reyn@trsvax.UUCP (06/06/90)
Thanks to all who replied to my question on Word For WIndows word wrapping causing the screen to scroll horizontally. I neglected to state that I am using a VGA adapter, so many of the responses were not applicable, but for the rest of the net, the gist is that you shouldn't think of using anything less than VGA, and that Hercules and Super-VGA ( 800 by 600 ) are much easier to deal with. I called CompuAdd ( the manufacturer of my machine ) and they will have a Windows 3.00 SuperVGA driver for my video card in about a month, and I'll certainly give it the good old college try. Now for the disturbing news, Most respondents informed me that I was correct. WFW and Write are not shipped with screen fonts for all printers which match the Ruler on all video resolutions. In my opinion, this stretches the term WYSIWYG to the limits of credability. If the columns on the screen don't line up like they do on the printer, then my assumption that WYSIWYG stood for "What You See Is What You Get" must be in error. The suggestion from those of you who liked WFW was to use one document setup for editing and proofing, and another for printing. Others suggested that I lie to Windows and select a different printer to fool it into using a good screen font. This seems odd to me, since we're talking about a $300.00 flagship product from a world-class software company, not ShareWare I downloaded from a BBS. Further investigation of the Draft Mode on my part has led me to believe that it is a better approach. The Draft Mode font is very readable, and the characters match the ruler. The major drawback of the Draft Mode is that all attributes (bold and underline) display on the screen as underline, but that's not too bad. The next most common suggestion was to get a SuperVGA display, since I only need a new driver to do this I'll give it a shot. Apparently, any screen with 640 horizontal pixels will correspond to 6 inches on the printer, the 800 pixel SuperVGA will correspond to 8 inches (approximately). The higher number of horizontal pixels will also give Windows a better shot at matching the font to the screen. Those who don't care for WFW responded with buy Ami Professional, it doesn't have these problems, or buy a Macintosh. I think I'll check up on Ami some more before I shell out any money, but I respectfully decline the suggestion to by a Mac. My overall feeling is that this product was designed for people who don't generate large amounts of text which they have to proof on the screen. The page preview seems to be for determining the "visual appeal" of the page layout, which is fine, but in my wife's occupation (writing fiction) the content is paramount. The typesetter at the publisher will lay out the pages, she only needs to generate a story in a format which is easy for her editor to proof. WFW has some tremendous pseudo-desktop-publishing features, but unless you have a SuperVGA or better monitor you are going to have to accept some visual (on the screen) degredation to get them. I still don't know whether we'll get WFW or not, but I certainly have a better understanding of the product now, so once again thanks for all of the responses.