Teaching software - one screencast at a time

150 Open Office help topics with screencasts

2007-06-06T09:01:00.000-04:00

Plan-B for OpenOffice.org celebrates fast expansion of its help topics supported by screencasts.

Within the last two weeks, we were able to grow the number of screencasts by 50%. Most new screencasts deal with paragraph formatting.

Some of the new additions to OOo writer documentation are:

Define space above paragraphs

Define space below paragraphs

Keep lines together in a paragraph or keep paragraphs together on a page

Also control orphan paragraphs and widow paragraphs

If you like fancy document formatting then you need to check out how to create drop cap letters at the beginning of a paragraph.

Plan-B grows to 100+ screencasts

2007-05-24T13:04:00.000-04:00

Read on our new blog location:

* Plan-B for OpenOffice.org grows to 100+ screencasts; progress for non technical users.
* Save the forrest, how big the MS OOXML spec really is.

OpenOffice.org 2.2 released

2007-03-30T07:27:00.000-04:00

Read the story at this blog's new home.

OpenOffice.org 2.2 released

Good bye Blogger, Welcome Wordpress

2007-03-14T16:13:00.000-04:00

I have struggled for a few month to post here. It happened after I moved to the new Blogger. It insisted that my URL's included invalid characters. Which really could not be, as I did copy them straight from the browser.

This inability to post cause a gap in my blogging journey while I had to set up the blog to continue from here.

So please be my guest and follow me to the new site. You can also pick up the RSS for the Plan-B for Software Documentation Blog.

Coffee with Michael - "Authentic Voice"

2007-01-26T18:40:00.000-05:00

I just received a nice New Year's surprise gift (I'm still struggling with writing '07 dates).

Michael Katz, a local e-newsletter marketing consultant, just published the recording of his audio seminar - "FINDING (AND USING) YOUR AUTHENTIC VOICE". He usually sells his recordings, but decided to make it a free download this month.

Michael has a really authentic voice in e-newsletter marketing and he teaches his clients to be themselves in their writing. He has started a series of "Coffee with Michael". This month he invited Lissa Bergin-Boles, a life coach from Toronto. I trust him to know something about this topic.

If you got 20 minutes and are interested in finding your authentic voice and using it in newsletters, articles or blogs, listen in.

Need Fuzzi Math?

2007-01-23T09:05:00.000-05:00

Are you in need of Fuzzy math. I do not mean the political rhetoric, but rather the mathematical concept of fuzzy logic and fuzzy math.

Now you can calculate with fuzzy math in OpenOffice.org Calc spreadsheets, thanks to the new InrecoLAN FuzzyMath component.

The component allows to use uncertain or approximate values in OpenOffice.org Calc. It means you can perform ordinary arithmetic operations and use ordinary mathematical and financial functions with uncertain values as if they are standard, or crisp, numbers. The component allows you to create and edit fuzzy numbers, use fuzzy numbers in formulas. You can also display the graphs from the fuzzy numbers and results of calculations.

Fuzzy math has strong mathematical basis. This component enhances all mathematical and financial OpenOffice.org Calc functions for which fuzziness might be reasonable.

InrecoLAN FuzzyMath is distributed under GNU General Public Licese (GPL). Source code and the newest versions of the component are available at SourceForge.

Learn more about it at www.openfuzzymath.org.

New OpenOffice.org tutorials

2007-01-16T14:09:00.000-05:00

ZDNet blogger Dana Blankenhorn points to new tutorials for OpenOffice.org by InPics.

While the tutorials are basic they are certainly helpful. Interesting is that Dana reports these have been made available with funding from the US Department of Education.

OpenOffice.org releases 2.1.0, includes presentation mode for Impress

2006-12-20T15:13:00.000-05:00

OpenOffice.org got me an early Christmas present this year. They released version 2.1.0 and included the feature I wanted most, presentation mode in Impress. Some call it multi monitor support for Impress, either way it is most practical for giving a presentation. It allows you to use your laptop and show on the external monitor, or projector, the slides, while you can see on your screen the slides plus your own notes and more. Thank You Santa, eh OpenOffice.org team!

Before I forget, OpenOffice.org 2.1.0 also includes the following:

Improved HTML export in OpenOffice.org Calc
Enhanced Microsoft Access® support for OpenOffice.org Base
Even more supported languages
Automatic notification of available updates
More extensions

Drawing Shapes for OpenOffice.org

2006-12-04T11:15:00.000-05:00

Do you need some drawing templates for OpenOffice.org Draw or Impress? I found this small but growing collection by Mark Lautman. Mark has created collections for Computer and Network Symbols, Home Entertainment, Office Layout, Furniture and more.

