odd, spontaneous pagination changes

[roberto]

Hi folks,

I think I've posted on here before about this problem, a year or two
ago, which has started appearing again on my iMac: I create a document,
and line breaks and pagination are fine. I re-open the document a few
hours or days later, and the line and page breaks are different, when
nothing else has changed. No changes in fonts, nothing. This has always
taken the form that maybe one or two lines are different, per page, but
that can be enough to shift manual page breaks or what fit on one line
of text in a cell is now two lines...

I think I used to solve this problem by deleting all font caches...
including Office's, and restarting. For a while I didn't seem to have
this problem, but now it's cropping up again. I *DO* use Adobe Open
Type fonts, mostly, and I'm running 10.4.8 and have applied the Office
11.2.6 update.

Any simple ideas about this? Thanks!

 

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

I'll give you one really simple idea which works 100 per cent of the time:
"Don't use manual page breaks!"

If you study Clive's "Bend Word to Your Will", he extensively describes
techniques for getting a Word document to paginate correctly automatically.
That's what it is designed to do.

If you use these techniques to do away with all of your hard page breaks,
your documents will go right and stay right, regardless of the computer,
platform, or printer you are using.

You could usefully check that in Tools>Templates and Add-ins you do NOT have
"Automatically update styles on open" left ON. If you do, that will reset
all your styles each time you open the document.

You could ensure that in File>Page Setup the Format For box is set to a
printer that is always available. If the target printer becomes
unavailable, Word will reformat the document according to the measurements
of the next available printer.

Hope this helps

Hi folks,

I think I've posted on here before about this problem, a year or two
ago, which has started appearing again on my iMac: I create a document,
and line breaks and pagination are fine. I re-open the document a few
hours or days later, and the line and page breaks are different, when
nothing else has changed. No changes in fonts, nothing. This has always
taken the form that maybe one or two lines are different, per page, but
that can be enough to shift manual page breaks or what fit on one line
of text in a cell is now two lines...

I think I used to solve this problem by deleting all font caches...
including Office's, and restarting. For a while I didn't seem to have
this problem, but now it's cropping up again. I *DO* use Adobe Open
Type fonts, mostly, and I'm running 10.4.8 and have applied the Office
11.2.6 update.

Any simple ideas about this? Thanks!

--

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. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[roberto]

Thank you for the feedback, guys, but let me be even more clear: I
create relatively simple 3-6 page documents that usually use two fonts,
Adobe Open Type (a serif and a sans serif... Lucida Std and Lucida Sans
Std, for example, or Chaparral Pro and Frutiger LT Std). There may be a
simple (3-5 column, 5-10 row) table. I create, save, and print it. I
close the file. I edit the hard copy, and then, sometimes just an hour
or two later, re-open the file and, sometimes, the line breaks, and
thus page breaks, are different. The words "Physical Education" that
fit in a cell in my table is now broken into two lines, even though the
cell, font, size, etceteras hasn't changed. I don't have different
printers, I don't do anything fancy with styles, I don't add or delete
fonts (all of which are in my main "/Library/Fonts" folder). I'm the
only user of this machine.

Now here's the weird part: I just discovered this issue depends on what
document I open first. If I quit Word, start it, and open a document
without Open Type fonts or, in the blank document that it opens with,
change the font to Marker Felt and type even one character AND THEN
open my Open Type document, the line breaks stay the same. "Physical
Education" is on one line. I quit Word, not saving the initial document
with the letter "a" in Marker Felt, restart Word and directly open the
Open Type document, and I'm back to having a few odd line breaks and
"Physical Education" is back to two lines, as the kerning or letter
spacing or whatever is just "off" enough to force that.

As bizarre as this is, at least I now seem to have discovered a way to
prevent the frustration I was feeling about this. But what also seems
sad is that two Word "experts" responded, both telling me to avoid
manual page breaks... is this due to knowing that Word doesn't deal
with them well, or just as stylistic advice?

Thanks again, and I'm still interested in advice or questions, if this
will help, particularly in the next iteration of Word, next year...

 

[CyberTaz]

But what also seems
sad is that two Word "experts" responded, both telling me to avoid
manual page breaks...

