Hi Karo:
Hmmm... I better watch my step here. I just had a coffee with the author of
that first post, so he will be checking my spelling on this one
A lot depends on how your document is set up, but a ten per cent variation
(which is what you are talking about) is quite common. To minimise it:
1) Use only the fonts supplied with Microsoft Office
2) Use the same printer driver on both machines (whether the printer is
actually connected to them or not)
3) Do not permit blank lines, multiple spaces, or hard page breaks in your
documents.
Format your documents using space after, not space before on your styles.
Use tabs rather than spaces to line things up. Use Keep With Next and Keep
Lines Together paragraph properties to tell Word where you do NOT want a
page break, rather than using page breaks to tell it where you *do*.
Doing this, a skilled author can remove the variation in pagination almost
completely.
But you need to know that fonts built for PCs and fonts built for Macs ARE
different sizes. Microsoft provides a small selection of fonts that are
specifically coded to have almost exactly the same size on the PC and the
Mac, to try to overcome this problem.
The size a font is actually rendered at depends on the measurements supplied
by the printer driver. If you can use the same printer on both machines,
your results will be very close.
Word processors (WYSIWYG ones, anyway...) will all re-flow the text to fit
the measures of the current fonts and printer. You need to use the same
fonts and printer in both platforms to minimise the problem.
Cheers
I found an earlier thread on this issue:
http://groups.google.fi/groups?
q=windows+length+group:microsoft.public.mac.office.word&hl
=fi&lr=&ie=UTF-
8&group=microsoft.public.mac.office.word&selm=BB5FC2D8.8F1
%25theoffice%40strategists.com.au&rnum=2
See also:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/otherproducts/officex/using.a
spx?
pid=usingofficex&type=tips&article=/mac/LIBRARY/how_to_art
icles/officex/of_crossplatform.xml
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/otherproducts/officex/using.a
spx?
pid=usingofficex&type=howto&article=/mac/LIBRARY/feature_a
rticles/officex/wd_crossplatform.xml
--
Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie <
[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410
