Hi Jean,
Some aspects of OpenOffice which I've found troublesome to work out:
* Parent and child styles (eg. basing all paragraph styles on 'default', so that when management says, "Actually, that Helvetica font IS a bit too skinny", I don't spend 3 hours fixing all my styles) and how to fix them up when they get out of sync. For the record, I've found that modifying styles.xml is by far the easiest option! * Templates, and how re-associate a document with its template. * How best to create a list - to do this properly requires a character style, a list style AND a paragraph style. * Using OOo Draw, esp. how to get a Draw object into a Writer document without pain (I've discovered that creating a .png file is easiest - but there's even a gotcha right there - press Ctrl-A then Export, otherwise you end up with too much whitespace) * Setting up outline heading numbering
Some features I LOVE:
* Page styles * Master documents * Hidden text and paragraphs (note: using a User Field rather than a variable seems to be a good idea in OOo 2.0 if using master documents) * Variables (so I can set ProductName on the first page of a master document, and reference that whenever a child document needs to mention the product name. Makes life a heck of a lot easier when wanting to share child documents between guides for products with largely the same functionality) * The list styles aren't bad, either... add a good amount of flexibility and WORK without being sworn at. * Document sizes
* Fix up paragraph style dependencies to allow easy font changes (see first 'troublesome' point) * Modify page style elements such as margins, header and footer contents etc.
I hope this helps!
- Naomi
I am giving a demonstration of OpenOffice.org features for techwriters at the ASTC(NSW) conference on the 28th.
Whether you are attending or not, it would help me to know what you would most like to see demonstrated. There's far too much to show in the time available, so I want to concentrate on what interests you most, or (if you've had a chance to try OOo yourself) what you've had problems with. I may not know how to do what you want, but with some lead time I might be able to find out or create some samples.
Cheers, Jean
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