Output Quality Queries from a "Prepress Guy" (Thanks!)
Andy
As a prepress guy, I'm very much "at home" with the Adobe way of working,
and only recently decided to get hold of Office 2001 for my Mac. Having used
Outlook Express before, Entourage was easy enough to get into and has some
great features but I've got myself three chunky books to teach myself more
about Office 2001 Mac.
There are however a few things I'd like to ask you guys about please, since
I'm new to all this and probably won't find answers easily elsewhere.
I love what I've seen of Word as a word processor, but I'm not quite so sure
I like what I've seen people try to get out of it as a page layout package.
This leads me to my first question: Do Office apps produce quality output,
say, for a printing press? I ask this because I notice PDFs generated for us
by a PC user have hairlines in tinted frames and table border seem very
crudely constructed when looked at closely at high resolution.
Is that a limitation of some incarnations of Word - that they simply aren't
up to certain printing tasks - or more to do with printer drivers, etc.?
I've done tests with frames/fills on the Mac through AdobePS and the results
are fine (seamless joins in table borders, unlike some Word output I've
seen), though "transparency" capabilities aren't quite Illustrator 9 yet!
Mail merge: I find this can become very slow as Word produces hundreds of
merged pages in a new file. The first hundred pages might whizz, but then
things seem to grind. Is this normal, and is it something we just live with?
Any tips for speeding things up (I have lots of memory allocated)?
Away from Word for a second, printing Excel sheets to a PostScript printer
often seems to take an awfully long time too - a PC-using customer pointed
out how slow this appeared compared to printing his file from his PC.
Finally, the "Define" command on contextual menus doesn't seem to function
properly when my language is set to English (UK), though Entourage is fine.
Any ideas?
I don't expect miracles from Word, but being a prepress guy I would very
much welcome any advice on getting the best quality output possible and also
any information on why problems/artifacts might occur. Is Word 2001 a step
forward in any respects in terms of output quality? Fonts are fine, it's
more to do with native Word objects like frames and fills.
Thanks so much :)
John McGhie
in article B74AD10B.A68B%andy...@blueyonder.co.uk, Andy at
andy...@blueyonder.co.uk wrote on 6/12/01 4:48 AM:
> There are however a few things I'd like to ask you guys about please, since
> I'm new to all this and probably won't find answers easily elsewhere.
>
> I love what I've seen of Word as a word processor, but I'm not quite so sure
> I like what I've seen people try to get out of it as a page layout package.
You're quite correct. It's NOT a page layout package, it's a
word-processor. This is not meant to be facetious. The "problem" is that
Word gets so close to professional layout abilities that people tend to use
it for things it wasn't designed for. Me, for example :-)
I would never recommend using Word for quality pre-press; any more than I
would recommend using Quark Express or InDesign for a 1,000-page technical
manual. Word is designed to do "words" in industrial quantities on very
short update cycles. It was always anticipated that people wanting
professional output would import the result into a proper high-end
publishing solution for lay-up.
> This leads me to my first question: Do Office apps produce quality output,
> say, for a printing press? I ask this because I notice PDFs generated for us
> by a PC user have hairlines in tinted frames and table border seem very
> crudely constructed when looked at closely at high resolution.
Hmmm... Try asking your customers for the native Word file and firing it
into the correct printer driver for your RIP. I won't guarantee perfection:
Word tends to use a lot of WMF-style objects where curves are comprised of
lots and lots of tiny straight lines.
I've never seen Word output at 3,600 dpi, but at 1,200 dpi it's close enough
that I have never been able to justify the expense of better software. But
then I have never been outputting to seven-colour offset either :-)
> Is that a limitation of some incarnations of Word - that they simply aren't
> up to certain printing tasks - or more to do with printer drivers, etc.?
My first thought would be drivers: internally, Word uses vector placement
accurate to very fine dimensions. For most things, Word's limiting
dimension is a "twip", a twentieth of a point. However, I believe that
internally it calculates most things to a finer resolution than that.
It's also the fact that a professional documentation person will work in a
concise, accurate, structured way, and avoid all the widgets embedded in
Word to entertain the newbies. This results in a much cleaner internal file
structure, and thus gives a better chance of clean output. An example that
comes to mind is the decorative boarders and frames offered in Word. These
were never intended for high-resolution output in professional work. A pro
would get a proper graphics artist to produce a real one in EPS :-)
> I've done tests with frames/fills on the Mac through AdobePS and the results
> are fine (seamless joins in table borders, unlike some Word output I've
> seen), though "transparency" capabilities aren't quite Illustrator 9 yet!
