Saturday, January 17, 2015

Word processing software P- 04. Information Communication Technology for Libraries

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Word processing software


P- 04. Information Communication Technology for Libraries *

By :Usha Munshi,Paper Coordinator

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Word processing Software

A word processor is an electronic device or computer software application that, as directed by the user, performs word processing: the composition, editing, formatting and sometimes printing of any sort of written material. Word processing can also refer to advanced shorthand techniques, sometimes used in specialized contexts with a specially modified typewriter. The term was coined at IBM's Böblingen, West Germany Laboratory in the 1960s. Typical features of a word processor include font application, spell checking, grammar checking, a built-in thesaurus, automatic text correction, Web integration and HTML exporting, among others. In its simplest form, a word processor is little more than a large expensive typewriter that makes correcting mistakes easy.

The word processor emerged as a stand-alone office machine in the 1970s and 1980s, combining the keyboard text-entry and printing functions of an electric typewriter with a dedicated computer processor for the editing of text. Although features and designs varied among manufacturers and models, and new features were added as technology advanced, word processors typically featured a monochrome display and the ability to save documents on memory cards or diskettes. Later models introduced innovations such asspell-checking programs, improved formatting options, and dot-matrix printing.

As the more versatile combination of personal computers and printers became commonplace, and computer software applications for word processing became popular, most business machine companies stopped manufacturing word processor machines. As of 2009 there were only two U.S. companies, Classic and AlphaSmart, which still made them. Many older machines, however, remain in use. Since 2009, Sentinel has offered a machine described as a "word processor", but it is more accurately a highly specialised microcomputer used for accounting and publishing.
Word processors are descended from early text formatting tools (sometimes called "text justification" tools, from their only real capability). Word processing was one of the earliest applications for the personal computer in office productivity.

Although early word processors used tag-based markup for document formatting, most modern word processors take advantage of a graphical user interface providing some form ofwhat-you-see-is-what-you-get editing. Most are powerful systems consisting of one or more programs that can produce any arbitrary combination of images, graphics and text, the latter handled with type-setting capability.
Microsoft Word is the most widely used word processing software according to a user tracking system built into the software, which is not built into LibreOffice, AbiWord, KWord, and LyX. Microsoft estimates that over 500,000,000 people use the Microsoft Office suite, which includes Word. Many other word processing applications exist, includingWordPerfect (which dominated the market from the mid-1980s to early-1990s on computers running Microsoft's MS-DOS operating system) and open source applicationsOpenOffice.org Writer, LibreOffice Writer, AbiWord, KWord, and LyX. Web-based word processors, such as Office Web Apps or Google Docs, are a relatively new category.

Features of Standard Word Processors

Word processors that support only these features (and maybe a few others) are called text editors. Most word processors, however, support additional features that enable you to manipulate and format documents in more sophisticated ways. These more advanced word processors are sometimes called full-featured word processors.Full-featured word processors usually support the following features:

  • File Management :Many word processors contain file management capabilities that allow you to create, delete, move, and search for files.

  • Font specifications: Allows you to change fonts within a document. For example, you can specify bold, italics, and underlining. Most word processors also let you change the font size and even the typeface.

  • Footnotes and cross-references: Automates the numbering and placement of footnotes and enables you to easily cross-reference other sections of the document.

  • Graphics :Allows you to embed illustrations and graphs into a document. Some word processors let you create the illustrations within the word processor; others let you insert an illustration produced by a different program.

  • Headers , footers, and page numbering: Allows you to specify customized headers and footers that the word processor will put at the top and bottom of every page. The word processor automatically keeps track of page numbers so that the correct number appears on each page.

  • Layout :Allows you to specify different margins within a single document and to specify various methods for indenting paragraphs.
  • Macros : A macro is a character or word that represents a series ofkeystrokes. The keystrokes can represent text or commands. The ability to define macros allows you to save yourself a lot of time by replacing common combinations of keystrokes.
  • Merges: Allows you to merge text from one file into another file. This is particularly useful for generating many files that have the same format but different data. Generating mailing labels is the classic example of using merges.

  • Spell checker : A utility that allows you to check the spelling of words. It will highlightany words that it does not recognize.

