Magicpoint users guide to OO.o's Impress

Or - how hackers can use OO.o effectively and fast. Having been an ardent magicpoint user, and advocate for many years; I was amazed that in fact OO.o can be used almost as effectively (modulo the lack of emacs key bindings) for content, and can do so much more as well.

Creating a presentation

As everyone knows, they key to a good presentation is content, not gimmicks. Thus, it is vital to be able to edit the content, unimpeded by the trivial.

In order to do this, create your presentation, using a sensible layout; then immediately switch to outline view (View->Master View->Outline View). To do this press F12, Control-F12 will switch back to the drawing view.

At this point simply type; to get more indentation, press Tab; to loose a level of indentation use Shift-Tab;

Editing the styles

So; having created a few bullet points, and switched to drawing view, you notice that the bullets look pretty awful, and you want to change them for the whole presentation.

Hit F11 - shows the style list, select 'Outline N' right click -> modify, and away you go - lots of funky options. Of course - you can also override those with sheet specific options, but that's less useful.

Background images

You can set a slide background image using Format->Page, Background->Bitmap. It is possible to add your own photos/images to the bitmaps list, just not in this dialog. Close the dialog and go to Format->Area, Bitmaps to find the Import button. Any bitmap you add here will be available as a page background. For more complex backgrounds (e.g. an image and a logo.), see below.

Editing the background / layout

At the bottom of the screen, to the left of the sheet tabs, and to the left of the 4 sheet tab shuttling controls there are 3 very magic buttons. In order to edit the default page background / layouts in the template, switch between the 'Slide View' and 'Master View' radio-toggles. Generating sane templates any other way is not feasible.

Stopping the auto-capitalization

Future versions of XOO.o will have this disabled; however for now the setting lurks in Tools -> Autocorrect, turn it off there for a less painful life.