justification - adjusting spacing between words
cimel
set on justification. How can I adjust the spacing
between the words. I do not like the large spaces between
words when the margins are set on justification. In
Wordperfect there is a "typeset" option and you can set
the max or min space between words.
Suzanne S. Barnhill
spacing for the text as a whole (Character Spacing tab of Format | Font). I
find that Condensed by 0.1 pt approximates WP Optimal spacing.
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft Word MVP
Words into Type
Fairhope, AL USA
"cimel" <ci...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1b5c201c1355d$4261f070$9be62ecf@tkmsftngxa03...
John McGhie
documents hard to read. Pretty, but hard to read. Readers read by the
shape of the word or phrase, not the letters in them. If you hyphenate and
justify, you change the shape of the words and massively slow the reader.
To control the activities of the hyphenation and thus the justification
engine, in Tools>Hyphenation, reduce the size of the Hyphenation zone. This
is the zone between the right page margin and the end of the line in which
Word will consider inserting a justification hyphen if an acceptable
hyphenation point for a word occurs in there.
Hope this helps
On 5/9/01 2:18 AM, in article 1b5c201c1355d$4261f070$9be62ecf@tkmsftngxa03,
"cimel" <ci...@aol.com> wrote:
--
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
Bruce Hamilton
> To control the activities of the hyphenation and thus the justification
> engine, in Tools>Hyphenation, reduce the size of the Hyphenation zone. This
> is the zone between the right page margin and the end of the line in which
> Word will consider inserting a justification hyphen if an acceptable
> hyphenation point for a word occurs in there.
This is perhaps the place to ask a question I've been wrestling with:
can I tell Word to treat other characters as hyphens? I'd like it to
break things like networking_technology after the underscore if
necessary (without inserting a hyphen, obviously) but I can't figure out
how to tell it.
Thanks in advance.
-Bruce
bruce_h...@agilent.com Tel: 650-485-2818 Fax: 650-485-8092
Agilent Technologies MS 24M-A, 3500 Deer Creek Road, Palo Alto CA 94303
Dave Rado
See:
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Formatting/NoWidthSpace.htm
Regards
Dave
"Bruce Hamilton" <bruce_h...@agilent.com> wrote in message
news:3B964C90...@agilent.com...
Bruce Hamilton
> | can I tell Word to treat other characters as hyphens? I'd like it to
> | break things like networking_technology after the underscore if
> | necessary (without inserting a hyphen, obviously)
and Dave Rado wrote:
> See http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Formatting/NoWidthSpace.htm
That will certainly do it. Just to be sure I understand: I am asked to
insert a zero-width space after every underscore in my 150-page
document, since a line break may be warranted after any of them. Is that
right?
(I know I can do this with global replace. It's just that, if the phone
company told me I could fix the static on my phone by painting my house,
trim and windows green, I would not find it comforting to know that a
big spray gun makes the job trivial).
Jonathan West
> I wrote:
> > | can I tell Word to treat other characters as hyphens? I'd like it to
> > | break things like networking_technology after the underscore if
> > | necessary (without inserting a hyphen, obviously)
>
> and Dave Rado wrote:
> > See http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Formatting/NoWidthSpace.htm
>
> That will certainly do it. Just to be sure I understand: I am asked to
> insert a zero-width space after every underscore in my 150-page
> document, since a line break may be warranted after any of them. Is that
> right?
Yup! :-)
>
> (I know I can do this with global replace. It's just that, if the phone
> company told me I could fix the static on my phone by painting my house,
> trim and windows green, I would not find it comforting to know that a
> big spray gun makes the job trivial).
Don't blame us - we didn't do it! :-))
--
Regards
Jonathan West - Word MVP
MultiLinker - Automated generation of hyperlinks in Word
Conversion to PDF & HTML
http://www.multilinker.com
Word FAQs at http://www.multilinker.com/wordfaq
Please post any follow-up in the newsgroup. I do not reply to Word questions
by email
Jay Freedman
Your understanding is correct, and your dissatisfaction is understandable.
There are a lot of things like this in Word, and in many other programs used
by a large and diverse group. Whenever we propose a macro as a solution to
someone's question, there's an implication that "Yes, Word can do that, but
not out-of-the-box. You have to do some work."
This situation involves a tradeoff between including useful features and
cluttering up the program. Some features are useful to lots of people, while
other features are useful -- even critical -- to just a small fraction of
users. In each release, Microsoft has to decide where that line is, and
consider the cost of engineering, testing and documenting the features. (I
won't go into the features that Microsoft does include that are so annoying
that almost no one uses them. <g>)
In this case, you want a "breaking underscore". Others might want a
"breaking slash" and a "breaking backslash" for writing long file names, or
some other breaking characters. Each of these would require a special
character in the character set (you'd have to use a Unicode font for that)
or special coding in the Word executable. How often would this be used?
Would the presence or absence of the feature have a measurable effect on the
sales of Word? Would it affect how many support calls Microsoft gets? I
don't have answers to those questions. But it seems to me that a global
replace, especially if you record it as a macro for one-button reuse, is a
fairly painless solution.
