Re: Grey logos in letterheads

Hi Daiya:

Oh. Shows how long since I hit Word.PC :-)

If you really need the rationalisation, it is/was this: HTML is not a
"paginated" medium. The protocol does not support "Running Headers", these
are an artefact of the printing industry.

This goes back to SGML, from which both HTML and XML protocols sprang: SGML
is supposed to be device agnostic. Because we cannot know what the
recipient's device is, we cannot know what his or her screen size is (or
even: if it has a screen). So we don't know how big a page is, and thus we
don't know where to put the header or footer.

In XML the standard solves the problem by providing tagged content for the
header and leaving it up to the recipient device to figure it out. In HTML,
the standard expects to discard header information and send a single flow.

Of course, the world has moved on since these decisions were made. However,
I think the application designers would still believe that headers and
footers (and footnotes!) would be inappropriate to email and would discard
them. But that may change: if they change to XML as the transmission medium
from HTML, they could send the header and footer if they chose.

Currently, that's a risky strategy: most email programs can't properly
decode XML. And a fair proportion of people still force their email
programs to read everything in plain text to prevent viruses and web bugs
and other click-tracking nasties.

Could we not expect the user to at least recognise that they are sending a
"Document" rather than a "Web page" or an "email"? I deeply appreciate it
when someone makes a reasoned decision not to expend my bandwidth on sending
me formatted text when I don't need it, and sending me a complete document
when I do!

I get a tad irritated when someone simply flips me a couple of megabytes of
"stuff" without thinking.

Maybe I'm just a curmudgeon, as has been alleged in here :-)

Cheers

On 8/1/07 4:00 AM, in article O7NJk1nMHHA.2236@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Daiya
Mitchell" <daiyaNOSPAM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

small comment--actually, both of my points (re faded and loss in HTML)
came about because people constantly post about both those problems on
the general Word groups, not here (this is just a better group for
random thoughts). It is most definitely causing lots of confusion among
the PC installed base. In fact, I was trying to write an explanation to
defend the lost headers in HTML to someone over there when I realized
there was no way I could rationalize it. And I'm generally pretty good
at rationalizing all sorts of nonsense in and out of Word, so *that's*
what makes me believe it needs to be redone. :)

Maybe the MacBU will fix it before Windows Word, wouldn't that be fun!
:) I feel a Send Feedback coming on.

Daiya


John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh] wrote:
Hi Daiya:

Yeah. I've been having and un-having the exact same random thought for a
little while now.

On the PC, it doesn't seem to cause any confusion because the PC installed
base are used to it, Word has always worked that way.

But you're right, it DOESN'T lead to an innate understanding of text
streams, flows, and stories. Or any understanding at all, really. It's
simply annoying :-)

Similarly, when sending as email the user has two choices: "Attachment" or
"Inline HTML". The choice is not obvious, and the difference is not
adequately explained.

I used to think that Dr. JoAnn Hackos was up there with Keynes. She
invented Minimalist Documentation for Microsoft. Now, I think death is too
good for her :-)

The "Theory" of minimalist documentation is really good: "Just enough, just
in time, exactly where you want it." But as soon as the business people got
hold of it and misunderstood it, it became "Quick, Cheap, or Absent."

I bet that's never happened anywhere else in history?

Cheers

On 7/1/07 6:34 AM, in article #LhFgmcMHHA.780@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Daiya
Mitchell" <daiyaNOSPAM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh] wrote:

This client needs to accept that if they send something in Word format, the
user can edit it and it can have a running header on each page. However,
the header will appear faded (to show that it is a header) unless they view
and edit it in Print Preview.


I'm starting to think, to be honest, that the Word team needs to rethink
headers for the 21st century. So many people complain about the faded
headers, that maybe it should be recoded--the fade isn't helping anyone
understand the text streams in Word anyhow. The other thing people
complain about is that sending a word doc as email loses the
headers--well yeah, cause that's the way it works, but really, there
isn't much logic behind not including at least the first header in the
document as HTML text.

Anyhow, random thought.

Daiya




--

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. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

.

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