Top margin vs First Line "At" position

[chuckvorndran]

It is my understanding that the Cursor Position "At" value, shown in Word's
status bar, is the vertical distance from the top edge of the page. Is it
logical to assume that the "At" value for the very first line in a document
created with Normal.dot should be the same value as that of the Top Margin?
If the top margin value is 1", then the At value, when the cursor is on the
very first line, is 1". When the top margin is 1.5" the corresponding At
value for line one is also 1.5". But not all values of top margin from 0"
through 1.9" produce the same "At" value for line one. Here are some
observations. (I left out several observation where the values to agree.)
0" 0"
0.1 0.1
0.2 0.1
0.21 0.2 Word sets the 0.21 margin
automatically from the 'Printable area' dialog box.
0.3 0.3
0.4 0.3
0.5 0.5
0.6 0.6
0.7 0.6
0.8 0.8
0.9 0.8
1.0 1.0
1.2 1.1
1.4 1.3
1.7 1.6
1.9 1.8
It appears that there may be some creative rounding going on here. It also
appears that Word 2003 is not the first version to exhibit this phenomenon.
In Word 2000, this discrepency seems to replicate precisely, in Word 97, the
results are different at the low end, but still don't find agreement between
the Top Margin and the first line's "At" value.
This "At" property seems to be important to my customer, for reasons I am
looking into. In this instance, the customer's Top margin specification is
0.7" and that yield a first line "At" value of 0.6". And that's consistent
across all three tested Word versions.
Can anyone shed some light on why this is happening? This customer is
looking to switch its environment from WordPerfect 8 to Word2003. I suspect
that this will pose some other unique formatting challenges as well.

Thanks

 

[Jezebel]

The problem, I think, is that internally all Word's measurements are in
points, with a precision of 0.5 point. Users who prefer millimetres to
inches have always had to live with numbers that are slightly off -- but a)
the differences are too small to matter, and b) as long as the value in
question is handled consistently, it does no harm. But use points rather
than inches if you want more precision in your margin settings.

In this particular case, it's hard to see what your customer might be
concerned about. Set the top margin so that the first line of text ends up
where they want it, regardless of the actual numeric value used. Bear in
mind that the 'at' position refers to the *top* of the text: the actual
position depends on the font -- ie, a font with large ascenders will appear
lower on the page.

 

[chuckvorndran]

Thanks for the reply. I tried with the units set to points and with the
units set to millimeters. In both cases there's still a problem when the Top
Margin is set to 0.6", 18 mm, or 50.4 pt. Even entering a Top Margin of
54.7 pt give me a first line cursor At 54.7 pt.

And yes, I was assuming that the that the 'at' position refers to the *top*
of the text. That's what make this so perplexing. I was expecting the top
of the text to be the bottom of the top margin area, exactly, no matter what
the units. Maybe my expectations and MS Word terminology are just out of
synch.

 

[Jezebel]

Even entering a Top Margin of 54.7 pt give me a first line cursor At
54.7 pt.

That surely comes as no surprise. As I said, Word is rounding to to half
points -- on my machine the value always ends in .7 or .2
As you observe, it's a rounding error, plus, perhaps, a difference in the
point of origin.

But I still don't understand why it's a problem for you. Half a point is
1/144 of an inch, which is quite a lot less than the paper-handling
precision of any printer. (Unless you're printing banknotes!)

 

[chuckvorndran]

Correction: Even entering a Top Margin of 55 pt gives me a first line cursor
At 54.7 pt.

Anyway, I'm not sure why it's so important either, but the customer was
pretty determined to emphasize the discrepency the other day. Now that I
have a bit more data regarding Word's behavior I'll dig deeper into the
reasoning for the customer's concern.

Thanks for your feedback.

 

[chuckvorndran]

Correction: Even entering a Top Margin of 55 pt gives me a first line cursor
At 54.7 pt.

Anyway, I'm not sure why it's so important either, but the customer was
pretty determined to emphasize the discrepency the other day. Now that I
have a bit more data regarding Word's behavior I'll dig deeper into the
reasoning for the customer's concern.

Thanks for your comments.

 

[rhythm]

--
When something ends‚ something else begins...

The problem, I think, is that internally all Word's measurements are in
points, with a precision of 0.5 point. Users who prefer millimetres to
inches have always had to live with numbers that are slightly off -- but a)
the differences are too small to matter, and b) as long as the value in
question is handled consistently, it does no harm. But use points rather
than inches if you want more precision in your margin settings.

In this particular case, it's hard to see what your customer might be
concerned about. Set the top margin so that the first line of text ends up
where they want it, regardless of the actual numeric value used. Bear in
mind that the 'at' position refers to the *top* of the text: the actual
position depends on the font -- ie, a font with large ascenders will appear
lower on the page.





thank Jezebel your Answer i think you ccomplet clarifte the poit and it is understandabel

regard

i appreciate