fractional widths and WordPerfect-style justification

[Aaron Shepard]

Can anyone tell me if Word for OS X still has the "Fractional widths"
option on the Print preferences tab, or has this become obsolete?

In Word 2001, I was trying out the "Justify like WordPerfect" option on
the Compatibility preferences tab, as this is often recommended to
improve the appearance of output for publication. On my VirtualPC Word,
it worked great. In Word 2001 for the Mac, though, it prevented
justification entirely, caused some letters to overlap each other, and
actually transposed some letters!

The only way I could make the justification work was to turn on "Use
printer metrics" on that same tab, and turn off "Fractional widths" in
the printers prefs -- but the result of that was awful beyond words. My
thought is that, if Word X no longer has to deal specially with
fractional widths, the WordPerfect setting might actually work.

Any thoughts or experiences are appreciated.

Aaron

Aaron Shepard
Author of Books, Typography, and Microsoft Word
http://www.aaronshep.com/publishing

 

[Jim Gordon]

Hi

In Office X on the compatibility tab I see:

"Set the width of a space like WordPerfect 5.x"
"Use Printer Metrics to lay out document"

There is a setting for "Recommended options for WordPerfect 5.x" that checks
about 14 different things in the compatibility section.

Maybe you should give a document a try in Office X. You might want to wait a
week and try it in Panther. The printer drivers may be different.

-Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

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