Re: How do I group font families in the font menu?

"Lots" of people have requested the feature. What Priyanka is saying is
that so far "not enough" have requested it to move it from the "Maybe Next
Time" bucket into the "Definitely This Time" bucket :-)

Each change costs time and money. Each change pleases some users and
displeases others. It's a constant balancing act...

Now to answer your question:

1) A skilled user of Word would rarely if ever use the "Font" menu. They
would reveal the Formatting toolbar, and use Tools>Customise to drag the
Font Name box wider so they could read the font name properly. Then they
would click the Font box and type the first letter of the font name. That
jumps the list to position with say the "W"s at the cursor, so "Wingdings"
is the third one down...

2) At the top of the toolbar menu, your five most recent fonts are grouped.

3) Word Processor users typically do not care about font "families". If
they know anything at all about fonts, it is that their Style Guide requires
them to use specified fonts for specified things, so they will go for the
font by its name, not its "family".

4) Professional users of Word will almost never do anything at all with
fonts. They perform ALL of their formatting with Styles. They define their
desired font, size, weight, kerning and tracking into the style. Do the
whole job the first time, and they never have to think about it again.

5) I run with all of Word's default toolbars hidden. I use special
toolbars of my own making that contain a button for each of the 20-odd
styles I use frequently.

6) Those styles are each defined differently depending upon the Type of
document I am working on. Those definitions are held in a series of
Templates: One for "Manuals", one for "Reports", one for "Websites", one
for "Letters and Memos".

7) Each "kind" of document has the correct template attached.

I never even think about fonts until I change jobs...

So: that's how I do it :-)

You are a "designer"? So you tell ME what fonts to use for what. Give that
to me as a list, I will define your requirements into my templates, and you
will never get the font wrong again :-)

You and I both need to remember that Word uncomfortably straddles a wide
range of different target markets. But at its basis, it is a Word
Processor. It is designed to handle large amounts of text, quickly and
automatically. It is designed with extremely powerful automation features
to enable users to bulk-process text. Sort of like "Television" as opposed
to "Oil on Canvas". Both do "pictures"; TV, like Word, does it in bulk :-)

I have to get over the fact that Word is impossibly cluttered with newbie
features designed to allow people who don't know how to use it to get
"something like" what they want quickly. I mutter in frustration at how my
efforts to achieve a precisely-specified result with absolute precision
across a 2,500-page document are rent asunder by Word's attempts to "help"
by creating a numbered list with non-compliant formatting in its efforts to
assist a user who doesn't understand paragraph numbering. Word is the
world's MOST powerful and MOST adaptable word processor. But regrettably,
its entire design philosophy is aimed at people who can't even handle
AppleWorks or TextEdit. Grrrr....

You might just have to get over the fact that the Fonts Menu is a pig :-)
It doesn't even exist in PC Word, and I think you have discovered the reason
for that :-)

When you get a few spare minutes, take a dig around in the Word Help.
Hopefully, you will find a few power features hiding in there that will be
useful for what YOU do. It will never challenge Quark or InDesign (by
design...) but it will get close enough for undemanding jobs, and it will do
huge jobs faaaast... :-)

Cheers


On 27/9/05 10:49 AM, in article
1127843379.639086.301680@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
"h.reininger@xxxxxxxxx" <h.reininger@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Thanks for that! Just a question, are you saying no one has requested
> this "feature" so far? Every other app is doing this as long as I can
> think back. How do members of the MBU choose a font in Word from a
> (potentially) long list of cryptic and often nondescriptive names?
>
> I am a designer, I definitely won't touch Fontbook and am using
> FontAgent pro to manage my fonts, works very well in almost all apps.
> If I could attach a screenshot here, I would show you MY choices in the
> Word font menu - definitely not easy to handle.
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <john@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

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