[P1] Reading word documents

[Michael Flournoy]

	Most of what you are describing shouldn't be done in Word to begin 
with ( but I know people do it ). Microsoft have tried to make 
themselves indespensiable by throwing every feature possible into Word, 
making it's format a standard and then refusing to publish the 
standard. Word was not originally designed to be a program for exact 
placement and formatting of text and graphics on the one hand nor the 
free flowing nature of HTML on the other.
	Word Processors were invented before either WYSWIG or web sites, MS 
Word is a word processor. Even MS recognize this and offer separate 
products ( Publisher and FrontPage ). What this means is that Word 
often does not format the same from OS to OS, version to version, or 
even machine to machine. My wife has upgraded 4 times through the years 
trying to keep up. If compatibitly is critical buy the latest version 
of Word, it won't be far off but don't expect it to be perfect. If 
exactitude is what is required you need a different product.
	If editing is not needed save your document as PDF. Basic ".doc" 
documents translate pretty darn good in the new TextEdit. ( But it 
can't present features it doesn't itself have. ) AppleWorks also does 
pretty well but usually needs some cleaning up. I put Word on my sons 
iMac for working on shared projects from school but he seldom uses it. 
His friends can't seem to type on anything else but he usually reverts 
to AppleWorks.  I like the new TextEdit, when set to wrap to window it 
makes for a nice place to write and it saves in the universal RTF 
format. It will do until Nisus gets their new program up to speed.

BTW, My son says the kids at school think it's fun to type faster than 
the computer can display the words. It's like a game. The game only 
works on Word of course.

              Mike

On Jan 26, 2004, at 7:13 PM, Harry D. Corsover wrote:

> On Jan 26, 2004, at 4:01 PM, Angus Wallace wrote:
>
>> Just out of curiosity (my ibook hasn't arrived - yet  ;-): how well do
>> the two programs (TextEdit and AppleWorks) read *.doc files? What 
>> about
>> complicated files with tables of contents, embedded
>> graphs/pictures/tables, hyperlinks and complicated formatting?
>>
>> Cheers,
>> -Angus
>
> A general response:
>
> If you need to be able to see exactly what was intended in a Word 
> document (the things you mentioned above, and exact line and page 
> breaks) there is nothing that will do it as well as Word. Even Word 
> won't always show you precisely what the document's author sees, given 
> different margin settings, fonts, etc.
>
> If all you need is to see the page elements (text, graphics, etc.) 
> then you have more choices. If you need precision (e.g., if you are 
> editing/proofreading, or contributing to a final document for 
> printing/publication, then stick with Word.
>
> Regards,
>
> Harry Corsover
>
> =======================================
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