Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!walt.cc.utexas.edu!awessels From: awessels@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Allen Wessels) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps Subject: Re: MS Word and the laser printer... Message-ID: <36022@ut-emx.UUCP> Date: 15 Aug 90 04:53:06 GMT References: <1990Aug14.164654.26727@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <35942@ut-emx.UUCP> <1990Aug14.214156.15034@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> Sender: news@ut-emx.UUCP Reply-To: awessels@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Allen Wessels) Distribution: na Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas Lines: 77 In article <1990Aug14.214156.15034@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> resnick@cogsci.uiuc.edu (Pete Resnick) writes: >awessels@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Allen Wessels) writes: > >>>1) Use tabs and NEVER USE MULTIPLE HARD SPACES. >>the other day someone wanted to creat a centered column of bulleted items. A >>tab would not do since you would have to position the tab for each line based >>on where it was centered. A couple of option-spaces worked quite well. > >Bad choice. This may screw up spacing. You have the choice of left-justified, >right-justified and center tabs as well as left right and center paragraphs >for tables (an under-utilized feature). Each should be used over hard spaces. >I agree that indents should be used over tabs. OK, I'm always willing to re-examine old habits to see if there is a better way. One of the people on the network I manage wanted to set up several lines of topic heads centered on the page horizontally. They also wanted bullets to preceed each topic head on its line. For example: * Topic A * Another Topic, Lets Call It B * And So On, .... Lets ignore WHY they wanted it this way. You also need to assume that there should be a constant amount of space between the bullet (*) and the topic text. We do not want the text centered on either the bullet or the beginning of the text. Now, without setting tabs separately in each line, my solution was to use the option-space between the bullet and the topic text, and to select all the topic lines and use center paragraphs. I have never, in hundreds of Word files, seen a problem with the fixed space. Word does not expand or contract the option-space as it does the standard space. If someone has an easier solution, I'm ready to copy it to disk. >>>2) Never use hard returns to reformat. >>I'd have to disagree here. [reasons deleted] > >Agreed that Paragraph positioning can be a pain and sometimes so can >Keep with next (although I have run into few problems with it), but >space before and after is an easy tool that should be used. Using >hard returns forces Word to make dubious decisions about the tops of >pages and when to keep something together at the end of the page. >Also, if you use styles, changing things is really no problem at all. >Almost nothing I ever do is in Normal style. Using the Format Paragraph options gets into what I call "text programming". I have seen novice users (even those very comfortable with word processing in Word) make selections in the Format dialog that conflict with other document settings, i.e. setting some value for Space After _and_ using double-spacing. Another thing they confuse is the page margin and the left/right indent. The problem with using dialogs to format text is that you have to bring up the dialog to see the settings. By using returns, you can see exactly how much space your lines are taking up (assuming you know the fontsize selected - a simple menu click). I don't know how the hard returns mess up pagination any more than setting breaks before, keep together, etc. Either way you have to tweak the page, and typically our editors will decide where those breaks should be, defeating any "smart-programmed" text. Style sheets are another can of worms, especially linking them. Not only do people have to keep track of what the sheets do, but how changes in the base sheets will cascade down through the descendant sheets. >I think that novices need to slowly learn some features of Word. I agree >that some of the more powerful features are difficult to master, but >some are so useful, you wonder how you ever got along without them and >why you hadn't tried them in the first place. I couldn't agree more. Word is such a powerful tool that people can develop different but equally powerful ways of using it. I have coached people who've used Word since 1.05 and show them ways of getting work done with tools they never realized Word had (or if they did, what could be done with such tools.) - Allen