Help a Solver Succeed – OpenOffice.org
In today’s installment of “Help a Solver Succeed” (HASS), where we ask InnoCentive experts to provide resources that they think might be helpful to you in solving Challenges, Marilyn Toomey introduces OpenOffice.org.
As a member of Client Services, I spend a lot of time scanning and organizing the many submissions received for our posted Challenges. When asked to blog about a service or technology that might be of interest to our Solver community, my first thought was “OOOOOOO”….. sort of like when you are excited and don’t know what to say!! In this case, I know exactly what to say, so I’m going to shorten my “OOOOOOO” to OOo (OpenOffice.org) which is the official name of the open source office suite called Open Office.org.
What is OpenOffice.org?
I was first introduced to OpenOffice.org by my husband and we have used it on our home computer ever since. It’s a free downloadable suite of applications that includes a document editor, a spreadsheet, presentation software, a graphics tool and a database. I know some of our Solvers are using OpenOffice.org as some of our submissions come in with a .odt extension. While Open Office defaults to saving documents using the .odt extension, it also can read and write files that are created by many existing software products. By using the Save As command from the tool bar, a document can be saved in various formats that can be read by all the popular office suites. It’s easy to learn and can be used for any purpose by just about anyone. There is one interface where you can start what you want ….a new document, new spreadsheet, new presentation, new drawing or new database from the same dropdown list. In addition to offering great products and applications, there is a whole open source community developing improvements and modifications to the code. Anyone can report a bug or offer enhancements. It all seems to be a meritocracy so start contributing and you will get recognized.
Did I mention, it’s free?
When I first started using computers I used “free” software to sell the expensive hardware we were offering so I am sort of attached at the hip to “free” software. The price is right. You can find the download at http://www.openoffice.org. OpenOffice.org is in its third version, has always been reliable when I have used it, and is currently celebrating its ninth birthday! It works on multiple platforms and is available in 80 different languages!
Another great free tool
Before writing this blog I was familiar with the OpenOffice.org document writer and spreadsheet. I didn’t know they had a graphics tool and so I was also going to suggest XnView, which can be downloaded at http://www.xnview.com/en/download.html. XnView is also a free download for private, non-commercial, or educational use. I really enjoy using this graphics tool for my photographs and would suggest it to all, even if you’re already using the graphics tool in OpenOffice.org. It’s a pretty cool tool to have in your pocket. However, I am now going to explore the Draw tool in OpenOffice.org to see what it has to offer! I’d love to hear from other people who have tried this application – please let me know if you are an OpenOffice user and if you use the Draw feature!!!
Marilyn
Tags: Client Services, Help a Solver Succeed, OpenOffice.org, Solver Resources
November 20th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
Hi Marilyn -
I use the Office One suite from OpenOffice.org for (almost) all of my work now. I have been a Linux fan for several years, and have used the GIMP graphics program quite often as well, although its current form is not for the faint of heart or the beginner.
OpenOffice.org developed and grew from some of the earlier offerings that came with the various versions of Linux, such as StarOffice. I have always found them extremely powerful and versatile application suites in ways that enable me to be far more productive and effective, and I strongly recommend them to anyone.
Anyone who has been watching cannot help but to have noticed that as the Windows OS has gone through its changes it has become more and more like Linux in numerous ways. The limitations that were built into the Windows applications of the MS Office suite, however, still remain and have become something of a hindrance when cross-application collaboration is needed. OpenOffice.org goes a long way to overcome those weaknesses.
I have yet to probe the graphics capabilities of the OpenOffice suite to any extent. I found several years ago that a simple, cheap graphics program called “Neopaint” easily and conveniently handles ALL of my graphics needs, from generating simple lines graphs to complex, hand-drawn three-dimensional molecular structures. I have used the original 16-bit version that I got for my old 486-33 almost exclusively until recently, when I was very pleased to find an updated and enhanced version available online. It is an amazingly effective program and well worth checking out for anyone who wants to be able to generate graphics easily and quickly.
OpenOffice.org also has the capability to save files in .pdf format, by the way, which brings me to a suggestion that would be very helpful for Innocentive to adopt. As a solver, I would like to generate a hardcopy working document of challenge details for any project in which I open a project room. To date this has meant that I have to go through a routine series of copy-paste steps that is time-consuming and which on more than one occasion has resulted in missed information and lost data. I also find, unfortunately, that images generally cannot be copied from the Innocentive pages and pasted into a document in the Office One writer application. This could be due to the particular combination of Firefox Portable 3 and Office One sWriter that I am using…I haven’t investigated that yet. Be that as it may, I would find it extremely helpful if one could simply download a .pdf document of the challenge details after one has opened a project room for a particular challenge.
Thanks for bringing others’ attention to OpenOffice.org with this article.
November 21st, 2009 at 3:33 am
Happy to see this post on OOo.
OpenOffice also provides an Application Programmer interface (API) which is an extremely powerful tool in the hands of a programmer. A programmer can extend the features and capabilities of OpenOffice.org. I recently built for a solution seeker (at another site) an OOo add-on that enables an author using the OO Writer to setup a list of keywords and phrases either by entering them or extracting from any website. The addon then keeps displaying the selected list of keywords along with realtime statistics on how many times each one finds a place in the document the author is creating in the OO Writer, flagging with a green tick those that reach a desired keyword density.
Regarding boog’s point about the challenge detail page in Innocentive, I want to say that I have also felt exactly the same way. I usually use the “Save As” option of the browser and choose “Plain HTML” to get the text part of the challenge and either save the pictures separately or keep going back to the site online for detailed study. A PDF version would greatly help. For security/IPR purposes Innocentive could consider password protecting, or digital signature. Alternatively, an agreement to the terms of license permitting download of PDF copy of challenge detail could be obtained from the solver.
November 21st, 2009 at 9:44 am
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November 21st, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Greetings, I would like to know if there is some spanish version of OpenOffice. Thanks!
November 23rd, 2009 at 3:48 am
Another great tool is http://www.socialtext.com/products/spreadsheets.php, providing distributed spreadsheets for multiple people to work on the same numbers. Check it out!
Love OOO by the way. Run it my private computer.
/P