  • Tables of contents and indexes: Allows you to automatically create a table of contents and index based on special codes that you insert in the document.
  • Thesaurus: A built-in thesaurus that allows you to search for synonyms without leaving the word processor.

  • Windows : Allows you to edit two or more documents at the same time. Each document appears in a separate window. This is particularly valuable when working on a large project that consists of several different files.

  • WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get): With WYSIWYG, a document appears on the display screen exactly as it will look when printed.

The line dividing word processors from desktop publishing systemsis constantly shifting. In general, though, desktop publishing applications support finer control over layout, and more support for full-color documents.

Characteristics

Word processing typically implies the presence of text manipulation functions that extend beyond a basic ability to enter and change text, such as automatic generation of:
  • batch mailings using form letter template and an address database (also called mail merging);
  • indices of keywords and their page numbers;
  • tables of contents with section titles and their page numbers;
  • tables of figures with caption titles and their page numbers;
  • cross-referencing with section or page numbers;
  • footnote numbering;
  • new versions of a document using variables (e.g. model numbers, product names, etc.)
Other word processing functions include spell checking (actually checks against wordlists), "grammar checking" (checks for what seem to be simple grammar errors), and a "thesaurus" function (finds words with similar or opposite meanings). Other common features include collaborative editing, comments and annotations, support for images and diagrams and internal cross-referencing.
Word processors can be distinguished from several other, related forms of software:
Text editors were the precursors of word processors. While offering facilities for composing and editing text, they do not format documents. This can be done by batch document processing systems, starting with TJ-2 and RUNOFF and still available in such systems as LaTeX (as well as programs that implement the paged-media extensions to HTML andCSS). Text editors are now used mainly by programmers, website designers, computer system administrators, and, in the case of LaTeX by mathematicians and scientists (for complex formulas and for citations in rare languages). They are also useful when fast startup times, small file sizes, editing speed and simplicity of operation are preferred over formatting.
Later desktop publishing programs were specifically designed to allow elaborate layout for publication, but often offered only limited support for editing. Typically, desktop publishing programs allowed users to import text that was written using a text editor or word processor.
Almost all word processors enable users to employ styles, which are used to automate consistent formatting of text body, titles, subtitles, highlighted text, and so on.
Styles greatly simplify managing the formatting of large documents, since changing a style automatically changes all text that the style has been applied to. Even in shorter documents styles can save a lot of time while formatting. However, most help files refer to styles as an 'advanced feature' of the word processor, which often discourages users from using styles regularly.

Document statistics

Most current word processors can calculate various statistics pertaining to a document. These usually include:
Errors are common; for instance, a dash surrounded by spaces — like either of these — may be counted as a word.

Typical usage

Page ContentsBusinessHomeLiterature

Word processors have a variety of uses and applications within the business world, home, education, journalism, publishing, and the literary arts.

Business

Within the business world, word processors are extremely useful tools. Typical uses include:
Business tend to have their own format and style for any of these. Thus, versatile word processors with layout editing and similar capabilities find widespread use in most business.

Home

While many homes have word processors on their computers, word processing in the home tends to be educational, planning or business related, dealing with assignments or work being completed at home, or occasionally recreational, e.g. writing short stories. Some use word processors for letter writing, résumé creation, and card creation. However, many of these home publishing processes have been taken over by desktop publishing programs specifically oriented toward home use which are better suited to these types of documents.They hence can be used for letter writing, creating cards, resume creation, and other types of documents

Literature

Novelists, poets, playwrights, screenwriters, and essayists naturally gravitated toward word processing once the technology became widely available. Notable early adopters in the mid- or late-1970s included science fiction author (and BYTE Magazine columnist) Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, Stanley Elkin, James Fallows, and Michael Crichton. However the first novel generally credited as having been written on a word processor is Len Deighton's Bomber, which was composed on an IBM MT/ST in London in 1968-9; Deighton's typist and assistant, Ms. Ellenor Handley, was the person to actually operate the machine.[5]

