OpenOffice is great from the outside.
The options to load PSDs and save as PDFs are great.
But, to be honest, something is wrong with OO Writer and needs to be fixed.
When you get further into formatting, it turns out to be a bit of a mess.
When a table is set to be as big as the page, it is almost impossible to move it around. I have had experiences with blank pages appearing in the beginning of the document (not just the end), which seem to be fixed by reloading it. (Further WTF).
If I have a full-page image and a full-page table, it seems impossible to rearrange these so that the image appears Before the table (1st page) instead of after.
Sometimes I end up with two duplicate images placed one after the other... sometimes duplicate tables, too. Perhaps because they're a bit bigger than the page.
The layout of options is mimicking Word, except in a few critical places such as headers and footers.
I am almost sure that those options actually move to new places each time I start the program.
I have not yet figured out how to have a particular header/footer for the first page, with every page afterwards doing a different one. I've had to go into Word to do that, instead.
That is sort of justified, since the pages are done using what is clearly just tables... which leads me to a thought: Considering that page margins and headers/footers are layed out using tables, why not add features to Tables for repeating themselves on every page so that Page options are really just Table options?
Maybe also give tables a handle so that they can be dragged around/completely selected even when they're really big, which could make it possible to remove mysterious blank pages.
More stuff I found annoying:
In Word, you can specify how many columns a table cell spans.
This is quickly and easily done with the Draw Table feature by removing a line from a row.
OO doesn't need this same feature, but it needs some way to set cell Span. Right now, I have to export to Word, use Word to set the cell's Span attribute, then put it back in OO.
OO understands this perfectly, but it can't set it itself.
The UI, as I wrote above, is way too similar to Word's.
In my opinion, they are vastly different word processors. If I want to use Word, I'll use Word.
The Borders/Shading windows look exactly the same in both programs, except in OO it is harder to find.
OO suffers from UI problems like Blender's, which is that it doesn't know what it is.
Is it Word, or is it something better?
I have a lot of time on my hands so I could join their developer community and see about fixing some of it.
The problem is that I'm sure right now they are running around in circles trying to recreate Office 2007's Ribbon feature, and so going in a new direction would be considered a waste of all that work and, undoubtedly, anger various users who treat Microsoft as some kind of Messiah who we all must follow.
Thus, I would have to start a new branch... which would suck.
...Uhm... What I mean to say is, OO Writer needs work and there are better alternatives. There are a few other free open-source word processors which people really like.
Other parts of the OO suite, such as Impress, are very good... and Writer isn't bad; all word processors are annoying in some way.
OO is much better value than Office 2003, anyhow, considering that it is free.
Give it a try; you may really like it!
The options to load PSDs and save as PDFs are great.
But, to be honest, something is wrong with OO Writer and needs to be fixed.
When you get further into formatting, it turns out to be a bit of a mess.
When a table is set to be as big as the page, it is almost impossible to move it around. I have had experiences with blank pages appearing in the beginning of the document (not just the end), which seem to be fixed by reloading it. (Further WTF).
If I have a full-page image and a full-page table, it seems impossible to rearrange these so that the image appears Before the table (1st page) instead of after.
Sometimes I end up with two duplicate images placed one after the other... sometimes duplicate tables, too. Perhaps because they're a bit bigger than the page.
The layout of options is mimicking Word, except in a few critical places such as headers and footers.
I am almost sure that those options actually move to new places each time I start the program.
I have not yet figured out how to have a particular header/footer for the first page, with every page afterwards doing a different one. I've had to go into Word to do that, instead.
That is sort of justified, since the pages are done using what is clearly just tables... which leads me to a thought: Considering that page margins and headers/footers are layed out using tables, why not add features to Tables for repeating themselves on every page so that Page options are really just Table options?
Maybe also give tables a handle so that they can be dragged around/completely selected even when they're really big, which could make it possible to remove mysterious blank pages.
More stuff I found annoying:
In Word, you can specify how many columns a table cell spans.
This is quickly and easily done with the Draw Table feature by removing a line from a row.
OO doesn't need this same feature, but it needs some way to set cell Span. Right now, I have to export to Word, use Word to set the cell's Span attribute, then put it back in OO.
OO understands this perfectly, but it can't set it itself.
The UI, as I wrote above, is way too similar to Word's.
In my opinion, they are vastly different word processors. If I want to use Word, I'll use Word.
The Borders/Shading windows look exactly the same in both programs, except in OO it is harder to find.
OO suffers from UI problems like Blender's, which is that it doesn't know what it is.
Is it Word, or is it something better?
I have a lot of time on my hands so I could join their developer community and see about fixing some of it.
The problem is that I'm sure right now they are running around in circles trying to recreate Office 2007's Ribbon feature, and so going in a new direction would be considered a waste of all that work and, undoubtedly, anger various users who treat Microsoft as some kind of Messiah who we all must follow.
Thus, I would have to start a new branch... which would suck.
...Uhm... What I mean to say is, OO Writer needs work and there are better alternatives. There are a few other free open-source word processors which people really like.
Other parts of the OO suite, such as Impress, are very good... and Writer isn't bad; all word processors are annoying in some way.
OO is much better value than Office 2003, anyhow, considering that it is free.
Give it a try; you may really like it!