--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
"Bruce Hamilton" <bruce_h...@agilent.com> wrote in message
news:3B96605D...@agilent.com...
Bruce Hamilton
> Whenever we propose a macro as a solution to
> someone's question, there's an implication that "Yes, Word can do that, but
> not out-of-the-box. You have to do some work."
Thank you for bringing this up. There are other implications, too. If
you ask me to solve a problem and I offer a nontrivial solution, I think
you can reasonably expect:
1. That there isn't a trivial solution (this is the implication you
point out).
2. That this solves your problem.
3. That it doesn't have unwanted side effects.
If (2) or (3) is false, I think it's incumbent upon me to point that
out. So, for example, if I want Word to be free to break lines after an
underscore, and Dave suggests inserting a zero-width space after each
underscore, we have this situation:
1. I conclude that there's no direct way to tell Word to do what I want.
Dave has thus saved me a lot of time, for which I am genuinely grateful.
(I did try Help, BTW, but I might well have continued beating on it, or
hand-edited 400 paragraphs).
2. I imagine that if I make the substitution, Word will break lines
after underscores where needed. However, it won't do that for any *new*
underscores I enter, or for any text which I Replace by underscores, so
this might or might not be a solution to my problem (I didn't say I
wanted to be able to continue editing and have Word continue to break
lines after underscores). It's maybe good engineering ethics and bad
marketing practice to point out shortcomings this near that threshold.
3. I imagine that nothing else will happen other than a trivial increase
in the file size. I haven't tried it yet (those little beasties are hard
to insert!), but I'm wondering how a search for "some_text" will fare
against "some_<zero-width-space>text." If it fails, that's a side effect
that (IMO) violates the spirit of (3).
> In this case, you want a "breaking underscore". Others might want a
> "breaking slash" and a "breaking backslash" for writing long file names, or
> some other breaking characters. Each of these would require a special
> character in the character set (you'd have to use a Unicode font for that)
> or special coding in the Word executable.
Well, no. This isn't the forum for "word processor X will do Y" so I'll
just say it's not hard to show the list of characters that signal a
possible line break and let me edit it. (If you want to protect me from
myself, disallow changing or deleting the default entries.) The idea is
not new.
> ...it seems to me that a global
> replace, especially if you record it as a macro for one-button reuse, is a
> fairly painless solution.
Sure. Type a sentence, decide whether it contains any of the things that
I have a special-case macro for, find the button, push the button. Type
the next sentence ... I'm new to this program and I just have to raise
my pain threshold. I'm working on it.
Before I go, sincere thanks to you, Jonathan West, Dave Rado and Klaus
Linke for their time and trouble. In particular, that FAQ page is
beautifully clear and (except for pretending that it has no
shortcomings) very helpful.
Suzanne S. Barnhill
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft Word MVP
Words into Type
Fairhope, AL USA
"Bruce Hamilton" <bruce_h...@agilent.com> wrote in message
news:3B968ACD...@agilent.com...
Dave Rado
You could make it petty much pain-free by putting the Find and Replace code
into an AutoClose macro (that fires whenever you close a document), perhaps
adding a message box asking whether to proceed. I'm not aware of any
unwanted side-effects, as long as you make sure the Find and Replace code
allows for the possibility that some underscores may already be followed by
a zero-width space and ignores those underscrores (as the code on the site
does).
Regards
Dave
"Bruce Hamilton" <bruce_h...@agilent.com> wrote in message
news:3B968ACD...@agilent.com...
Bruce Hamilton
>
> If you had any idea how long we asked for a no-width space . . .
One imagines, but it's helpful to have it pointed out. What a
disappointment, then, not simply to have it added to the insertable
Symbols!
I left out the "so what?" part of my last posting; let me say it here.
We slipped into a pattern:
Me: How do I xyzzy?
MVP: It's not supported directly, but try http://abccb.
Me: Humpf. That's really clumsy.
MVPs: Don't blame us.
... when I'll bet none of us wanted it to go this way. I should be
saying "Thanks" and you (plural) shouldn't be defending or apologizing.
Jay was good enough to bring the issue to the surface, about the
implications of an answer in this forum.
The point of my response was: when I read Dave's workaround, the fact
that it was going to be trouble was obvious (and the FAQ states it, just
to be sure). So it was annoying but I felt no need to comment on it --
the comment had already been made (and, as Jay points out, one expects
effort in a workaround). Then I noticed (a) it was only a partial
solution, and (b) it has unwanted side effects. This did need comment,
since it's important AND no one was saying anything about it. The
tension behind these things dies down when someone mentions them, but
until they get said, they're hard to get past. That, I suspect, is the
reason I slipped into that pattern of saying "But..." when I should be
saying "Thanks."
What to do? One thing is for me and everyone like me to shape up. The
part under your control :-) is to point out not only when a workaround
takes effort, but also any deficiencies:
* It solves only part of the problem, or
* It has side effects.
If you say those things then I don't need to, and it's easier for me to
say what I should: "thanks."
