Pictures in Word document

[incognito]

I am working on an extensive Word document that I subdivided into
subdocuments. Each subdocument contains a fair amount of pictures (.jpg
encoded). It seems that I may be doing something not quite right since the
pictures do not remain at the specific location where I put it. This is
very frustrating. What am I not doing right? Where could I find specific
answers addressing this behavior? Any hint would be appreciated.
Rudolf

 

[incognito]

I forgot to add that I am running MAX OS X 10.4.6 and Mac: Office Word for
X.

incognito wrote on 5/12/06 10:03 AM

 

[CyberTaz]

Pictures in Word documentHello Rudolf -

If you first take a look at:

http://word.mvps.org/Mac/PagesInWord.html

You'll better understand what I mean when I suggest that Word may not be the
best program for your purpose. IMHO, you are going to need the features
provided in a page layout/desktop publishing application which simply don't
exist in a word processing program.

You might also be interested in taking a look at:

http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/General/WhyMasterDocsCorrupt.htm

Especially with a large number of graphics involved, as they have a tendency
to exacerbate the complexity of the doc, increasing the likelihood of
corruption.

I don't mean to be an alarmist, but the plethora of 'features' added to an
excellent word processing program often gives the impression that it does
all those other things equally well. That, unfortunately, isn't the case.
Please don't misunderstand, though, it isn't that the features don't *work*,
nor that graphics cannot be acceptably dealt with. It's just that there is a
very real limit to what can be effectively handled and that what has to be
done almost amounts to a full-time profession in itself.
--
HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

I am working on an extensive Word document that I subdivided into
subdocuments. Each subdocument contains a fair amount of pictures (.jpg
encoded). It seems that I may be doing something not quite right since the
pictures do not remain at the specific location where I put it. This is
very frustrating. What am I not doing right? Where could I find specific
answers addressing this behavior? Any hint would be appreciated.
Rudolf

 

[incognito]

Hi CyberTaz,

Thank you very, very much for the enlightenment!

I have used Word for many years, in Windows as well as with the Mac, but
usually for light and easy material. I truly did not want to become an
expert in publishing and thought it would be easy to do a special
'retirement project'. I will have to rethink my strategy, since I do not
want to give up this project but I also do not want to trouble shoot the
document every so often as has been the case. Granted, since I subdivided
the document into a bunch of subdocs, it has been more consistent, but it
also has been frustrating and time-consuming.

Where could I get advice for some decent publishing software? Any
suggestion? I hate to give up.

Thank you
Rudolf

CyberTaz wrote on 5/12/06 1:52 PM

 

[Clive Huggan]

Hello Rudolf,

Pages '06 (part of the iWork suite) is quite good, and not expensive,
although it is still suffering from being a very new application (actually,
not *that?* new by now ­ Apple are rather slow in improving it). It isn't
anywhere near Quark XPress or InDesign, but it doesn't have the steep
learning curve either. Most people would start with the templates provided
and modify them as required. Pages is integrated very nicely with iPhoto,
which can be a great advantage if your material is photo-rich. If you use
Word's styles you will find Pages very easy to format.

For more information, especially concerning Pages' shortcomings (some
aspects of making reliable PDFs are particularly bizarre, for example), try
http://discussions.apple.com/index.jspa ==> iWork.

Cheers,

Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is 5-11 hours different from the US and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
============================================================

 

[incognito]

Hi Clive,

Thanks for the links and tips. I probably have to bite the bullet and go
the 'steep learning curve'. If I only knew which path is the most stable.
Maybe I wait a few days and hope for more advice and tips. Ich wish there
was a voting system or a critique box for the various tools. I feel right
now that I have to start at ground zero with very little of a report card
that would give me confidence with what to go.
If you find out more - or anyone else - please let me know.
Rudolf
PS: How safe is it these days to sign off with a real address?

Clive Huggan wrote on 5/13/06 9:10 PM

 

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

Hi Rudolf:

You don't need new "software"

Word functions quite capably as publishing software.