Mark's Drawings are easy to use. Just download the documents he offers and click on a shape, copy, paste and use it as you need. These come in handy if you are illustrating your Impress presentation.

Way to go Mark.

Office collaboration server O3Spaces

2006-11-22T16:50:00.000-05:00

Dutch firm O3Spaces B.V. of a program that lets OpenOffice and StarOffice users collaborate on office documents. O3Spaces is fully integrated in OpenOffice.org, so users do not need to leave OpenOffice to perform most functions. This is equivalent to MS SharePoint for MS Office.

O3Spaces is a cross platform collaboration server with integration in the desktop, OpenOffice.org and a browser interface. In this environment a team stores their documents, if ODF or MS Office format, on a central server and creates versions with every change saved. users can receive notifications if any document they have in their workspace changes.

With O3spaces users can share documents on different OS platforms, such as Linux, Windows or Mac OS X. In addition the server provides shared calendars for scheduling meetings. A workflow engine can route documents to different users for review or approval.

All documents are secured by access rights so only authorized users can access them. The user management can be integrated with any LDAP server.

The version for self installation, the professional edition, costs 295 Euros (~ $375) , for five-users. A 100-user license costs 5,900 Euros (~ $7,600). O3Spaces is also available as an on-demand version or hosted application service.

Plan-B for OpenOffice.org - support for non-technical users

2006-11-21T17:39:00.000-05:00

On November 14th, Conficio (my company) released "Plan-B for OpenOffice.org" a support website for non-technical users. The release is a public beta test and a major milestone in our work.

In our press release titled "Plan-B™ for OpenOffice.org - The innovative support service for non-technichal users - starts public beta test" we write:

Plan-B™ for OpenOffice.org is the first website that creates a comprehensive documentation of the application suite based on visual instructions. Kaj Kandler, founder of Conficio, is convinced "Non-technical users learn better with visual instructions like short videos." He says, "We are very excited to offer this new technology to the fast growing user base of OpenOffice.org, the free open source office suite. Plan-B™ for OpenOffice.org especially benefits users who migrate from other office suites." This service, with its easy to understand help topics, supports the on demand needs of users at all levels of expertise.

I'd like to encourage all my readers to check out this new service. I'd appreciate if you would leave a comment on this blog or send me a message through the feedback on every page that contains a screencast.

Expect me to explain the various features and benefits in the next few weeks on this blog.

And by all means, register at Plan-B for OpenOffice.org if you find the service helpful.

IDC, launches OpenOffice.org survey

2006-11-17T08:42:00.000-05:00

IDC and OpenOffice.org have launched a survey to better understand the usage of Openoffice.org (now closed). IDC is a leading IT market analysis firm. This survey will analyze who is using the Openoffice.org suite and how.

IDC and OpenOffice.org will share the results of the survey with the public 3 month after conclusion. I think the OpenOffice.org community will welcome the feedback and use it to define the future direction of the productivity suite.

To attract more participants, IDC enters everybody into a raffle of 5 x $100 prizes. I'd encourage all my readers to take the survey right now (It's too late, now).

And the Winner is - OpenOffice.org

2006-11-11T06:27:00.000-05:00

Linux Journal, has announced it 2006 Editors' choice awards. In three categories OpenOffice.org won the top choice.

OpenOpffice.org wins in the category office suite. "OpenOffice.org delivers just the right combination of openness, power and similarity to Microsoft Office that it provides the features and familiarity people want in an office suite without the drawbacks of proprietary document format or proprietary code." write the editors of Linux Journal. They also note it is by far the most popular office suite behind MS Office.

OpenOffice.org Calc wind the category spreadsheet. They write "if you're really serious about doing spreadsheet work, your best bet is with OpenOffice.org Calc." Honorable mention in this category goes to EIOffice and KSpread. Interestingly they don't mention neither Google nor other web based applications. Well they are probably not close enough to Linux.

The third category win goes to OpenOffice.org Impress as editors' choice of presentation software. They state that offering "that optimal balance of features, power and familiarity for those who want to migrate from Microsoft Office" did convince them to prefer it over KPresenter or the EIOffice presentation component.

The word processor choice went to AbiWord. Often a word processor is all one needs and AbiWord apparently does a good job in that. LinuxJounal mentions that "AbiWord has all of what most people will need in a word processor and then some, without the bloat and long load times of OpenOffice.org Writer". As LinuxJournal reviewd version 2.0.3, this category might change next year, as version OpenOffice.org 2.0.4 has much improved load times.