I don't know that the term "expert" applies in my case, but here is a 3rd
voice in complete harmony... And I wouldn't be a bit surprised to hear the
same from Clive, Daiya, Beth, and any of the others who use Word
professionally - PC or Mac... In fact I would be 'dumbfounded' to hear
otherwise from any of them.

is this due to knowing that Word doesn't deal
with them well, or just as stylistic advice?

Both, but even more specifically "due to" wanting (and *needing*) to
maintain control of the document

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Elliott Roper]

Now here's the weird part: I just discovered this issue depends on what
document I open first.

Like we both said. Uncheck "automatically update styles" in your Word
prefs. Even if you think you are not using styles, you are. The default
style, confusingly called 'normal' gets its properties from your
default template, confusingly called 'normal', and may be different to
the normal style definition in the document you open. If your Word
preference is set to automatically update styles, then your normal
template's normal style is scampering after the normal style definition
of the last document you opened. Which explains what you are seeing.

Sadly, the style defs in your OTF doc are the ones that are screwing up.
I'd open a fresh doc, uncheck the auto update styles preference thingy,
make some trivial change to the fresh doc and save it before quitting
Word.

Then see what happens when you open your proper doc with the OTF fonts
in it. If it is still not breaking Phys Ed properly, fiddle gently with
the table widths.

 

[roberto]

I'm sorry --- I forgot to mention that I unchecked "automagically
update styles" long ago, so that's not the issue.

Further, all documents are created and edited on the same machine.

I don't want to have to fiddle with table or cell widths or margins...
I expect the same document to flow the same text the same way each
time. I can't stress enough: I start with a blank document, write my
text, save it, and re-open it within hours, and the text wraps
differently IF I have quit and restarted Word and unless I either first
type any character(s) using a non-OT font or first open a document that
uses non-OT fonts. To ME, this is saying there's still some weird
interaction between Word and OS X and OT fonts. It's not like these
files are going from one Mac to another, or to a PC and back, or I'm
making any changes to my system...

And I can stop using manual page breaks... but, again, if things were
working like they should, this wouldn't be a problem.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Hi Roberto,

I expect the same document to flow the same text the same way each
time.

Hmm. By design, Word constantly reflows text according to the printer
driver, which can depend on the OS and the version of Word. So that
expectation is subject to many qualifications. "Experts" responded as they
did because you mentioned manual page breaks.....I have seen people
hand-type footnotes at the bottom of a page and then use manual page breaks
to keep them at the bottom--so, no one can tell what your documents look
like from a newsgroup, and crazy use of manual page breaks is a common
issue, and it tends to bite people in the a**.

Nevertheless, the problem you report sounds out of line with the normal
printer reflow (to me, anyhow, who knows least about printers), especially
with the weird workaround that you found.

Since deleting the font caches used to fix this, have you tried that again?
Did it work? Are you using a font manager that might play into the
interaction here? Have you tested your fonts for corruption? Does this
happen with all fonts, or just some?

What type of machine? Exact version of OS? What printer and what driver
are you using? Have you checked for an updated printer driver?

Do you see the same re-wrapping behavior in Normal View, Page Layout View,
and Print Preview? E.g., I'm thinking it might be a screen draw issue that
fixes itself in Print Preview.

Is the problem totally reproducible or intermittent? If reproducible, what
happens if you try the same thing in a new user identity on the same
computer?

I'm sorry --- I forgot to mention that I unchecked "automagically
update styles" long ago, so that's not the issue.

Further, all documents are created and edited on the same machine.

I don't want to have to fiddle with table or cell widths or margins...
I expect the same document to flow the same text the same way each
time. I can't stress enough: I start with a blank document, write my
text, save it, and re-open it within hours, and the text wraps
differently IF I have quit and restarted Word and unless I either first
type any character(s) using a non-OT font or first open a document that
uses non-OT fonts. To ME, this is saying there's still some weird
interaction between Word and OS X and OT fonts. It's not like these
files are going from one Mac to another, or to a PC and back, or I'm
making any changes to my system...

And I can stop using manual page breaks... but, again, if things were
working like they should, this wouldn't be a problem.

 

[roberto]

Okay, okay! I give in! I'll stop using manual page breaks! Heh heh.
No, really, I will.

