Meeting Pearls 1

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ Meeting Pearls 1 / Meeting Pearls Vol 1 (1994).iso / installed_progs / text / faqs / macintosh.apps-faq < prev next >

Wrap

Internet Message Format | 1994-05-04 | 38.4 KB

Subject: Macintosh application software frequently asked questions (FAQ) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps,comp.answers,news.answers From: elharo@shock.njit.edu (Elliotte Rusty Harold) Date: 3 May 1994 10:41:55 GMT Archive-name: macintosh/apps-faq Version: 2.2.3 Last-modified: March 17, 1994 Frequently Asked Questions about Macintosh Application Software =============================================================== comp.sys.mac.faq, part 4: comp.sys.mac.apps Copyright 1993,1994 by Elliotte Harold Archive-name: macintosh/apps-faq Version: 2.2.3 Last-modified: March 17, 1994 What's new in version 2.2.3: ---------------------------- 1.1: What's the best text editor? Text Editor Patches is at version 1.3.1. I've added two new questions, 1.10: What's the best typing tutor? 1.11: What's the best OCR software? Table of Contents ================================================================== I. What's the Best... 1. Text editor 2. Word processor 3. Genealogy software 4. TeX/LaTeX 5. Integrated application 6. Spreadsheet 7. JPEG Viewer 8. Electronic publishing software 9. Drawing application 10. Typing tutor? 11. OCR software? II. Microsoft Word 1. How can I assign styles to characters? 2. How can I automatically generate cross-references? 3. How can I change a Word document to TeX? and vice-versa? 4. How can I depersonalize Word? 5. Where can I get more information? III. TeachText 1. How can I change the font in TeachText? 2. How do I place a picture in a TeachText file? 3. How do I make a TeachText document read-only? ADMINISTRIVIA ============= Copyright --------- This work is Copyright 1993, 1994 by Elliotte M. Harold. Permission is hereby granted to transmit and store this document as part of an unedited collection of any newsgroup to which it is posted by myself. I also grant permission to distribute unmodified copies of this document online via bulletin boards, online services, and other providers of electronic communications provided that no fees in excess of normal online charges are required for such distribution; i.e. if the FAQ is available on a system, it must be available at the minimum charge for accessing the system. For instance you may post it to most BBS's that charge either a flat monthly fee or a per hour rate. However if there is an extra charge for downloading files over what is charged per normal access, either per hour, per kilobyte, or per month, then the FAQ may not be posted to that system without my explicit, prior permission. Portions of this document may be extracted and quoted free of charge and without necessity of citation in normal online communication provided only that said quotes are not represented as the correspondent's original work. Permission for quotation of this document in edited, online communication (such as the Info-Mac Digest and TidBITS) is given subject to normal citation procedures (i.e. you have to say where you got it). If you wish to republish this FAQ in a modified form or in a non-electronic medium, please contact me with specific details. I'm normally receptive to non-profits that wish to redistribute it at no charge, and to anyone who is willing to make reasonable remunerative arrangements for non-exclusive republication rights. Disclaimer ---------- I do my best to ensure that information contained in this document is current and accurate, but I can accept no responsibility for actions resulting from information contained herein. This document is provided as is and with no warranty of any kind. Corrections and suggestions should be addressed to elharo@shock.njit.edu. Trademarks ---------- Apple, Macintosh, LaserWriter, ImageWriter, Finder, HyperCard and MultiFinder are registered trademarks and PowerBook is a trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. PostScript is a registered trademark and Illustrator and Photoshop are trademarks of Adobe Systems, Inc. Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. PageMaker is a registered trademark of Aldus Corp. WordPerfect is a registered trademark of WordPerfect Corporation. All other tradenames are trademarks of their respective manufacturers. How to Get the Entire FAQ ------------------------- The file you are reading now contains only productivity application specific information. This is the FOURTH part of this FAQ. Many other topics of interest to comp.sys.mac.apps readers are covered in other FAQ lists in the Macintosh newsgroups. The first part of this document is also posted to this newsgroup under the subject heading "Introductory Macintosh frequently asked questions (FAQ)" and includes a complete table of contents for the entire document as well as information on where to post, ftp, file decompression, trouble-shooting, and preventive maintenance. The second part is posted to comp.sys.mac.system and features many questions about system software. The third part is posted to comp.sys.mac.misc and the fifth part to comp.sys.mac.wanted. All answer many questions that often