Exploring the JDS Linux Desktop

StarWriter Customizations

In an accident of convenience and relevance, we have already covered Customizing the Toolbars and Custom Keyboard Mappings.

In this section, we touch upon further ways you can customize StarWriter’s settings and behavior to adapt it to the way you prefer to work. We show how to configure Launcher icons to make it faster to open the program. A substantial number of people report their displeasure at a few of the default settings, so we show you how to change certain unpopular defaults here, too.

StarOffice offers a daunting number of ways to customize settings. Many of these adjustments are simply uninteresting to most users, so we do not address them in this book. A quick browse of the five tabs under StarWriter’s Tools → Configure . . . (Menu, Keyboard, Status bar, Toolbars, Events) would offer a good sense of the scope of StarWriter’s customization possibilities for the advanced user or system administrator.

Add an Icon on the Desktop or Panel

Instead of bringing up StarWriter’s Template window via Launch → StarWriter 7, some users may prefer to open StarOffice to a new document more directly. To save a few extra mouse clicks to gain speed, you can add a Launcher with a StarWriter icon to either the desktop or the Main Panel, or to both.

You can add separate Launchers to open each of the StarOffice modules directly. Here’s the easiest way to set up a Launcher specifically for StarWriter on both your desktop workspace or the edge panel across the bottom of ...