I did check my Normal template. I did use AppleJack and do a deep
cleaning of all my caches. I did delete my Office Font Cache. I checked
my fonts for corruption. I zapped the PRAM. I checked permissions. I
did move all of my Office preference files, and let Word start up,
fresh (no change, so I replaced the newly created files with my tried
and true ones). I've got the latest and greatest printer drivers,
although I only print to one printer, and nothing else changes. I've
done everything, really, except sacrifice a chicken to Bill Gates or
John Warnock or Steve Jobs.

I really think this is still some of that vague Open Type Font
funkiness that's been lurking for a few years, now. It's not fully
gone.

For the curious: it's a 2.0 GHz G5 20" iMac with 1.5 GB of RAM running
OSX 10.4.8 and Office 11.2.6. Adobe Open Type fonts. Brother 5140 laser
printer. Cool desktops I downloaded from Mandoluxx (and yes, I sent him
some money via PayPal for his efforts). Listening to Aimee Man on
iTunes. Had some pasta for lunch, washed down with iced green tea. The
weather is overcast and cool, here in rural Western PA.

Seriously, thank you for all who've so quickly and helpfully responded.
I know my "fix" is weird, but it works, and right now that's the
important thing for me. Maybe when Leopard comes out I'll do a clean
install and re-install Office 2004 to clear out any cruft that might
have developed in there, somewhere.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Hi Roberto,

For the curious: it's a 2.0 GHz G5 20" iMac with 1.5 GB of RAM running
OSX 10.4.8 and Office 11.2.6. Adobe Open Type fonts. Brother 5140 laser
printer.

Not just curiosity--I suspect you are right about this being Open Type
funkiness (since you clearly know more about fonts than I do), and I want to
alert someone at the MS MacBU to this thread. But for them to track it
down, they need all such information--narrowing the possible sources of the
problem is the first step in finding the cause. It's unlikely that we'll
come up with anything better than your workaround here, but please sacrifice
the time to post to help improve future versions.

Also, you missed a couple of questions:

Do you see the same re-wrapping behavior in Normal View, Page Layout View,
and Print Preview? E.g., I'm thinking it might be a screen draw issue that
could fix itself in Print Preview.

Is the problem totally reproducible under certain conditions or
intermittent? If reproducible, what happens if you try the same thing in a
new user identity on the same computer?

And, Intel or PPC machine? Very important.

Confirm no font manager software in the mix?

Daiya

 

[Elliott Roper]

Okay, okay! I give in! I'll stop using manual page breaks! Heh heh.
No, really, I will.

I did check my Normal template. I did use AppleJack and do a deep
cleaning of all my caches. I did delete my Office Font Cache. I checked
my fonts for corruption. I zapped the PRAM. I checked permissions. I
did move all of my Office preference files, and let Word start up,
fresh (no change, so I replaced the newly created files with my tried
and true ones). I've got the latest and greatest printer drivers,
although I only print to one printer, and nothing else changes. I've
done everything, really, except sacrifice a chicken to Bill Gates or
John Warnock or Steve Jobs.

I really think this is still some of that vague Open Type Font
funkiness that's been lurking for a few years, now. It's not fully
gone.

Heh! I too love my OTFs. I've seen some funky spacing on screen from
Word for many a year. I have never been able to lay the blame on any
font family or technology. Lately things have become milder round here.
(except for the OTF crasher on Intel Macs, which seems to be fixed in
10.4.8)

For the curious: it's a 2.0 GHz G5 20" iMac with 1.5 GB of RAM running
OSX 10.4.8 and Office 11.2.6. Adobe Open Type fonts. Brother 5140 laser
printer. Cool desktops I downloaded from Mandoluxx (and yes, I sent him
some money via PayPal for his efforts). Listening to Aimee Man on
iTunes. Had some pasta for lunch, washed down with iced green tea. The
weather is overcast and cool, here in rural Western PA.

With all that mellowness, I don't really think you need that chicken
sacrifice. Hell, you seem to have successfully cast every magic spell
that is available to the humble Mac user.

Seriously, thank you for all who've so quickly and helpfully responded.
I know my "fix" is weird, but it works, and right now that's the
important thing for me. Maybe when Leopard comes out I'll do a clean
install and re-install Office 2004 to clear out any cruft that might
have developed in there, somewhere.

The evidence really does point to a mucked up style somewhere between
your fresh docs and the real ones.

