Now that you have successfully installed your Mandrake Linux distribution, it is time to attack serious stuff: the tools you use everyday. In this chapter, we will cover basic stuff and applications, that is StarOffice, general Internet use and multimedia applications such as XMMS. If you feel you already master those applications, you may simply skip this chapter. Then again, you might learn a few tips.
StarOffice was conceived by Marco Börries in 1985 and was so successful with this office suite that he decided to offer it to a wider range of users, that is GNU/Linux, MacOS and Windows users alike. In this chapter, we will refer to the 5.2 version, which is different from the openoffice suite developed by Sun Microsystems and the open-source community. The latter, however, will be completely GPL when fully developed, whereas the one we describe is still in binary form, therefore proprietary. This may mean absolutely nothing to you. If you feel dazzled, please refer to the chapter The GNU General Public License.
StarOffice can be used for many purposes. It acts as a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) text-editor, a spreadsheet, a presentation software, etc. And you can even retrieve your mail from it. Now that you know what StarOffice can do for you, let us describe its basic utilities and features.
As you can see in the StarOffice desktop image, it combines almost all the software pieces you might need in an every day work. However, for the purpose of this book, we will only talk about the text editor.
Let us go through the menu in order for you to grasp StarOffice's capabilities. But first, to launch StarOffice, click on your KDE menu icon, choose the Office sub-menu StarOffice. You can also create a symbolic link on your desktop. To do so, right-click anywhere on your desktop and choose Create New->Link to Application.
![]() | For GNOME users, the method is very similar. Right-click anywhere on your desktop and choose New->Launcher, type in the Name, Comment, Command (full path) and make sure to choose the Application type. Then, select the appropriate Icon. |
Then, write the name of the application in the dialog box followed by the extension .desktop and choose an icon by pressing on the default one. Also, in the Execute tab, you must set the path for the application to be launched. It should be:
/home/your_user_name/office52/soffice |
![]() | A little comment about keyboard shortcuts... Many of us are still fascinated by this little two-or-three button thing called the mouse. Keyboard shortcuts allow to execute simple commands and apply them for specific meanings, hence leaving your hands on the keyboard and accelerating the rhythm at which you can make your work progress. As an example, Ctrl-O opens a document, Ctrl-C copies a piece of document which you want to copy elsewhere, etc. Browse through the menus, you will see that shortcuts are set for most major functions, |
It enables simple commands such as Open, Close, Print, etc. This is probably the mostly used menu since it holds the utmost basic commands. It is also through this menu that you access the latest opened documents.
Since it contains the famous Cut & Paste commands, it is also largely utilized. The very practical Find & Replace option is also found in this menu. Ctrl-H pops up this familiar window.
![]() | Notice the little underscore under each menu item. This is another rapid way to access commands. For example, Alt-E (Edit Menu) and the b character is a shortcut for your address book. |
The Zoom, Toolbars, Nonprinting character are within this handy menu. If you have the unfortunate bad luck of owning a 14'' screen, you will surely appreciate the zoom option... By configuring your tool bar, if you are a mouse aficionado, remove the buttons you never use and replace them with more often-utilized ones. As for the Nonprinting character, it facilitates basic letter and document layout, in order to be very precise.
![]() | By clicking on the the little arrow next to the style-level window, you open a tree view of StarOffice-based utilities, as well as your complete computer tree structure. Therefore, you can access your files through the Explorer option, carefully selecting your /home/your_user_name directory or which ever directory you wish to access. |
This menu holds very practical features such as Manual Break, Headers & Footers and the Indexes. The first one is often used when you prepare documents in which you want the sections to start at the top of a page, not halfway through. Note that Ctrl+Enter gives you the same result. The Headers & Footers option avoids repeating the same document title at the beginning or end of a document, which is, you will admit, tedious to say the least. When you are responsible for medium-to-large documents, you might want to index them and create a table of contents, which you can create through the index sub-menu.
![]() | To insert tables, files or images, this is the menu. Alt+I and the t character pops up a dialog window in which you choose the number of table rows and columns you wish to insert. |
This menu contains essential formatting features, such as Character, Page and Paragraph. The first one applies font, style and size parameters, amongst others, to your document. Click on the different tabs and you will find font effects, hyperlinks and background features. In the Paragraph sub-menu, you determine background colors, indent and spacing, tabs, etc. The Page sub-menu, as its name clearly states, allows general and more advanced page formatting.
A writer's best friends reside in this menu: Spellcheck, Thesaurus and Options. When you select the Spellcheck option (or F7), you launch a corrector which indicates what words are badly spelled. Note that the language must properly be set before trying to correct a document. The changes, if necessary (i.e.: you want to correct an English document but the French dictionary is active: mission impossible). As for the Thesaurus option, it also pops a window from which you can select same-family words or even synonyms.
The Options menu, however, is the most important personalization tool. There, you can set the correct paths for opening directories directly instead of having to browse your entire tree to find a file.
This one lets you organize your document windows like you desire, either in cascade fashion, vertically or horizontally setting one next to the other.
Finally, this is the one to go to if you need specific help on anything concerning StarOffice. Say you have a question about hyperlinks. Just select that topic in the index. If you are not accustomed to software such as the one we are describing, maybe you should enable the tips and extended tips. Once you remember the operations you do everyday, however, you will soon want to disable them since they can get annoying...