erroneously appear in comp.sys.mac.apps. Please familiarize yourself with all five sections of this document before posting. All pieces are available for anonymous ftp from rtfm.mit.edu [18.70.0.209] in the directory pub/usenet/news.answers/macintosh. Except for the introductory FAQ which appears in multiple newsgroups and is stored as general-faq, the name of each file has the format of the last part of the group name followed by "-faq", e.g the FAQ for comp.sys.mac.system is stored as system-faq and the FAQ for comp.sys.mac.misc is stored as misc-faq. You can also have these files mailed to you by sending an E-mail message to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with the line: send pub/usenet/news.answers/macintosh/"name" in the body text where "name" is the name of the file you want as specified above (e.g. general-faq). Send this server a message with the subject "help" for more detailed instructions. ========================= WHAT'S THE BEST... (1.0) ========================= TEXT EDITOR? (1.1) ------------------- Available shareware and freeware text editors include McSink, BBEdit Lite, Edit II (with grep style searching), Alpha (particularly nice for working with TeX files), Stevie (for fans of vi), and microEmacs. The feature sets of these editors overlap somewhat but are not identical. Since all are available via anonymous FTP, there's no reason not to try them all and find the one you like best. I use Rich Siegel's BBEdit Lite for the FAQ because it can word wrap to a specific number of characters and indent lines with spaces. (You didn't think I did all this nice formatting by hand, did you?) It's also a very nice programmer's editor. BBEdit has an extensive interface for adding custom externals written in Think C so if you need a feature that's not built-in you can add it. For me the only thing that's missing is automatic word-wrap, but that's available from the Text Editor Patches 1.3.1 by James W. Walker. Some others may also miss a macro language that's easier to use than writing code externals in C which brings us to my second choice. Alpha ($25 shareware) is a text editor that includes a full featured implementation of the tcl scripting language and extensive search and replace capabilities. Emacs users will feel at home with this powerful program. Unfortunately it's System 7 dependent. Shareware authors take note: About 40% of all installed Macs are still running System 6. If you actually intend to make some money, then you shouldn't cut out half your market at a swipe. Stevie is vi-workalike for the Mac, but since Stevie isn't an interface to an ex-style editor as is vi, it's not as powerful as its UNIX inspiration. microEmacs is likewise NOT a full featured implementation of Emacs. If you want to do Emacs style Lisp programming and keybinding (and I can't imagine why else anyone would ever want to use Emacs on a Mac) you'll probably be happier with Alpha. WORD PROCESSOR? (1.2) ---------------------- I have seen the future, and its name is WordPerfect. WordPerfect has almost every feature of competing word processors including not only basic and advanced word processing tools (style sheets, spelling checker, thesaurus, grammar checker, outliner, equation editor, on-line help, multiple import and export formats, etc. etc. etc.), but many features more commonly associated with desktop publishing software (text and picture boxes, tables, multiple column layouts, indexing, EPS and uncompressed TIFF importing, etc. etc. etc.) as well. Furthermore it has two abilities that have been glaringly absent from Microsoft Word for years, automatic cross-referencing and a built-in macro language. While most of these features are available in third party products for other word processors, by the time you've bought the other word processor and one or two add-ons you've already spent more than on WordPerfect alone. As I said WordPerfect 3.0 is the future of Macintosh word processing. Unfortunately I'm not sure it's the present. All these capabilities don't come cheaply. WordPerfect needs about 1800K of RAM and seven megabytes of hard disk space for full functionality, and still manages to make Word look like a speed demon. Screen redraw is abysmally slow. And they're still some non-trivial bugs in file import and export, macros, and WorldScript support. Nonetheless if you do have lots of RAM, a 68040 CPU and some need for the extra features WordPerfect offers, it's a good buy. In previous versions of this FAQ list I strongly recommended Microsoft Word 5.1. Word is still the market leader and still fulfills ALMOST every conceivable word processing need. However WordPerfect does everything Word does (except graphing which I could never get to work anyway) and also includes automatic cross-referencing, a built-in macro language, and WorldScript support, all of which are missing from Word. Word is faster than WordPerfect but not by that much. Word's outliner is more integrated with document writing and formatting than WordPerfect's is but can't auto-number headings. WordPerfect's can. Furthermore WordPerfect Corporation is fully committed to Apple's vision for system software with current and future technology like OpenDoc, PowerTalk, WorldScript, and