henry@rochester.UUCP (07/22/85)
From: Henry.Kautz >Subject: laserwriter leading >From: jww@sdcsvax.UUCP (Joel West) >Path: seismo!harvard!think!mit-eddie!genrad!decvax!tektronix!hplabs!sdcrdcf!sdcsvax!jww >Organization: CACI, Inc - Federal, La Jolla >Newsgroups: net.micro.mac >Date: 19 Jul 85 00:27:22 GMT > >I'm preparing my first document on the laserwriter and like what I >see. I'm only renting it ($.25/page) and so the success of this >document will probably determine whether I get to buy one or not. > >I like Times-12, and so do most other folks. However, the spacing >between lines is a little too tight. From my days in the newspaper >business, I know that they would increase the leading to make it >more readable. They also do that with our newsletter. > >Is there an easy way to change Times-12 with MacWrite (or Word, >if you must) to add about 10% extra spacing? How hard is it to >define a new laserwriter font with more spacing? I don't want >to spend a month learning postscript, if I can help it. > > Joel West CACI, Inc. - Federal (c/o UC San Diego) > {ucbvax,decvax,ihnp4}!sdcsvax!jww > jww@SDCSVAX.ARPA In WORD, you can set the spacing between lines to whatever you want it to be -- in fractions of an inch, or points, or centimeters. Be sure to get the latest upgrade to WORD before doing your laser-printing -- the original version is very slow at laser printing. (>2 minutes each page.) ---- Henry Kautz :uucp: {seismo|allegra}!rochester!henry :arpa: henry@rochester :mail: Dept. of Comp. Sci., U. of Rochester, NY 14627 :phone: (716) 275-5766
jww@sdcsvax.UUCP (Joel West) (07/27/85)
> From: Henry.Kautz > In WORD, you can set the spacing between lines to whatever you want it > to be -- in fractions of an inch, or points, or centimeters. Be sure > to get the latest upgrade to WORD before doing your laser-printing -- > the original version is very slow at laser printing. (>2 minutes each > page.) > ---- Henry Kautz I'd like to thank Henry and all the others who pointed out that MS-WORD has this arbitrary leading capability. In the meantime, I have solved the problem by using the 1 1/2 spacing on MacWrite, which I find too white but the people who count approve of. **FLAME ON** I purchased MS-WORD about 6 months ago, spending $150 of my hard-earned dollars. Other than doing one form letter and a few landscape-format reports (5 pages each), it has remained in the box. There are some things I like about it, such as * obvious improved flexibility over MacWrite * arbitrary leading * multiple headers in one document * horizontal scrolling (why can't MacWrite do this?) * ability to move a document on the page without reformatting * handles documents with lots of "Returns" (like computer printouts) unlike MacWrite However, I will not use the current version for anything important because: 1) Very user-hostile and confusing 2) Poorly documented 3) What You See is Not What you Get (such as page headings) 4) Slow 5) Undocumented and incompatible file format The latter might not seem to be as important as the others. However, once I import a document into WORD, there's no way to take it out (without losing all formatting). Because of this, I dare not start something in WORD unless I'm sure I want to remain there forever. With some improvements it could be a very good program (like MS-BASIC 2.0). Or, I would gladly buy a MacWrite-like product that corrects the above deficiencies for serious writing. (Is anyone listening?) I recently did a 100-page report using Wordstar 2000 on an IBM AT. I'd previously used "real" Wordstar on a CP-M machine and found it difficult to get started on, but easy to use once you knew it. Wordstar 2000 allows nice footnotes, fancy rulers, etc. However, it is more cumbersome, confusing, buggy and less desireable than old Wordstar. I would submit that MS-Word is the Wordstar 2000 of the Macintosh world. I'm still waiting for the Easywriter, Volkswriter or PFS Write. ---------- Joel West CACI, Inc. - Federal (c/o UC San Diego) {ucbvax,decvax,ihnp4}!sdcsvax!jww jww@SDCSVAX.ARPA
tdn@cmu-cs-spice.ARPA (Thomas Newton) (07/30/85)
How is MS-WORD more user-hostile and confusing than MacWrite? At least in
WORD I don't need to devote half the screen area to rulers if I'm typing in
paragraphs with different formats. I also find the ability to work with more
than one document at a time and to split a window very useful. MacWrite only
lets you work with one document at a time, and only gives you one view of that
document.
