I wrote the piece in Docs, and then downloaded it for use in NeoOffice, the Open Office.org branch that I'm currently using on my Mac. One of the problems I had is that Docs displays output as a continuous stream of paper, and does not show pages unless you use the new print preview feature. While that worked well for a while, it was distracting and when I went beyond five pages the preview broke. I had to guess at the remainder of the formatting.
The downloaded *.ODT file was also messy on formatting, I had to do extensive corrections both in the introduction and in my bibliography. I think I spent almost as long on that as I did for the writing itself. Probably not suitable for beginners.
I also want to talk about publishing. I was able to publish it as a web page through Google Docs, and through the same set of sharing controls, post it here on Blogger. I'm not very satisfied with the results, but I'm not done trying. At the end of this course, I will post my full research paper as I would do it, using all the formatting tools that I know how to use.
With those caveats, I still am a big fan of Google Docs. I like having my documents and spreadsheets available on my desktop, laptop, and school computer in almost every format under the sun. I'm hoping to have more success doing it in reverse order for the final draft. I am going to try two tacks - first created a formatted file on my local word processor and upload it. Second, try doing it with portable document format file (PDF).
I'll keep you updated.
