Using Open Source, Part 1: OpenOffice Writer
by Doug Anger, Technology Columnist
This week's column begins a short series of articles on using Open Source software. There are several factors in deciding whether to use any software product and in this series, I'll walk you through the major ones. This week, we begin with OpenOffice Writer.
OpenOffice.org is a complete, free suite of office programs. It will run on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. OpenOffice consists of five main programs: a word processor (Writer), a spreadsheet (Calc), a presentation program (Impress), a drawing program (Draw), and a database program (Base).
About OpenOffice Writer

Writer is similar to Microsoft Word and can even open and save Word documents as well as its own OpenDocument Text Format. It can also export your documents to PDF and HTML. It is more than powerful enough for typing papers, taking notes, and other things college students typically use word processing software for.
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For more advanced users, OpenOffice makes typesetting longer documents (like a thesis or book) easy. Documents typed with Writer's pre-defined styles or styles created by the user can automatically generate a table of contents that will stay up to date when the locations of chapters and sections change. Since styles can be modified at any time, this also allows the user to change the style of an entire document of any length in a matter of seconds.
Writer can generate an index automatically that will keep track of what pages tagged words appear on, making an index almost work-free.
In addition, OpenOffice has a built-in bibliography database that will keep track of sources. Once a source is entered in the database, it becomes available throughout OpenOffice, regardless of which document is on the screen. Adding a citation is a simple as choosing Bibliography Entry... from a menu and choosing the source you want. Writer can handle the bibliography automatically in the same manner as it handles the table of contents and index.
Should You Switch?
OpenOffice comes as a single suite, not a collection of separate applications. For this reason, any decision to switch would be better made after looking at the whole OpenOffice suite. You can do this on your own or wait for next week's column to learn about OpenOffice Calc.
In terms of cost, OpenOffice (free) is a sure winner, unless you can get some company to pay you to use their product. OpenOffice also lacks the security vulnerabilities of Microsoft Office.
Like most open source software however, OpenOffice comes with no warranty and no support line. If you can't figure something out, your options are most likely limited to the built-in help system (which is actually pretty good), searching the Internet, and calling a tech-savvy friend.
In the case of Writer, you won't have to spend a lot of time converting all your existing documents to Writer's format because it will handle Microsoft Word files. However, if you start using OpenOffice and then decide to switch to Microsoft Office, you will have to convert your files back into .doc format. Writer can do this, but if you have a lot of files, it will take a while.
If you decide to try OpenOffice, you can get it by going to http://www.openoffice.org/, clicking on the get openoffice.org button, and following the instructions for your platform.

Stay tuned for Using Open Source, Part 2: OpenOffice Calc next week.