There are always issues going out to PDF from Word, usually to do with
drivers. Adobe puts out drivers as you know, and anyone expecting
professional results needs to ensure that they're using the Adobe flavoured
drivers. Expect some futzing around to get a driver that both Word and the
rest of your system are happy with.
> Mail merge: I find this can become very slow as Word produces hundreds of
> merged pages in a new file. The first hundred pages might whizz, but then
> things seem to grind. Is this normal, and is it something we just live with?
> Any tips for speeding things up (I have lots of memory allocated)?
Merge is not my subject. However the issues are likely to be with file
size. I assume you have virtual memory turned on? I would expect a big
improvement in this regard from OS X. Things like this rip along in Windows
2000, and OS X offers much of the same capabilities in terms of multitasking
and memory management. What slows it down is the system pausing the
application to write to the disk. A multi-tasking OS is a real revelation
in this regard. Note: Office 2001 does not run native in OS X, so the
benefit is not available to Office 2001 -- expect it in the next version.
> Finally, the "Define" command on contextual menus doesn't seem to function
> properly when my language is set to English (UK), though Entourage is fine.
> Any ideas?
Yeah: It's a bug. The dictionary works properly only in US English. I am
not sure that the fix has appeared yet. Please check on the Mactopia site
for an updater, and if you find one, please tell me I'm in English AUS, it
doesn't work there either!)
>
> I don't expect miracles from Word, but being a prepress guy I would very
> much welcome any advice on getting the best quality output possible and also
> any information on why problems/artifacts might occur. Is Word 2001 a step
> forward in any respects in terms of output quality? Fonts are fine, it's
> more to do with native Word objects like frames and fills.
Generically, I think we have to disappoint you. You are the very first
person I have seen who has even noticed the difference, and that's in a few
years of doing this. So I guess Microsoft would not consider there was much
pressure for change.
I worked on the beta for Office XP (which is so close to Office 2001 it's
not funny!!) and I do not recall any discussion of output quality.
I do know that Word is very sensitive to its printer driver, its fonts, and
its graphics card. It reads all three to make up its pages; so internally
it is trying to do the right thing.
Given that you have access to professional fonts and a professional RIP, I
would be very interested to hear what discoveries you make when working with
a native Word document.
It is also worth noting that Word 2001 supports Word 9 file format. This
includes structures designed to improve rendering of text in HTML. These
structures are particularly active in things such as tables and text boxes.
I suggest you have a play in Edit>Preferences>Compatibility. You will find
lots of options there to amuse you, and you are one of the few people in the
world who would understand what they all do :-)
Frames are deprecated in Word 2001: there are things you *have* to use them
for, but note that the mechanism has not updated since Word 4, and is
probably still in 16-bit code.
Jeez, I'm not being much help, am I?
--
Please post replies to the newsgroup to maintain the thread.
John McGhie, Microsoft MVP -- Word
Consultant Technical Writer
<jo...@mcghie-information.com.au>
+61 4 1209 1410; Sydney, Australia: GMT + 10 hrs
Andy
MAN, are you helpful! I'll hold onto that post in my precious "Held Onto
Posts" Entourage box. Thanks so much for an intelligent, entertaining, and
informative set of answers. It's like you know exactly what I'm trying to
get out of software! I'll certainly stay with these groups, and while I've
lurked very casually up to now, I hope to contribute more as I learn more
about Office; it's just finding the time.
I really look forward to seeing how OS X develops over time, and more
importantly how the applications evolve with it. Hopefully we'll see lots of
improvements in the months to come. The first time I used carbonised
Internet Explorer (Public Beta) was a bit scary though.
I haven't found out too much about Windows XP or Office XP (is information
pretty vague?), but it's interesting to hear that Office XP is similar to
Office 2001. Actually, last time I looked into Office XP out of interest, I
got completely distracted by a Microsoft site full of flash movies that was
completed devoted to the elimination that stupid paperclip! Anyway.... :)
Do the Office suites leapfrog each other across the two platforms, or would
you say they more or less keep the same but have a different numbering
scheme and release schedule? I hear compatibility is pretty impressive.
> I suggest you have a play in Edit>Preferences>Compatibility. You will find
> lots of options there to amuse you, and you are one of the few people in the
> world who would understand what they all do :-)
Damn! Show Balloons doesn't work in there ;)
THANKS again,
John McGhie
in article B74C2FD8.A7B6%andy...@blueyonder.co.uk, Andy at
andy...@blueyonder.co.uk wrote on 6/13/01 5:45 AM:
> Hi John (why does your [whole] name look familiar?),
I have no idea... I have yet to see your whole name, so I can't comment.