Spreadsheets Software

A spreadsheet is an interactive computer application program for organization and analysis of data in tabular form. Spreadsheets developed as computerized simulations of paper accounting worksheets. The program operates on data represented as cells of an array, organized in rows and columns. Each cell of the array is a model–view–controller element that can contain either numeric or text data, or the results of formulas that automatically calculate and display a value based on the contents of other cells.
The user of the spreadsheet can make changes in any stored value and observe the effects on calculated values. This makes the spreadsheet useful for "what-if" analysis since many cases can be rapidly investigated without tedious manual recalculation. Modern spreadsheet software can have multiple interacting sheets, and can display data either as text and numerals, or in graphical form.
In addition to the fundamental operations of arithmetic and mathematical functions, modern spreadsheets provide built-in functions for common financial and statistical operations. Such calculations as net present value or standard deviation can be applied to tabular data with a pre-programmed function in a formula. Spreadsheet programs also provide conditional expressions, functions to convert between text and numbers, and functions that operate on strings of text.
Spreadsheets have now replaced paper-based systems throughout the business world. Although they were first developed for accounting or bookkeeping tasks, they now are used extensively in any context where tabular lists are built, sorted and shared.
Visicalc was the first electronic spreadsheet on a microcomputer, and it helped turn the Apple II computer into a popular and widely used system. Lotus 1-2-3 was the leading spreadsheet when DOS was the dominant operating system. Excel now has the largest market share on the Windows and Macintosh platforms. A spreadsheet program is a standard feature of an office productivity suite; since the advent of web apps, office suites now also exist in web app form.

Spreadsheet use

A modern spreadsheet file consists of multiple worksheets (usually called by the shorter namesheets) that make up one workbook, with each file being one workbook. A cell on one sheet is capable of referencing cells on other, different sheets, whether within the same workbook or even, in some cases, in different workbooks.
Spreadsheets share many principles and traits of databases, but spreadsheets and databases are not the same thing. A spreadsheet is essentially just one table, whereas a database is a collection of many tables with machine-readable semantic relationships between them. While it is true that a workbook that contains three sheets is indeed a file containing multiple tables that can interact with each other, it lacks the relational structure of a database. Spreadsheets and databases are interoperable—sheets can be imported into databases to become tables within them, and database queries can be exported into spreadsheets for further analysis.
A spreadsheet program is one of the main components of an office productivity suite, which usually also contains a word processor, a presentation program, and a database management system. Programs within a suite use similar commands for similar functions. Usually sharing data between the components is easier than with a non-integrated collection of functionally equivalent programs. This was particularly an advantage at a time when many personal computer systems used text-mode displays and commands, instead of a graphical user interface.

Batch spreadsheet report generator

A batch "spreadsheet" is indistinguishable from a batch compiler with added input data, producing an output report, i.e., a 4GL or conventional, non-interactive, batch computer program. However, this concept of an electronic spreadsheet was outlined in the 1961 paper "Budgeting Models and System Simulation" by Richard Mattessich.[4] The subsequent work by Mattessich (1964a, Chpt. 9, Accounting and Analytical Methods) and its companion volume, Mattessich (1964b, Simulation of the Firm through a Budget Computer Program) applied computerized spreadsheets to accounting and budgeting systems (on mainframe computers programmed in FORTRAN IV). These batch Spreadsheets dealt primarily with the addition or subtraction of entire columns or rows (of input variables), rather than individual cells.

Microsoft Excel

Microsoft developed Excel on the Macintosh platform for several years, and then ported it to Windows 2.0. The Windows 3.x platforms of the early 1990s made it possible for Excel to take market share from Lotus. By the time Lotus responded with usable Windows products, Microsoft had begun to assemble their Office suite. Starting in the mid-1990s continuing through the present, Microsoft Excel has dominated the commercial electronic spreadsheet market.

Open source software

Gnumeric is a free, cross-platform spreadsheet program that is part of the GNOME Free Software Desktop Project. OpenOffice.org Calc and the very closely related LibreOffice Calc are free and open-source spreadsheets, also licensed under the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL).



Web based spreadsheets

With the advent of advanced web technologies such as Ajax circa 2005, a new generation of online spreadsheets has emerged. Equipped with a rich Internet application user experience, the best web based online spreadsheets have many of the features seen in desktop spreadsheet applications. Some of them such as Office Web Apps or Google Spreadsheets also have strong multi-user collaboration features and / or offer real time updates from remote sources such as stock prices and currency exchange rates.