You just have to learn how to do "publishing".

Publishing is a somewhat different workflow from "document production". You
use different techniques, and at different points in the production cycle.

Rule 1: Get your text FINISHED FIRST. Do not do any formatting or layout
until the text is letter-perfect. Many users of word trap themselves in a
hopeless tail-chasing exercise of writing, formatting, editing,
reformatting, rewriting, reformatting, editing, reformatting... All of
those "formatting" passes are an utter waste of time. The formatting cannot
be done until the text stops changing, and when the text is finished,
formatting can be done once, only once, and it will be fast and easy.

Rule 2: Do all formatting with Styles. No exceptions. When you come to
the layout process, you'll save literally weeks if you can change the
formatting instantly by changing a style definition.

Rule 3: Word processors have no "pages". They "invent" pages when you
print, but they do not exist in the file. If you want to use Word for
"Publishing" you need to create pages manually.

Myth 1: Word processors have no "text flows". That's a lie Word does
have text flows: look up "Linked text boxes" in the Help.

Myth 2: Word can't keep pictures where you put them. Bulldust! It can.
But you need to understand the difference between "floating" and "inline"
graphics. You need to understand "anchors" and their placement. You need
to understand that Word positions everything with respect to a paragraph:
and learn to keep your anchoring paragraph on the correct page.

So there: Don't give up yet. Learn "Publishing" and learn the different
toolset that Word provides to permit publishing from Word and you will get
on just fine without new software

I have sometimes been heard to mutter that iPages succeeds not because it's
"better" than Word but because it leaves out all the powerful tools that
confuse people who don't want to learn how to use them. Ipages forces you
to do things the right way because it's the only way: it doesn't have the
other features

Cheers

Hi CyberTaz,

Thank you very, very much for the enlightenment!

I have used Word for many years, in Windows as well as with the Mac, but
usually for light and easy material. I truly did not want to become an
expert in publishing and thought it would be easy to do a special
'retirement project'. I will have to rethink my strategy, since I do not
want to give up this project but I also do not want to trouble shoot the
document every so often as has been the case. Granted, since I subdivided
the document into a bunch of subdocs, it has been more consistent, but it
also has been frustrating and time-consuming.

Where could I get advice for some decent publishing software? Any
suggestion? I hate to give up.

Thank you
Rudolf

CyberTaz wrote on 5/12/06 1:52 PM

--

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 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Beth Rosengard]

I do. Always have. It undoubtedly means I get more spam than I would
otherwise but between my ISP's filtering and Entourage's handling of junk
mail, I'm rarely bothered by it. Many would advise you otherwise, though.
It comes down to personal preference in the end.

One thing you might consider is to create an account that you only use for
newsgroups and/or web forums.

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
MacOffice MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/Mac/WordMacHome.html>

 

[Clive Huggan]

If you intend to use a high-powered page layout application, InDesign is
generally considered easier to learn than Quark XPress.

It's good when people, like you, sign off with a "real" name, and that does
no harm. It¹s the courteous thing to do, and if one ends up posting several
questions or follow-ups, the people answering will remember their real name
better than an alias, and they may well get a better answer. But it's still
advisable to keep a fake account (good information is at
http://www.entourage.mvps.org/tips/tip019.html).

Cheers,
Clive
=======

 

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

Hi Rudolf:

PS: How safe is it these days to sign off with a real address?

I have been doing so for ten years. Presumably this attracts lots of spam,
but I wouldn't know because it all disappears sight unseen down the black
hole at my ISP. As it will for you if you check the box that enables the
spam filter at your ISP.

As Beth notes, its much better to do spam filtering at the ISP, then you
don't have to pay for the bandwidth taken up downloading it all just to
chuck it in the bin...

On the other hand, I do know that the "effort" people put into responding to
your post at least doubles if you have a real email address, and if you
include your real name as well, I at least will be your personal slave until
your matter is dealt with...

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 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Elliott Roper]

Hi CyberTaz,

Thank you very, very much for the enlightenment!