Also, then all three aspects -- effort, incompleteness and side effects
-- are part of your ammunition in talks with the product team.
Thanks again.
Dave Rado
BTW it was Klaus Linke who discovered the workaround, though I helped write
up the article.
Regards
Dave
"Bruce Hamilton" <bruce_h...@agilent.com> wrote in message
news:3B96B67D...@agilent.com...
Suzanne S. Barnhill
msw...@microsoft.com the same as you.
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft Word MVP
Words into Type
Fairhope, AL USA
"Bruce Hamilton" <bruce_h...@agilent.com> wrote in message
news:3B96B67D...@agilent.com...
RMF
Dave Rado wrote:
>
> I'm not clear what the side-effects you've found are?
I can't really check it (since word97 doesn't give me that zero-width I
take it :-)), but what happens when some1 copy/pastes such a text out of
word -- will there a NON-ZERO-space pop up all of a sudden..?
.bob
--
/"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign
\ /
X Against HTML
/ \ in e-mail & news
Dave Rado
Good point. Depends where you paste to an how you paste.
If you paste into Notepad the space dissapears. If you paste into any
application As Text, the space also dissapears.
If you paste As Rich Text into an application that supports Unicode (such as
Publisher) the zero-width space remains a zero-width space.
If you paste as rich text into Word 97, or into any rich-text-supporting
application that doesn't support unicode (such as CorelDraw or PageMaker)
you get either a square box or a question mark (depending on the app) - but
that happens with *any* "upper unicode" characters you use, not just this
one (except in the case of Word 97, which does support most "upper unicode"
characters, just not this one for some weird reason).
Guess that's worth a mention in the article ...
Regards
Dave
"RMF" <f...@bwi.bepr.ethz.ch> wrote in message
news:3B976CAF...@bwi.bepr.ethz.ch...
Jonathan West
In case you are still watching this thread, a new solution to this has
apparently been discovered by Dermod Quirke, and documented in the latest
edition of Woodys Office Watch. It is as follows
Just click Tools|Options, select the Compatibility tab, and check the box
beside "Do full justification like Word Perfect 6.x for Windows".
Type some text with Ctrl-J justification, and watch what happens as you come
to the end of the line. Instead of prematurely wrapping, the text will
actually shuffle to the left and try to fit the word onto the current line.
Hope this helps!
--
Regards
Jonathan West - Word MVP
MultiLinker - Automated generation of hyperlinks in Word
Conversion to PDF & HTML
http://www.multilinker.com
Word FAQs at http://www.multilinker.com/wordfaq
Please post any follow-up in the newsgroup. I do not reply to Word questions
by email
"cimel" <ci...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1b5c201c1355d$4261f070$9be62ecf@tkmsftngxa03...
Tonya Marshall
thing, except that the newsletter says that it's a Word2000 capability.
I Checked in Word97 and the same option is available. Works very nicely.
Tonya Marshall
John McGhie
On 6/9/01 6:27 AM, in article 3B968ACD...@agilent.com, "Bruce
Hamilton" <bruce_h...@agilent.com> wrote:
> 1. That there isn't a trivial solution (this is the implication you
> point out).
The solution you have been given I would regard as both trivial and
flexible. It also happens to be the only one :-)
> 2. That this solves your problem.
It does. It allows you effectively to declare "any" character to be a
"breaking" character.
> 3. That it doesn't have unwanted side effects.
This solution has no side-effect, unwanted or otherwise, except that you get
a no-width breaking space in the code. Most other applications will
substitute this character for an ordinary space if they don't support it:
this may result in an unwanted side-effect of you want to repurpose the text
to a different application, but any other solution will produce the same
result.
> 1. I conclude that there's no direct way to tell Word to do what I want.
This method is as direct as it gets. If you crack enough C++ you can alter
the table Word uses to decide whether a character is breaking or not: that's
a lot more indirect.
> 2. I imagine that if I make the substitution, Word will break lines
> after underscores where needed. However, it won't do that for any *new*
> underscores I enter
Yes, it will if you do it right. You add an underscore to your AutoCorrect
list, and have AutoCorrect replace it with underscore + no-width
non-breaking space.
I personally would not do this, because you may find that you do not want
EVERY underscore treated this way. It's a lot easier to use a
search/replace when you finalize the document. It may take you five or ten
seconds to do this.
> this might or might not be a solution to my problem (I didn't say I
> wanted to be able to continue editing and have Word continue to break
> lines after underscores).
You didn't, but now you have, we have told you how to do that too. It *is*
good engineering practice to fully define a problem before requesting a
solution :-)
> It's maybe good engineering ethics and bad
> marketing practice to point out shortcomings this near that threshold.
Nope: But it is suicidal business practice to admit to ANY shortcomings if
you happen to trade in the USA. I know that Americans are very proud of
their legal system, but the more that I see of it, the more convinced I
become that in its determination to prevent people making mistakes, it often
prevents them making anything.
When you use any American software product, you need to take the view that
the company cannot tell you what it *won't* do, because if they did, some
lawyer would find a way to sue them for it and they would be unable to
remain in business.
