Watermarking and similar ???

[bigjohn]

Sorry, this is probably a really stupid question,

but how the hell do I append a watermark to a page?

I'm only just starting to use OOo 2 for my main WP tool and don't really understand what the hell I'm doing - I used to be able to do this with Office 2k (well I had a nice little crib sheet ) but this OO writer thing? well it's just a bit "too" different.

Can anyone point me in the right direction? or maybe has a link to a tutorial that seems to be valid for OOo 2 (not version 1 - though while I didn't find one that looked "idiot proof", it may be that I haven't got some of the necessary toolbars or somesuch showing - it wasn't very helpful).

Any assistance is much appreciated - though I have done a search and didn't have a clue as to what the threads were on about i.e. I couldn't find anything that might tell me how I can make some text very large, coloured or vvv light grey and then apply it as a watermark.

regards

John

[xirontask]

Hi,
you can find some good tips here:
p://homepage.ntlworld.com/pesala/Home/html/watermarks.html

and more over this topic here, in the OOo forum:
p://homepage.ntlworld.com/pesala/Home/html/watermarks.html

It is recommended that you first create your graphic and give it a light color in a graphics program (Draw, for instance). Then you can import this graphic in Write using the menu Format/Page/Background/(As Graphic+Browse)
Hope it helps
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Xirontask

[xirontask]

I apologise for the wrong addresses in my preceding message.
The right one is:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/pesala/Home/html/watermarks.html

You can find more information entering a search for watermarks in
http://www.oooforum.org/
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Xirontask

[JohnV]

Here's one way to do a text watermark. Open Draw, open a Text box with the "T" tool and type the text. Select the text and change its color to someting light. With the text box selected do File > Export and pick something like.jpg.

In the Write document edit the page style and click the Backgrond tab, change Color to Graphic, browse to the .jpg file and open. Put the bullet someplace - Area will give you one, more or less centered.

If you have a graphic you want to use then Insert it in Draw and you can let Draw change it to a Watermark by selecting Watermark from the drop down in the box that says Default. The do the Export thing again.

[bigjohn]

Thankyou very much. I shall attempt this this afternoon - probably with my partner in attendance, is it's her that needs to understand how this is done (she's a teacher in a nursery/kindergarten and often has to present stuff to the "non-teaching" staff there i.e. they need to know what order various things need to be followed as hence the need for something like a "Draft curriculum goals" type graphic/watermark).

Ha, thats got me thinking. I wonder what format the images in "openclipart" are in, because I could always make various versions of whatever I (or Clare) need and make a folder of "watermarks". I'll have to check later on.

Again, thanks for the advice so far, I'll post back with how I get on.

regards

John

p.s. Oh and for anyone who might need to read this thread, I'm currently using OOo version 2.0.2 under Kubuntu Linux (6.06 a.k.a. "dapper").

[bigjohn]

Ok, so I managed to produce a table for test purposes, with a "watermark for testing as a graphic".

I still haven't managed to work out the how's and why's of a few things, but I didn't manage so suss out the lats bit of JohnV's post about letting draw change it to a watermark (couldn't find any box with default on it so I couldn't export it.

Also, I couldn't see why I couldn't just make the watermarking graphic and make it a .gif with "save as" - because when I tried that, it only seemed to want to let me save stuff in pretty obscure formats, whereas "export" allows "all the usual suspects" - why would that be ?

Plus, I still find it completely inconvenient to have to keep looking through the various toolbars to see "what's where".

I'd hoped that things might be a little more intuitive than they seem to be.

One other annoyance - which I suspect is kubuntu based, is that I only seem to have the option to open database, presentation, spreadsheet and word processor directly from the "K" menu - I'd have thought that it would show all the various elements of OOo in the "office" section of my menu, but it doesn't so I'll have to find out how to get draw in there as well - fortunately I do have an icon that starts the whole suite with "open" followed by a list of choices like "text document", "drawing", etc etc.

Hum! it's gonna take a bit of getting used to. No doubt it's one bloody clever piece of software, but having previously only used word, excel, etc etc it's gonna be yet another bloody learning curve.

regards

John
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At the end of the day,
Wherever you go,
There you are!

[JohnV]