Document Productions
In this session you will be looking at how to create and open documents using different sources or files.
Everyday you are likely to come in contact with documents, letters, books, leaflets and printed material that were prepare and edited by using software to developed and edit text documents.
Locating an recognising file types
As the part of the practical work you will need to be able to open and edit work that has been prepared for you. People do not always work using the same types of text editing software and so there are many various generic file types that all computer systems will recognise. Generic file type mean that you will be able to work with them regardless of the software packages that you are using.
Format |
Meaning |
Description |
| .csv | Comma seperated values | This data contains data items that is separated by commas. When imported into text editing software the data can be fomatted as a table. Often csv file are use in spreadsheet and databases as the data can be read by any of appropiate software.
|
| .rtf | Rich text format | Text file which keep some of the formatting that was in the original file. |
| .txt | Text file | This file can be open in any of the text editing or processing program. |
Opening documents and importing data from existing files
When you create the documents for your practical work, you can use as many different types of document formats as part of your work. As well as the generic file types you could include:
| .dox | A document file created in Microsoft word 2003 or earlier. |
| .docx | A document created in Microsoft word 2007 or 2010. |
| .txt | A document created in Open Office writer. |
Page Layout
The layout of the pages in your document needs to be considered very carefully. Each time you import text or open a document that someone else has created, you may be dealing with the page settings that were set when the document was created. This can have a problem with the layout which mean when you print it would be a poor quality printing.
In the word processing program select page layout and open the Page Setup dialogue box by clicking the icon at the bottom right.
From this icon you can change:
- the orientation of the page as landscape, wide, portrait and tall.
- the size of the page
- the layout of the page
- the size of the margins
Font style
The style of a font(sometime called the font face) can e described as being a serif or sans-serif.
The difference between a serif and a san-serif font is that Serif on the left have a little marks added on the top and the bottom. The san-serif does not have little marks added on.
Changing font, size and color is very easy. You have the panel that allows you to work with fonts.
Paragraph alignment
The next layout problem concerns the paragraphs. Some are over to left, some centered and some to the right. This is known as paragraph alignment, and you may hear this refereed to as justify. Some paragraph are justified left alignment
t and center. Changing the alignment is very easy just choose which one you want.
Header and Footers
Sometime title are put on top of the page and the date on the bottom of the page. Important information can be put in the Header and footer. The header is at the top of the page, the footer is at the bottom of the page. It also use to print the page no. of the document.
IGCSE ICT 
