Apress / http://www.apress.com/book/view/9781430215905
ISBN:978-1-4302-1-590-5

A Review

I had a chance to review this recently published book and my overall impression is very positive. The author has spent time getting to know the program and how it works.

In a series of chapters he explains each of the components and uses a project paradigm to show the common features of each of the parts of the office suite. This not only shows how the different aspects of each program work with each other, but also gives an idea of a workflow that can be used to develop similar projects. While this workflow may not work for you, it is a base to start from and sometimes getting started is the hardest part.

After starting with straightforward projects he graduates into more complex methods of not only using the programs by themselves, but also how the parts of the office suite can work together. He is very good at showing some of the more esoteric things that can trip you up.
Throughout the book he notes how OO.o differs from Microsoft Office, where they’re similar, and there’s a section that discusses some tests involving importing and exporting files between the two office suites. He finishes up by talking about some of the common extensions that can be used to make life with OpenOffice easier and more productive.

There are a couple of factual errors that I found, but those relate more to cross platform considerations and not so much with the program usage itself.

I will note that the most jarring thing I found that increased the difficulty of reading this book is the lack of “calling out” program specific references (like dialog items, etc) by the use of a different font. For me, it broke up the rhythm of reading the text. I realize that, being a programmer, that may just be a style that I am used to seeing in technical books and it could very well be normal for this kind of application centric book.

All in all I recommend this book for those people that may be familiar with the Microsoft Office suite and are contemplating switching to a freer alternative or to those that are just starting out with an office suite and want a good background in how to use the features of this type of software.

At any rate, you just gotta check out this link – it’s very cool, but a bit creepy. It’s called Big Dog and it’s a 4 legged autonomous “vehicle”. Watching the video is just a bit weird. I have to admit that the very first bit when it’s shown walking through the woods the very first thing that came to my mind was Monty Python. It just reminded me of some of the parts when they’re carrying baggage on the Quest for the Holy Grail.

It does do some amazing things and it has better balance than I do on some days.