Hi, Whatever your Name Is...
I'm an avid user of the latex publishing software, but I'm testing out word,
because it is more friendly for non-unix using collaborators.
Hang in there! I moved over to using Word for professional major document
work in 1992 and I have never gone back. These days, I double or triple my
quote to cover the lost productivity if I am forced to use anything else
Moving from the
overwhelming simplicity of latex to the referencing and indexing nightmare
that is word, has left me substantially more than underwhelmed.
Anyone who describes LaTex as "overwhelmingly simple" has obviously found
the flaw in the Theory of Relativity and can prove it...
In this case, and like the poster, I don't understand why grouping should
affect the flow of numbering. The text in a caption is still text, regardless
of how it's been grouped.
No. A Word document is comprised of "Stories" of text. You can think of it
as a three-layer sandwich, with the "Text" in the middle layer. There is
also a graphics layer "behind the text" and one in "front of the text".
As soon as you "float" text (i.e. Convert it to anything other than "Inline
with text", you turn it into a "Graphics object" and Word removes it from
the Text story and adds it to the "Shapes" story.
Nothing outside of the Main Text story is considered for things such as
cross-references, numbering, or Contents and Index Generation.
The reality is quite a bit more complex, because there are potentially 21
Text stories and each has a Z-order, but if we consider it as "three layers"
it makes the explanation so much simpler
I had also grouped the text boxes, because I was VERY sick of the captions
boxes floating around, miles away from the figure itself - which brings me to
an additional beef - what is the possible utility of having a detached figure
caption?
A question I have been asking Microsoft for ten years, without getting a
plausible answer. I have always considered it to be a design bug.
Moreover, why is this the default?
You may have set one of your options wrongly, or you may be using an
incorrect technique. Here's what I do:
1) Insert all graphics "Inline with Text" (set your Word preferences to
make that the default).
2) Create a Paragraph to hold the graphic. Format that paragraph with the
"Graphics" style (which you need to create).
Set the Paragraph properties of the Graphics style to position the graphic
correctly on the page. Make SURE that you enable "Keep Lines Together" and
"Keep With Next". Make sure that you disable "Page Break Before" and
"Widow/Orphan".
The graphic will now be treated like a very large single character,
positioned relative to the paragraph above it by the properties of the
Graphics style.
Nothing in Word is positioned relative to a "Page". Word does not know
about "pages" and they are not stored in the document file. Word flows the
text each time you open the document, using the measurements from the
current or most recently used printer driver.
It inserts "pages" into the output stream dynamically when the document is
on the way to the display or the printer. They are not written into the
file.
3) Now that you have your picture where you want it, create a new blank
paragraph after it and place your insertion point in that.
4) NOW you can use Insert>Caption and everything will work.
What has been happening is that you have been creating the pictures as
floating objects -- and/or you have been clicking on or selecting the
picture before using Insert>Caption.
When you do either, the Caption is created in a floating text box. In that
case, their excuse is that because the picture is, or can be, floating, the
caption must float in order to follow it. But as you have discovered, that
makes the caption a floating element that cheerfully detaches from the
picture and wanders around with its own agenda.
Worse: It is no longer in the text layer, so it no longer appears in
cross-references or the table of contents.
I remember describing this design as a "Train Wreck" not so long ago at a
meeting at Microsoft. I was not the most popular person in the room.
Because the bottom line is that they "can't" change it unless PC Word also
agrees to change. And PC Word is in enough trouble fixing their screw-ups
in their design without worrying about captions.
The mechanism is marginally useable. Once you get used to it. Once you
remember that in Word, EVERYTHING is anchored to a paragraph, and pages do
not exist.
If you use Word the way it was designed to be used: let it look after he
pagination for you, and set up your styles so that Word always gets it
right, you will find it remarkably useable, and far more productive than any
other application capable of industrial-strength text manipulation. If you
try to force Word to behave like a Page Layout program, it will fight you
every step of the way. And it will win!
Hope this helps
It seems to me from the literature that far
more captions are attached, than are detached - instead, we have some strange
mouse-clicking, ad-hoc "keep with next" circus to achieve what really should
be the default. - why, why, why is the caption NOT anchored to the figure by
default?
--
Don't wait for your answer, click here:
http://www.word.mvps.org/
Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:
[email protected]