Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
In November of 2011, Ronnie put out a call for someone willing to write a series of articles on OpenOffice.org. OpenOffice.org was, at the time, the default office suite for Ubuntu. I had been using Ubuntu for only about a year, but I had used OpenOffice.org for years, as far back as when it was StarOffice. I put my name in the hat and was assigned the job of penning the series.
At the time, the future of OpenOffice.org was in question. Sun Microsystems, the technology company that had developed OpenOffice.org, had been bought by Oracle Corporation in January of 2010. Development of the office suite had stopped. In September of 2010, a group of OpenOffice.org developers defected from Oracle and started the Document Foundation. They forked OpenOffice.org, and LibreOffice was born. The cherry on top, Canonical planned to make LibreOffice their default office suite in Ubuntu 11.04.
The first article was slated for around February 2011. I wrote the first couple of articles, using the OpenOffice.org name, but couldn't help feeling I wasn't writing anything for the future. I began a conversation with Ronnie about changing it from OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice, using the Canonical switch as my reasoning. Ronnie agreed, and I edited the existing articles to LibreOffice.
I may have used OpenOffice.org for years, and StarOffice before that, but I soon discovered I knew very little about the suite. I was familiar with the pieces of the suite, but my experience was limited to Writer and Calc. I decided to work my way through the basics of each of the suite modules starting with Writer. Documentation became the key to my success. I started with the old OpenOffice.org documents, but as the Document Foundation started making changes and improvements to the programs, existing documents quickly became outdated. Experimentation became my second key. I learned to test everything. The document might say it works this way, but did it actually work that way in the current version? Sometimes, no. Soon the Document Foundation created their own documents for LibreOffice, and while they are never completely up-to-date, they have stayed close enough that this writer can read, test, and learn about the different features of the program.
The biggest challenge for me was macro scripts. At the time I was writing about them, there was little official documentation on the subject. I googled, read, and followed links. I have studied many programming languages in my days, COBOL, Pascal, C, Visual Basic, Python, C++, Java, but the lack of easy-to-read documentation for the interface to LibreOffice made learning to program macros challenging. The Document Foundation offers no official manual for macros. However, each of the manuals for the different modules includes a chapter on creating macros. It is better than what I had when I was trying to write about macros. The help file is the best source for learning the structure of LibreOffice Basic. See the chapters devoted to macros in each of the guides for module specific help.
My second biggest challenge was Base. As with macros, I had little official documentation to work with. To top off the difficulty, relational databases are a complex and complicated subject. I was determined to meet it head on and then never write about it ever again. Over time, documentation came out, and I began to relax a little. In addition to the articles I wrote for Full Circle, I wrote a series of posts on my blog, What The Tech Am I Doing?, about using the SQL language with LibreOffice (https://eeperry.wordpress.com/category/libreoffice/libreoffice-base/). In the end, I hope I presented you with enough information to proceed on your own.
The thing that changed the way I do things was Impress. I use it at work all the time, even though I have Powerpoint loaded on my work computer. Impress doesn't make creating a presentation any easier than Powerpoint. The two are about the same on that subject. Where Impress has changed the way I do things is with the Impress Remote (FCM#79). Impress Remote frees me from the presentation computer and allows me to roam and interact, with all my controls and notes on my tablet.
The joy of writing about a program like LibreOffice is watching the program blossom before you. With each new version they add something new to the program. Sometimes, the changes add a feature to the program; other times, they makes an existing feature work better. So, before you think this is all about memory lane, let's take a glance at some of the new features and changes that have come about since LibreOffice was born.
In the latest version (4.4), the developers worked on restructuring the toolbars in all the suite modules. They removed some of the icons that users rarely click on and added icons that are used more frequently. They also compacted the formatting toolbar by condensing like functions into one drop-down icon. For example the line spacing is now a drop-down. As an added bonus, the Insert Field is now a drop-down on the standard toolbar in Writer, which is easier than Insert > Fields > [field to insert]. Icons like the bullets and numbering are now drop-down dialogs rather than pop up dialog windows, which makes using the basics of these tools quicker.
One of my favorite new tools is the sidebar, which I wrote about in part 34 (Full Circle Magazine issue 81). At the time, the sidebar was still an experimental feature, but it didn't stay that way for long. I usually keep the sidebar open but collapsed. If I need to change one of the styles, two clicks and I'm there. I like having the four most used docked dialogs readily handy.
Speaking of readily handy, the style selection drop-down on the formatting toolbar has a new feature. Now, there is a drop-down arrow on the currently highlighted style. If you click on the arrow, a menu gives you the options to update or edit the style. Convenient when you need to make a quick change to a style. The Start Center, LibreOffice with no documents open, now shows recently open documents by default. Doesn't seem like much until you work on the same document every day for weeks at a time, or need that budget spreadsheet you opened just last week. Click on the Templates button and it switches to the templates loaded on your system. This makes starting a new document based on a template much easier.
The Document Foundation is doing a better job of keeping manuals up-to-date. All the current guides and handbooks are up to version 4.0, with most at 4.2 or higher. They are my guide when coming up with new articles for you to read.
My journey so far with LibreOffice and writing for Full Circle Magazine has been a rewarding one. I was asked to give a presentation to a group about LibreOffice because of my articles in Full Circle. The guy introduced me as an international writer, and I blush now just thinking about it. I asked him why and he said, “Because Full Circle is all over the world.” I couldn't argue. So, thank you, Full Circle fans, for making me an international writer.
Let me end by thanking Ronnie Tucker for the chance to write for Full Circle each month. He spends hours laying out and compiling each issue. He has repeated this task 100 times, and I think that is something to celebrate. Hopefully, he can go another 100 before his editorial egg cracks. Writing How-To articles has polished my writing and editing skills, as well as giving me an excuse to write something at the end of each month. A big thanks to the proofreaders who have saved me from embarrassing myself more than once or caused me to write a better article. Mostly, I thank you the reader. Without you, what's the point? You are the reason there are 100 issues out there. I salute you.
NOTE: While I was editing this, LibreOffice 5.0 was released. Haven't had much of a chance to look at it, but I'm sure they have added some more cool stuff. The current Ubuntu version is still 4.4.