Writer is a powerful and easy-to-use desktop publishing and Web content creation tool. Writer intuitively manages paragraph and page styles, has advanced capabilities for creating multi-file books, and lets you make calculations in tables like a spreadsheet. Setting up a form letter for mass mailing to contacts in a database is a simple drag-and-drop procedure, and you can print the letters, send them to a file for later printing, or send them directly through e-mail. There's even a handy clipart gallery from which you can preview and drag art (your own custom art included) directly into a document without going into a separate window.

Sophisticated indexing functions help define bibliographical and index entries and keywords as well as generate indexes and reference tables (such as a table of contents). Keeping track of different versions is a snap for Writer, as it is for all StarOffice documents. Flexible layout and design options make it a snap to create multicolumn newsletters and brochures. StarOffice software also has an AutoPilot that automatically converts all your MS templates to SO templates with one pass.

The Easiest Route to Internet Content. Publishing your own home page or updating intranet pages is as simple as writing a document. Even if you don't know HTML, you can create sophisticated Web pages with hyperlinks from text or graphics and icons, scrolling marquees, and image maps. Save a Writer document as a Web page or start over with one of the many existing Web page templates. And StarOffice software's hyperlink capabilities, like making a graphic linked to a URL or file, and making any hyperlink open a new StarOffice file or go to a newsgroup, are available throughout StarOffice software. For those users familiar with HTML coding, StarOffice provides a View HTML source where you can preview and edit HTML. StarOffice color codes the HTML for you so it's easy to tell what's content and what's markup--use the defaults or customize the colors for SGML, comments, keywords, and content. Click the same icon again to immediately see the changes in the Web page.