Word/Excel magnification not quite right

[parnold]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
Processor: intel

Is there any way to fix Word and Excel to have 100% magnification actually be close to 100% magnification? On any Mac I've ever seen Office running (G5 Tower, PowerBook G4, MacBook, MacBook Pro, external monitor), 100% magnification is about 30% or so smaller than it should be--it seems more like about 70% than 100%. This is really difficult in a mixed-computer environment, since PC users will send me a document at 100% and I always have to bump up the magnification to 125-150% in order to be able to read it. And of course, if I send them something back, it's way too big for them. This same issue was in Office 2004 and I had hoped that it would be fixed in Office 2008. Is there a setting or something (even a hidden preference) that will fix this?

Thanks!

 

[CyberTaz]

There is no "fix" because nothing is "broken" What you are witnessing is
a combination of 2 factors:

1- The native display of PCs & Macs is different - PCs = 92 pixels per inch,
Macs - 72 ppi, which accounts for your rather accurate estimate of ~30%
difference (actually 25%), and

2- A misunderstanding of what the percentage refers to. In terms of display
resolution 100% means that the pixels (picture elements) of what's being
displayed match the pixels of the monitor on a 1-1 basis. It doesn't mean
100% of *actual size* which is what most people understandably assume. The
higher the Zoom, the more display pixels are used to display 1 content pixel
& vice-versa.

In order to ease the pain, try using Page Width as your Zoom setting, which
will control how the doc goes back to other users. Unfortunately there isn't
anything you can do to control how they save the doc... the best you can do
for yourself is to perhaps create a macro to more quickly set the Zoom to
whatever you prefer when the doc opens.

 

[Phillip Jones]

Uhmm! its either 96 or 100.

There is a formula for for figuring the difference.

72/96 for viewing MS files on Mac

or 96/72 for viewing Mac files on a PC

to put it another way anything written in 12 pt on PC looks like 9 point
on Mac and 9 point Mac looks like 12 pt on a PC.

if you wre to look at the dots chart to make up letters on a its 8/12
pattern and the dots are actually square blocks.

On Mac its a 9/8 pattern and instead of block its actually dots withing
those blocks

That's the reason unless a PC is using adobe ATM technology if you look
at a letter it looks blocky looking if you look real close. Where on a
mac if you look really close the blocky look is for the most part
absent. unless the font file is a Postscript font and not TruType font
at very large sizes they will look blocky as well.

Note as adooe use the ATM technology in PDF and PDF is the basis for
viewing and printing in OSX. you tend not to get that blocky look for text.

There is no "fix" because nothing is "broken" What you are witnessing
is a combination of 2 factors:

1- The native display of PCs & Macs is different - PCs = 92 pixels per
inch, Macs - 72 ppi, which accounts for your rather accurate estimate of
~30% difference (actually 25%), and

2- A misunderstanding of what the percentage refers to. In terms of
display resolution 100% means that the pixels (picture elements) of
what's being displayed match the pixels of the monitor on a 1-1 basis.
It doesn't mean 100% of *actual size* which is what most people
understandably assume. The higher the Zoom, the more display pixels are
used to display 1 content pixel & vice-versa.

In order to ease the pain, try using Page Width as your Zoom setting,
which will control how the doc goes back to other users. Unfortunately
there isn't anything you can do to control how they save the doc... the
best you can do for yourself is to perhaps create a macro to more
quickly set the Zoom to whatever you prefer when the doc opens.

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[parnold]

Thanks for the info, but unfortunately I think this is a bit out of date. Given that the standard resolution on Apple laptops has been &gt; 100ppi for quite some time (not to mention the fact that Macs use the same external monitors that PCs use), it seems that the whole "always use 72ppi on the Mac" is way out of date. Given the mere fact that you're saying "anything written in 12 pt on PC looks like 9 point on Mac and 9 point Mac looks like 12 pt on a PC" implies that there's a fundamental flaw. At 100% resolution on either platform, 12pt should look like 12pt.

Either way, it sounds like Microsoft didn't bother to put in any way to customize the pixel density of your local system to allow you to see 12pt as 12pt

Can we put this in as a really useful feature request? Also, Apple has some guidelines for how to do this at:

<http://developer.apple.com/document...f/doc/uid/TP40003409-CH4-DontLinkElementID_50>

Thanks, everyone....

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

CyberTaz's #2 isn't out of date. This is simply not true:

At 100% resolution on either platform, 12pt should look like 12pt.

Sorry, wrong. But it has nothing to do with platform--it depends on the
resolution of the monitor. People who have two monitors of varying
resolutions, running the same platform, will find that 100% zoom is
different on each one, side-by-side.

