Getting Started Guide

What is Writer?
Writer is the word processor component of OpenOffice.org (OOo). In addition to the
usual features of a word processor (spelling check, thesaurus, hyphenation,
autocorrect, find and replace, automatic generation of tables of contents and indexes,
mail merge and others), Writer provides these important features:
• Templates and styles (see Chapter 3)
• Page layout methods, including frames, columns, and tables
• Embedding or linking of graphics, spreadsheets, and other objects
• Built-in drawing tools
• Master documents—to group a collection of documents into a single document
• Change tracking during revisions
• Database integration, including a bibliography database
• Export to PDF, including bookmarks (see Chapter 10)
• And many more
These features are covered in detail in the Writer Guide.
The Writer interface
The main Writer workspace is shown in Figure 60. The menus and toolbars are
described in Chapter 1 (Introducing OpenOffice.org).
Some other features of the Writer interface are covered in this chapter.
Figure 60: The main Writer workspace in Print Layout view
Status bar
The Writer status bar provides information about the document and convenient ways
to quickly change some document features.
Chapter 4 Getting Started with Writer 77