> 3. I imagine that nothing else will happen other than a trivial increase
> in the file size.
You may not even get that. The last block of a file on the disk is usually
not full. So you could potentially add as many as 32,766 of these little
beasties without increasing the occupied disk space at all.
> I'm wondering how a search for "some_text" will fare
> against "some_<zero-width-space>text." If it fails, that's a side effect
> that (IMO) violates the spirit of (3).
It will work perfectly if you specify the hexadecimal character code of the
no-width space. Look up "Wild card searches" in the help and burrow around
until you find out how to search for hex.
> Well, no. This isn't the forum for "word processor X will do Y" so I'll
> just say it's not hard to show the list of characters that signal a
> possible line break and let me edit it. (If you want to protect me from
> myself, disallow changing or deleting the default entries.) The idea is
> not new.
You're right. It's not. There's probably less than three weeks of design,
coding, documentation, and testing time in it. That's about $US90,000 worth
in real prices. Call your Microsoft solutions consultant and write the lad
a cheque: he'll get right onto it for you. But if you put up the price of
Word by $10 to do this, *I* will be coming looking for YOU!!
> Sure. Type a sentence, decide whether it contains any of the things that
> I have a special-case macro for, find the button, push the button. Type
> the next sentence ... I'm new to this program and I just have to raise
> my pain threshold. I'm working on it.
You missed his point: You do the global at the end of the whole document.
Or use AutoText to do it while you type.
> In particular, that FAQ page is
> beautifully clear and (except for pretending that it has no
> shortcomings) very helpful.
Ummm... The FAQ page owes its very existence to the fact that Word has
shortcomings :-) That's what caused us to create this whole activity :-)
Mind you, the reason we (certainly I...) persist with it is because it's the
best product there is. I have tried most of the others in my 30-odd years
of professional writing. The last one I came across that had assignable
hyphenation and breaking character properties cost 12 million dollars in
1986. It had 800 key-stroke commands and no help file. It ran on a
mainframe and required extensive user training.
Best cheers
Bruce Hamilton
several notes.
RMF
Tonya Marshall wrote:
[..]
> I Checked in Word97 and the same option is available. Works very
> nicely.
hmm, as the days go on, it seems that there still ARE things in word97
that make me wonder (like: why haven't I seen those for long :-)).
I've played a bit with that compatibility option only (that = rand(x,y)
comes in handy at times :-)), so there must be folks out there who can
explain what it really does: it just looks like that it uses a slightly
expanded word spacing as long as the line isn't full, and then makes it
smaller and smaller until it comes to a minimum and then bangs it up
again (at which time, the result seems equally ugly than before --
admittedly, this might happen less often with this setting...).
any comments to that..?
Dave Rado
IMO it's an "as well as" rather than an "instead of". It does not allow the
underscore to wrap but it does justify the spacing more intelligently (and
more like a DTP package). IMO you want both.
The werd thing is, having written such an intelligent justification engine,
why on earth did they choose to turn it off by default? And to hide it away
so effectively that it took the world five years to discover it?
Regards
Dave
"Jonathan West" <jw...@mvps.org> wrote in message
news:uJOsEEuNBHA.1840@tkmsftngp05...
Bruce Hamilton
chose the "Send" button as the part to click on).
If you don't mind, I'll use this spot to reply to several notes.
Dave Rado wrote:
> I'm not clear what the side-effects you've found are?
A search for "some_text" fails to find "some_<zero-width space>text".
John below suggests how to search for "some_<zero-width space>text" but
the fact remains that there is a side effect. If underscore were a
breaking character,
1. Lines would break after underscores, and
2. I could search for text containing underscores by typing the text
in the Find box.
If I follow this solution,
1. Lines will break after underscores, and
2. I must search for text containing underscores by typing the text
plus the code for a zero-width space in the Find box.
The change in item (2) is a side effect. RMF also points out the one
about inadvertently pasting zero-width spaces into places where they
might be visible.
John McGhie wrote:
> >... there isn't a trivial solution...
> The solution you have been given I would regard as both trivial and flexible.
Huh. It takes more than a page to display on my monitor, but then, I've
already admitted to a lower pain threshold than the other players in
this game.
> It allows you effectively to declare "any" character to be a "breaking" character.
We have by now discovered that these phrases are ambiguous. When we say
that space is a breaking character, we don't mean "the spaces I've typed
so far," or "the currently-selected space," etc., we mean *any* space,
including those not yet typed/pasted/whatever. If you like, we mean the
_class_ space, not particular instances of the class. It's the class
sense in which I want to make underscore a breaking character, but one
can imagine wanting the other sense (e.g. only in URLs). It's the
instance sense which Dave and Klaus's FAQ article answers.
You have been helpful in amending the workaround to function in the
class sense. I particularly like the Autocorrect scheme. It's not
mentioned in Dave & Klaus's article. I can't type one of those things
from my keypad, and Paste doesn't seem to work in the Autocorrect dialog
box (that is, when I Copy a zero-width space and then say (in effect)
Replace "_" with "_<paste>" I get an entry in the autocorrect box, but
subsequently typed underscores are not followed by zero-width spaces.