I have used Word for many years, in Windows as well as with the Mac, but
usually for light and easy material. I truly did not want to become an
expert in publishing and thought it would be easy to do a special
'retirement project'. I will have to rethink my strategy, since I do not
want to give up this project but I also do not want to trouble shoot the
document every so often as has been the case. Granted, since I subdivided
the document into a bunch of subdocs, it has been more consistent, but it
also has been frustrating and time-consuming.

Where could I get advice for some decent publishing software? Any
suggestion? I hate to give up.

Hi Rudolph, you have gotten some very good but conflicting advice from
the experts in here. I guess the conflict arises because each took a
different view of your requirement.

It is possible to lay out documents in Word with pictures where you
want them, as long as you set the bar rather low.
Everything that John McGhie says is right, especially about keeping
text and layout apart till you are near the end.
If you are really "publishing" your finished work, then you should take
Bob CyberTaz Jones' advice. Keeping control of a heavily illustrated
document in Word - all the way to the printing company - is harder than
herding cats. It really isn't meant to do that kind of work.

What nobody else ever says in these discussions is that InDesign is
actually very easy to learn. It is far far easier to produce an average
to good layout with InDesign than it is with Word. Where it, and other
"publishing" applications like Quark, excels is that you can go on to
produce truly beautiful publications with excellent typography and
perfect picture placing in a way that will normally arrive back from
the printer exactly as you meant it to look.

If layout and typography is important to you, you might as well give up
on Word sooner rather than later.

If you really need to place the pictures precisely. If you want CMYK
colours, If you want masks and alpha channels and clipping paths, if
you want to do proper hyphenation and justification per paragraph
instead of per line, if you want hanging punctuation, if you want
proper copy fitting, if you want to take full advantage of large type
families, if you want to ensure your columns of type line up their
baselines, then it is a no-brainer.

However, do remember that Word is a far better environment for editing
the text than trying to do that job in InDesign. You will find that
careful style definition between the two will pay off handsomely. Word
documents pour into InDesign layouts rather well.

Use the tool for the job. Word for word processing. InDesign for
publishing, layout and typography.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

On the other hand, I do know that the "effort" people put into responding to
your post at least doubles if you have a real email address, and if you
include your real name as well, I at least will be your personal slave until
your matter is dealt with...

Not for me. I never even check whether anybody has a real address, nor do I
care about a real name, particularly.

I also post with a spam-proofed address, which people can edit easily to get
my real address, if they remember to check for it.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Hi Rudolf,

Whereas my project looked simple and straightforward, word-processing and
every page or so a picture or two that come in various sizes. Up to now I
was under the impression that I did not need to know much about publishing
assuming Word was almighty.

When the project is done, what do you want to do with it? Share it with
friends and family? Do you want to print it, photocopy it, have a press
make a book from it, put it on the web? What are you envisioning?

My strategy of the day is to take all pictures
out and placing, approximately at the place I want to see the picture in the
finished product, perhaps an HTML link to the file location of the picture.
Does this make sense to you? I am uncertain whether this is technically a
simple process.

Whether it makes sense depends on some other stuff, but I don't think it's
worth doing.

What do you want the end product to look like? Option 1: the pictures are
in-line with text, basically acting with a very big letter. Each picture
occupies its own line.

Option 2: the pictures are floating and text can wrap around them, rather
than having each on its own line. This looks nicer, but floating pictures
will randomly move around and are tough to control, especially if you are
still writing.

Even if you want a snazzy layout at the end, your life will be easier if you
put all pictures in-line right now. Then they will act just like text, and
move with the flow of text like any other words would. (John already said
this, but I think you might have missed it) This will keep them
approximately where you want them, above or below the paragraph they belong
to. I think this will serve the same function as your proposed HTML
strategy, letting you write the project without worrying about the pictures
moving.

When *all* the writing is done and no more changes will be made, then you
can go back and carefully place the pictures so that the end product looks
more sophisticated.

