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Contents:
Word 4/5 weirdness (mlbizer@bongo.cc.utexas.edu (Marc Bizer))
Re: Fixing Badly Formatted Documents No 1. (rgoodhew@seagoon.newcastle.edu.au
 (Ron Goodhew))
Re: WORD-MAC digest 263 (Sam's question about the tip) (umbaugh@uta.edu (Dave
 Umbaugh))
Re: WORD-MAC digest 263 (slloyd@st6000.sct.edu (Sandy Lloyd))

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Date: Fri, 18 Feb 1994 00:02:25 -0600
From: mlbizer@bongo.cc.utexas.edu (Marc Bizer)
To: word-mac@alsvid.scu.edu.au
Subject: Word 4/5 weirdness
Message-ID: <199402180601.AA10513@bongo.cc.utexas.edu>

Hi everyone,
        I sent a message to this list about some Word problems before, but
for some reason it seems not to have appeared. I have noticed two quirks
with both Word 4 and 5:

(1) When background pagination is disabled (this saves power on PowerBooks
by allowing processor cycling to occur), sometimes (i.e. under
circumstances which I have difficulty in specifying) left and right
justified text which is being displayed "shoots" out beyond the right
margin. If I choose "repaginate now," the text is aligned properly.

(2) I use American-style 8 1/2" x 11" paper and set my left and right
margins at one inch. The right margin indicator on my ruler should
therefore appear at 6.5 inches, which is the case for some files, but not
for others. When it is not at 6.5", it is at 5 5/8" + some small offset. In
addition, choosing "new" under the "file" menu opens a window with the
right margin at 5 5/8" + the offset. Page preview and the document dialog
boxes still indicate that the margin is 1" wide. Printing gives 1" margins.
I thought that this might be a problem with the HP Deskwriter driver (vers.
3.9), but I tried the LaserWriter LS and obtained the same results.

        Has anyone seen these problems before?

        Yours truly,
        Marc Bizer



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Date: Fri, 18 Feb 1994 17:48:19 +1000
From: rgoodhew@seagoon.newcastle.edu.au (Ron Goodhew)
To: word-mac@alsvid.scu.edu.au
Cc: kaplan@virginia.edu
Subject: Re: Fixing Badly Formatted Documents No 1.
Message-ID: <199402180648.RAA05274@seagoon.newcastle.edu.au>

In Digest 263 Sam Kaplan wrote:

Stuff deleted from TFTW 28:

>>If you're going to edit a badly-formatted document, make sure that you can
>>see the spaces and paragraph marks. Each item in the table is separated by
>>12 spaces.  The document would be hard to edit, and with proportional fonts
>>it is impossible to get the columns to line up exactly.
>>So you want to replace the 12 spaces with a tab mark.
>>
>>In Word 5.x, you would follow these steps:
>>
>>1. From the Edit menu, choose Replace (or Command-H).
>>2. In the Find What box, you may be tempted to press the spacebar
>>   12 times. But this is not the best way. It would work in this
>>   instance, but in case you encountered different number of spaces
>>   separating columns, you should do this:
>>
>>   Type one space, then select the Special box and choose White Space
>>   (WORD inserts ^w code - see tip below)
>>

....Stuff deleted.

>My question is about step 2 above.  What is the effect of choosing White
>Space form the Special box?  When faced with this problem I usually replace
>some odd number of spaces with a ^t until I get no changes, then replace 2
>spaces with ^t, and then replace ^t^t^t with ^t  and finally ^t^t with ^t.
>Is Ron's suggestion an improvement?  Would the advice change if there were
>spaces to be retained, such as a column for "European Departures," where
>you do not want to lose the space between the two words?

Well Sam,

The concept of using the White Space instruction is to minimise the number
of passes to just one. The definition of White Space is: any number of
spaces, tabs, returns (or combinations of same) in a string.

In the example I have used in TFTW 28 you will notice that I have entered a
space before the ^w. That is to ensure that single spaces, tabs, returns
and new lines (shift-returns) are not replaced. There are some instances
when one can get caught, eg. if spaces precede returns. Normally documents
don't have such character combinations. One example of where it might
happen is where you have converted an ASCII document from something other
than a word processor and hard returns have been inserted at line endings.
In which case it is wise to do a pass like:

        Find What:    <space>^p
        Replace With: ^p
        Replace All.

before you use the above sequence.

Of course, my sequence will replace double spaces. You would not want to
replace them with TABS. Incidently, most WP documents should not contain
double spaces (unless you are writing with monospaced fonts). The other
factor is that you would normally constrain the Replace command by first
selecting a block of text that you wish to strip spaces for tabs. If you do
it globally (without first selecting) it is wise to test by interacting for
a few replacements to see what it is doing before hitting the Replace All
button. At least you need to think about what you are asking WORD to do
with respect to how you have prepared your document.