Can you tell me how to do this?
> > It's maybe good engineering ethics and bad
> > marketing practice to point out shortcomings this near that threshold.
>
> Nope: But it is suicidal business practice to admit to ANY shortcomings if
> you happen to trade in the USA. I know that Americans are very proud of
> their legal system, but the more that I see of it, the more convinced I
> become that in its determination to prevent people making mistakes, it often
> prevents them making anything.
>
> When you use any American software product, you need to take the view that
> the company cannot tell you what it *won't* do, because if they did, some
> lawyer would find a way to sue them for it and they would be unable to
> remain in business.
Whoa -- that button is hot! We're talking about an FAQ article here,
John.
> > I'm wondering how a search for "some_text" will fare
> > against "some_<zero-width-space>text." If it fails, that's a side effect
> > that (IMO) violates the spirit of (3).
>
> It will work perfectly if you specify the hexadecimal character code of the
> no-width space. Look up "Wild card searches" in the help and burrow around
> until you find out how to search for hex.
Actually, it's enough in my case to search for "some_*text" -- I can
live with the false positives. In the spirit of a workaround, I will now
remember to change all searches for text containing underscore to
searches for the text with the underscore followed by * and to keep "Use
wildcards" turned on. This will be good for adjusting my pain threshold.
> > it's not hard to show the list of characters that signal a
> > possible line break and let me edit it. (If you want to protect me from
> > myself, disallow changing or deleting the default entries.) The idea is
> > not new.
>
> You're right. It's not. There's probably less than three weeks of design,
> coding, documentation, and testing time in it. That's about $US90,000 worth
> in real prices.
This is an argument against every feature now in Microsoft Word.
> > Sure. Type a sentence, decide whether it contains any of the things that
> > I have a special-case macro for, find the button, push the button. Type
> > the next sentence ... I'm new to this program and I just have to raise
> > my pain threshold. I'm working on it.
>
> You missed his point: You do the global at the end of the whole document.
> Or use AutoText to do it while you type.
The auto-text bit I agree with (and I really hope you can help me make
it work). The global at the end is a matter of taste, I think. If
you're used to post-formatting, it slides right down. If you prefer
WYSIWYG, it tends to come back up.
> > In particular, that FAQ page is
> > beautifully clear and (except for pretending that it has no
> > shortcomings) very helpful.
>
> Ummm... The FAQ page owes its very existence to the fact that Word has
> shortcomings :-) That's what caused us to create this whole activity :-)
Ambiguity again. The "it" that has shortcomings is the solution proposed
in the FAQ.
> I have tried most of the others in my 30-odd years
> of professional writing. The last one I came across that had assignable
> hyphenation and breaking character properties cost 12 million dollars in 1986.
You have more experience than I do, but mine cost $600 retail.
Dave Rado
This was the article:
"SQUISHED" JUSTIFICATION IN WORD
My old friend Dermod Quirke sent me this Word tip for justifying text. It's
an amazing discovery. Quoth Dermod:
"For me, the worst feature of Word is its primitive handling of justified
text. If I type a fully-justified document, some lines are quite densely
packed, but others have large, ugly gaps between the words. The overall
effect is patchy and amateurish, and certainly not up to acceptable
typesetting quality.
"The reason is that Word justifies text only by ADDING space between words.
So as it nears the end of a line, Word tries to fit the next word into the
remaining space. If it won't fit, Word distributes the remaining space
between the words already on the line, and moves the next word to the next
line. And if that word is a long one, the space that has to be inserted
between the existing words is large and unsightly.
"OK, that's how Word handles justification. What's the alternative? Well,
why not REDUCE the space between words instead? If a long word won't quite
fit the line, the program could try to make room for it by moving the
existing words closer together. Of course, there has to be a limit: the
program, or the user, must define a minimum (and a maximum) acceptable
inter-word space. But subject to these limits, inter-word spacing becomes
noticeably more even and less patchy.
"Sounds unrealistic? Well, that's how WordPerfect handles justification.
Dammit, it's how my venerable old mid-80s word processor (Spellbinder DTP)
handled it. And the results are DRAMATICALLY better than Word's clumsy,
amateurish justification.
"Now here's the good news: Word 2000 is capable of producing proper
WordPerfect-style justification as described above. Just click
Tools|Options, select the Compatibility tab, and check the box beside "Do
full justification like Word Perfect 6.x for Windows".
"Type some text with Ctrl-J justification, and watch what happens as you
come to the end of the line. Instead of prematurely wrapping, the text will
actually shuffle to the left and try to fit the word onto the current line.
"Now try it with an existing document. Make sure it's fully justified (type
Ctrl+A to select the entire document, then type Ctrl+J to justify it); then
print a page. Now activate WP-style justification (Tools|Options,
Compatibility, check "Do full justification..."); and print the same page.
"Compare the two print-outs: you'll find that the WP-style page has fewer
ugly gaps between words.
