Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!randvax!jhenry
From: jhenry@randvax.UUCP (Jim Henry)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Fractured Widths (Fairytales?)
Keywords: MS Word, Fonts
Message-ID: <2183@randvax.UUCP>
Date: 5 Sep 89 23:44:45 GMT
References: <126900068@p.cs.uiuc.edu> <5263@tank.uchicago.edu>
Reply-To: jhenry@rand-unix.UUCP (Jim Henry)
Organization: Rand Corp., Santa Monica, Ca.
Lines: 27


I have had some lengthy discussions about Word's problems with justification
with people at Microsoft in a position to know about such things.  They say
that the problem is actually somewhere in the system printer driver.  This
make sense because Word doesn't generate the PostScript, the print driver
does.  What I don't know is how Word would ask the system to set a text
string to a given length.  Obviously ripe territory for a finger pointing
match.  At any rate, Microsoft's prime hope for a solution are the new
facilities that will coming in System 7.0.  It seems to me that the
situation is better with the 6.0 Laser Driver that comes on the color
support disk.

If you are noticing the poor right margin, you may have also noticed that
the print driver adds both word space AND letter space to justify.  Letter
spacing, especially when used like this, makes typographers ill.  It is
"easily" fixed with ResEdit.  If you change the Flag Word (first word) of a
FOND from $1000 to $0800, the print driver will only add space between
words to justify the text.

To get back to the original question, Fractional Widths does work and does
make a MAJOR difference in appearance.  The difference is much more
noticeable with ragged text.  If you do NOT enable Fractional Widths, your
printed output will be too loose.  In 3.0, you could even have lines
disappear from a page; I don't know if this still happens in 4.0.  On the
other hand, disabling Fractional Widths does make the screen easier to
read, particularly at smaller sizes.  I added Fractional Widths to my File
menu so I can quickly double check that it is enabled before I print.