This is Chapter 1 of the OpenOffice.org 3 Writer Guide produced by the OOoAuthors group. A PDF of this chapter is available from Documentation at OpenOffice.org.

What is Writer?

Writer is the word processor component of OpenOffice.org (OOo). In addition to the usual features of a word processor (spelling check, thesaurus, hyphenation, autocorrect, find and replace, automatic generation of tables of contents and indexes, mail merge, and others), Writer provides these important features:

• Templates and styles
• Page-layout methods, including frames, columns, and tables
• Embedding or linking of graphics, spreadsheets, and other objects
• Built-in drawing tools
• Master documents—to group a collection of documents into a single document
• Change tracking during revisions
• Database integration, including a bibliography database
• Export to PDF, including bookmarks
• And many more

Styles are central to using Writer. Using styles, you can easily format your document consistently and change the format with minimal effort. A style is a named set of formatting options. Writer defines several types of styles, for different types of elements: characters, paragraphs, pages, frames, and lists. Often, you are using styles whether you realize it or not. The use of styles is described in more detail in Chapter 6 (Introduction to Styles) and Chapter 7 (Working with Styles).

The other features of Writer listed above are also covered in detail in other chapters of this guide.