"You can use this trick whenever you want to produce slicker, more
professional typesetting, and it works pretty well. But although the
printed text will look very good, the screen display will NOT, because
Microsoft has made no attempt to implement proper WYSIWYG. So you'll find
that the words at the start of each screen line are widely spaced, while
those at the end of each line are crammed together. But when the line is
printed, the spaces will be evenly distributed throughout the line.
"To sum up: Word now allows you to produce professional-quality justified
text. But it's hidden away in an obscure corner of the program, and it
doesn't display properly on the screen.
"It isn't properly documented either, so there may be more goodies (or
nasties) that I haven't discovered. I'd welcome feedback from readers: my
address is mailto:jus...@dermod.dircon.co.uk
As soon as I saw Dermod's tip I hopped over to my test machine and checked
Word 2002. Sure enough, the trick works there, too - and from what I can
see, the line justifies quite well on-screen.
Amazing. Dermod, my hat's off to ya.
Dave Rado
~~~~~~~~~
A search for "some_text" fails to find "some_<zero-width space>text".
the fact remains that there is a side effect.
~~~~~~~~~
True.
~~~~~~~~~
If underscore were a breaking character
~~~~~~~~~
But it isn't. You can email msw...@microsoft.com to ask for a breaking
underscore character in a future Word release. (And while you're at it, ask
for a breaking forward slash and backslash.)
~~~~~~~~~
I get an entry in the autocorrect box, but
subsequently typed underscores are not followed by zero-width spaces.
Can you tell me how to do this?
~~~~~~~~~
In your document insert an underscore followed by a zero-width space, select
both, and choose Tools + Autocorrect. The right-hand side (where it says
"With") is filled in; don't worry about the fact it doesn't display
correctly in the dialog - it will insert correctly. In the left hand side
(where it says "Replace") type an underscore.
~~~~~~~
Whoa -- that button is hot! We're talking about an FAQ article here,
John.
~~~~~~~
It did sound as if you were criticising Microsoft's development policy.
~~~~~~~
> You're right. It's not. There's probably less than three weeks of
design,
> coding, documentation, and testing time in it. That's about $US90,000
worth
> in real prices.
This is an argument against every feature now in Microsoft Word.
~~~~~~~
Cost vs. benefit. How many people will buy Word if they add breaking
underscores and wouldn't have bought it otherwise? If you email mswish that
will help tilt the perception your way (as long as lots of other people do
so as well).
Regards
Dave
Dave Rado
| It will work perfectly if you specify the hexadecimal character code of
the
| no-width space. Look up "Wild card searches" in the help and burrow
around
| until you find out how to search for hex.
You can use ^u followed by the decimal character code - in this case ^u8203.
(Or if you have a numeric keypad you can type Alt-8203 into the dialog).
Regards
Dave
Dave Rado
| The "it" that has shortcomings is the solution proposed
| in the FAQ.
Now covered (and creating Autocorrect as well):
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Formatting/NoWidthSpace.htm
Regards
Dave
Dave Rado
Second para still stands though. <g>
Regards
Dave
"Dave Rado" <dr...@onetel.net.uk> wrote in message
news:#YaFHkwNBHA.1996@tkmsftngp05...
Dave Rado
it wouldn't be a good idea to create AutoCorrect entries for characters like
/ or @, because if you did, you'd find yourself creating invalid hyperlink
fields when you typed a url or email address. For those sort of characters I
think Find and Replace is the best way. (Even in case of the underscore
you'd have to be very careful - some urls contain underscores). I guess you
could use AutoText instead, though ...
Regards
Dave
"Dave Rado" <dr...@onetel.net.uk> wrote in message
news:ecNrF$xNBHA.2164@tkmsftngp04...
Klaus Linke
Dave just notified me of this thread and the changes to the article at
www.mvps.org/word/FAQs. Almost everything has been said in this long thread.
You have asked why you can't set the breaking/non-breaking property of some
character globally (your class/instance argument). For one, this would confuse
the hell out of everybody (since these settings might then differ in every
document you open). And in many cases, it just doesn't work. For example in
the dictionaries I produce, I want to make steward/stewardess breakable after
the slash and steward/ess non-breakable.
Introducing a breaking and a non-breaking variant of lots of characters isn't
good design in my opinion, either. Apart from the inflation of characters, you
would have to display both versions differently on screen, assign different
keyboard entries for them ..., so using *one* extra character seems simpler to me.
MS implemented the zero-width-space, but didn't document it. In Unicode, there
are quite a few new characters that people aren't used to yet. Some of those
characters will be used because users have a need for them, others won't. If
you want to break your text after an underscore someplace, it's good to know
you can do it by inserting a zero-width-space. The only problem I have with
Micosoft is that they hid it so well (as you already pointed out, it should
appear under "Insert > Symbol... > Special characters").
The pasting problem is a general problem with Unicode characters, as long as
this standard isn't supported in all programs.