AppleScript. Microsoft is committed to making the Mac look like Windows. Which company's vision do you share? Even more convincingly competitive upgrades to WordPerfect 3.0 are much cheaper than Microsoft's version upgrades, and Wordperfect's version upgrades are about a third the cost of Microsoft's. And of course WordPerfect offers toll-free technical support. If you're happy with your current version of Word, you may not want or need to switch to WordPerfect right away, (though I have) but I see no reason to ever again pay Microsoft for another expensive upgrade to Word. Users with limited disk space, 68000 CPUs, or less than four megabytes of memory may want to consider WriteNow 4.0, a word processor noted for its speed, small memory appetite, minimal disk footprint, and small price. ($60 bundled with various other indispensable productivity tools like SimAnt :-) Unlike the other products discussed here, WriteNow really is designed first and last to be a word processor, not a document formatter. It doesn't have an equation editor, text boxes, an outliner or other features more associated with desktop publishing than with writing. If all you want to do is write, WriteNow may be the choice for you. Users behind the power curve and even those out in front of it may also want to consider ClarisWorks whose word processing functions are more than sufficient for basic writing. While more expensive than WriteNow, ClarisWorks also provides many other well-integrated features in a small and speedy package. Among writers of technical documents that include many numbered equations, tables, and figures, FrameMaker is particularly popular. Unlike Word it has the cross-referencing capability to match its tables, drawing package, and equation editor. However FrameMaker really is more of a desktop publishing package than a word processor, and it's priced like one. The educational discount price for FrameMaker is close to the non-educational, street price of Word 5.1 or WordPerfect; and competitive upgrades are not available. When creating a Framemaker document you need to give a lot more initial thought to the layout of the page than you would with most word processors. It's much harder to just launch FrameMaker and begin writing than it is in any of the other word processors. FrameMaker is not well suited to general use. Many netters swear by (and at) Nisus from Nisus Software. Nisus 3.4 has has several features not found in any other Macintosh word processor including very powerful macros and multiple Undo's. It's also missing many features included in other similarly priced packages like tables, useable styles, and support for most System 7 features. The fully WorldScript savvy edition is copy-protected by an ADB dongle; but if your writing is limited to Roman languages and Japanese, the non-copy protected limited flag edition will serve equally well. Nisus has developed an almost religously loyal installed base. It will be interesting to see how this base reacts now that WordPerfect has included almost all the features that made Nisus unique without any annoying copy protection. MacWrite Pro 1.5 is a solid product but has nothing special to recommend it beyond the name of the company that makes it. If MacWrite was produced by Friendly Neighborhood Software (tm) instead of Claris, it would have been eliminated from the market long ago. GENEALOGY SOFTWARE? (1.3) -------------------------- Leister Productions' Reunion is the most powerful, flexible, graphical, and easy-to-use Macintosh software for producing family trees and doing genealogical research. At $115 street it's also the most expensive. Reunion is available from all the usual sources of payware software. If all you want to do is chart your own family tree back a few generations, you may want to consider the less powerful and less flexible, but considerably cheaper Personal Ancestry File (PAF for short) from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons for short). It's designed primarily for easy downloading of data into the Mormons' central database so it's not as easy to use as Reunion and lacks some basic features. For instance there's no provision for children of unmarried couples. PAF is, however, only $35. It must be ordered directly from the Mormons at Salt Lake Distribution Center 1999 West 1700 South Salt Lake City, UT 84104 (800) 537-5950 The product number is #30992 (Macintosh) and an IBM version is also available. MasterCard and Visa are accepted for a $2 fee. However your card is charged for a cash advance rather than a purchase so interest will begin accruing immediately and your credit card company will probably tack on about a 2.5% cash advance fee. Simple descendant and ancestor charts can be produced with the shareware HyperCard stack Our Family Tree 1.2 by Timmy G. Bremer. However this stack is limited compared to PAF and the much more powerful Reunion. For instance, pedigree charts can only go back five generations. TEX? (1.4) ----------- Textures from Blue Sky Research is easily the superior implementation of TeX for the Mac. It's the only TeX for the Mac that typesets and displays text and equations continuously as the TeX code describing them is typed, includes PostScript