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However, Writer consistently allows more control, offering settings for hyphenation, automatic page breaks, and the last line in a fully justified paragraph. Like most word processors, both OOo Writer and Microsoft Word have paragraph and character styles. In general, Writer pressures users to format with styles for anything beyond the simplest, shortest of documents. By contrast, in OOo Writer, by formatting manually without using styles, tasks such as adding a different header or footer become a matter of laboriously adding page breaks. Microsoft Word supports them, but users sacrifice little except their own time if they format manually. Styles allow users to define formats once and then apply them to multiple blocks of text. While hardly surprising, the results offer a concrete example of how open source tools are not only equalling but starting to surpass proprietary ones.
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Both are adequate for most users’ purposes, so I focused on functions that power users are likely to want:Īt the end of each category, I give my verdict about which program has the best combination of features and usability. Accordingly, I compared the beta of OOo Writer 2.0 with Microsoft Word 2003. Now that OOo is starting to be used in business, a more detailed look seems overdue. At that time (OOo) was barely known, so I confined myself to highlights. Up to : Finding an Alternative to Microsoft Word” - my most quoted article.
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