Taming OpenOffice.org

The second edition of Getting Started with OpenOffice.org 3 (updated for OOo3.2) has been published. PDFs of individual chapters are here. Editable files (ODT) are coming soon to that page, along with ZIP files containing all the chapter files in either PDF or ODT form. A printed book is also coming soon, along with downloadable PDF and ODT files of the full compiled book.

A complete first draft of my book Self-Publishing using OpenOffice.org 3 Writer is now available in PDF (3.5MB). If you want a review copy, please contact me directly and ask for one.

I hope to get the website copy of the book updated and ready for online comments within the next few days.

You can help by telling me about anything that

• doesn’t make sense
• is out of logical order
• is covered in not enough detail
• is covered in too much detail for the audience of the book
• needs more or better illustrations
• is missing from the book but you think should be covered
• is covered in two places but should be combined into one place
• or anything else that you think would make the book more useful for the audience

At this point, please confine your comments to the content, not the inconsistencies of formatting or screen captures or bad page breaks or similar, most of which I am well aware of but unwilling to spend time fixing until I’m confident that I won’t be rewriting or deleting whole sections.

Please don’t buy from Amazon.com the three OOo3.0 books by the OOoAuthors team (Getting Started, Writer Guide, and Impress Guide) being sold there, because they have been republished by someone not associated with OOoAuthors nor (as far as I can tell) associated with OpenOffice.org in any way.

This is legal under the Creative Commons license we are using, but it does put money into someone’s pocket when they haven’t contributed. The small amount of profits from sale of the Getting Started and the Writer guides through Lulu.com (see sidebar on right) will be distributed in ways to benefit the OpenOffice.org community, though the group has not yet decided just what those ways will be.

Why aren’t we selling those books ourselves through Amazon.com? It’s a long story, involving extra costs and hassles related to Friends of OpenDocument Inc (the actual publishers of the printed books) not being a US-based organisation, and the technical requirements for book files for on-demand printing and distribution beyond Lulu.com. None of this is insurmountable, but it takes time and effort away from writing new material and keeping older material up to date.

The first draft of the OpenOffice.org 3.x Calc Guide chapters is now complete, and some chapters have been reviewed once. I have updated them to include the new features for OOo3.1. The draft is on the Documentation wiki (though not all the latest updates are on the wiki yet) and on the OOoAuthors website (PDFs of the individual chapters). PDFs should go on the Documentation Project’s website within a few days.

Today I finally found time to finish the first draft of Chapter 4 (Charts and Graphs) of the Calc Guide. I have also finished a first draft of Chapter 3 (Formulas and Functions) and revisions to Chapter 10 (Using Styles and Templates in Calc). Reviewers are sought for these and other draft chapters of the book, which are on the OOo Documentation wiki; I hope to get Chapter 4 there soon. You can also get .odt files for review purposes by joining OOoAuthors.

I haven’t been making progress on this book as quickly as I’d like over the past few weeks, because I’ve been distracted by buying a new house, battening down the apartment for a cyclone (which passed us by unscathed, fortunately), and packing to move.

It’s now official: I’ve been elected as Co-Lead of the Documentation Project at OpenOffice.org.

Many of you will recall that in late November 2007, I announced that after 5 years with the OpenOffice.org project, it was time for me to move on to something else, so I ws winding down my activities by the send of that year. Then in March 2008, I admitted that I was still involved, though not in the (unofficial) role of lead editor at OOoAuthors, the group producing the user guides for OpenOffice.org.

In my new role, I expect to be mainly continuing what I’ve been doing all along: overseeing the production of the user guides. I hope I’ll be a bit more disciplined in tracking and scheduling and other project-management activities—things I know perfectly well how to do, but usually don’t get around to. I also plan to start blogging regularly on OOo-related topics on this website… as well as finishing the book I started writing and publishing here.