Word X and OS X 10.4

[Dan]

I recently upgraded from an iBook G3 running OS X 10.3.9 to an iBook G4
running 10.4.6. I've noticed that the appearance in Word X is flaky.
(Yes, Quartz smoothing is on.) It's hard to describe, but as I type,
characters, words, and whole lines appear light and hazy, and will
sometimes shift slightly in appearance, especially if I toggle italics.
Usually if I reopen a document, stuff that I've previously typed looks
fine -- dark and reasonably sharp. I have no idea what's going on, but
I'm wondering if Word X is not entirely compatible with 10.4. I don't
want to upgrade to Office 2004, but I guess I'd consider it.

 

[Elliott Roper]

I recently upgraded from an iBook G3 running OS X 10.3.9 to an iBook G4
running 10.4.6. I've noticed that the appearance in Word X is flaky.
(Yes, Quartz smoothing is on.) It's hard to describe, but as I type,
characters, words, and whole lines appear light and hazy, and will
sometimes shift slightly in appearance, especially if I toggle italics.
Usually if I reopen a document, stuff that I've previously typed looks
fine -- dark and reasonably sharp. I have no idea what's going on, but
I'm wondering if Word X is not entirely compatible with 10.4. I don't
want to upgrade to Office 2004, but I guess I'd consider it.

I kept X when I went to 2004, so for nostalgia, I cranked it up. I
can't see too much difference on a quick test, on this 12" PBoko, but I
vaguely remember it doing something like that at some time in the past
at some funny zoom level in normal view.
Try some of these:-
Page View ( zoom fit width then drag the window wider and narrow)
Prefs » Print » fractional widths (IIRC that's always on in Page view)
See if the problem changes with the font in use.
Try it with quartz smoothing off. Oh that reminds me. Is your v.X fully
up to date? If you reloaded it from CD, there were some early Word
patches that greatly improved quartz, but mostly that was getting the
character widths *badly* wrong. It would make the text jump about
manically.
New glasses (soreee!)

I assume you are running the G4 at native resolution (1024*768 pixies)?