To make pictures in-line, for now, double-click the picture to bring up
Format Picture. Click on the Layout panel, and make sure "in line with
text" is selected.

You can easily tell whether a picture is in-line or floating without going
to the dialog--click on a picture to select it. If the box around it has
solid black squares, then the picture is in-line. If the picture isn't
surrounded by a box, but just several outlined squares, then the picture is
floating.

Daiya

PS. The email address in the gif is adding 60K to every message, and that's
just a waste of space and bandwidth, so generally advised against on
newsgroups. Attachments of any kind are disliked.

 

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

Hi Rudolph:

Mind you, though, that my process of writing is not copying text
but writing down thoughts and experiences as they come while I am writing.
Like writing a thesis.

Mine too. Follow Daiya's suggestion and keep hacking. That's the way Word
is designed to work. But don't bother formatting until you've finished the
text.

And all pictures are mental stimulants for me, if you know what I mean.
I do use styles profusely but probably not efficiently. I also have to look
into anchoring. I am a real hacker in word processing, I guess.

Profusely and efficiently are the same thing as far as styles are concerned.
Create sufficient styles so that you do not need to override any with direct
formatting

Q: When I write in the page layout mode, doesn't that automatically create
a page?

No. That causes Word to "invent" pages twice, once to display the document,
and again to print it. Nothing causes Word to insert "pages" in its
documents "automatically", you have to do it manually if you want pages.
Word is designed to dynamically make up pages on output, and to avoid having
them in the document, so it can perform its automatic pagination.

Hint: Just TRY it the way it is designed to work. Rather than use page
breaks to tell Word where you want the pages, use paragraph properties to
tell it where you *don't*. Then let Word sort out the pagination while you
get on with the writing.

Use "Keep With Next" to cause Word to "pull" a paragraph onto the next page
if the paragraph after it goes to the next page. All of your heading styles
should have this property so you can't get headings stuck at the bottom of a
page.

Use "Page Break Before" on your Heading 1 style to force chapters to start a
new page.

Use "Keep Lines Together" on all of your heading styles to prevent headings
splitting at a page break.

You must turn OFF "Widow/Orphan Control" for these properties to work.

Personally, I turn off Window/Orphan and use Keep Lines Together on
everything including body text. Paper is not that expensive these days, and
readers hate having to flip to the next page to see the end of a paragraph:
it breaks their concentration.

Any page that is 3/4 full is full "enough". Don't bother trying to chase
page filling any closer than that: you'll drive yourself mad. If the page
is 3/4 full, it's fine: go on to the next page

Don't *Justify*. Leave your text set ragged right. Justification was
always a polite fiction, a triumph of form over function. Used with narrow
newspaper-style columns its still "acceptable". But it presupposes a column
no wider than 2-1/2 alphabets (65 characters at the font size in use). Most
document columns are set wider than that these days, so leave them ragged
right And if you don't justify then you don't need to hyphenate either,
so don't! Again, hyphens piss the readers off, and the paper they save is
just not worth the aggro they cause.

Elliot's crying in his Chateaux Cardboarde by now

But finally, I would say finish the text then flip it to Elliot and get him
to lay it up FOR you. A professional can do in a day what it will take you
a month to learn and a year to get right. How much is your life worth

Cheers

It is getting very interesting with all the great feedback I get. Being
retired gives me some leeway for my schedule.
Regards to all!

Rudolf

John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh] wrote on 5/14/06 12:06 AM

Hi Rudolf:

You don't need new "software"

Word functions quite capably as publishing software.

You just have to learn how to do "publishing".

Publishing is a somewhat different workflow from "document production". You
use different techniques, and at different points in the production cycle.

Rule 1: Get your text FINISHED FIRST. Do not do any formatting or layout
until the text is letter-perfect. Many users of word trap themselves in a
hopeless tail-chasing exercise of writing, formatting, editing,
reformatting, rewriting, reformatting, editing, reformatting... All of
those "formatting" passes are an utter waste of time. The formatting cannot
be done until the text stops changing, and when the text is finished,
formatting can be done once, only once, and it will be fast and easy.