Hope this clarifies the situation. Glad to hear other comments.


Ron Goodhew, Engineering, University of Newcastle, NSW, 2308, Australia
_______________________________________________________________________
.          Well done is better than well said. Ben Franklin



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Date: Fri, 18 Feb 1994 11:19:23 -0600
From: umbaugh@uta.edu (Dave Umbaugh)
To: word-mac@alsvid.scu.edu.au
Subject: Re: WORD-MAC digest 263 (Sam's question about the tip)
Message-ID: <9402181719.AA11656@cse.uta.edu>

In WORD-MAC digest 263 Sam Kaplan <srk7a@maxwell.acc.virginia.edu> said:


>
>Ron Goodhew wrote:
>
>>Imagine you have received a document that looks like this:
>>
>>Year..............Arrivals...........Departures
>>1986..............629 617............628 245
[ etc. ]
>
>My question is about step 2 above.

Gosh, Sam, if your question was about step 2, why reproduce the entire
original tip?

>  What is the effect of choosing White
>Space form the Special box?  When faced with this problem I usually replace
>some odd number of spaces with a ^t until I get no changes, then replace 2
>spaces with ^t, and then replace ^t^t^t with ^t  and finally ^t^t with ^t.
>Is Ron's suggestion an improvement?

Since your procedure takes x steps (x depending on the number of times you
replace the odd number of spaces and then replace the resulting multipe
tabs) and Ron's takes one step the improvement seems pretty apparent.  As
someone who did it your way before reading the tip, I expect it to save me
considerable effort in the future.

>Would the advice change if there were
>spaces to be retained, such as a column for "European Departures," where
>you do not want to lose the space between the two words?

No, because Ron specified at least one space *followed* by white space so
that only multiple spaces or tabs preceded by atleast one space get
replaced.  A single space, such as would be in any properly formated text,
would not be replaced.
>****************************************************************************
>Sam Kaplan                                       (804) 982 5819
>Center for Public Service                        (804) 982 5524 FAX
>
>University of Virginia                            kaplan@virginia.edu
>****************************************************************************

-dave umbaugh,  umbaugh@uta.edu   Telephone: (817) 273-3628



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Date: Fri, 18 Feb 1994 11:43:12 -0500
From: slloyd@st6000.sct.edu (Sandy Lloyd)
To: word-mac@alsvid.scu.edu.au
Subject: Re: WORD-MAC digest 263
Message-ID: <9402181643.AA33369@st6000.sct.edu>

>Ron Goodhew wrote:
>
>>Imagine you have received a document that looks like this:
>>
>>Year..............Arrivals...........Departures
>>1986..............629 617............628 245
>>1987..............624 306............626 297
>>1988..............681 541............683 635
>>1989..............576 616............591 152
>>1990..............684 264............679 941
>>
        <stuff deleted>

>My question is about step 2 above.  What is the effect of choosing White
>Space form the Special box?  When faced with this problem I usually replace
>some odd number of spaces with a ^t until I get no changes, then replace 2
>spaces with ^t, and then replace ^t^t^t with ^t  and finally ^t^t with ^t.
>Is Ron's suggestion an improvement?  Would the advice change if there were
>spaces to be retained, such as a column for "European Departures," where
>you do not want to lose the space between the two words?

===================================
I used to do it your way, Sam, but after reading this tip the other day, I
in fact was faced with just such a document and tried it the "new" way...
it was wonderful!!!  It worked perfectly with just one pass and as for the
column where you wanted to retain the space, that is why you do the search
and replace on two spaces with white space I would imagine...

and thanks to Ron for this great tip!!

==================================>
message from:
>Date:     17 Feb 1994 11:55:05 GMT+1100
>From: "Frank Milthorpe"  <FRANKM@gsb.su.oz.au>
>To: WORD-MAC@alsvid.scu.edu.au
>Subject:  Mail Merge Limitations on Large Data Record!!
>Message-ID: <312194A1B@gsb.su.oz.au>
>
>I am attempting to merge a data document with many fields (50 or even up to
>100). The maximum number of columns in a table is 31 as found by attempting
>to create a table with more and referring to Appendix D (Operating Limits)
>in the manual. If you have more than 31 fields and wish to perform a
>mail-merge it appears that the data needs to be tab or comma separated. When
>I try to merge the tab separated data I get an error message saying "Data
>record too long".  I do not have a character based editor but it appears
>that the limit is around 500 characters (512 character length would seem a

         <stuff deleted>

the only time I get this error message is when a record is actually too
long, meaning it has an extra tab or comma.... check the record it stopped
on and make sure there is no extra field in that line... they can be a real
pain to find
Good luck ... sounds like a big project!!


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End of WORD-MAC Digest 264
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