gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu (08/30/89)
Is it true that fractional widths is completely broken is MS-Word
(3.02 and 4.0)?
At the moment, I am using adobe screen fonts and fractional widths. I
have several justified paragraphs with 11 point times font [italic and
normal] (note that 11 is not included in the standard sizes, but 10
and 12 are). When I print out justified / filled paragraphs, the
right-hand edge is as ragged as a Navajo rug.
Lines consisting Times font alone are simply lousy. Lines with
italics, subscripts, and math overstrikes are downright awful. Why
doesn't this work? What's the point of fractional widths? Is it a
quick way to make your paper look awful? 8-)
Don Gillies, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Illinois
1304 W. Springfield, Urbana, Ill 61801
ARPA: gillies@cs.uiuc.edu UUCP: {uunet,harvard}!uiucdcs!gilliesxdab@tank.uchicago.edu (David Baird) (09/01/89)
I once asked MicroSoft about this and was told that Word needs the installed screen fonts in order for the program to calculate the spacing using fractional widths and full justification. I wish either Adobe would provide 9 and 11 point screen fonts, or that Microsoft would enable one to use fractional widths with full justification with font sizes not available for the screen.
jhenry@randvax.UUCP (Jim Henry) (09/06/89)
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.
nedludd@ut-emx.UUCP (charles s. geiger, esq.) (09/06/89)
> 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. Fractional widths is most noticeable when using bold, italics, and bold-italics. The word spacing is just all screwed up on these without fractional widths -- it just looks like dog poo-poo. Of course, the trade-off is: use fractional widths and get good-looking bold and italics but lousy justification, or don't use fractional widths and get justification but really shitty-looking bold and italics. Such a trade-off is really not acceptable when trying to produce quality output. In such a case, hell, pipe everything into pagemaker or xpress. cheers, from charles s. geiger, esq.