Rule 2: Do all formatting with Styles. No exceptions. When you come to
the layout process, you'll save literally weeks if you can change the
formatting instantly by changing a style definition.

Rule 3: Word processors have no "pages". They "invent" pages when you
print, but they do not exist in the file. If you want to use Word for
"Publishing" you need to create pages manually.

Myth 1: Word processors have no "text flows". That's a lie Word does
have text flows: look up "Linked text boxes" in the Help.

Myth 2: Word can't keep pictures where you put them. Bulldust! It can.
But you need to understand the difference between "floating" and "inline"
graphics. You need to understand "anchors" and their placement. You need
to understand that Word positions everything with respect to a paragraph:
and learn to keep your anchoring paragraph on the correct page.

So there: Don't give up yet. Learn "Publishing" and learn the different
toolset that Word provides to permit publishing from Word and you will get
on just fine without new software

I have sometimes been heard to mutter that iPages succeeds not because it's
"better" than Word but because it leaves out all the powerful tools that
confuse people who don't want to learn how to use them. Ipages forces you
to do things the right way because it's the only way: it doesn't have the
other features

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 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[incognito]

Dear John,

I really appreciate your advice and especially for your big chunk of time
you took to give me the reasons why to do what. It makes learning for me
that much easier.

I haven't posted during last week because I am following Daiya's advice and
do no longer formatting. This was valuable advice, and my thanks to Daiya
since I am talking about the subject. I wanted to get better used to this
different method of writing. As you all may have guessed not being a
professional writer I never took a formal course on how to use Word "the
right way", clearly my fault . This is deeply rooted in my impatience and
eagerness to see results - looking for instant gratification. Since I
stopped formatting and include the pictures "in line with text", the whole
process calmed down considerably, no more shifting and jumping.

On the subject of using styles, I had a mystery surprise once, when a
subdocument showed up with the Normal style applied to everything, including
Headings and all. I can't explain how this could have happened. But
feeling inferior to Word I have become pretty submissive. Otherwise the
styles I am using work well so far.

A question though, should I create styles in the Master Document or can it
also be done in any of the Subdocuments and then expect the style to be
available in all Subdocs?

Your hint to avoid writing in Page Layout mode is well taken! I liked it so
much from writing correspondence having not more than a page or two, that I
thought this could foul up the process of pagination and keeping track of
chapters, etc. So this was news to me. I probably have wasted a lot of
time inserting page/section brakes where I should not have done it all. It
probably will take some time to get used to write in Normal view. You sort
of have to write in blind faith, trusting Word to do the layout right.

The thing with justification is also quite unusual for my hitherto personal
approach since I liked the 'neat look'. But I will try it out right away.

Now here is my plan: I am going to print out your list of tips and follow
all. This list beats a book of 397 pages. (Why do the authorities in Word
always have to write everything in one big volume as if everybody using Word
will be or wants to be a professional? Unfortunately, the sheer 'volume" of
a book turns me off, although I had to read a lot of technical books to make
a career out of my life. But that stuff was easier to learn for me than to
memorize the minute details of document processing.)

I will report back to you in a week or so, after I have tried out
everything!

And thanks to all who showed compassion with my frustrations and failures.

I am not sure Elliot will be affordable for fixing a hacker's output.

And thanks for your cheers for now!
Rudolf



John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh] wrote on 5/18/06 6:03 AM

Hi Rudolph:

Mind you, though, that my process of writing is not copying text
but writing down thoughts and experiences as they come while I am writing.
Like writing a thesis.

Mine too. Follow Daiya's suggestion and keep hacking. That's the way Word
is designed to work. But don't bother formatting until you've finished the
text.

And all pictures are mental stimulants for me, if you know what I mean.
I do use styles profusely but probably not efficiently. I also have to look
into anchoring. I am a real hacker in word processing, I guess.