versions of the Computer Modern fonts, or allows simple copying and pasting of graphics and formatted pages between TeX and other Mac applications. If you work with TeX on a daily basis, Textures at $195 student price is worth a look. Blue Sky Research is famous on the net for technical support that should be a model for the industry. For more information send E-mail to sales@bluesky.com. Andrew Trevorrow's OzTeX is not as sophisticated or as Maclike as Textures, but OzTeX files are somewhat more easily exported to TeX systems on other platforms than are Textures files. More importantly OzTeX is only $30 shareware and available for anonymous ftp from midway.uchicago.edu [128.135.12.73] in pub/OzTeX. OzTeX is the most integrated and Maclike of the shareware TeX's. It's also the only shareware TeX with anything approaching complete documentation. It's slower than the other programs discussed here but does allow background compilation and printing. If you only need to print or preview an occasional TeX document, get OzTeX. Tom Kiffe recently released CMacTeX 2.1, a more modular TeX for the Mac. The different pieces of this full TeX package like dvipreview, TeX, and METAFONT are all available separately. CMacTeX is available in both freeware and commercial versions. The freeware version is available for anonymous ftp at ftp.shsu.edu [192.92.115.10] in /tex-archive/systems/mac/cmactex. The freeware package includes information on ordering the commercial version which costs $25 and adds the "big" TeX and Metafont packages. Both versions include METAFONT, dvips, and various other TeXie tools. However both versions require a PostScript printer. Unlike the other TeX programs CMacTeX cannot print to a QuickDraw printer. CMacTeX's documentation is somewhat lacking. Finally Wilfried Ricken maintains DirectTeX, shareware, $100 for up to three copies, $20 for each additonal copy. It can be retrieved from hadron.tp2.ruhr-uni-bochum.de [134.147.104.8] in pub/directtex. DirectTeX sits on top of and requires the payware MPW. This gives it exceptionally strong macro abilities but makes it by far the least Maclike of the four packages. DirectTeX supports bidirectional typesetting as is needed for Hebrew and Arabic. It includes most TeX utilities such as BibTeX, METAFONT, and various tools for working with .dvi files. DirectTeX is the fastest shareware TeX and offers the most complete collection of TeX capabilities and tools. INTEGRATED APPLICATION? (1.5) ------------------------------ Most software is driven by the needs of power users. Features are added to sell into the power-user segment of the market since they're the hardest to please and spend the most dollars. Triple Omega Paperware Corp. and its competitors need to design cocktail napkins in 16,000,000 lifelike, mouthwatering colors so Big Software Inc. has its programmers spend many hours adding photorealistic color capability to Bloated Draw 7.2. Meanwhile Father O'Brian finds he needs all the hard disk space on his Color Classic and more money than he gets in the collection plate on a good Sunday just to purchase and install Bloated Draw 7.2, SuperDuperPublisher 3.8, and WhizzyWriter 9.7 so he can make a brochure with a picture of a hamburger to advertise the upcoming CYO dinner. Integrated applications provide the tools for Father O'Brien to create his brochure at a price, both in money and system resources, that won't require him to rob the poorbox. Very few Mac users really push our $200 software packages to the limit. Even people who do use Word 5.1 to the fullest may not come close to utilizing the power of Excel or Canvas, and vice-versa. An integrated package omits the 80% of features that 90% of users never touch. Thus we get the 20% of features that we actually do use in several areas for less than the price of a full featured application in any one of those areas. Integrated applications also pack these features into a smaller, faster package ideal for users with 68000 Macs or small hard disks. The basic components of an integrated package include a word processor, drawing application, spreadsheet, database, charting module, and telecommunications. Some integrated apps also include painting (ClarisWorks, WordPerfect Works, and GreatWorks), outlining (ClarisWorks, GreatWorks), and even presentation (ClarisWorks) modules. ClarisWorks is undoubtedly the best integrated package for the Mac (which of course means it's easily the best integrated package anywhere, but you knew that already. :-) ClarisWorks 1.0 did what was previously thought to be impossible. It destroyed a virtual Microsoft monopoly in a market, something no one had ever before achieved though many had tried. The virtual dethroning of market leader Microsoft Works by the upstart Claris ought to serve as a lesson to any company that thinks market dominance can substitute for solid, improving products. It also proved for the first time that even as a wholly owned Apple subsidiary Claris was capable of turning out a market leading product, something they'd never done before. With the release of version 2.0 the gap between ClarisWorks and everyone else became a chasm. Though other integrated packages like Symantec's GreatWorks and WordPerfect Works offer