Congratulations to OpenOffice.org and the development team. I think these awards are well deserved.

Writing sheet music with OpenOffice.org

2006-11-04T13:43:00.000-05:00

Are you a musician or a music teacher? Do you have the need to write some sheet music? why not use OpenOffice.org?

Did you know there is a simplified notation for music, called LilyPond. It is a simple system to describe the notes and also a program to typeset the notes as sheet music. Thanks to Dave Philips from LinuxJournal I now know how to write sheet music with OpenOffice.org.

Dave demonstrates the use of Samual Hartman's open source project OOoLilyPond.
Sam's project is a set of macros that integrate LilyPond into OpenOffice.org and is tested with OOo 2.0.2 and 2.0.4.

Thanks Dave and Sam!

All or Nothing with Vista?

2006-11-04T10:38:00.000-05:00

I just received a nice message from Intuit about "Decisions ahead on Vista Operating System". It states "Only QuickBooks 2007 will run on the Vista Operating System, as prior versions of QuickBooks were developed on pre-Vista technology and will not run properly on Vista."

That is rather surprising to me for two reasons. Isn't Microsoft the save bet that invests heavily in backward compatibility? Did Microsoft abandon this principle with Vista? The other reason is that using QuickBooks means I get constant updates. This is even true with my version that is a couple of years old now. So if Microsoft usually does preserve backward compatibility and Intuit has the software update process refined. What can be the reason for only a new version running on a new Version of Windows?

As a matter of fact they are serious that you need to upgrade "We know as a practical matter that many of you are supporting clients on previous versions of QuickBooks. For now the bottom line is that a user who upgrades to Vista will need to run QuickBooks 2007."

From where I stand this is a reason to not upgrade to Vista and may be buy my next PC without it all together. I'm also thinking hard about locking myself to Intuit's fine products if they are forcing me to upgrade because I upgrade something else.

Do you find this acceptable?

OpenOffice.org in Colleges and Universities

2006-10-26T11:46:00.000-04:00

OpenOffice.org is a popular office suite. As it is open source and available for free it is very attractive to institutions that want to save some money. This is especially true for institutions of higher education, that also want to save some money for students.

How popular is OpenOffice.org at the nations colleges and universities? That question has been researched by Benjamin Horst a NY based open source advocate. If your college uses OpenOffice and it is not on the list, drop Ben a comment.

Also, Digg this story so more people read about it and we get an even better list.

OpenOffice.org 2.0.4 released

2006-10-13T15:35:00.000-04:00

Highly anticipated, the next minor release of OpenOffice.org is out officially today. You can download release 2.0.4 here.

It is mostly a bug fix release. However it brings support for several new local data such as Namibian Afrikaans, Tigrigina Eritrea, Amharic Ethiopia, Tajik Tajikistan, Kirghiz, and Farsi Iran. OpenOffice.org is now capable to format locale dependent information such as date and time in these languages.

Release 2.0.4 improves the integration with KDE, using now system wide parameters correctly. Apple OS X users will like the better integration of native fonts into applications.

Calc became a function "INFO" that allows to ask for system data and makes spreadsheets more compatible with Microsoft Excel. An improve HTML import makes is more likely for Calc to read HTML formatted tables correctly.

Impress got a new feature to save shapes as images directly from the context menu.

OpenOffice.org can now also import LaTeX formatted files. Also this release lays the ground work for OpenOffice.org extensions to be come popular and easier to manage.

And last but not least, OpenOffice.org release 2.0.4 is supposed to be wicked fast at start up.

I'll report on my experience after I have used the new release a few days.

Speed is essential for OpenOffice.org

2006-10-12T21:55:00.000-04:00

Apparently speed is a major concern for the development team of OpenOffice.org. They were not satisfied with the time it takes to load large spreadsheets from Excel into OpenOffice.org Calc. So they improved Calc to load large spreadsheets faster by a factor of 15+.

When they say large spreadsheet, they mean really large, 25 megabytes, 100 sheets, 1 million cells and hundred thousand formulas. A change in the algorithm used brought down the times from ~39 minutes to 2:37 on a 1.8 MHz Pentium IV. On a Dual Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 275 with more memory, the time reduced from ~28 minutes to 43 seconds, almost a gain of factor 40.

Unfortunately, the improvements will only be included in Release 2.1, targeted for end of the year. Hope for a nice Christmas present.

Danish study confirms saving with OpenOffice.org

2006-10-09T22:17:00.000-04:00

Switching to OpenOffice.org could save the Danish government $21 million over an upgrade to Office 2007. This is the conclusion of a study conducted by Ramboll Management an IT consultancy. The report was commissioned by the Danish Open Source Business Association.

