best WP app for producing .doc documents ?
in [UK Mac]
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From: Adrian C on 4 Jul 2010 10:25 On 04/07/2010 13:57, Jaimie Vandenbergh wrote: > Saying that something speaks XML for input/output is actually only > very slightly more useful than saying it can do ASCII for i/o. The > "XML based format" Steve mentions would be an external standard that > everyone could use. > Quite. Came across this in Microsoft Visio 2003 on the PC. This application sports an XML file format that should in theory should aid intechange of data between Microsoft's and other people's platorm. However, in practice the Visio XML format (which Microsoft had the gaul to offer as 'open') describes very accurately the internal format and data requirements of structures intended to make just Visio work (and *that* internally is a crock) and absolutely no other application. I mean, if ye had the sorry job to build something like Visio you wouldn't want to use the insides of that as a starting point. It's a horrid mulch of presentation and data. I had to reverse engineer a lot of it for a network worldwide server mapping project - involving much XML/XSLT and several databases - and could have perhaps written a 300 page book on it. Looking back, I should have. For Microsoft, how did they gift that to the whole community, declare it as _the_ open standard, and run away with the goodie goodie XML publicity praises - knowing that in effect they've now placed Visio as a necessary customer purchase in the midst of this glitz? The open external standard for this as far as I'm concerned is GraphML. -- Adrian C
From: Elliott Roper on 4 Jul 2010 11:32 In article <ea0136t1u06emol5elgcqqo1dv1d5o9fb9(a)4ax.com>, Jaimie Vandenbergh <jaimie(a)sometimes.sessile.org> wrote: > On Sun, 04 Jul 2010 12:52:16 +0100, Elliott Roper <nospam(a)yrl.co.uk> > wrote: > > > and its > >ruination of double sided or pdf printing > > I don't recall ever having trouble with double-sided, what happens > there? And Word doesn't do PDF natively AFAIK. It does in WIndows I think. On OS X, pdf is always present in the print dialog options. If a section break changes margins, paper size or orientation. Word will split the print job. If you print to pdf you will get the pdf split into two or more files. If you print double sided, the pages will spit out in two print jobs with a decent chance of the spreads being broken after it has forgotten or inserted a blank side. If you print to pdf from word and your document contains an eps, Word will print the low-res bitmap preview of the eps if there is one, a blank box with a placeholder message if not. The workaround is to print to PS, then use Preview or Acrobat to print the ps file. -- To de-mung my e-mail address:- fsnospam$elliott$$ PGP Fingerprint: 1A96 3CF7 637F 896B C810 E199 7E5C A9E4 8E59 E248
From: Bruce Horrocks on 4 Jul 2010 11:55 On 04/07/2010 13:57, Jaimie Vandenbergh wrote: > More seriously: Word's XML based "docx" file format is not the XML > based standard we were looking for. And to give just one example of how hopeless Word's XML is, the 'bubble comments' that are used to display changes in the print view when track changes are on are stored as one line per XML element. So, a three line comment is stored as three separate lines, wrapped as they appear on screen. If Microsoft were asked to fix Toyota's braking problem they'd supply you with an anchor to throw out the back window. -- Bruce Horrocks Surrey England (bruce at scorecrow dot com)
From: Woody on 4 Jul 2010 12:31 Jaimie Vandenbergh <jaimie(a)sometimes.sessile.org> wrote: > On Sun, 04 Jul 2010 12:52:16 +0100, Elliott Roper <nospam(a)yrl.co.uk> > wrote: > > > and its > >ruination of double sided or pdf printing > > I don't recall ever having trouble with double-sided, what happens > there? And Word doesn't do PDF natively AFAIK. I assume he means as a pdf printer. But word 2007 onwards supports PDF as an output type. -- Woody www.alienrat.com
From: Rowland McDonnell on 4 Jul 2010 14:32