Profusely and efficiently are the same thing as far as styles are concerned.
Create sufficient styles so that you do not need to override any with direct
formatting

Q: When I write in the page layout mode, doesn't that automatically create
a page?

No. That causes Word to "invent" pages twice, once to display the document,
and again to print it. Nothing causes Word to insert "pages" in its
documents "automatically", you have to do it manually if you want pages.
Word is designed to dynamically make up pages on output, and to avoid having
them in the document, so it can perform its automatic pagination.

Hint: Just TRY it the way it is designed to work. Rather than use page
breaks to tell Word where you want the pages, use paragraph properties to
tell it where you *don't*. Then let Word sort out the pagination while you
get on with the writing.

Use "Keep With Next" to cause Word to "pull" a paragraph onto the next page
if the paragraph after it goes to the next page. All of your heading styles
should have this property so you can't get headings stuck at the bottom of a
page.

Use "Page Break Before" on your Heading 1 style to force chapters to start a
new page.

Use "Keep Lines Together" on all of your heading styles to prevent headings
splitting at a page break.

You must turn OFF "Widow/Orphan Control" for these properties to work.

Personally, I turn off Window/Orphan and use Keep Lines Together on
everything including body text. Paper is not that expensive these days, and
readers hate having to flip to the next page to see the end of a paragraph:
it breaks their concentration.

Any page that is 3/4 full is full "enough". Don't bother trying to chase
page filling any closer than that: you'll drive yourself mad. If the page
is 3/4 full, it's fine: go on to the next page

Don't *Justify*. Leave your text set ragged right. Justification was
always a polite fiction, a triumph of form over function. Used with narrow
newspaper-style columns its still "acceptable". But it presupposes a column
no wider than 2-1/2 alphabets (65 characters at the font size in use). Most
document columns are set wider than that these days, so leave them ragged
right And if you don't justify then you don't need to hyphenate either,
so don't! Again, hyphens piss the readers off, and the paper they save is
just not worth the aggro they cause.

Elliot's crying in his Chateaux Cardboarde by now

But finally, I would say finish the text then flip it to Elliot and get him
to lay it up FOR you. A professional can do in a day what it will take you
a month to learn and a year to get right. How much is your life worth

Cheers

It is getting very interesting with all the great feedback I get. Being
retired gives me some leeway for my schedule.
Regards to all!

Rudolf

John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh] wrote on 5/14/06 12:06 AM

Hi Rudolf:

You don't need new "software"

Word functions quite capably as publishing software.

You just have to learn how to do "publishing".

Publishing is a somewhat different workflow from "document production". You
use different techniques, and at different points in the production cycle.

Rule 1: Get your text FINISHED FIRST. Do not do any formatting or layout
until the text is letter-perfect. Many users of word trap themselves in a
hopeless tail-chasing exercise of writing, formatting, editing,
reformatting, rewriting, reformatting, editing, reformatting... All of
those "formatting" passes are an utter waste of time. The formatting cannot
be done until the text stops changing, and when the text is finished,
formatting can be done once, only once, and it will be fast and easy.

Rule 2: Do all formatting with Styles. No exceptions. When you come to
the layout process, you'll save literally weeks if you can change the
formatting instantly by changing a style definition.

Rule 3: Word processors have no "pages". They "invent" pages when you
print, but they do not exist in the file. If you want to use Word for
"Publishing" you need to create pages manually.

Myth 1: Word processors have no "text flows". That's a lie Word does
have text flows: look up "Linked text boxes" in the Help.

Myth 2: Word can't keep pictures where you put them. Bulldust! It can.
But you need to understand the difference between "floating" and "inline"
graphics. You need to understand "anchors" and their placement. You need
to understand that Word positions everything with respect to a paragraph:
and learn to keep your anchoring paragraph on the correct page.

