OT: Q on MS Nerd

You didn't mention what version.

Here is how you do it for MS Word 2003

Word XP

More general methods:

Robert

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Netscape/7.2

Two suggestions:

A) Just ork with the tool the way Bill intended and not the way *you* want to! Your document might look like s**te - but ... so does everyone elses and it's the corprat standard anyway (and nobody else cares, really).

B) Learn to use LaTeX. LaTex knows how to layout pages perfectly with no futzing - but the learning curve is *steep*. It is available on Windows from Cygwin - or on every flavour of Linux/Unix.

OpenOffice appears - to me at least - to be sufficiently good a clone of MS-Office to block that escape route.

PS: Approach A should be used when you need your job, when you need that paycheck, while you are still willing to grab your ankles and say "Yes, sir! May I have another!"

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Netscape/7.2

Jun 2007 20:43:10 PDT)

...and it's really fundamentally broken when viewed from a modern perspective. It's just absurd that if you want, e.g., a caption for a figure to contain an equation, oh, that's "fragile" and you need to know to use a "\protect" command. Another example: There's lots of extra functionality that can be obtained from adding in various packages, but the order that you reference them can make the difference between everything working or not (e.g., the "hyperref" package usually needs to be last). ...etcetera...

OpenOffice actually has more "separate formatting from text entry" features that Office does. It's sometimes a little clunkier in places (e.g., for drawing tables, the Office approach of giving you a pencil and eraser tool to willy-nilly draw and erase cell boundaries is definitely a little more intuitive than the "traditional" approach used by OpenOffice -- there's a "split cell" command, a "merge cell" command, etc.), but for free I'm really not complaining: It's quite nice and I enjoy using it.

---Joel

Thanks; will try that scheme (document on another drive and OS).

Netscape/7.2

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Netscape/7.2

Jun 2007 20:43:10 PDT)

Netscape/7.2

Jun 2007 20:43:10 PDT)

Also you mentioned not being able to change defaults and have them "stick" if I understood you correctly. There is a "normal.dot" template that contains the defaults for Word Docs.

Robert

THANKS!! That worked (btw, i am using Nerd 2000).

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LaTeX brokeness is rock solid and stable, you learn the "ninja grips" and then do not go there!

With Office, *every* release is broken in new and creative ways - no doubt to entice users into licensing to get "support"...

It's not bad - but ... I do not use it much.

Netscape/7.2

Jun 2007 20:43:10 PDT)

Fair point, although I'd suggest that you can go through and learn/workaround bugs/weidnesses in several versions of Office in the time needed to become a LaTeX expert -- especially if you do a lot of work with tables and "fancy" mathematics. :-)

A hybrid of Scientific Workplace's WYSIWYG environment and WinEdts's excellent multi-file document handling/templates/utilities would be a great product. I suspect there's more likelihood than WinEdt might evolve in this direction, as Scientific Workplace seems to be largely on life support at this point.