The free open-source office suites LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice are excellent fully functional productivity applications. Their description may therefore be(come) overwhelming, as E. W. Dijkstra noted about another such application:

We know that we can only use a system by virtue of our knowledge of its properties ... if we refuse to be crushed by the complexities of our own making. But complexity sells better and the market pulls in the opposite direction. I still remember finding a book on how to use “WordPerfect 5.0” of more than 850 pages, in fact a dozen pages more than my 1951 edition of Georg Joos, “Theoretical Physics”! [1]

Since the features provided in LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice exceed those of WordPerfect, one might imagine an even larger size for a reference on using these suites. Fortunately, this book is much better designed. It provides a focused, well-written, and very nice introduction to the most important features of the Writer, Calc, Impress, and Base modules in less than 150 pages. The book is intended for beginners (the authors start with an explanation of windows, menus, scrollbars, toolbars, file opening and saving, and so on) and may also be used as “a quick reference or refresher for intermediate users.” While the authors never use the term “abstraction,” they illustrate the concept very well.

The book explains the most important features of the software, and is illustrated with appropriate, excellently commented screen shots (one or sometimes two screen shots per page). Of course, not every feature is included, and at times the explanations are rather terse, but if readers work with the software while reading, they will be able to move forward in cases of doubt. A “Try It!” prompt on every screen shot encourages the reader to do just that. The very explicit approach to the Base module suggests that “a few simple concepts ... should provide you with the background necessary to start working.” This could certainly be used in other modules as well. Somewhat similarly, in many of the sections on the Calc (spreadsheet) module, the book encourages the reader to use Calc Help instead of presenting a lot of too-specific details. The general feature overview provided in the book is more than sufficient to get started.

The more than 30 projects (pages 150-237) “serve as a valuable intermediate step between the learning environment and working on your own,” and present, in particular, quite a few additional features and hints about using various modules of the office suite.

Not all of the modules are mentioned by the authors, and I think it would be nice at least to mention the existence of Draw and Math, and of the Extensions. More advanced important features of the various modules are at times treated in the book to a certain extent. For a notable example, while only one page in the Base description is about databases having more than one table, two projects deal with relationships in more detail.

It would be very desirable if the next edition included at least an appendix that recounts the history and current state of the office suite, compatibility issues, and, perhaps more importantly, some guidance on “where to go from here,” how to report software errors, and how to get involved in general.

It is well known that these office suites are available for all major operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, and GNU/Linux. Regrettably, the BookOnCD included with this book, as well as the presentation by the authors, is Windows-specific, and therefore many potential readers may be discouraged from using the book. Nevertheless, most of the text itself applies to all platforms. While the CD helps a lot, strictly speaking it is not essential even for completing the projects; therefore, readers on non-Windows platforms can, grudgingly but successfully, work out most of the problems without it.

Some readers may wish to know that a free program, Adobe Reader (and not just the full Acrobat, as stated on page 55), allows highlighting and comments in PDF files.

The 10-page index is nice to have and very useful.