Exploring hidden features of OpenOffice.org, part II.
Today we will create a seven feet by seven feet poster in Draw and print this using normal letter paper.
Well, that would certainly need much more than 100 sheets of paper and a lot of precious ink, so we'll restrict the poster size to span four sheets of paper, just for this exercise. In OpenOffice.org Draw 3, the maximum paper size is set to 3m x 3m. In full color, you will soon run out of ink. But thin line art would not need so much ink. Look at this real world example: http://openoffice.exblog.jp/7614509/
Imagine you want to paint some comic characters to a wall of your living room. You can create the line art in Draw. To print the comic without emptying your wallet for new ink, remove all fill colors and set the line width of the remaining outline lines to a small value. Print the line art, glue the paper sheets to the wall, let them dry. Or ask your great grand mother for a sewing pattern copy tool that can copy the lines through the sheets onto the wallpaper. Then use a really big brush and some inexpensive wall colors to paint the wall.
Attention, kids, please ask your parents before you start!
So, first you define the paper size to be as large as you want the final painting to be.
1. Open a new Draw document, choose Format - Page.
2. Set the paper format to the width and height of the final painting.
For this example, we chose landscape orientation and entered 16" width and 12" height. If you want 40 cm each, you can enter that into the box, together with the measurements.
3. Now draw your line art.
For this example, we inserted a rectangle, removed the fill color, and set the line width to 0.06". Then we rotated the rectangle to some degrees, so that we can more easily see how well the final pages will fit together.
The rotation tool is still selected, down there on the Drawing toolbar.
By the way, this blog image shows StarOffice 9.0, which uses the same program code as OpenOffice.org 3.0. You see the tilted rectangle with jagged lines on screen, but it will print much better. Later on, that is in OpenOffice.org 3.1 or so, it is planned to have an anti-aliased screen display, so that the screen looks much better, too.
4. When your line art is finished, choose File - Print.
If your printer is set up to print double-sided, you would want to change the properties temporarily to print single-sided. Click OK.
OpenOffice.org knows that your printer cannot print on such paper size, so it asks how to continue.
5. Check "Print on multiple pages" and click OK. For the example, your printer should output approximately four sheets of paper. This depends on how large your rectangle is, how much you tilted the rectangle, and of course on the paper size inside the printer.
6. Arrange the paper sheets in the right order and glue them together as needed.
Happy drawing!