When you copy text containing the zero-width space and paste as unformatted
Unicode text *in* Word, the character is lost. For this I see no reason, so I
complained to MS about it (the characters ^0172 and ^0182 also get lost when
pasting this way ... just a stupid bug as far as I can see).
It would be nice if the zero-width-space would be ignored in searches
(find/replace). That's something for msw...@microsoft.com -- optional hyphens
(Ctrl--) show that this is possible.
So to paraphrase Jay Freedman, the world may not be a perfect place, but it's
the only place.
Regards, Klaus
--
Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
Bob Buckland ?:-)
Well new to Woody perhaps :)
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q166/0/16.ASP
It's a technique we've been using to help folks since
Word 97 came out who insist on using justification
on their Resume/CV. :)
=========
<<"Jonathan West" <jw...@mvps.org> wrote in message news:uJOsEEuNBHA.1840@tkmsftngp05...
Hi cimel
In case you are still watching this thread, a new solution to this has apparently been discovered by Dermod Quirke, and documented
in the latest edition of Woodys Office Watch. [snip]>>
--
Hope that helps you,
Bob Buckland ?:-) MS Office Products MVP
http://forums.compuserve.com/gvforums/default.asp?SRV=MSOfficeForum&loc=us
*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*
Office XP vs Office 2000 Productivity - Compare your times
http://microsoft.com/office/evaluation/indepth/productivity.htm
Newest MS Office family products
MS Office Keyboard
http://microsoft.com/hardware/keyboard/offkey.asp
MS Office Data Analyzer
http://microsoft.com/Office/dataanalyzer/default.htm
For Word, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint, MapPoint, Publisher
questions choose a MS newsgroup specializing in that app -
From your NewsReader (Outlook Express)
news://msnews.microsoft.com
From your Browser:
http://communities.microsoft.com/newsgroups/default.asp?icp=prod_office
Dave Rado
Regards
Dave
"Bob Buckland ?:-)" <7521...@compuserve.com> wrote in message
news:OIHn#8NOBHA.1500@tkmsftngp05...
John McGhie
Forgive me, I'll only address the bits you haven't already had answers to:
On 7/9/01 5:21 AM, in article 3B97CC9E...@agilent.com, "Bruce Hamilton"
<bruce_h...@agilent.com> wrote:
> John McGhie wrote:
>>> ... there isn't a trivial solution...
>> The solution you have been given I would regard as both trivial and flexible.
> Huh. It takes more than a page to display on my monitor, but then, I've
> already admitted to a lower pain threshold than the other players in
> this game.
Yeah, but it only takes ten seconds or so to implement once you know how. I
regard that as "trivial".
>> When you use any American software product, you need to take the view that
>> the company cannot tell you what it *won't* do, because if they did, some
>> lawyer would find a way to sue them for it and they would be unable to
>> remain in business.
>
> Whoa -- that button is hot! We're talking about an FAQ article here,
> John.
Nope: Sorry. They would sue us for it :-) However, you do need to accept
that NNO software company can EVER admit fault or accept blame. ALL
software companies wish to trade in America, and all of them wish to remain
in business.
The closest you can come is "The rule of 'this'". If I say "It will do
this" I am saying only "this", not "that". If it will also do "that", I am
likely to say so, because that will help me sell my product.
>> You're right. It's not. There's probably less than three weeks of design,
>> coding, documentation, and testing time in it. That's about $US90,000 worth
>> in real prices.
>
> This is an argument against every feature now in Microsoft Word.
Correct. It is. Every change to Microsoft software has to pass this test.
Word is a huge and gnarly bit of code: there's no such thing as a "simple"
change to Word. EVERY "feature request" and every bug fix has to pass the
80:20 rule. If 80 per cent of the users would use it, it's in. Else it's
out. 80 per cent of users use only 20 per cent of the features: these are
the features that get maintained. We have been trying to get rid of Fast
Saves for years: but since no-one uses it any longer, we can't even get a
business case up to turn it off permanently, let alone take it out of the
code.
Sorry: But rigid business justification is why Microsoft is where it is,
and the lack of it is why the dot-bombs are where they are.
> The auto-text bit I agree with (and I really hope you can help me make
> it work). The global at the end is a matter of taste, I think. If
> you're used to post-formatting, it slides right down. If you prefer
> WYSIWYG, it tends to come back up.
Being a long-document professional, I *always* prefer post-formatting.
After all, you can't make up your pages until you've made the pages.
There's no point in intervening in justification or pagination until you
have finished your pages.
I also go for global changes rather than individual changes, because it's so
much easier to obtain consistency.
So I never bother with WYSIWYG at all. I prefer WYSIWYD (What you see is
what you're doing) so I always use Normal view when working in long
documents. Not at all WYSIWYG, Normal View has the advantage that it shows
you all the formatting marks and properties, and is ten to 100 times faster
because it is not stopping to consult the printer driver to draw each
individual character.
>> I have tried most of the others in my 30-odd years
>> of professional writing. The last one I came across that had assignable
>> hyphenation and breaking character properties cost 12 million dollars in
>> 1986.
>
> You have more experience than I do, but mine cost $600 retail.
