Love OOO by the way. Run it my private computer.

/P

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.

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.