pti4378@ritvax.isc.rit.edu (IGOE, PT) (12/10/90)
How good of a WYSIWYG word processor is W4W? What resolution does one need to see the entire page at one time? Does having graphics on the page effect this? Would W4W + ATM + HPLaserJet = a decent WYSIWIG system? I'm especially interested in Times and Helvetica fonts, without blocky edges. Does one need a PostScript printer for this, or will ATM do the job? Good answers were not available at the local software-mart. Thanks, Pat
a752@mindlink.UUCP (Bruce Dunn) (12/12/90)
> pti4378@ritvax.isc.rit.edu writes: > > How good of a WYSIWYG word processor is W4W? What resolution does one need > to > see the entire page at one time? Does having graphics on the page effect > this? > > Would W4W + ATM + HPLaserJet = a decent WYSIWIG system? I'm especially > interested in Times and Helvetica fonts, without blocky edges. Does one need > a > PostScript printer for this, or will ATM do the job? > > Good answers were not available at the local software-mart. > > Thanks, > > Pat I have the combination of WfW (Word for Windows), Adobe Type Manager (ATM) and a stock HP IIP Laserjet with no additional memory. The combination is excellent. In standard VGA (640x480), you can see a little over 6 inches of the page in a horizontal direction. This is an annoyance, because if your margins don't total at least 2.5 inches, some of the text will be off screen. Up-down, you probably see about a third of a page. When run in super-VGA at 800x600, you can see about 7.75 inches right-left, which means that for any reasonable margins on an 8.5 inch page you can see all the text. Simply changing the driver to 800x600 does not change the screen fonts - the same number of pixels in the same arrangement are used for each letter. Since the screen has more pixels, you see more "paper" on the screen, but the characters are smaller. If you display in 1024x768 super-VGA, you can see about 10.2 inches right-left on your paper, which allows you to see the entire printed area of an 11 inch page in landscape mode. This mode is my favorite, although the screen characters are rather small on a conventional size monitor (although not any smaller I think than the screen characters on a classic Mac). In page view mode at 1024x768, if you remove the ruler and ribbon from the screen, you can see an entire page with only one page-up or page-down command (you can see the top half or the bottom half of your page). Unlike "page preview" modes in many word processors, you can easily read and edit the text. Screen output is very close to WYSIWYG. You can tell from the screen whether text is in Time or Helvetica, what point size it is, and whether it is bold, italics etc. I have worked for years with Word for DOS, and after a couple of weeks with WfW didn't ever want to go back to blind formatting and trial printouts. Adobe Type Manager produces first class Helvetica and Times Roman printouts, provided you remember to set the printer resolution in the printer setup part of Windows to 300 dpi. I don't see how the output could be better. Printing is quite fast - typically there is only a few seconds delay before a page is printed. I have some complaints however about how ATM is integrated into the WfW environment. To sumarize my previously posted complaints: 1) If you are allowing ATM to build screen fonts, there is a delay of several seconds each time you **first** select a new font or point size. It would be nice if you could tell ATM to prebuild common fonts. 2) In the smaller point sizes (8 and 10), the ATM screen fonts which are built on the spot from an outline are relatively ugly and poorly formed. Windows has better 8 and 10 point Helvetica and Times screen fonts which are installed with Windows. With some fiddling and careful choice of font names, you can use these better looking (presumably hand tuned) screen fonts for Helvetica and Times Roman. 3) ATM does strange things with the font selector box in WfW. You get listings for Helv and Helvetica, and Times and Tms Rmn. Both versions of the font give identical printed output, but differ in which screen fonts they use. One font name gives exclusively screen fonts generated by ATM, while the other font name gives Windows screen fonts below and ATM fonts above a given point size (settable in the ATM.INI file). A bug in ATM will make it appear as if any cartridge fonts you have in your printer can be printed in all point sizes from 6 to 48, whereas in fact they can only be printed in their preset size. I think that 800x600 VGA is probably the best compromise of character size vs. amount of text visible. If you are just doing word processing, Hercules mono is also quite good (allowing you to see more of your work than the 640x480 VGA display. -- Bruce Dunn Vancouver, Canada a752@mindlink.UUCP