Concepts

Page ContentsCellsValues

values, or formulas in the cells. Formulas say how to mechanically compute new values from existing values. Values are generally numbers, but can also be pure text, dates, months, etc. Extensions of these concepts include logical spreadsheets. Various tools for programming sheets, visualizing data, remotely connecting sheets, displaying cells' dependencies, etc. are commonly provided.

Cells

A "cell" can be thought of as a box for holding data. A single cell is usually referenced by its column and row (A2 would represent the cell containing the value 10 in the example table below). Usually rows, representing the dependent variables, are referenced in decimal notation starting from 1, while columns representing the independent variables use 26-adic bijective numeration using the letters A-Z as numerals. Its physical size can usually be tailored to its content by dragging its height or width at box intersections (or for entire columns or rows by dragging the column- or row-headers).
An array of cells is called a sheet or worksheet. It is analogous to an array of variables in a conventional computer program (although certain unchanging values, once entered, could be considered, by the same analogy, constants). In most implementations, many worksheets may be located within a single spreadsheet. A worksheet is simply a subset of the spreadsheet divided for the sake of clarity. Functionally, the spreadsheet operates as a whole and all cells operate as global variables within the spreadsheet (each variable having 'read' access only except its own containing cell).
A cell may contain a value or a formula, or it may simply be left empty. By convention, formulas usually begin with = sign.

Values

A value can be entered from the computer keyboard by directly typing into the cell itself. Alternatively, a value can be based on a formula (see below), which might perform a calculation, display the current date or time, or retrieve external data such as a stock quote or a database value.

Real-time update

This feature refers to updating a cell's contents periodically with a value from an external source—such as a cell in a "remote" spreadsheet. For shared, Web-based spreadsheets, it applies to "immediately" updating cells another user has updated. All dependent cells must be updated also.

Locked cell

Once entered, selected cells (or the entire spreadsheet) can optionally be "locked" to prevent accidental overwriting. Typically this would apply to cells containing formulas but might be applicable to cells containing "constants" such as a kilogram/pounds conversion factor (2.20462262 to eight decimal places). Even though individual cells are marked as locked, the spreadsheet data are not protected until the feature is activated in the file preferences.

Data format

A cell or range can optionally be defined to specify how the value is displayed. The default display format is usually set by its initial content if not specifically previously set, so that for example "31/12/2007" or "31 Dec 2007" would default to the cell format of date. Similarly adding a % sign after a numeric value would tag the cell as a percentage cell format. The cell contents are not changed by this format, only the displayed value.
Some cell formats such as "numeric" or "currency" can also specify the number of decimal places.
This can allow invalid operations (such as doing multiplication on a cell containing a date), resulting in illogical results without an appropriate warning.

Cell formatting

Depending on the capability of the spreadsheet application, each cell (like its counterpart the "style" in a word processor) can be separately formatted using the attributes of either the content (point size, color, bold or italic) or the cell (border thickness, background shading, color). To aid the readability of a spreadsheet, cell formatting may be conditionally applied to data; for example, a negative number may be displayed in red.
A cell's formatting does not typically affect its content and depending on how cells are referenced or copied to other worksheets or applications, the formatting may not be carried with the content.

Concepts (Continue)


Named cells

In most implementations, a cell, or group of cells in a column or row, can be "named" enabling the user to refer to those cells by a name rather than by a grid reference. Names must be unique within the spreadsheet, but when using multiple sheets in a spreadsheet file, an identically named cell range on each sheet can be used if it is distinguished by adding the sheet name. One reason for this usage is for creating or running macros that repeat a command across many sheets. Another reason is that formulas with named variables are readily checked against the algebra they are intended to implement (they resemble Fortran expressions). Use of named variables and named functions also makes the spreadsheet structure more transparent.
Cell reference
In place of a named cell, an alternative approach is to use a cell (or grid) reference. Most cell references indicate another cell in the same spreadsheet, but a cell reference can also refer to a cell in a different sheet within the same spreadsheet, or (depending on the implementation) to a cell in another spreadsheet entirely, or to a value from a remote application.
Cell ranges
Likewise, instead of using a named range of cells, a range reference can be used. Reference to a range of cells is typically of the form (A1:A6), which specifies all the cells in the range A1 through to A6. A formula such as "=SUM(A1:A6)" would add all the cells specified and put the result in the cell containing the formula itself.

