Re: Pictures in Word document

Dear John,

I really appreciate your advice and especially for your big chunk of time
you took to give me the reasons why to do what. It makes learning for me
that much easier.

I haven't posted during last week because I am following Daiya's advice and
do no longer formatting. This was valuable advice, and my thanks to Daiya
since I am talking about the subject. I wanted to get better used to this
different method of writing. As you all may have guessed not being a
professional writer I never took a formal course on how to use Word "the
right way", clearly my fault . This is deeply rooted in my impatience and
eagerness to see results - looking for instant gratification. Since I
stopped formatting and include the pictures "in line with text", the whole
process calmed down considerably, no more shifting and jumping.

On the subject of using styles, I had a mystery surprise once, when a
subdocument showed up with the Normal style applied to everything, including
Headings and all. I can't explain how this could have happened. But
feeling inferior to Word I have become pretty submissive. Otherwise the
styles I am using work well so far.

A question though, should I create styles in the Master Document or can it
also be done in any of the Subdocuments and then expect the style to be
available in all Subdocs?

Your hint to avoid writing in Page Layout mode is well taken! I liked it so
much from writing correspondence having not more than a page or two, that I
thought this could foul up the process of pagination and keeping track of
chapters, etc. So this was news to me. I probably have wasted a lot of
time inserting page/section brakes where I should not have done it all. It
probably will take some time to get used to write in Normal view. You sort
of have to write in blind faith, trusting Word to do the layout right.

The thing with justification is also quite unusual for my hitherto personal
approach since I liked the 'neat look'. But I will try it out right away.

Now here is my plan: I am going to print out your list of tips and follow
all. This list beats a book of 397 pages. (Why do the authorities in Word
always have to write everything in one big volume as if everybody using Word
will be or wants to be a professional? Unfortunately, the sheer 'volume" of
a book turns me off, although I had to read a lot of technical books to make
a career out of my life. But that stuff was easier to learn for me than to
memorize the minute details of document processing.)

I will report back to you in a week or so, after I have tried out
everything!

And thanks to all who showed compassion with my frustrations and failures.

I am not sure Elliot will be affordable for fixing a hacker's output.

And thanks for your cheers for now!
Rudolf



John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh] wrote on 5/18/06 6:03 AM

Hi Rudolph:

On 15/5/06 3:14 AM, in article C08CDDC1.16ADE%postonly@xxxxxxxxxx,
"incognito" <postonly@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Mind you, though, that my process of writing is not copying text
but writing down thoughts and experiences as they come while I am writing.
Like writing a thesis.

Mine too. Follow Daiya's suggestion and keep hacking. That's the way Word
is designed to work. But don't bother formatting until you've finished the
text.

And all pictures are mental stimulants for me, if you know what I mean.
I do use styles profusely but probably not efficiently. I also have to look
into anchoring. I am a real hacker in word processing, I guess.

Profusely and efficiently are the same thing as far as styles are concerned.
Create sufficient styles so that you do not need to override any with direct
formatting :-)

Q: When I write in the page layout mode, doesn't that automatically create
a page?

No. That causes Word to "invent" pages twice, once to display the document,
and again to print it. Nothing causes Word to insert "pages" in its
documents "automatically", you have to do it manually if you want pages.
Word is designed to dynamically make up pages on output, and to avoid having
them in the document, so it can perform its automatic pagination.

Hint: Just TRY it the way it is designed to work. Rather than use page
breaks to tell Word where you want the pages, use paragraph properties to
tell it where you *don't*. Then let Word sort out the pagination while you
get on with the writing.

Use "Keep With Next" to cause Word to "pull" a paragraph onto the next page
if the paragraph after it goes to the next page. All of your heading styles
should have this property so you can't get headings stuck at the bottom of a
page.

Use "Page Break Before" on your Heading 1 style to force chapters to start a
new page.

Use "Keep Lines Together" on all of your heading styles to prevent headings
splitting at a page break.

You must turn OFF "Widow/Orphan Control" for these properties to work.

Personally, I turn off Window/Orphan and use Keep Lines Together on
everything including body text. Paper is not that expensive these days, and
readers hate having to flip to the next page to see the end of a paragraph:
it breaks their concentration.