Lessee now... Have you been drinking in some low pubs with me??
> I haven't found out too much about Windows XP or Office XP (is information
> pretty vague?), but it's interesting to hear that Office XP is similar to
> Office 2001.
Windows Xp is Windows NT 6 in the old money. It's actually Windows 2000
under the skin, with lots of stability and performance tweaks. It's rock
solid and blindingly fast. However, it's biggest leap forward is the user
interface: although anyone who first tries it who comes from Windows will
hate it. But once you get the hang of it, it's really slick and easy and
intuitive. Mac users will love it: it's got many things that OS X should
have had, and probably soon will have :-)
> Actually, last time I looked into Office XP out of interest, I
> got completely distracted by a Microsoft site full of flash movies that was
> completed devoted to the elimination that stupid paperclip! Anyway.... :)
>
> Do the Office suites leapfrog each other across the two platforms, or would
> you say they more or less keep the same but have a different numbering
> scheme and release schedule? I hear compatibility is pretty impressive.
Far be it from me to let any fast-moving furry objects out of any hessian
containers... But there really isn't much to talk about in Word XP. I
can't say much about the other apps, I have not had time to try them yet.
Poor Microsoft: It's a rotten position to be in. Word 2002 is an absolute
must-have, compelling upgrade for anyone who does long documents or complex
documents, and yet they dare not say so. The reason is that the greatest
advances in Word 2002 are two very important bug fixes: one to finally make
bullets and numbering manageable, the other to finally make Compare
Documents work. Either of these are worth the price of the whole suite.
But since they're bug fixes, and in America, the litigation climate means
you can never admit that there was a problem in the first place, we're
reduced to talking about the dear beloved but sadly departed Clippy!
If you do professional documentation work, get your hands on Word XP as soon
as you can. Since you are on a Mac, that will be Office X, which is just
about to go into beta. A further upside for Mac users is that Office X
should be Native OS X. Let's not get too impatient: Porting a code-base
the size of Office from one OS to another is *not* a job for the
faint-hearted. Office is breath-taking in its size and complexity under the
hood. I think this will be a fairly lengthy beta...
Yes, the office suites do tend to leap-frog each other. It was not the case
back when Office for the Mac had to be individually coded up for the Mac.
But since the Power PC-only versions, there has been a lot of common modules
at the source code level. This has always enabled the Mac guys to take a
"cut" of the PC guys code around half-way through their development cycle,
and produce a Mac Office that's about half a version ahead each time. Which
seriously pisses those of us on the PC, but most of us don't get to find out
about it. You Mac guys always end up half a version ahead, and with all the
bug fixes applied, while we're still stuck with all the things that didn't
work, frantically applying service releases. It's not fair!!!
The similarities between OS X and Windows 2000/XP are greater than their
differences, so I expect the Office suites will move closer together over
time. Performance has always been an issue on the Mac. Now we have
multi-tasking, multi-threading and all the goodies to play with, Microsoft
can afford to include horsepower-hogging things such as the PC version's
Help system, which is much enhanced over the Mac version, even though
they're built from the same source code.
> Damn! Show Balloons doesn't work in there ;)
{Giggle} Get into the Macro VBA editor and look up the terms in the help
there. You get MUCH more technical detail in the descriptions. Word's
help, like everything else, is object-oriented. When you are in the VBA
editor, you are sitting on top of the mountain, you can see for miles :-)
Best regards
Paul Berkowitz
"John McGhie" <jo...@mcghie-information.com.au> wrote:
> The reason is that the greatest
> advances in Word 2002 are two very important bug fixes: one to finally make
> bullets and numbering manageable, the other to finally make Compare
> Documents work. Either of these are worth the price of the whole suite.
> But since they're bug fixes, and in America, the litigation climate means
> you can never admit that there was a problem in the first place, we're
> reduced to talking about the dear beloved but sadly departed Clippy!
Take a look sometime at the language used for the fixes in Office 2001's
recent SR1. Almost everywhere, it refers to fixes, for example, where
"Entourage 2001 SR 1 fixes a problem that sometimes caused Entourage to stop
responding when ..."
"stop responding" = "crashed Entourage and maybe the computer"
Same for the other apps. I find it a very useful expression. When I have had
a complete meltdown and lose my temper, I now say to people "I'm sorry I
stopped responding yesterday." They tend to look a little leery, perhaps
wondering what things would have been like had I _not_ "stopped responding".
--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP Entourage/Outlook Express Mac
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