Subject: Re: feature usage in my office
From: Neil Timms (neilt@netvigator.com)
Date: Sat May 05 2001 - 05:50:42 CDT
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.
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. I should experiment more with
abiword sections.
For margins I also used the gutter, and margin mirroring so that I could copy
single consecutive pages to double sided, leave room for binding/holes, and
keep the margins looking correct (same distance from the outside edge of the
paper to the text on both sides of the sheet). Very important for producing
documents with a consistent look.
These are all features that I would call basic for a WP to be used in an
office envirnoment. While I still help others with Word problems I'd never
consider using it myself again other than to access my old work.
Hope some of this is useful for debate on defining development priorities.
BTW I have tried the BeOS version but not as stable as the Linux - I'll keep
testing it as the new versions come out. The concept of a true cross platform
WP is a very good one.
Cheers
Neil
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Sat May 26 2001 - 03:51:25 CDT