a few features not found in Claris Works and vice versa, (Noone agrees on exactly how much should be included in an integrated package.) none of the other packages are as well integrated, well designed, and easy to use as ClarisWorks. I strongly recommend ClarisWorks as the first software for new Mac owners, and an essential tool for PowerBook users. SPREADSHEET? (1.6) ------------------- The best professional's spreadsheet is undoubtedly Microsoft Excel. It's so far out in front of its competition, there really isn't any point in giving an exhaustive list of why it's better. However Lotus 1-2-3 is a full-featured spreadsheet and currently sells on the street for about a third the price of Excel. ($99 for Lotus 1-2-3 AND DeltaGraph Pro from MacConnection vs. $295 for Excel alone) If you're not developing spreadsheet-based applications, doing heavy statistical work, complicated What-If analyses, or pushing the limits of what a spreadsheet can do, Lotus is probably the better buy. If you are doing sophisticated charting, then the Lotus-DeltaGraph bundle is by far the better buy. While there are occasional reasons one might want to use Wingz or Resolve, they all fall into the "If you have to ask..." category. Since Claris is quietly dropping work on Resolve, I particularly recommend that you do not buy Resolve unless you absolutely must. However if you're less than a real power user of spreadsheets, you may want to take a look at two excellent shareware packages, BiPlane and Mariner which retail for about 20% of the street prices of their payware counterparts and offer the 20% of spreadsheet features 90% of spreadsheet users spend 100% of their time using. Both are available from the usual sources of shareware. You may also want to consider one of the integrated packages such as ClarisWorks. For less than the price of a full-blown spreadsheet, you get a medium-sized spreadsheet with all the basic features except macros, and a damned good word processor and graphics package to boot. JPEG VIEWER? (1.7) ------------------- Storm Technology's Picture Decompress shows JPEG's on all Macs with 32-bit QuickDraw. Aaron Giles' JPEGView previews JPEG files on System 7 Macs with QuickTime installed. PictPixie, a QuickTime development tool from Apple, also allows Macs with 32-bit QuickDraw and QuickTime to display JPEG's but requires enormous amounts of memory. All are free; the first two are available from the regular archive sites, the last from ftp.apple.com in /dts/mac/quicktime. JPEGView and PictPixie not only display JPEG's but can also convert them to Quicktime format. Kevin Mitchell's GifConverter, $45 shareware, can read and dither JPEG's on any Mac running System 6.0.5 or later regardless of the presence of Quicktime and 32-bit Quickdraw. One more free product worthy of mention is Jim Brunner's JPEG Convert which translates JPEG format files to GIF's on any Macintosh, albeit with some loss of resolution. They can then be viewed with any Gif viewer like QuickGif or GifConverter. ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING SOFTWARE? (1.8) -------------------------------------- Professional electronic publishers tend to swear by either QuarkXPress or Aldus Pagemaker, typically because they haven't tried the other package. The interface metaphors of the two products are quite different, and forcing your mind to switch between the two is non-trivial. However many people have made the effort to switch to Quark. Few have moved the other direction unless forced. Quark offers more control over the placement of objects on the page and various color effects than does PageMaker. This makes Quark particularly popular for advertising and other layouts that don't look like traditional books and magazines. For instance I can't imagine laying out Mondo 2000 or Spy in PageMaker. In Quark it might actually be fun. This is not to say that such things can't be done; the MacWarehouse catalog is done with Pagemaker; but Quark is certainly easier to use for this sort of free-form layout. Pagemaker fits a more traditional layout like MacWeek's where everything fits neatly into non-overlapping rectangular columns and boxes with occasional pull quotes. Aldus has been playing catch-up with Quark for several years now, and with the recent release of PageMaker 5.0 they may finally have pulled even. The two products still aren't equal (Quark's XTensions are superior to Aldus Additions; PageMaker's book publishing features like automatic indexing are non-existent in Quark.) but they are roughly comparable. PageMaker is a little more expensive, but Aldus provides much better support. For users just starting out I recommend PageMaker. Many people choose PageMaker because its simpler interface makes it easier to use for simple black and white newsletters, books, and other printed matter that doesn't push the art of electronic publishing to its limits. However if this is all you want, you may be surprised at just how well today's word processors fit your needs. With text and picture boxes, styles, multi-column capabilities, sectioning, EPS import, and many other features traditionally associated with desktop publishing, word processors like Word 5.1, WordPerfect 3.0, and even ClarisWorks