Hmmm... Let me guess... FrameMaker? Last I saw, FrameMaker would not
allow you to alter its hyphenation dictionary, or decide which characters
would be breaking characters, nor adjust the kerning of individual character
pairs. Maybe I didn't look hard enough :-)
Cheers
John McGhie
I knew it was there somewhere, but I was on the Mac at the time, and the Mac
does not support Unicode properly.
Cheers
On 7/9/01 5:14 AM, in article #$hDy2wNBHA.1936@tkmsftngp05, "Dave Rado"
<dr...@onetel.net.uk> wrote:
--
Bruce Hamilton
> >> When you use any American software product, you need to take the view that
> >> the company cannot tell you what it *won't* do, because if they did, some
> >> lawyer would find a way to sue them for it and they would be unable to
> >> remain in business.
> >
> > Whoa -- that button is hot! We're talking about an FAQ article here, John.
>
> Nope: Sorry. They would sue us for it :-) However, you do need to accept
> that NO software company can EVER admit fault or accept blame. ALL
> software companies wish to trade in America, and all of them wish to remain
> in business.
I don't understand this: I really was talking about an FAQ article. In
an FAQ article we have the luxury to be helpful, unlike the situation of
the label of a product sold in America (I agree with you on that subject
-- don't get me started!). If I offer -- in an FAQ article -- a remedy
to line wrapping which has the side effect that you now have to modify
all your subsequent searching behavior, I claim that it's helpful of me
to say so.
> The closest you can come is "The rule of 'this'". If I say "It will do
> this" I am saying only "this", not "that". If it will also do "that", I am
> likely to say so, because that will help me sell my product.
This argument fails to distinguish between features and side effects. If
your drug (besides curing my headache) makes my hair fall out, saying so
will not help you sell your product. Still, I claim you ought to say so.
[Some out-of-sequence quoting here -- ]
> Being a long-document professional, I *always* prefer post-formatting. [...]
> So I never bother with WYSIWYG at all.
Fair enough. In my case I have some enormous "words" tied together with
underscores. Normal line wrapping makes the text hard to read. Since I
have to *understand* this stuff, I want it cleaned up as I go.
> I also go for global changes rather than individual changes, because it's so
> much easier to obtain consistency.
If I could have truly global changes (e.g. make the *class* underscore a
breaking character) I'd be a happy camper. As it is, in order to get the
consistency that we both appreciate I have to do a global replace after
every action that might introduce an underscore. This includes typing
one, Paste, Replace, autoText, and AutoFormatAsIType. Then I have to
remember which special characters get that zero-width space, and modify
my search text in those cases, but not in other cases. The price of that
consistency is high.
> Last I saw, FrameMaker would not
> allow you to [...] decide which characters would be breaking characters [...]
> Maybe I didn't look hard enough :-)
It's worth the look.
-Bruce
John McGhie
On 14/9/01 3:37 AM, in article 3BA0EEF2...@agilent.com, "Bruce
Hamilton" <bruce_h...@agilent.com> wrote:
> I don't understand this: I really was talking about an FAQ article. In
> an FAQ article we have the luxury to be helpful, unlike the situation of
> the label of a product sold in America (I agree with you on that subject
> -- don't get me started!). If I offer -- in an FAQ article -- a remedy
> to line wrapping which has the side effect that you now have to modify
> all your subsequent searching behavior, I claim that it's helpful of me
> to say so.
Oh, sorry, I misunderstood... Yes, I agree, if there are side-effects to a
solution, we normally try to mention them.
OK. You can write a FAQ article, post it here, and we'll put it up. That
would be good.
> This argument fails to distinguish between features and side effects. If
> your drug (besides curing my headache) makes my hair fall out, saying so
> will not help you sell your product. Still, I claim you ought to say so.
See my original argument: Thou shalt not admit fault...
> I have to do a global replace after
> every action that might introduce an underscore.
No, you do it once, at the completion of the document.
> This includes typing
> one, Paste, Replace, autoText, and AutoFormatAsIType.
Again, no: You set that up once, so any time you type an underscore
followed by a space, you have it replaced with an underscore followed by a
zero-width space. Then the replacement happens as you type.
> Then I have to
> remember which special characters get that zero-width space, and modify
> my search text in those cases, but not in other cases. The price of that
> consistency is high.
Are you sure you are not arguing just for the sake of it now?
I commend to you Word's help text on macros. Whenever you find yourself
doing something fiddly, record it as a macro, save it, and run the macro
next time you need it.
Word is more powerful than FrameMaker, but you have to use it all. Sounds
like you've got it stuck in second gear :-)
>> Last I saw, FrameMaker would not
>> allow you to [...] decide which characters would be breaking characters [...]
>> Maybe I didn't look hard enough :-)
>
> It's worth the look.
No, it isn't :-) Time is money: my time and my money. I haven't time to be
using FrameMaker: I need Word's customisability and automation and document
interchange. I only agree to use FrameMaker if THEY are paying me by the
hour. For fixed-price work, which is what I do a lot of, Word's a more
powerful tool.