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RE: recommending open-source sw and OpenOffice.org WAS (no subject)
Subject:RE: recommending open-source sw and OpenOffice.org WAS (no subject) From:"James Jones" <doc-x -at- earthlink -dot- net> To:"'Claire Pateman'" <clairepateman -at- hotmail -dot- com>, <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Fri, 9 Jun 2006 11:48:53 -0500
Cannot say much about the part of your question about hats and diagram
drawing tools because I don't know. However, I just started learning the
OpenOffice suite and it is quite impressive. Its interfaces are not entirely
unlike those of the MS Office suite.
Another thing is that OOo lets you 'save as pdf'.
-----Original Message-----
A huge amount of high quality free software is available, and some of it is
superior to similar commercial software. Open Office is a complete office
suite that can save in Microsoft formats. http://www.openoffice.org/ .
SourceForge is a central repository for opensource software of many kinds.
There are many thousands of programs available there. http://sourceforge.net/ . Those are good places to start, but there are
more.
...As a tech writer I
> find that there are more
> and more software programs that clients/employers
> require. I am wondering if
> anyone knows of freeware/cheap shareware progs that
> I can use to familiarise
> up-and-coming tech writers with before they commit
> to buy the big boys. The
> three areas that I am looking at are: DTP (eg.
> Quark), Help(eg. Robohelp or
> Flare), Diagrams (eg. Visio). I have found a few on
> Tucows and Download.com,
> but any that other that fellow tech writers would
> say were worth a look then
> please let me know. I want my students to be able to
> evaluate software that
> gives them a good idea of what the more costly
> programs will involve so that
> they can assess where they want to specialize before
> forking out lots of
> cash...
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