I was corrected about Ctrl-J -- of course that should
have been Ctrl-Shift-J. A couple of responders assume
this is full screen, but this is something different,
odd: being locked into a maximized window that obliterates
the Gnome desktop panels, upper and lower both. Well,
it isn't completely locked. I can Alt-Tab out of it if
I have any other window(s) open. Plus, I now learn about
Alt-F9:

(LC)
> I believe the ALT key plus the mouse will allow you
> to grab any window and drag it so you can see the
> top or bottom. ALT+F5 should unmaximize. This assumes
> that you are using the default Gnome desktop.

I am. Alt-F5 does nothing, nor does the ALT key plus
the left or middle button save bring up the File menu
in OpenOffice, as it normally does. However, I noted
that ALT plus the right mouse button opens the "window
menu" with the following choices

"Minimize (Alt-F9)"
"Move Titlebar Onscreen"
"Always on Top"
"Always on Visible Workspace"
"Only on This Workspace"
"Move to Workspace Right"
"Close (Alt-F4)"

Good. This means I can minimize it. In fact, it did
alert me to the Alt-F9 option, which works fine.

However it doesn't solve the riddle, nor my problem
overall. In addition to the above choices are three
greyed-out choices I cannot make:

"Maximize (Alt-F10)"
"Move (Alt-F7)"
"Resize (Alt-F8)"

Obviously Alt-F10 would be meaningless because the window
is already locked in the maximized position. Although
Alt-F9 does minimize the window, neither Alt-F8 nor
Alt-f7 do anything; this makes sense because those choices
are greyed out anyway.

This menu is the same as what happens with Alt-spacebar
but instead of in the upper left corner it appears
immediately below where the mouse cursor is.

Note that this phenomenon is NOT a matter of full-screen.
I can still toggle back and forth into full-screen mode,
which looks like full-screen usually does (Open Office
menus and toolbars disappear) except that it obliterates
the Gnome panels just as had been the case before the
full-screen was selected with Ctrl-Shift-J. When I
click out of full-screen I'm back to the same situation.

These are great, thanks.

> Some useful links:
> http://allhotkeys.com/ubuntu_hotkeys.html
> www.ubuntu-unleashed.com/2008/02/list-of-ubu\
ntu-keyboard-shortcuts.html

There is nothing among the hotkeys listed here,
however, that solves this problem.

Maybe I should reinstall. But before I do, does it
make sense to make a bug report to Ubuntu, or to
OpenOffice, or to somewhere else? How would I go
about this?

I have taken screen shots (by Alt-Tab into a terminal
window and calling

gnome-screenshot --interactive

with a delay. But this forum doesn't allow me to
post graphics images, photos, or upload files.
Would these be helpful? to anyone either who might
help me figure this out or to someone who would
deal with a bug if that's what this is?