Re: Gripe about Word and image placement

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From: Harlan Messinger (h.messinger_at_comcast.net)
Date: 06/08/04 

Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 11:37:57 -0400

"Cindy M -WordMVP-" <C.Meister-C@hispeed.ch> wrote in message
news:VA.00009a6c.003d8dfe@speedy...
> Hi Harlan,
>
> > WordPerfect was a word processing application, and yet they
> made it
> > work. Your explanation doesn't really get into why Word can't
> do the
> > same thing.
> >
> WordPerfect is based on a very different concept: the formatting
> is stuck right into the text ("Reveal codes"). Word is more
> "object-based". Formatting, layout, etc. are based on tables of
> data, with pointers in the text to the information. In some
> respects, the one has advantages over the other; and in others,
> these are disadvantages.

A linear scheme with embedded codes and a hierarchical scheme implemented
with pointers are isomorphic. The correspondence between them is trivial.

>
> So, WordPerfect does the layout as it "reads" the file from front
> to back. Word doesn't do it that way.

It reads the components of the page by tree navigation rather than linearly.
It still follows a well-defined order from start to finish, and it still has
to know for each component what formatting to apply. There really isn't a
difference.

>
> > I'm a programmer, and *I* can easily work out the algorithm for
> > this.
> >
> Based on a "new empty framework", perhaps. But if you had to fit
> it into Word's core code, and not break anything else, I wonder
> just how far you'd get :-)

I would do just fine. I'm curious whether you're a programmer--the answer
will determine whether I'm informing you or arguing with you. :-)

>
> If WordPerfect is more suited to your needs, then please, do use
> it. As a colleague of mine says "Horses for courses"; use the
> tool that will do the job.

That's rather a simplistic solution, given that how an application places
images is hardly the sole consideration in choosing it. I believe that
Microsoft could perfectly well add this, that it's *obviously* a desirable
feature whose lack indicates a certain slovenliness on their part, and my
main intent was to express that sentiment. You could just as well tell me to
use Mozilla or Opera if I complained that IE is still, after five years or
so, deficient in some key support for Cascading Style Sheets, but that would
simply be avoiding the question of why Microsoft hasn't seen fit to finish
supporting CSS2.

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