Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!helps!wf-aus!gustwick From: gustwick@wf-aus.cactus.org (Bob Gustwick ) Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms Subject: Re: Which Word Processor is easiest to use? Message-ID: Date: 2 Jun 90 11:46:12 GMT References: <7366@fy.sei.cmu.edu> Organization: W.F. Associates, Austin, Texas Lines: 94 bwb@sei.cmu.edu (Bruce Benson) writes: > >WFW and Word 5.0 are not compatible. even on simple documents > >WFW will paginate differently than WFW... on more complex > >documents, especially w/ style sheets, WFW may produce output that > >not only is not similar to Word 5.0 output, but is completely > >unrecognizable. > > You need to move/adapt the style sheets to WFW. Without the > style sheets, of course, output can be drastically different. This is not > a problem with WfW or an incompatibility at the document level. There is > a lot of power in style sheets, just like in macros, and everything has > to be moved to the new system. I've had no real problems. i did move the style sheets. most worked.... however, several documents were screwed up beyond all recognition. ie: side by side columns switched sides of the page serendipidously. > >>hard disk and you'd like to view/print them in the future, be sure > >not to throw away word 5.0. w/o word 5.0, your old documents > >will be useless. > > Nah, too strong a conclusion and certainly not true. For a power user > who has used every last trick of the system moving to a new system is > always tough. I've tossed my Word 5.0 to save the space, have a couple agreed. my frustration has not really been because there are incompatibilites, but because Microsoft representatives claimed that there were none. i called Microsoft as soon as i loaded my first document, and stared in disbelief at what i saw. my question was 'what migration tools or hints do you have for word 5.0 to word for windows users?' the reply i got was that no migration was needed, because everything worked perfectly. after several phone calls, i finally got someone to admit that style sheets had changed from word 5.0 to WFW. in word 5.0 there are three categories of styles: character, paragraph, and document. in WFW there is only one type of style: paragraph. the word 5.0 --> WFW conversion changes the character styles to direct formatting, uses the paragraph styles as you would expect, and kind of sort of sets default document parameters according to the document style. (you don't have more than one document style in your style sheet do you?) after sending a disk of document examples to microsoft, i got a nice letter explaining that yes, there were some differences, but i should find the new features so splendiferous that i shouldn't mind the changes. perhaps. but i should have been warned from the start. i shouldn't have been told over and over that the two words were completely compatible, and that there are no migration problems. an appendix explaining such things would have been nice. one of the kind people i talked to in customer support suggested that if enough people complain about compatibility, then perhaps the software designers would do something about it. i suggest that anyone seeing similar problems complain. i can understand some of the new nifty stuff in WFW not moving to the other words... such as the fields, templates, and macros. but features that all the words claim to support such as directly formatted text, indirectly formatted text (style sheets), and included graphic images should move seemlessly between them all. i loaded all the conversion filters w/ WFW and was surprised to find that there was no converter for Word for Mac to WFW. you must save your word for mac document in RTF or word for dos format from mac word *before* moving it to a PC. heaven help you if you thought that you could read a mac disk on your PC w/ a CopyII PC option board and load that file into Word for Windows. ideally i should be able to have a TOPS network that has low end PC's running word 5.0, higher end PC's running WFW, and Mac's running word for mac. all the machines should be able to load each other's word files, and all should be able to print to a networked laserwriter and get the same results. if one were to restrict oneself to features that seem to be implemented similarly across all words, one couldn't use style sheets or graphics. and it is likely that the same file printed w/ each WFW and Word 5.0 to the same networked laserwriter will still look different. perhaps the look and feel of the words is similar. perhaps some amount of data can be moved between them. but they aren't compatible. it occurs to me that PC Word 2.0 features are probably pretty common to all the Words... if i remember correctly there were no style sheets or graphics back then... in all my letters and calls to microsoft product support, i always talked to kind well-meaning people. they offered what help they could. but even when i sent a disk of WFW screwups, i was never told that any of my problems were their problems... problem reports were never opened, and there were never any replies such as 'thank you, that will be fixed in the next release.' instead i've been told that i should work around things. i work around things by using word 5.0. ...bob