Any page that is 3/4 full is full "enough". Don't bother trying to chase
page filling any closer than that: you'll drive yourself mad. If the page
is 3/4 full, it's fine: go on to the next page :-)

Don't *Justify*. Leave your text set ragged right. Justification was
always a polite fiction, a triumph of form over function. Used with narrow
newspaper-style columns its still "acceptable". But it presupposes a column
no wider than 2-1/2 alphabets (65 characters at the font size in use). Most
document columns are set wider than that these days, so leave them ragged
right :-) And if you don't justify then you don't need to hyphenate either,
so don't! Again, hyphens piss the readers off, and the paper they save is
just not worth the aggro they cause.

Elliot's crying in his Chateaux Cardboarde by now :-)

But finally, I would say finish the text then flip it to Elliot and get him
to lay it up FOR you. A professional can do in a day what it will take you
a month to learn and a year to get right. How much is your life worth :-)

Cheers


It is getting very interesting with all the great feedback I get. Being
retired gives me some leeway for my schedule.
Regards to all!

Rudolf

John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh] wrote on 5/14/06 12:06 AM

Hi Rudolf:

You don't need new "software" :-)

Word functions quite capably as publishing software.

You just have to learn how to do "publishing".

Publishing is a somewhat different workflow from "document production". You
use different techniques, and at different points in the production cycle.

Rule 1: Get your text FINISHED FIRST. Do not do any formatting or layout
until the text is letter-perfect. Many users of word trap themselves in a
hopeless tail-chasing exercise of writing, formatting, editing,
reformatting, rewriting, reformatting, editing, reformatting... All of
those "formatting" passes are an utter waste of time. The formatting cannot
be done until the text stops changing, and when the text is finished,
formatting can be done once, only once, and it will be fast and easy.

Rule 2: Do all formatting with Styles. No exceptions. When you come to
the layout process, you'll save literally weeks if you can change the
formatting instantly by changing a style definition.

Rule 3: Word processors have no "pages". They "invent" pages when you
print, but they do not exist in the file. If you want to use Word for
"Publishing" you need to create pages manually.

Myth 1: Word processors have no "text flows". That's a lie :-) Word does
have text flows: look up "Linked text boxes" in the Help.

Myth 2: Word can't keep pictures where you put them. Bulldust! It can.
But you need to understand the difference between "floating" and "inline"
graphics. You need to understand "anchors" and their placement. You need
to understand that Word positions everything with respect to a paragraph:
and learn to keep your anchoring paragraph on the correct page.

So there: Don't give up yet. Learn "Publishing" and learn the different
toolset that Word provides to permit publishing from Word and you will get
on just fine without new software :-)

I have sometimes been heard to mutter that iPages succeeds not because it's
"better" than Word but because it leaves out all the powerful tools that
confuse people who don't want to learn how to use them. Ipages forces you
to do things the right way because it's the only way: it doesn't have the
other features :-)

Cheers

On 14/5/06 8:30 AM, in article C08BD653.16AA6%postonly@xxxxxxxxxx,
"incognito" <postonly@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi CyberTaz,

Thank you very, very much for the enlightenment!

I have used Word for many years, in Windows as well as with the Mac, but
usually for light and easy material. I truly did not want to become an
expert in publishing and thought it would be easy to do a special
'retirement project'. I will have to rethink my strategy, since I do not
want to give up this project but I also do not want to trouble shoot the
document every so often as has been the case. Granted, since I subdivided
the document into a bunch of subdocs, it has been more consistent, but it
also has been frustrating and time-consuming.

Where could I get advice for some decent publishing software? Any
suggestion? I hate to give up.

Thank you
Rudolf

CyberTaz wrote on 5/12/06 1:52 PM

Pictures in Word documentHello Rudolf -

If you first take a look at:

http://word.mvps.org/Mac/PagesInWord.html

You'll better understand what I mean when I suggest that Word may not be
the
best program for your purpose. IMHO, you are going to need the features
provided in a page layout/desktop publishing application which simply
don't
exist in a word processing program.

You might also be interested in taking a look at:

http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/General/WhyMasterDocsCorrupt.htm

Especially with a large number of graphics involved, as they have a
tendency
to exacerbate the complexity of the doc, increasing the likelihood of
corruption.

I don't mean to be an alarmist, but the plethora of 'features' added to
an
excellent word processing program often gives the impression that it does
all those other things equally well. That, unfortunately, isn't the case.
Please don't misunderstand, though, it isn't that the features don't
*work*,
nor that graphics cannot be acceptably dealt with. It's just that there is
a
very real limit to what can be effectively handled and that what has to be
done almost amounts to a full-time profession in itself.



.

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