Word v.X with Mac OS 10.3.7 on PowerMac G5 - display bug

[Siva Ananmalay]

All,

I found an obscure (maybe I didn't search far and wide enough) bug that was
driving us nuts. This only happens on the G5 (dual 1.8 Ghz), not on our G4.
Here's what we were seeing:
- a small 1 page document contained several textboxes, clip art images
- over top of all of those was a rectangular box with 100% transparency

With those factors in place, the document was unusable on screen (but prints
just fine). The test and graphics in the document were not visible, but
rather a pile of pixels. If another window opened over top of it, it would
artifacts and garbage all over.

The workaround is to set the transparency level to <96% to the box. As soon
as it was less than 100%, it appears to improve and by 95%, the onscreen
appearance was just fine, and printing remained fine.

Microsoft - any ideas or fixes? This appears to be G5 specific though I
can't explain why (the OS level was identical between the G4 and G5 I
tested).

Hope this helps someone else save some time.

Cheers,
Siva

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Siva,

I'm in Office/Word 2004 and I can't reproduce your scenario. Hopefully
someone with Word X can confirm this. In the meantime, instead of setting
transparency to 100%, try changing the Fill setting to No Fill.

Hope this helps.

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

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>

 

[John McGhie]

Siva:

We're actually trying to confirm the cause of this.

It appears to be a graphics card driver bug.

One user was able to work-around it by changing the colour depth of his
display. Set 256 colours and see what happens, then try Thousands.

If this works, we'd like to know: we're trying to find the cause.

Cheers

All,

I found an obscure (maybe I didn't search far and wide enough) bug that was
driving us nuts. This only happens on the G5 (dual 1.8 Ghz), not on our G4.
Here's what we were seeing:
- a small 1 page document contained several textboxes, clip art images
- over top of all of those was a rectangular box with 100% transparency

With those factors in place, the document was unusable on screen (but prints
just fine). The test and graphics in the document were not visible, but
rather a pile of pixels. If another window opened over top of it, it would
artifacts and garbage all over.

The workaround is to set the transparency level to <96% to the box. As soon
as it was less than 100%, it appears to improve and by 95%, the onscreen
appearance was just fine, and printing remained fine.

Microsoft - any ideas or fixes? This appears to be G5 specific though I
can't explain why (the OS level was identical between the G4 and G5 I
tested).

Hope this helps someone else save some time.

Cheers,
Siva

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410