MS Word for Mac graphics driver problem

[Siva Ananmalay]

John,

Sorry for the delay in responding - many other more pressing computer
problems to deal with.
This problem exists in Word 2004 as well as Word v.X.
Your suspicion was correct that the problem only occurs at one colour depth:
Thousands.
When I set the depth to Millions it works like a charm, and when I set it to
256, it works fine (though with obvious degradation). But the bug exists in
both versions of Word. Not sure if this problem is G5 specific, because I
don't have the original G4 with which to test, but it was probably set to a
colour depth of millions, so that may account for the difference, not the
processor or graphics card itself.

Thanks for your help - hopefully either Microsoft or Apple will get this
fixed (not sure where the bug is).

Siva

------------------------------------------------

Siva:


We're actually trying to confirm the cause of this.


It appears to be a graphics card driver bug.


One user was able to work-around it by changing the colour depth of his
display. Set 256 colours and see what happens, then try Thousands.


If this works, we'd like to know: we're trying to find the cause.


Cheers

All,

I found an obscure (maybe I didn't search far and wide enough) bug that was
driving us nuts. This only happens on the G5 (dual 1.8 Ghz), not on our G4.
Here's what we were seeing:
- a small 1 page document contained several textboxes, clip art images
- over top of all of those was a rectangular box with 100% transparency

With those factors in place, the document was unusable on screen (but prints
just fine). The test and graphics in the document were not visible, but
rather a pile of pixels. If another window opened over top of it, it would
artifacts and garbage all over.

The workaround is to set the transparency level to <96% to the box. As soon
as it was less than 100%, it appears to improve and by 95%, the onscreen
appearance was just fine, and printing remained fine.

Microsoft - any ideas or fixes? This appears to be G5 specific though I
can't explain why (the OS level was identical between the G4 and G5 I
tested).

Hope this helps someone else save some time.

Cheers,
Siva

--
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

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Siva:

OK, Jeffrey from Microsoft would have seen this by now, so they will have it
on their list.

Cheers

John,

Sorry for the delay in responding - many other more pressing computer
problems to deal with.
This problem exists in Word 2004 as well as Word v.X.
Your suspicion was correct that the problem only occurs at one colour depth:
Thousands.
When I set the depth to Millions it works like a charm, and when I set it to
256, it works fine (though with obvious degradation). But the bug exists in
both versions of Word. Not sure if this problem is G5 specific, because I
don't have the original G4 with which to test, but it was probably set to a
colour depth of millions, so that may account for the difference, not the
processor or graphics card itself.

Thanks for your help - hopefully either Microsoft or Apple will get this
fixed (not sure where the bug is).

Siva



Siva:


We're actually trying to confirm the cause of this.


It appears to be a graphics card driver bug.


One user was able to work-around it by changing the colour depth of his
display. Set 256 colours and see what happens, then try Thousands.


If this works, we'd like to know: we're trying to find the cause.


Cheers

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410