Open Office
OpenOffice.org, commonly known as Open Office or OOo for short, is an open source suite of applications. The suite consists of applications for word processing, presentations, spreadsheets, graphics and storage. Thus, it offers a complete alternative to the ubiquitous Microsoft Office created by Bill Gates.
OpenOffice.org started out as StarOffice, an office suite that was developed by a company called StarDivision. It was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 1999. In order to provide an alternative to people and to reduce the firm grip Microsoft had in this market, Sun Microsystems released the source code of the StarOffice suite and called it OpenOffice.org. The reason they added the '.org' post-fix to the name was because the name 'OpenOffice' was already trademarked in the UK and the Netherlands. The project development was primarily funded by Sun Microsystems but when the Oracnle Corporation acquired Sun in 2010, they ceased any commercial support and contributed the source code to the Apache Incubator to become an Apache Software Foundation project.
OpenOffice primarily supports the OpenDocument Format(ODF) which is an ISO/IEC standard. Apart from this is also supports a host of other popular file types, including Microsoft Office formats. OpenOffice is free to download and users can use, modify or distribute it without any restrictions. It supports multiple platforms including Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris and a few others.The different components of the OpenOffice.org suite are explained below.
Writer
Writer is a fully equipped word processor or desktop publisher, using which you can create simple text documents to complete books with images or diagrams. It provides wizards to create standard documents like letters, faxes, agendas or even mail merges. You can also create your own templates or download additional templates. It provides various style and formatting tools, auto correct and auto complete features, table controls and various other features that we have come to expect from a modern word processor. Microsoft Office users will be able to relate this to Microsoft Word.
Calc
Calc is the spreadsheet program that provides the features to add various types of formulas and perform complex calculations on your data. There are tools for adding styles and formatting your data. You can also add macros to perform automatic calculations or manipulations of the data in the spreadsheet. Microsoft Office users will be able to relate this to Microsoft Excel.
Impress
Impress is a presentation program that lets you create slides with 2D or 3D images or words and then transition between these slides using various special effects or animations. Tools are provided to support drawing and creating diagrams, writing notes for each slide, writing outlines and so on. It provides several templates to quickly create a presentation. Additional templates can be downloaded if required from their extensions repository. Microsoft Office users will be able to relate this to Microsoft PowerPoint.
Draw
Draw is a diagramming program that gives you various tools to quickly draw various shapes, both 2D and 3D, lines, arrows and even add images and labels. It also provides styles and formatting tools and allows you to add textures, lighting effects, transparency and so on that enable you to create photorealistic images. Microsoft Office users will be able to relate this to Microsoft Visio.
Base
Base is a fully featured desktop database management system which can be used for simple databases to more complex projects that involved multiple tables and reports. It provides wizards to create tables, queries, forms and even generate reports. Microsoft Office users will be able to relate this to Microsoft Access.