Sheets

In the earliest spreadsheets, cells were a simple two-dimensional grid. Over time, the model has expanded to include a third dimension, and in some cases a series of named grids, called sheets. The most advanced examples allow inversion and rotation operations which can slice and project the data set in various ways.

Formulas

A formula identifies the calculation needed to place the result in the cell it is contained within. A cell containing a formula therefore has two display components; the formula itself and the resulting value. The formula is normally only shown when the cell is selected by "clicking" the mouse over a particular cell; otherwise it contains the result of the calculation.
A formula assigns values to a cell or range of cells, and typically has the format:
=expression
where the expression consists of:
When a cell contains a formula, it often contains references to other cells. Such a cell reference is a type of variable. Its value is the value of the referenced cell or some derivation of it. If that cell in turn references other cells, the value depends on the values of those. References can be relative (e.g., A1, or B1:B3), absolute (e.g., $A$1, or $B$1:$B$3) or mixed row– or column-wise absolute/relative (e.g., $A1 is column-wise absolute and A$1 is row-wise absolute).
The available options for valid formulas depends on the particular spreadsheet implementation but, in general, most arithmetic operations and quite complex nested conditional operations can be performed by most of today's commercial spreadsheets. Modern implementations also offer functions to access custom-build functions, remote data, and applications.
A formula may contain a condition (or nested conditions)—with or without an actual calculation—and is sometimes used purely to identify and highlight errors. In the example below, it is assumed the sum of a column of percentages (A1 through A6) is tested for validity and an explicit message put into the adjacent right-hand cell.
=IF(SUM(A1:A6) > 100, "More than 100%", SUM(A1:A6))

Functions

Spreadsheets usually contain a number of supplied functions, such as arithmetic operations (for example, summations, averages and so forth), trigonometric functions, statistical functions, and so forth. In addition there is often a provision for user-defined functions. In Microsoft Excel these functions are defined usingVisual Basic for Applications in the supplied Visual Basic editor, and such functions are automatically accessible on the worksheet. In addition, programs can be written that pull information from the worksheet, perform some calculations, and report the results back to the worksheet. In the figure, the name sq is user-assigned, and function sq is introduced using the Visual Basic editor supplied with Excel. Name Manager displays the spreadsheet definitions of named variables x & y.

Subroutines

Functions themselves cannot write into the worksheet, but simply return their evaluation. However, in Microsoft Excel, subroutines can write values or text found within the subroutine directly to the spreadsheet. The figure shows the Visual Basic code for a subroutine that reads each member of the named column variable x, calculates its square, and writes this value into the corresponding element of named column variable y. The y column contains no formula because its values are calculated in the subroutine, not on the spreadsheet, and simply are written in.

Remote spreadsheet

Whenever a reference is made to a cell or group of cells that are not located within the current physical spreadsheet file, it is considered as accessing a "remote" spreadsheet. The contents of the referenced cell may be accessed either on first reference with a manual update or more recently in the case of web based spreadsheets, as a near real time value with a specified automatic refresh interval.

Database Graphics and Presentation Software


Database Graphics

Each graphics application that creates a display on a graphics device, also stores information describing the display in the graphics database. This is a file, which usually resides in the user's home directory, and is often referred to as the AGI database. Displays are described in terms of pictures. A picture is basically a rectangular area on the graphics device within which an application produces graphical output. Each time an application creates a picture, the dimensions and position of the picture (together with other ancillary information) are stored in the graphics database. Subsequent applications can then read this information back from the database, and use it (for instance) to align new graphics with previously displayed graphics.
A graph database is a database that uses graph structures with nodes, edges, and properties to represent and store data. By definition, a graph database is any storage system that provides index-free adjacency. This means that every element contains a direct pointer to its adjacent element and no index lookups are necessary. General graph databases that can store any graph are distinct from specialized graph databases such as triplestores and network databases.