can do a surprisingly professional job when producing relatively simple documents. These features may not be obvious (especially in Word 5.1) but they are present, and for considerably less money than Pagemaker. DRAWING APPLICATION? (1.9) --------------------------- For sheer artistic capability Aldus Freehand and Adobe Illustrator have been playing leapfrog with each other for years, and neither company shows any signs of letting up soon. As of this writing Illustrator is probably slightly out in front, particularly with the recent release of Adobe Dimensions; but most people feel more comfortable with whichever program they learned first since the interfaces of the two packages are somewhat different. Both Illustrator and Freehand are designed for tasks that would traditionally have been accomplished by freehand drawing. If your drawing tends more towards the technical than the artistic, you'll probably be happier with Canvas 3.5 which has a superior interface for object alignment and drawing to scale. Illustrator and Freehand can do pretty much anything Canvas can and vice-versa; but having the right package does make particular jobs easier. If your pictures will consist mainly of smooth curves, Illustrator or Freehand will suit you better. All of the above packages are geared toward serious artists and professional designers and are priced accordingly. For occasional drawing by non-professionals any of the integrated packages such as ClarisWorks or even the drawing modules of WordPerfect or Microsoft Word will likely serve well for a substantially smaller investment of time, money, and disk space. TYPING TUTOR? (1.10) --------------------- Almost everyone agrees that Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing ($34 street) is the best typing tutor program though some, including myself, would qualify that by noting that it's the best of a bad lot. It includes all the standard bells and whistles one would expect from a typing tutor including statistics, typing games, and practice text plus a few extras like a Dvorak mode and a manual that's considerably more interesting and fun than the program itself. Mavis Beacon has its flaws (It expects you to type two spaces at the end of a sentence, and its Dvorak mode doesn't work with a genuine Dvorak keyboard.) but these are shared by the competitors as well. Several shareware typing tutors are available from the usual archives. None of these are the equal of Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, but if price is your only concern download them and try them out. OCR SOFTWARE (1.11) -------------------- OmniPage Professional ($500 street) is far and away the best optical character recognition package for the Mac. Omnipage 3.0 costs about $150 less but doesn't retain formatting in recognized text. Cheaper programs are available, but make many more mistakes. If price is your only concern, Delrina FAX Pro is the cheapest OCR package at about $90 street. You may or may not need the FAX capabilities of FAX Pro but the OCR is passable, and FAX machines are often cheaper and more accesible than scanners. ===================== MICROSOFT WORD (2.0) ===================== HOW CAN I ASSIGN STYLES TO CHARACTERS? (2.1) --------------------------------------------- Once you've used character based styles it's almost impossible to imagine document formatting without them. After all, just because you want equations to be formatted in 10 point I Times Italic or references to menu choices in 12 point Chicago doesn't mean you want the entire paragraph in that font; but that seems to be the only choice Word offers. It's truly a shame that a program that makes working with styles so easy via its ribbon bar and customizable command key equivalents that can be attached to common styles doesn't let the user attach styles to less than a paragraph of text at a time. There is, however, a work-around. Unless you're one of the fifteen people who actually use color text, you've got six unused character formats called Blue, Cyan, Green, Magenta, Red, and Yellow available in the Format Character dialog box and via user-assignable Command-Keys. (There's also Black and White but using those two will mess with the normal appearance of your document.) Pick a color for each different character-based style you want to use and mark your text with the appropriate color. Then, before saving the document, do a global Find and Replace for each color; i.e. find the color and replace with the style attributes like font and font size. HOW CAN I AUTOMATICALLY GENERATE CROSS-REFERENCES? (2.2) --------------------------------------------------------- Matthew Nodine's WordRef 1.4.1 (shareware, $25) uses some truly inspired hacks to make cross-referencing and auto-numbering of figures, tables, sections, equations or whatever else you might care to count almost simple. (It can't be made genuinely simple until Microsoft incorporates these features directly into Word.) WordRef will also automatically generate BibTeX style bibliographies. The writer defines variables for each reference or number series while writing. These variables can be operated on by various arithmetic and logical operators (so a little programming experience is helpful though