Print Screen Mystery and Myths

[daveboyd]

Hi, I'm using alt-PrintScreen to capture an x-window application window
and paste it into the application's user manual (x.doc). I have
captions that separate from the resulting floating objects. Somebody
once told me to always use inline graphics and all these troubles
disappear. However, when I format the pasted thingy (bitmap, object,
picture...???) as an inline graphic it disappears to a frame overlaying
the text with a little bit (no pun intended) of the original screen
capture along the bottom line. Somebody once told me to turn off "show
picture frame" but that's already done. When I turn it on, just to
gather more evidence, the inline graphics option is grayed out.
Someone once told me to set the graphics card acceleration down from
maximum. Haven't tried this yet since the picture is there as a
floating object, but perhaps floating objects accept faster bit-maps.
Someone once told me to "paste special" and all would be well. Doesn't
seem to be so, maybe the choices are too complicated. Why does paste
as picture sometimes appear and sometimes not? (someone once told me to
paste into powerpoint, paint, photoeditor -- you name it-- first, and
then into word). The advantage of paste as picture appears to be a
right context menu that has a "caption" option. This caption is locked
to the picture by an invisible, unknowable mechanism unlike those
available to mere mortals.

Help!!! The bogey man's going to get me if you High Priests of Word
can't re-interpret my nightmare visions of Word processing. Thanks!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You've inserted your graphic into a text paragraph with line spacing set to
an Exact amount. That's why you're seeing only a little stripe of it. The
first time this happened to me (many years ago), I was just as bamboozled.

 

[daveboyd]

Thanks be to you O wonderful oracle! Do you have any wisdom, once you
can see screen grabs via proper line spacing magic, on controlling and
subjugating them via the inline (format controlled), framed(flow box)
or most "powerful" floating incantations? MS seems to recommend
floating, unless you have captions, then use framed. Folk wisdom says
only inline works well enough for "professional", captioned documents.
Also, I have captions, but truly wish to grok how the right context
embedded caption implements the more pedestrian picture paragraph "keep
with next". Or am I re-bamboozled as usual? Thanks again!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Keeping both figure and caption inline really does make for the easiest
maintenance. Define specific styles for the figure and caption (if you're
Word's Caption feature, the caption will already be in Caption style, which
you may wish to modify), and format as "Keep with next" whichever comes
first; that is, if the caption goes below the figure, then make the Figure
style "Keep with next." This will assure that they stay on the same page.

It doesn't, however, allow text to flow around them. If you need that, then
a frame is recommended. Select both figure and caption together and use
Insert Frame (you'll find a button for that on the Forms toolbar, or you can
put Frame on the Insert menu using Customize). You may need to remove the
frame border (Format | Borders and Shading) and do some tidying up, but
basically wrapping for frames is now limited to on or off (there used to be
choices for "left side," "right side," etc., but no more), and if you wanted
off, you wouldn't be using a frame!

You *could* float your graphic, in which case Word will put the caption in a
text box, and you could group them, or you could put the graphic and caption
in a single text box, but Word can't see text in a text box, so this is a
terrible idea if you want a list of figures, and the extra formatting
options you get with drawing objects are not usually needed for
illustrations (you probably don't want them to be Behind Text or In Front of
Text, for example).

 

[daveboyd]

Thanks, Suzanne. The right context menu for caption insertion does use
"keep with next", something I missed when I asked the question. There
was one experienced user (in the Mac Word group) that recommended a
couple of old macros related to in-line frame usage but I didn't quite
catch what/how they helped. Anyway, I'm happy your advice coincides
with folk wisdom and will follow it unfailingly.