OpenOffice.org Training, Tips, and Ideas

Sun Report Builder Extension

Anyone who's worked with the OpenOffice.org Base report writer knows that it's....a first generation product. It works but it doesn't have huge features. So I’m particularly glad to see some work being done with reports, in the new Report Builder extension from Sun.

http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/    for all extensions

http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/reportdesign   for the Sun Report Builder

The Report Builder extension looks like it has a lot of powerful features, though not exactly easy to see how to use. I’ve spent a few hours with it and one thing that bugs me a bit is that the tab for selecting the data source for the report disappears if you click on something else first. Ease of use aside, though, it does have quite a feature set, including grouped records, sorting of records, different alignment of text fields, and calculations.

I'm going to have to spend a lot more time with this to really figure it out and give some procedures, but here's a short tour of the basics.

To use the Sun Report Writer extension, download and install it first. (Tools > Extension Manager). Then open the .odb database file for the database you want to create a report for. Choose Insert > Report, and you’ll see the report writer interface.

 

This is the tab that disappears too quickly. Select Table or another type of data, then select the actual source. Once you make that selection, the Add Field palette appears; use it to drag fields onto the appropriate section of the report.
   

Click the Sorting and Grouping icon on the toolbar to get this window where you have a lot of control over how the fields and the report behave.

 

When you’ve dragged fields onto the report, set options, inserted page numbers, and done other formatting, save the report. The report will show up in the Reports area of the main editing windows of the .odb database file.

 

---

---

Sun, StarOffice, Calc, and Forks

Thanks to Scott for tipping me off to this.

Here's  something interesting. The question: what happens when contributors and, I'll just say publishers, want different things?

The result seems to be that Openoffice.org, as Linux did, is going to have different versions. Perhaps not for the same reasons.

Kohei Yoshida wrote a long post on the history of Calc Solver, which is an optimization solver module for the Calc component of OpenOffice.org. After three years, they don't agree on some aspects of the licensing.  Now Michael Meeks has announced ooo-build (previously just for build fixes) is now a formal fork of OpenOffice  to be located at http://go-oo.org/.

The fork looks pretty interesting as it includes several things that have not make it into the official build.

Intrigue in the OpenOffice.org world.  In ten years will there be as many versions of OOo as there are of Linux?

---

---

A podcast: Solveig Talks to Barton George from Sun

I ran into Barton George at LinuxWorld in August. Barton develops relationships with the various GNU/Linux communities as well as Sun's relationship with the FSF.

Barton and I chatted about various things; read about them here  and/or listen here.

---

---

Using OpenOffice Impress for Storyboarding

I met Martin Hardee at a friend's party this past weekend, and, since it was a group of Sun employees and Sun escapees, the conversation naturally turned to work. (After a rolicking discussion of wines, gossip, Camaros, and other fun-loving topics, of course.)

Martin mentioned that he likes Impress for doing storyboarding. He has some interesting blogs on it on his Sun blog; check'em out.

Design Comics: An 0.9 Version You Can Use

"Here's how we're progressing on our project to create Comic-based storyboard templates for web designs. I've put together an example comic book storyboard using StarOffice slides and telling the story of buying ballet tickets from an imaginary web site (actually a real site but I changed the name to protect the guilty).  If you don't already have it, you can download StarOffice or OpenOffice to view and edit the slides."

Read more on this blog

Other blogs:

Examples of Comics in Designing Customer Experiences

How Customers Can Help You Develop Concepts via Comics

 

---

Trick Question: Should You Use OpenOffice.org or StarOffice?

Here's an interview with Sun's Simon Phipps about what Sun's doing with StarOffice and OpenOffice.org.

"Phipps added 'I think you’ll see growing support from Sun for the things people use.'"

This strikes me as a remarkably practical attitude:

Here's what I've experienced as an OpenOffice.org and StarOffice author and trainer.

- Business started taking off when OpenOffice.org became available, not when it was just StarOffice.
- People asked me the difference between OpenOffice.org and StarOffice, and seemed to think that OpenOffice.org was the better program.
- I encounter very few training clients who use StarOffice. One is a school that gets it essentially for free anyway, and one is a private company contracting to NASA, so perhaps they want a big company name behind their software.

OpenOffice.org, in my experience, has better name recognition and a better reputation. Like Phipps says, follow the market share.

---

Sun's OpenOffice Tshirts

Remember the cool Sun tshirts from the contest they had?

 

I don't know when it happened, but the promised tshirts are out now at Cafepress. The store name is sunopensource. Not quite as cool looking since the colors aren't there but still pretty good.

And just because I can, here's the link to my tshirts. ;>  Among others: "OpenOffice.org: Great office software. No Bills to pay."

---