Subject: Re: feature usage in my office
From: Ron Ross (ronross@colba.net)
Date: Sun May 06 2001 - 22:49:10 CDT
Neil Timms <neilt@netvigator.com> writes:
> In the technical documents - operations manuals and structured training plans
> to fit in an ISO 900x document system - I maintained with MS Word I made
> heavy use of headers & footers (document control by date in footers), tables
> (my preference for general layout solutions), sections (in conjunction with
> footers to allow different dates/versions in footers, sometimes on a page by
> page basis). I avoided use of tabs for layout because these tended to cause
> formating problems between Word versions and different printers - tables
> worked better for me and provide for easier amendments later.
>
> I would have made use of the auto- number features of Word but they are a
> pain to use and I decided were more trouble than they are worth - so most
> things were hard listed. Abi word however seems to provide an intuitve method
> for entering, using, and leaving numbered lists. I would however also like to
> mix lists freely keeping the indenting (can't seem to do that at the moment):
>
> 1.
> 1.2
> (a)
> (b)
> 2.
Yes, now that I'm experimenting with it, I also find AW list
manipulations rather intuive, especially in regard to jumping to
different list levels. I also look forward to having greater scope in
defining list numbering and symbols. It will become essential, actually,
for interoperability with other WPs.
>
> For footers I would have liked a general template for a footer but with the
> facility to have individual fields different on every page if I wanted.
> Useful for document control by date for amending individual pages - I have
> used sections in Word to do this but adding and removing sections has to be
> with great care and is not intuitive IMO.
You're not kidding! And it isn't just your opinion. Coming back -
forcibly - to Word, after a hiatus of several years, to work on a
massive, and massively formated, document (multi-page and nested tables,
lists, graphical elements, text boxes, foot/endnotes), I told one of the
authors I was trying to get grip on sections in Word, and she told me
bluntly, and seriously: "Nobody understands them." I tried to get
endnotes to appear at the end of a section, and just couldn't do it.
AW should provide documentation on just what its "sections" feature
does, its purpose, what the various section-related functions do, and
not rely on the user's experience with Word.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Sat May 26 2001 - 03:51:25 CDT