Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours |
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Hour 8: Formatting Your Document |
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In this hour, you learn how to format your document. You'll want to have a document open to use for the examples that are given (or just type in some text). The figures show sample text that has been typed in to demonstrate what is being described.
Formatting determines what fonts are used and how they're displayed, how lines and paragraphs are aligned, and how the page is arranged.
More advanced formatting tools are described in Hour 9, "Using Advanced Formatting Tools," but you'll quickly see that StarOffice provides a full set of formatting options. They're even easy to use! Most of the StarOffice basic formatting options are the same as those in Microsoft Word or Corel WordPerfect.
The font in which a document is written gives it a certain feel when you read it; the font can make the document casual or business-like, or it can make the document easier or harder to read.
Fonts can be loosely grouped into fixed-spacing fonts, which are often used to indicate computer output, and proportional fonts, which are much easier to read. Also, fonts can be serif--with little ledges like the text you're reading now--or sans-serif (French for "without serif"). Sans-serif fonts are good for headlines, but are considered more tiring for large amounts of text.
The term font usually refers to the typeface, such as Times, Helvetica, or Courier. Other characteristics of the typeface--character attributes--are normally defined separately because they are used much more frequently.
A font can be applied to an entire document, to just a paragraph, or even to a character. For example, the entire document might be in the Times font, but words that describe computer commands can be in Courier font.
Before you enter text, you can select a font for the text that you enter. After you've entered text in a document, you can select text that you want to appear in a different font and apply that font.
To apply a new font to selected text, follow these steps:
1. Select the text to which you want to apply a font by either clicking and dragging the mouse pointer, or by holding down the Shift key and using the arrow keys.
2. Choose Character from the Format menu. The Character dialog box appears (see Figure 8.1).
Tip - You can also select a font from the drop-down list in the Object toolbar, if that toolbar is displayed. However, you're about to explore the other character formatting options, so use the dialog box for now. |
3. Select a font from the Font list. The Preview window in the dialog box shows you how your selected text looks in the font that you selected from the list.
4. If you want the font to be sized differently than the surrounding text, choose a size from the Size list.
5. Choose OK to apply the font and close the dialog box.
Text sizes are displayed in points, a printers' term you'll become familiar with as you use StarOffice. Standard text is sized at either 10 or 12 points; headlines usually start at 14 points and go up from there.
Figure
8.1
The Character dialog box enables
you to set characteristics for a selected block of text
Tip - An inch is 72 points; so, if you want a headline that is 1/2-inch high on a printed page, for example, use a 36-point font. The size of fonts onscreen rarely corresponds to their correct point size. |
You'll probably only set a new font for headlines, captions, or certain words in your documents, but other font characteristics are much more commonly used.
The font settings that you'll work with continually are those such as bold, italic, and underline.
While you're in the Character dialog box, you can see which options are available in the font that you select by looking in the Style list. If you choose a specialized font, for example, italic might not be available.
You can select any of these styles, and then press OK to apply them to selected text. If no text is selected, they apply to any new text that you enter at the current cursor position.
When you're typing in text, however, it's tedious to open this dialog box and select a style just to set a word in italic type. Instead, you'll want to use one of the following methods for the three most common font settings (bold, italic, and underline):
Select the text to which you want to apply the setting. Then choose one of the icons on the Object toolbar for bold, italic, or underline (see Figure 8.2).
Figure
8.2
The bold, italic, and underline icons on the Object toolbar are a fast way to
change font settings.
You can also select the text to be altered and press Ctrl+B for bold, Ctrl+I for italic, or Ctrl+U for underline. Pressing the same keys a second time reverses the setting. (If bold or italic is not available in the current font, nothing happens when you press these keys.)
The Effects section of the Font tab in the Character dialog box includes the following options:
Outline
Shadow
Underline
Strikethrough
StarOffice can apply these effects to any font that you select.
If you want to see the more advanced settings, open the Character dialog box and choose the Font Effects tab. (See Figure 8.3.) Here, you can set things such as superscript and subscripts, double underlining, small caps, and blinking text (which everyone prefers you don't use).
Following are some examples to show you what these effects can do:
1. Select a block of text in your document.
2. Open the Character dialog box from the Format menu.
3. Choose the Font Effects tab (this example works with whatever font you're using).
4. Click on the Small caps option in the More effects area.
5. Choose OK to apply your changes. The result is shown in Figure 8.4.
Figure
8.3
The Font Effects tab contains many advanced options for controlling the appearance
of your documents.
Figure
8.4
You can apply small caps to any
font.
Now select the last few characters of the text that you marked as small caps:
1. Open the Character dialog box from the Format menu and select the Font Effects tab.
2. Select the Super radio button in the Position area of the dialog box. The Position options area becomes active.
3. Uncheck the Automatic check box.
4. Change the Raise/Lower field to 75% (raise the superscript).
5. Change the Relative font size to 100% (make the superscript the same size as regular text).
6. Choose OK to apply your changes to the selected text. The result is shown in Figure 8.5.
Figure
8.5
The Font Effects tab enables you to define exactly how superscript text is sized.
Another setting you can apply to a selected block of text, such as a word or sentence, is a hyperlink. You can create a link as if your document were being viewed on the Web. Any StarOffice document can contain hyperlinks.
Caution - If you export a document with hyperlinks (see Hour 5, "Importing and Exporting StarOffice Documents"), the hyperlinks won't appear in the other word processor. |
To add a hyperlink to a block of text, follow these steps:
1. Select the word or sentence that you want to be linked to an URL.
2. Choose Character from the Format menu.
3. Choose the Hyperlink tab (see Figure 8.6).
Figure
8.6
The Hyperlink tab of the Character dialog box enables
you to assign an URL link to any block of text.
4. Enter an URL in the URL field. You can enter a local file (use the Browse button if you need to) or an URL for any document on the Web.
5. Choose OK to apply the hyperlink and any changes you've made in the other tabs in the Character dialog box.
Tip - The Hyperlink tab also contains several other features related to using StarOffice with the Internet, which you can explore on your own. |
The following sections describe how to expand your formatting skills to complete paragraphs.
Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours |
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Hour 8: Formatting Your Document |
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