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SUSE Linux comes with the OpenOffice.org office suite — a set of office productivity applications comparable to (and compatible with) Microsoft Office. Like Microsoft Office, the OpenOffice.org office application suite comes with its own PowerPoint-like presentation software — OpenOffice.org Impress (or Impress for short).
 | If you've used Microsoft PowerPoint and you're already familiar with its nuts and bolts — the concept of a slide, how to add text and graphics to a slide, how to organize the slides, and how to run a slide show — then you'll find it easy to get started with Impress. Remember that some details of how you perform basic Impress tasks may differ from the way they're done in PowerPoint. |
Taking stock of Impress
You'll find that Impress can do all the usual things that presentation software such as Microsoft PowerPoint can do. For example, you can create professional-looking slide shows in Impress, using capabilities like these:
- Open and edit Microsoft PowerPoint files or convert Microsoft PowerPoint files to Impress format. One advantage of converting to Impress format is that Impress files are smaller in size than corresponding Microsoft PowerPoint files. Presentation files stored in Impress format are assigned filenames with the .sxi extension.
- Save documents in many different formats, including Microsoft PowerPoint 97/2000/XP, StarDraw 5.0 and 3.0, and StarImpress 5.0 and 4.0.
- Insert graphics and clip art from files of many different formats, including JPEG, GIF, ZSoft Paintbrush (PCX), TIFF, Windows BMP, Macintosh PICT, Encapsulated PostScript (EPS), Adobe Photoshop (PSD), AutoCAD DXF, and many more.
- Insert other OpenOffice.org documents (from programs such as Writer, Calc, and Draw) into a presentation.
- Use Presentation Wizard to quickly create a presentation.
- Use all the drawing tools from OpenOffice.org Draw to add drawings to the slides.
- Export a presentation to a Web Page (HTML) with or without frames. You can also export the slides in any of the supported graphics file formats.
- Use layers to separate parts of the slide so that each part can be edited or viewed separately.
- Use special effects such as animated text and graphics, sound, and slide transition effects.
- Use FontWork (Format --> FontWork) to create various text effects such as aligning text along a curve.
- Save versions of a presentation as you continue to change it and revert back to an older version, if necessary.
- Add speaker's notes to each slide and create handouts.
Using Impress
The best way to get comfortable using Impress is simply to start using it. To start Impress, choose Main Menu --> Office --> Presentation --> OpenOffice.org Impress in KDE or GNOME.
The Presentation Wizard appears and prompts you for the type of presentation you want. If Impress is already running, you get the Presentation Wizard when you choose File --> New --> Presentation. If you want a blank presentation, simply click Create in the first step of the Presentation Wizard . Impress then displays an empty slide along with a gallery of slide layouts from which you can change the slide's layout.
 | Typically, a slide layout might have a title area and some text bullets. You can click and add the text to each of these areas. To insert any graphic image, choose Insert --> Graphics and pick the graphics file you want to insert. You can draw directly on the slide by using the drawing tools from the vertical toolbar along the left side of the Impress window. To see which tool does what, move the mouse over any icon, and a tooltip gives you a hint. |
After you finish working on a slide, you can insert another slide by choosing Insert --> Slide. Impress displays an Insert Slide dialog box, and you can select the layout for the next slide.
To save a presentation, choose File --> Save from the menu. For new documents, you have to provide a filename and select the directory to save the file.
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