My two major complaints with WORD are
(1) Although Microsoft put in keyboard equivalents for mouse/menu
commands, they didn't go far enough. To move the cursor and
select text, you must press COMMAND, OPTION, and sometimes the
SHIFT key in addition to one of the non-alphanumeric keys on the
right hand side of the keyboard. When I'm using Emacs, I very
rarely need to press more than two keys at once. And what did
Microsoft do with the more desirable COMMAND-key combinations?
They devoted them to such "common" functions as repagination!!!
(2) If you want to change the number of columns in the middle of a
document, you generally must break across page boundaries. For
example, there is no way to print a two-column article with a
large one-column title/introduction, unless you break it into
two documents:
The title page, two-column with a large header and
with the page boundaries changed
The rest of the document
The only way to tell it "break this page into one-column and
two-column pieces" seems to be to change the page boundaries
and use an extra-large header on the first page. But since
the page boundary setting is global, this screws the rest of
the document. So you are forced to break one document into
two pieces, or to choose a formatting that it can handle.
By and large, the things that WORD has problems with (other than slow printing
on the LaserWriter) seem to be features that don't even exist in MacWrite. So
yes, WORD has problems, but I'll take it over MacWrite any day of the week.
Now if only they'd put in a basic Gosling EMACS-like set of keyboard commands
(programmability is too much to hope for) and make the formatter smarter about
multi-column documents...
-- Thomas Newtonsakw@cvaxa.UUCP (Sak Wathanasin) (08/10/85)
> By and large, the things that WORD has problems with (other than slow > printing on the LaserWriter) seem to be features that don't even exist in > MacWrite. I have a few gripes (in addition to the ones already posted) that are not related to WORD "features": 1) Changing fonts is awkward. I found this out when using the Princeton font for equations in running text. Someone else mentioned this in a recent posting. 2) It doesn't show you running headers and footers. Also it ignores the margins when printing them, so that I had to produce several drafts to get my headers lined up right. And it takes several levels of menus (3 ?) to set up a header or footer. 3) The paragraph format is held at the end of the para, and can be deleted by the backspace key. I was deleting a bunch of stuff with the backspace key and didn't take my finger off fast enough - the preceeding para suddenly reformatted itself. Took me a while to work out what had happened. I use MacW most of the time, if only because I can convert from MacW to WORD but not vice versa. -- Sak Wathanasin, U of Sussex, Cognitive Studies, Falmer, Sussex BN1 9QN, UK uucp:...mcvax!ukc!cvaxa!sakw arpa/janet: sakw%svga@uk.ac.ucl.cs
bill@utastro.UUCP (William H. Jefferys) (08/15/85)
> I have a few gripes (in addition to the ones already posted) that > are not related to WORD "features": > > 1) Changing fonts is awkward. I found this out when using the Princeton font > for equations in running text. Someone else mentioned this in a recent > posting. This one, at least, is easy. If you type the combination "Command-Shift-E" and then a digit n, the font which is shown as the nth one in your font list will be selected. This has really saved a lot of time. I tried out the new WORD (Version 1.05) on the LaserWriter today. What an improvement in speed! The pages came out just about as fast as possible (as soon as one page was printed, the next one was about ready). -- "Men never do evil so cheerfully and so completely as when they do so from religious conviction." -- Blaise Pascal Bill Jefferys 8-% Astronomy Dept, University of Texas, Austin TX 78712 (USnail) {allegra,ihnp4}!{ut-sally,noao}!utastro!bill (uucp) bill%utastro.UTEXAS@ut-sally.ARPA (ARPANET)