So there: Don't give up yet. Learn "Publishing" and learn the different
toolset that Word provides to permit publishing from Word and you will get
on just fine without new software

I have sometimes been heard to mutter that iPages succeeds not because it's
"better" than Word but because it leaves out all the powerful tools that
confuse people who don't want to learn how to use them. Ipages forces you
to do things the right way because it's the only way: it doesn't have the
other features

Cheers

On 14/5/06 8:30 AM, in article C08BD653.16AA6%[email protected],

Hi CyberTaz,

Thank you very, very much for the enlightenment!

I have used Word for many years, in Windows as well as with the Mac, but
usually for light and easy material. I truly did not want to become an
expert in publishing and thought it would be easy to do a special
'retirement project'. I will have to rethink my strategy, since I do not
want to give up this project but I also do not want to trouble shoot the
document every so often as has been the case. Granted, since I subdivided
the document into a bunch of subdocs, it has been more consistent, but it
also has been frustrating and time-consuming.

Where could I get advice for some decent publishing software? Any
suggestion? I hate to give up.

Thank you
Rudolf

CyberTaz wrote on 5/12/06 1:52 PM

Pictures in Word documentHello Rudolf -

If you first take a look at:

http://word.mvps.org/Mac/PagesInWord.html

You'll better understand what I mean when I suggest that Word may not be
the
best program for your purpose. IMHO, you are going to need the features
provided in a page layout/desktop publishing application which simply
don't
exist in a word processing program.

You might also be interested in taking a look at:

http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/General/WhyMasterDocsCorrupt.htm

Especially with a large number of graphics involved, as they have a
tendency
to exacerbate the complexity of the doc, increasing the likelihood of
corruption.

I don't mean to be an alarmist, but the plethora of 'features' added to
an
excellent word processing program often gives the impression that it does
all those other things equally well. That, unfortunately, isn't the case.
Please don't misunderstand, though, it isn't that the features don't
*work*,
nor that graphics cannot be acceptably dealt with. It's just that there is
a
very real limit to what can be effectively handled and that what has to be
done almost amounts to a full-time profession in itself.

 

[Elliott Roper]

Dear John,

I really appreciate your advice and especially for your big chunk of time
you took to give me the reasons why to do what. It makes learning for me
that much easier.

That's why we all come here!

Your hint to avoid writing in Page Layout mode is well taken! I liked it so
much from writing correspondence having not more than a page or two, that I
thought this could foul up the process of pagination and keeping track of
chapters, etc. So this was news to me. I probably have wasted a lot of
time inserting page/section brakes where I should not have done it all. It
probably will take some time to get used to write in Normal view. You sort
of have to write in blind faith, trusting Word to do the layout right.

The thing with justification is also quite unusual for my hitherto personal
approach since I liked the 'neat look'. But I will try it out right away.

John and I like to keep arguing about this. ;-) I think you are right
with the 'neat look'. All the really beautifully typeset books on my
bookshelf have been set justified. Technical material looks dreadful
set ragged right. Can you imagine Knuth's "Art of Computer Programming"
with all those equations and program snippets without justified body
text making it look calm and ordered?

On the theme of "calm and ordered" I prefer to work in page view. I
have a tiny slow Powerbook, yet it does a wonderful job of keeping up
with my typing and editing. Keeping up with my typing speed is not a
huge challenge for even the slowest computer.

Now here is my plan: I am going to print out your list of tips and follow
all. This list beats a book of 397 pages. (Why do the authorities in Word
always have to write everything in one big volume as if everybody using Word
will be or wants to be a professional? Unfortunately, the sheer 'volume" of
a book turns me off, although I had to read a lot of technical books to make
a career out of my life. But that stuff was easier to learn for me than to
memorize the minute details of document processing.)

That is a very rational point of view. John's and Daiya's advice of
"don't fight it - let it work for you" is very sound.

I will report back to you in a week or so, after I have tried out
everything!

And thanks to all who showed compassion with my frustrations and failures.

I am not sure Elliot will be affordable for fixing a hacker's output.

