When Writer creates a document, it stores the name of the creator of the document. It also stores other information along with this. To set the default user name:

When you open or save a file, Writer will use the location you set in Options as a starting point. This will be the path that will be displayed in the Open and Save as dialogues.

To set the default file locations:

	Terminology
	The terms directory and folder can be used interchangeably. Linux prefers the term directory whereas Windows prefers the term folder.

One way of highlighting text, is to position the cursor at the start or end of the text you wish to highlight and, while holding down the Shift key, use the navigation keys to move to the other end of the text you wish to highlight.

Another related method is to position the cursor at the start or end of the text you wish to highlight and, while holding down the left mouse button, use the mouse to position the cursor at the other end of the block of text.

Writer uses certain keyboard combinations and mouse actions to select clearly defined blocks of text such as words and paragraphs. These are shown in the following table.

When working with Writer there are two different modes of text entry, insert and overwrite mode. When you are in insert mode and you begin typing, text is inserted at the current position. All text ahead of the cursor is simply pushed further to the right to make way for the new text. In overwrite mode text you type replaces existing text.

The Insert key on the keyboard acts as a toggle switching Writer between the two modes. The current mode is indicated on the status bar at the bottom of the screen.

The status bar below indicates that Writer is in Insert mode.

If we press the Insert or INS key, the status bar will change to indicate that you are now in overwrite mode.

Pressing Ctrl+Z undoes the last change you made. Pressing it a second time, undoes the one before that, and so on.

An alternative method is to use Edit->Undo. When you use this method, the menu will indicate what type of operation you will be undoing.

For example, the following screen segment shows that the last operation was the creation of a new paragraph. The undo will remove this new paragraph.

Yet another way of carrying out undo is to press the undo icon on the function bar, .

As mentioned above, redo undoes the action of the last undo.

To use this function use Edit->Redo. As in the case of undo, the menu will indicate the action that you will be redoing.

You can also execute the redo function by pressing the redo icon on the function bar, .

If you wish to make another copy of the text, you only need to perform the last two steps since Writer remembers the text that you copied.

The process is basically the same when copying between documents.

The process is basically the same when moving between documents.

The term font refers to the style of the type face. Here are some examples:

The size of fonts is measured in points. A point is 1/72”. The size is determined by the distance from the bottom of the descender to the top of the ascender.

The central part of the letter is called the body. Fonts vary in the relative sizes of their ascenders, descenders and body as well as their thickness.

Another difference between fonts are those which have small tails or feet attached to the vertical strokes. These are called serif fonts. Examples are Times New Roman and Bookman Old Style. The fonts without these are called sans serif fonts. Examples are Arial, Tahoma and Verdana.

The default font is the font that Writer chooses for you unless you specify otherwise. To set the default font:

The current font style and size are shown on the object bar as in the following example where the font is Arial 11 point.

Any text you type will automatically assume this font.

You may change the font type and size of existing text as follows:

The fonts that are displayed could vary from installation to installation. Certain fonts are installed when you install the operating system, whether Linux or Windows. Further fonts can be added at a later stage, but this must be done through the operating system interface.

Changes we make to fonts are called attribute changes. Examples include bold, underlining and italics. Further, we can add combinations of these as shown in the following table.

Attributes can be set before new text is typed or they can be added to existing text. The object bar contains icons for setting bold, italic and underlined.

When an attribute is set, the corresponding icon on the object bar will have a border around it. In the above illustration, bold is on but italic and underline are off.

Set attributes for new text

Each of the attribute icons on the object bar acts as a toggle. If the attribute is on, clicking the icon will switch it off. If the attribute is off, clicking the icon will switch it on.

• Before typing new text, set each of the attribute settings using the object bar icons as described above. These settings will hold for further text until you change them.

	If you now move to another part of your document where the settings were set previously, the icons on the object bar will change to reflect the settings of this text.

Change attributes of existing text

1. Highlight the text whose attributes you wish to change.

2. Click on the appropriate icons on the object bar to change the attributes.

	Where you highlight text that contains a mixture of the same attribute, for example, some bold and some unbold text, the situation becomes slightly more complicated. You will need to click the icon two or three times to achieve the desired state.

The quick way of creating superscripts or subscripts is to use the keyboard shortcuts:

If you use superscript and subscript frequently, you might like to add appropriate icons to the object bar.

The object bar can be customised as follows:

The more elegant and efficient method would be to format one paragraph very carefully and then copy the formatting to other paragraphs. In order to achieve this, Writer makes use of styles. A style is a set of attributes that can be applied to characters, paragraphs and pages. Each style is given a name.

Writer has styles for characters, paragraphs or pages. The next section will look at styles in more detail. This section will consider the basic use of the character style to copy formatting from one block of text to another.

A character style is a set of attributes that can be applied to individual letters, numeric digits and symbols. The attributes could include font style, size and colour, and bold, italic or underlining.