The Danish Parliament decided on June 2 that starting 2008 all documents exchanged with its citizens must be based on open standard file formats. The report compares the two options of upgrading to Microsoft Office 2007 with OpenXML and OpenOffice with the OpenDocument Format (also known as ISO 26300 standard).

The report looks at the cost over five years, including training and file conversion. The report concludes that on a strict cost basis, sticking with installed Offixe XP and Office 2003 and using a plug-in to load and save ODF documents would be the least expensive option. However, switching to OpenOffice, which uses ODF as its native file format, is little more costly. While upgrading to MS Office 2007 would cost additional $21 million.

Saving on Software in 2056

2006-10-09T21:52:00.000-04:00

Scott Carpenter published a rather sad satire about "5 ways to save on your monthly software rental bill in the year 2056".

Scott looks into the rear view mirror at current trends of monetizing software not with an up-front one time license but with a monthly or annual license fee. Well, as many of us know, commercial software does not really have a one-time fee anyhow. After a number of years the pressure to upgrade to the new version becomes so strong that there is no escaping. Did you know that Microsoft's assisted support for Outlook 98 ended on January 16, 2004. This is barely five years after inception and not atypical.

So enjoy Scott carpenter's satire and see the grain of truth he is conveying.

OpenOffice.org 2.0.4 late but in a hurry

2006-10-07T21:21:00.000-04:00

It appears the next minor release is a bit delayed. According to the roadmap the next minor release with bug fixes and smaller improvements was planned for September.

However, apparently release candidate 3 of the release does turn some heads with its improvements in speed. Some beta testers can't but rave about its quick startup time.

Sounds rather good to me. I can't wait.

The new chart module gets noticed

2006-10-06T21:38:00.000-04:00

I have recently reported on the new OpenOffice.org chart module and its improvements. Looks like Linux.com has also noticed the ongoing development of better charts for Calc. They have some nice screen shots of the chart preview, the ability to add regression curves, and the new flexible data ranges.

Unfortunately, they confirm the uncertain release schedule.

OpenOffice.org Template and Clipart Contest

2006-10-03T22:18:00.000-04:00

Worldlabel.com sponsors a contest for template and clipart held by the the Openoffice.org Documentation Project.

While OpenOffice.org (OOo) has reached a functional parity with the market leader in most categories that matter, it has not developed the wealth of templates for documents from faxes to letters, presentations and classic calculation projects such as business plans and budgets or travel expenses. It also lacks a great deal of creative clipart for newsletters and memos or simple product fliers.

The OOo documentation project has put the challenge to the many talented designers
and business people to share their creations. All entires must be licenses under Public Documentation License or LGPL. Entries must be posted to the documentation project by October 31st. Prizes of up to $750, sponsored by Worldlabel.com will be awarded for the best entries by December 1st.

See the contest home page for further details.

OpenOffice.org supports extensions like Firefox

2006-09-27T07:30:00.000-04:00

A major theme at the OpenOffice.org Conference (OOoCon 2006) was the support for extensions. The OpenOffice developers envy the success of extensions in Firefox, NetBeans and Eclipse and want to replicate it.

OpenOffice has had for a long time a component architecture called Universal Network Objects (UNO). This architecture allows to mix components written in different languages, register them and allow each one to contribute to the overall functionality of the application. So far creation of such a component and its integration was a bit cumbersome.

The next minor release (2.0.4) will add common functionality, such as handling of license for extensions and the ability to install the extension for all or only for one user on a PC.

For the next major release (2.1) the development team introduces a new format that allows the components to be installed with one click, versioned and managed as extensions. It also will be possible to update extensions online and automatically search for updates. In addition extensions can require dependencies on other components. This will lead to a much more stable application and extension eco system.

OpenOffice.org 2.1 is planned for December 2006. I expect the first extensions to be out in Spring 2007. I look forward to such extensions. This move will set the bar lower for members of the community to add the single function they need and to contribute to the application as a whole. It also does work hand in hand with the contest for templates and clipart. This will make the OpenOffice.org suite more complete and more attractive to new users.

Next generation OOo Chart

2006-09-07T06:56:00.000-04:00

The OpenOffice.org development team is hard at work to make its office productivity suite better than ever.

Bruce Byfield reviews an OpenOffice.org milestone release and particularly its charting component. Although the component is not yet scheduled for any release date, Bruce does describe in detail the many changes and enhancements of the chart wizard for OpenOffice.org Calc. I guess it will be far into 2007 before we see the fruits of this work.