Although I have been doing computer typesetting since 1970, I wouldn't
call myself a typography or design professional. I was always stuck in
a tiny technical niche of that business. So you would probably not like
my amateur efforts at layout. I know what I like when I see it, but
making great design is something I could not charge for.

If you would like a free sample of a snippet of your Word moved to
InDesign, let me know. (the e-mail address below is currently unwell -
try (e-mail address removed))

And thanks for your cheers for now!
Rudolf



John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh] wrote on 5/18/06 6:03 AM

Elliot's crying in his Chateaux Cardboarde by now

Puligny Montrachet if you *don't* mind!

 

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

Hi Rudolph:

As you all may have guessed not being a professional writer I never took a
formal course on how to use Word "the right way", clearly my fault .

That would *make* you a professional writer, then? I don't know *any*
professional writers (and I've been one for 40 years...) who have done a
course in Word. Plenty of amateurs, but no professionals. Hell, most
professional writers are like me: can't even TYPE!

A question though, should I create styles in the Master Document or can it
also be done in any of the Subdocuments and then expect the style to be
available in all Subdocs?

You should not be using Master Documents, period. Read it and weep...
http://word.mvps.org/FAQS/General/WhyMasterDocsCorrupt.htm

For the moment, throw that Master Document out (literally) and confine
yourself to single document files, one per chapter. We''show you more
sophisticated ways to manage the process later. But get out of that master
document right now, or you will suddenly lose all of your work.

You need to bear in mind that when a computer file "corrupts", you do not
lose "some" of it. A file is not like a paper book: if a paper book gets
chewed by the dog, you can still read almost all of it. With a computer
file, you lose the lot, and it's permanent.

It probably will take some time to get used to write in Normal view. You sort
of have to write in blind faith, trusting Word to do the layout right.

You may never get used to that. Some don't Word *will* get it right --
*if you let it*. Most people who complain about Word's layout have done so
many things to interfere with the pagination that Word simply is unable to
sort the mess out.

The thing with justification is also quite unusual for my hitherto personal
approach since I liked the 'neat look'. But I will try it out right away.

That's a choice of "artistic" versus "functional". Justified text is much
harder to read: people read it slower and remember less of it. That's
because people read by the "shape" of entire phrases: they do not read
letter-by-letter. If you justify text, you change the shape of phrases.
The brain must then slow down and examine the individual words or even the
individual letters in order to decode the meaning. However, older readers
like the appearance of justified text, and through many years of practice
their eyes are used to decoding it. Younger readers, on the other hand, shy
away from the "solid columns of black".

You need to decide what the likely composition of the readership of your
publication is. If you decide that it's mainly people over 50, you may
decide to justify your text.

This list beats a book of 397 pages. (Why do the authorities in Word
always have to write everything in one big volume as if everybody using Word
will be or wants to be a professional? Unfortunately, the sheer 'volume" of a
book turns me off, although I had to read a lot of technical books to make a
career out of my life. But that stuff was easier to learn for me than to
memorize the minute details of document processing.)

Ahhh... You just pressed the two hottest buttons in technical writing
OK, sit back and enjoy the show

Yes, you're quite correct: a paper volume becomes progressively less useable
as it heads north of 200 pages. It's physically too big and unwieldy to sit
open on the desk. Navigating within it simply takes too long.

However, from an instructional design point of view, we need to remember
that we build knowledge upon other knowledge. If the knowledge you need to
build on is not there, you end up with part of your logical structure
dangling in the air when the foundations collapse. The learner gets totally
confused and gives up.

The big move these days is into electronic delivery. With electronic
delivery, you can disguise the "size" of the publication, and at the same
time, dramatically speed up people's navigation through it. The Microsoft
Office Help on the PC runs to about 35,000 pages: but you would never know
it. You can find exactly what you want, regardless of where you are, in
less than two seconds.

I am not sure Elliot will be affordable for fixing a hacker's output.

I am: A dozen bottles of good Australian red wine and you OWN Elliot I
can help you choose the wine...

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 (0) 4 1209 1410