It's not so much a feature request to MS, as it is changing the
standards that the entire software industry operates on. That's why
Apple is promoting a new concept of resolution independence--which,
incidentally, I'm fairly sure Apple doesn't even do yet. You can make
the feature request, but since it's easy enough to change the zoom in
Word documents, it's probably not going to be very high on MS's priority
list, and I'm pretty sure it would take a whole new version, not an
update. Resolution independence is not easy to code.

As said, using Page Width is probably your best bet for now.

 

[CyberTaz]

Not unusual for Daiya to beat me to the punch but there's also a fallacy
in your reasoning with regard to the 100 ppi LCDs - The majority of word
processing professionals using Word *aren't* doing their job on notebook
computers. And yes, most displays are now compatible with either platform
but it isn't the monitor that determines the video output - it's the
graphics generator of the computer. Want to try taking a video card from a
Mac & sticking it into a PC or vice-versa?

As far as MS not including pixel density adjustment - who does? Even Illy &
Photoshop don't offer that sort of control for graphic design where it would
arguably be a more critical issue than in a word processor. No disrespect
intended, but you might do well to re-read the document you cited, starting
near the top:

"Mac OS X v10.4 introduced preliminary support for resolution independence,
but the implementation was very limited and many visual errors occur. Mac OS
X v10.5 adds further support and the implementation has been refined. Most
Cocoa applications, and Carbon applications that use compositing mode,
should be capable of being resolution-independent when running on this
release. However, resolution independence is still a developer-only feature
in Mac OS X v10.5 and is not yet intended for end-user adoption."

Perhaps when it's ready for Prime Time MS will be, too

 

[Elliott Roper]

Not unusual for Daiya to beat me to the punch but there's also a fallacy
in your reasoning with regard to the 100 ppi LCDs - The majority of word
processing professionals using Word *aren't* doing their job on notebook
computers. And yes, most displays are now compatible with either platform
but it isn't the monitor that determines the video output - it's the
graphics generator of the computer. Want to try taking a video card from a
Mac & sticking it into a PC or vice-versa?

Not to gang up on ya Bob, but are you sure that logic holds up for LCD
monitors?
The native resolution of a LCD panel is a property of the LCD. I don't
think the graphics card can change that. They really do have arrays of
R G and B display elements, unlike a CRT with its phosphors and shadow
mask sprayed by hoses of electrons which are waved about by fixed field
magnets and awfully analog-ish high voltage electrodes.

Each element of an LCD is individually addressed and switched to go
transparent or not. What you see is the light shining through its
coloured window from the backlight while it is transparent. Each
sub-pixel when addressed, gets fed a charge proportional to its desired
brightness. As the charge leaks away, it gets more opaque till the next
refresh interval.

One each of R G and B sub-pixels makes a display element.
With 8 bit values of charge on each, that makes 2^24 different colours
you can assign to each of them. The celebrated 'millions of colours" so
beloved of class action lawyers this week.

So you can't do better than "native resolution", but you can do worse.
Easy peasy would be 1/4 and 1/9 resolution by feeding the same numbers
to 2 or 3 wide pixel blocks. Smartypants graphics devices can fake
different scale factors by blurring the charge values of nearby pixels
by how much they contribute to a fake midsized pixel.

I did lie when I said you can't do better. There is a technique called
sub-pixel aliasing that lets you display finer detail at the cost of
rainbowed edges. Make a screenshot of some aliased text, then blow it
up to high bu^h^h magnification in GraphicConverter or something to see
it at work.

Since the sales droids describe screen size by the diagonal, you can
compute native ppi with a bit of pythagoras.
working in pixels:- sqrt( h^2 + w^2 ) divided by the number of inches
the salesman first thought of.
e.g. this 12.1" Powerbook has
sqrt (1024^2 + 768^2)/12.1 ppi
That's 105.78, so you need to be short-sighted, and sit up close.
(Great in economy class when the muppet in front yanks his seat back
onto your spreadsheet.)

If your maths are as bad as your eyesight, take a tape measure to the
width of the thing and do the obvious division. LCD salesmen don't lie
as outrageously as CRT salesmen.

What you say about graphics cards is partly true when the LCD is driven
out the old-fashioned VGA analog port. Only partly, because the monitor
has to assign each pixel's charge value internally by timing the VGA
analog to decide which pixel gets it, and how much by the analogue
value at that pixel's time. Dusty.

It is *always* best to work at the native resolution of an LCD. It cuts
out all the foolin'.