Category Archives: OpenOffice.org

Spectrum: An exploration into open-source publishing

By Ananda | Published: October 3, 2010

Yesterday, at DHAN Foundation’s “Foundation Day” celebration, the students from PDM 11 of the Tata-Dhan Academy and others were able to have–after a really long break–a new issue of Spectrum: Colours of Development in their hands to look at (and hopefully read). Spectrum is the student newsletter of the Academy; students contribute articles, solicit articles [...]

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Pivot Tables in Excel and OpenOffice.org Calc

By Ananda | Published: July 30, 2010

One of the features I find useful in Excel is the ability to create “pivot” tables. Essentially pivot tables let you summarize big tables of data in different ways, using different variables to “pivot” your data around (hence the name, I guess). Pivot tables are most easily understood through an example, so here’s one done [...]

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A little spark for presenting your data

By Ananda | Published: June 17, 2010

For some reason, I’ve been obsessing over the presentation of data. (Either it is that I’ve just read all of Edward Tufte‘s books, or I’m just being a nerd. But I guess that those two things aren’t exactly exclusive….) Considering my obsession, you could imagine how I felt when one of my students stood up [...]

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Making an A6 booklet in OpenOffice.org the easy way

By Ananda | Published: November 19, 2009

Tutorial level: Elementary I recently had to create an A6 booklet for an event that was being hosted by DHAN Foundation/Tata-Dhan Academy. At first, I thought it would be a nightmare to design and print it—particularly because I only had one day to do the layout for a 60+ page book—but it turns out that [...]

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Drop caps with OpenOffice.org Writer

By Ananda | Published: September 21, 2009

Tutorial Level: Elementary From time to time, I like some minor embellishments in my design, and one such embellishment I use is the drop cap that you commonly find in magazines and so on. In OpenOffice.org (OOo) it is pretty easy to do this throughout a document. As with the last tutorial, this one is [...]

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Automation with OpenOffice.org Writer

By Ananda | Published: July 26, 2009

Tutorial Level: Intermediate At the Tata-Dhan Academy where I work, with each new batch of students, we try to promote the adoption of freeware or open-source software instead of promoting the already ridiculous levels of piracy that goes on around here. So, during our orientation, we introduce the students to OpenOffice.org—something which, unfortunately, causes many [...]

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