Linux Dummies 9th

218
Part III: Getting Things Done
Table 12-1 (continued)
Button or Item
Nonprinting
Characters On/Off
Zoom
Help
What You Can Do
Show all spaces, returns at the ends of paragraphs, and
other characters that you don’t normally see in your
documents.
Alter how large the document appears on-screen.
Open the OpenOffice.org Help dialog box.
The Formatting toolbar is directly below the standard toolbar in a default
OpenOffice.org setup — though not on all distributions. You can remove the
Formatting bar at any time by choosing View➪Toolbars➪Formatting.
This toolbar allows you to click buttons and expand drop-down lists that represent
standard word-processing functions such as styles, fonts, font sizes,
and formatting instructions. Most features on this bar are identical to what
you see in most modern word processors. The button for paragraph background
formatting is the only one that’s particularly unusual. It allows you
to change the background color of the paragraph, which can produce some
interesting results.
This toolbar actually changes depending on what you’re doing. If the cursor is
within a table, for example, the Formatting bar contains useful buttons for
working with tables.
Directly below the Formatting toolbar in a default OpenOffice.org setup is the
ruler. All modern word processors offer this item, which marks (for example)
the margins and tabs of your document in the measuring system of your
choice. To change the units of measurement you’re using, right-click the ruler
to open the Measurements dialog box.
Oh, yeah — that big, blocked-off white space that takes up most of the
window is the Document area. That’s where you actually work on your documents!
Just click in there and start typing. You can also access a Formatting
shortcut menu by right-clicking in the document section.
Working with Writer files
OpenOffice.org Writer can work with lots of different file types. This allows
you to create documents that can be used with many different types of wordprocessing
systems.