Elliott Roper <nospam(a)yrl.co.uk> wrote: > Gareth John <g.john(a)PLUG.btinternet.com> wrote: > > > Elliott Roper <nospam(a)yrl.co.uk> wrote: > > > > > In article <899ltoFv9rU1(a)mid.individual.net>, Bruce Horrocks > > > <07.013(a)scorecrow.com> wrote: > > > > > > > On 03/07/2010 19:29, Colin Harper wrote: > > [snip] > > > > No the printers bit was fixed in Office 97 > > > > > > Almost, but not quite. Same version of Word, same OS, different printer > > > will paginate differently if the document margins are wider than the > > > printable area on either printer. > > > > > > The workaround is to share documents with generous page margins. > > > > > > That leaves you with the fonts and the OS. You have to be unlucky, but > > > the same document will break lines differently on different machines if > > > font versions differ, and in rare cases, the way different OS's handle > > > ligatures and kerning pairs. > > > > > > Word has no idea of a page until the document is printed. > > > > Not quite. If you merely flow text from page to pag, then printer > > differences will alter pagination. But if you fix 'hard' page breaks, > > leaving a sensible lower whitespace on each page, then Word is fairly > > well-behaved in that respect. > > Have you ever maintained a 500 page document with hard page breaks? > It is like herding cats. Not at all - after all, you only put the hard page breaks in *after* the document has been fully written and proof-read and is in the final production stages where that sort of tweak to the typesetting has to be done. And it never takes that many hard page breaks. You'd surely not attempt to create a 500 page document by putting a hard page break in at every page, because that would be utter madness and only needed if you were using hopelessly incompetent software for the job. Adobe InDesign or `whatever' TeX dialect - they aren't incompetent... The whole /point/ of having a computer to prepare your printed documents is to get the computer to do as much work for you as possible. > The right way is via styles with keep-with-next and keep-lines-together > set sensibly. That with the generous margins keeps page breaks almost > consistent. The right way is to use competent software which is able to give you good page breaks and all pages exactly the same length. If you're thinking about document layout, you should be thinking in terms of the width and the height of the body text, and the position of the text block on the page - not `margins'. You set margins on a typewriter, not when you're doing typesetting. The margins should be set on the basis of aesthetics - that is, what looks good. The body text width should be set on the basis of ergonomics - that is, what reads well. The two conflicting requirements need to be balanced by a typographical designer so as to produce a harmonious whole on the page (or virtual page, in the case of documents meant to be read on screen). > > Page footers and headers that fall outside the printer's area are merely > > cropped and not printed, if the printer can't handle them - which is > > niggling but not fatal. > Pretty fatal for a 'professional' document. Hmm. A professional document should be printed without any changes. If the document needs a printer that prints closer to the edge than the one being used, then *someone's* got something wrong. But it might well be that the document designer did a competent job and did the job properly, given that the intended printing tech was fully professional full bleed printing. Then someone decides that it'd be a good idea to let people have the electronic version, and then they try to print it on `whatever' printer and find that it wasn't ever meant for that. That's something which happens in the real world. I've met it... >The last copy of Word I > used would crop the footers from the top of the footer. That's bizarre. Surely it should have just left the cropping to the printer? I really hate software that second-guesses me like that - just do what you're told. If it doesn't work, it's easier to figure out if the software's not pratted about. [snip] > When you add in Word's manic mangling once you dare change the size of > a jpg or other raster picture, and its epic mishandling of eps, and its > ruination of double sided or pdf printing it is a wonder that anyone > bothers trying to make something consistent with such a mess. MS Word is one reason for the continuing popularity of LaTeX. Mind you, what LaTeX does when you ask it to slap a figure or a table in as a `float' (i.e., let LaTeX work out where to put it) can be eccentric, but: the algorithm is easy to understand, clearly explained, up for user modification, and you've always got the `Don't prat about, just put it HERE' positional option [H] if you want to use it. Rowland. -- Remove the animal for email address: rowland.mcdonnell(a)dog.physics.org Sorry - the spam got to me http://www.mag-uk.org http://www.bmf.co.uk UK biker? Join MAG and the BMF and stop the Eurocrats banning biking |