Properties

Compared with relational databases, graph databases are often faster for associative data sets, and map more directly to the structure of object-oriented applications. They can scale more naturally to large data sets as they do not typically require expensive join operations. As they depend less on a rigid schema, they are more suitable to manage ad hoc and changing data with evolving schemas. Conversely, relational databases are typically faster at performing the same operation on large numbers of data elements.
Graph databases are a powerful tool for graph-like queries, for example computing the shortest path between two nodes in the graph. Other graph-like queries can be performed over a graph database in a natural way (for example graph's diameter computations or community detection).

A presentation program is a software package used to display information in the form of a slide show. It has three major functions: an editor that allows text to be inserted and formatted, a method for inserting and manipulating graphic images, and a slide-show system to display the content.

Notable examples

Notable examples of presentation software include:

History

The presentation graphics software ran on computer workstations, such as those manufactured by Trollman, Genigraphics, Autographix, and Dicomed. It became quite easyto make last-minute changes compared to traditional typesetting and pasteup. It was also a lot easier to produce a large number of slides in a small amount of time. However, these workstations also required skilled operators, and a single workstation represented an investment of $50,000 to $200,000 (in 1979 dollars).
In the mid-1980s developments in the world of computers changed the way presentations were created. Inexpensive, specialized applications now made it possible for anyone with a PC to create professional-looking presentation graphics.
Originally these programs were used to generate 35 mm slides, to be presented using a slide projector. As these programs became more common in the late 1980s several companies set up services that would accept the shows on diskette and create slides or print transparencies. In the 1990s dedicated LCD-based screens that could be placed on the projectors started to replace the transparencies, and by the late 1990s they had almost all been replaced by video projectors.
The first commercial computer software specifically intended for creating WYSIWYG presentations was developed at Hewlett Packard in 1979 and called BRUNO (software) and later HP-Draw. The first software displaying a presentation on a personal computer screen was VCN ExecuVision, developed in 1982. This program allowed users to choose from a library of images to accompany the text of their presentation.

Features

A presentation program is supposed to help both: the speaker with an easier access to his ideas and the participants with visual information which complements the talk. There are many different types of presentations including professional (work-related), education, entertainment, and for general communication. Presentation programs can either supplement or replace the use of older visualaid technology, such as Pamphlets, handouts, chalkboards, flip charts, posters, slides and overhead transparencies. Text, graphics, movies, and other objects are positioned on individual pages or "slides" or "foils". The "slide" analogy is a reference to the slide projector, a device that has become somewhat obsolete due to the use of presentation software. Slides can be printed, or (more usually) displayed on-screen and navigated through at the command of the presenter. Transitions between slides can be animated in a variety of ways, as can the emergence of elements on a slide itself. Typically a presentation has many constraints and the most important being the limited time to present consistent information.
Many presentation programs come with pre-designed images (clip art) and/or have the ability to import graphic images. Some tools also have the ability to search and import images from Flickr or Google directly from the tool. Custom graphics can also be created in other programs such as Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator and then exported. The concept of clip art originated with the image library that came as a complement with VCN ExecuVision, beginning in 1983.
With the growth of digital photography and video, many programs that handle these types of media also include presentation functions for displaying them in a similar "slide show" format. For example, Apple's iPhoto allows groups of digital photos to be displayed in a slide show with options such as selecting transitions, choosing whether or not the show stops at the end or continues to loop, and including music to accompany the photos.
Similar to programming extensions for an operating system or web browser, "add ons" or plugins for presentation programs can be used to enhance their capabilities. For example, it would be useful to export a PowerPoint presentation as a Flash animation or PDF document. This would make delivery through removable media or sharing over the Internet easier. Since PDF files are designed to be shared regardless of platform and most web browsers already have the plugin to view Flash files, these formats would allow presentations to be more widely accessible.
Certain presentation programs also offer an interactive integrated hardware element designed to engage an audience (e.g. audience response systems) or facilitate presentations across different geographical locations through the internet (e.g. web conferencing). Other integrated hardware devices ease the job of a live presenter such as laser pointers and interactive whiteboards.



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