If you can be bothered chasing this down, compare what you see in
format style... for one of each. In particular, look at the style
definitions of the text inside your table cells, paying attention to
the indenting. Indenting for a line as wide as a page is usually
excessive inside a table cell.
..Well, that is an interesting observation. I'll see if I can reproduce
it. Although I gotta say that I go for a long time without using
anything *but* OTF fonts in Word and I have never seen the mess you do
now that I have quarantined all the style idiosyncrasies.

Heh! We really beat you up on that didn't we? Even when Word is working
properly, manual page breaks remain a dumb idea. It all goes to pot
when you sneak in a little extra material near the front of your
document. The resulting cascade of page break nastiness is best
avoided.

 

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

Hi Roberto:

prevent the frustration I was feeling about this. But what also seems
sad is that two Word "experts" responded, both telling me to avoid
manual page breaks... is this due to knowing that Word doesn't deal
with them well, or just as stylistic advice?

This is "portability advice". If you use manual page breaks, you will get
variable results and you will continue to have to move them around. You
will waste time and effort and often find some circumstance where they go
wrong and produce embarrassing results.

Word deals with manual page breaks perfectly: you put one in, and you get a
new page there. You are responsible for determining what happens to the
paragraph leading and justification when you do this. But as the document
changes, as you move it from machine to machine, the page breaks you have
inserted will need to be re-adjusted each time.

If you adjust your working methods to AVOID manual page breaks and other
manual layout interventions, your documents will have maximum reliability
and portability.

Word is designed to be as close as possible to WYSIWYG. To see what you are
about to get, Word needs to adjust the displayed document according to the
fonts and printer metrics that are in memory at the time the document is
displayed or printed.

It's quite accurate, but not perfect. Obviously, a 96 dpi display cannot
render with the same accuracy as a 4800-dpi film printer. Word offers three
Views, each with a different purpose.

Normal View is only barely WYSIWYG: quite inaccurate, but is enhanced for
low power consumption and to display control characters that do not print.
Use it for long documents in draft stage or for low-powered computers.

Page Layout View is about 98 per cent WYSIWYG if you turn off the Show/Hide
button. It consumes a lot more CPU but uses the real font outlines to draw
the display. Many people with powerful modern desktop computers use it as
their default display, particularly for documents less than two hundred
pages.

Print Preview is better than 99 per cent accurate. It is savagely power
hungry, particularly if you are editing in that view. It uses not only the
real font outlines, it uses the actual printer metrics in real time. Not a
good idea to use it too often on a laptop: you will roast your knees and
eventually the machine will run out of memory and crash. On a dual Zeon
with 4 gigs of memory, it saves a lot of trees because you don't have to
print so many proof pages

But the bottom line is that Word is DESIGNED to REFLOW. That's a
fundamental requirement of a word processor. So what we are recommending is
that you adjust your working methods so that when it reflows, it gets it
right. If you do this, you will normally not notice the reflows.

I have a 560-page book here: I can open it on PC or Mac, with any printer
and any font set, and the page breaks and line-turnovers will all be
compliant with the style guide, always. Note: I said "compliant with the
style guide" not "the same". Things will move around, but the book remains
within specification.

That's certainly how those of us who do long documents direct to press from
Word normally operate. But our layout standards are more relaxed and our
documents run to several thousand pages each. We're in the high-volume
business. For low-volume documents with exacting style specifications, Word
is not the tool to use.

I still think your problem stems from some change in your environment. It
may not be the fonts, but it may be the font manager! If you have a font
manager in play, and fonts are dynamically coming and going, Word will
dynamically substitute available fonts for needed fonts, and it will reflow
each time! If you have your template attached with "Automatically update
styles on open" set to ON, Word will replace the style table each time you
open the document. And it will reflow. If you have a network printer
coming and going, Word will receive different metrics each time the printer
changes, and it will reflow.

These are expected behaviours for a word processor. We would not want any
changes to this set of behaviours. If Microsoft were to change these
behaviours, it would render Word unsuitable for the purposes we use it for.

We have requested the ability to Lock Pagination on a document, to suit the
legal fraternity that wants to cross-reference court documents by page
number and line number. We did not get this facility in the next version of
Word. It's an extremely complex change, and very few people actually want
it.

Hope this helps

--

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. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410