not absolutely necessary.) When you're ready to prepare a draft, WordRef will resolve all references and citations into Word PrintMerge variables. Then PrintMerge produces the final output. The procedure is more complicated than it would need to be if Microsoft incorporated these features into Word, but for the moment WordRef 1.4.1 should serve most users' cross-referencing needs well. HOW CAN I CHANGE A WORD DOCUMENT TO TEX? AND VICE-VERSA? (2.3) ---------------------------------------------------------------- Brian Jefferies of the University of New South Wales has written the program RTF->TeX to convert files Word files saved in RTF format into plain TeX files. RTF->TeX is less than robust. Among other deficiencies it ignores paragraph and character formatting and will not handle equations written with the Equation Editor (though it will try to convert equations written in Word's built-in formula setting language.) However RTF->TeX is a useful tool to handle a lot of the grunt work of preprocessing documents before finishing the conversion by hand. Erwin Wechtl has written a similar though less polished tool called rtf2LaTeX for converting RTF files to LaTeX. Design Science's MathType, the commercial software from which Word's Equation Editor is derived can convert Equation Editor equations into TeX (though it can't convert the rest of the document). Call Design Science at (310) 433-0685 for ordering info. There are no Macintosh tools to go the other direction, i.e. to change a TeX file into a Word file. There are several Unix programs, noteably detex, that will strip out TeX formatting codes as part of a conversion from TeX to plain ASCII which can of course be read by most Mac word processors. HOW CAN I DEPERSONALIZE WORD? (2.4) ------------------------------------ BEFORE installing any software you should lock all the master disks, make a backup of all the master disks, and install from the backups. Since some installers now check for specific bits on the installer floppy, use DiskCopy to make the backup of the master disks. DiskCopy also copies floppies more quickly on a one-floppy system than the Finder. This is especially true for recent Microsoft applications like Word and Excel that write personalization info on the master disks. If you need to do multiple installs such as from the single set of disks Microsoft sends with its site licenses, you don't need to make a backup for every computer you'll be installing on. Instead just copy the original, pre-personalization Installer application onto your hard drive and replace the one on the floppy with the clean copy from your hard drive after every install. If the disks have already been personalized, get the freeware Anonymity 1.2. Make a copy of Word on your hard drive and then "Zap" it with Anonymity. This removes the personalization information. The next time Word is launched it will prompt you for the personalization information. If you're using Word 5.0 or 5.1 you'll then be asked to insert the "Install" disk. Don't! Instead click Cancel. Word will now display a dialog telling you how nice it's being for letting you use your software even though you're obviously a nasty, evil pirate. Click OK. Then quit Word. Launch Word again, cancel out of the dialog asking for the Install floppy again, acknowledge the anti-piracy message again, and quit Word again. Repeat this three more times. The sixth time you launch Word it should have given up on ever getting you to give it the master Install floppy and will stop asking for it. WHERE CAN I GET MORE INFORMATION? (2.5) ---------------------------------------- A FAQ list for the Word-for-Mac mailing list is archived at alsvid.une.edu.au in pub/archives/word-mac/FAQ. This archive stores both the full FAQ list and individual questions with reasonably descriptive titles. Answers are available for many more detailed and advanced questions than are covered here. ================ TEACHTEXT (3.0) ================ HOW CAN I CHANGE THE FONT IN TEACHTEXT? (3.1) ---------------------------------------------- Make a copy of TeachText 7.0 and open the COPY with ResEdit. Open CODE resource 1. You'll probably be warned that the resource is stored compressed and that opening it will irreversibly decompress it. Click OK. Scroll down to address 4A88. You should see the hex string "0001 A887". A887 is the call to TextFont(). The four hex digits preceding it (0001) are the font ID. Change this number to the ID (in hexadecimal) of the font you want. Monaco would be 0004. (It may be something else if Monaco has been renumbered on your system.) To change the size go to the next line (4A90) and look for "000C A88A" A88A is the call to TextSize(). The four hex digits preceding it are the size of the font to be used. Change "000C" to the size (in hex) you want. For instance 0009 is nine-point, 0010 would be sixteen point. Changing the font and size can adversely affect the way TeachText displays embedded pictures which most commonly occur in read-only TeachText documents (the ones with the little newspaper icons) so you may want to finish your modifications by deleting FREF resource 130 to prevent your modified TeachText from opening those files. Save your changes and quit. HOW DO I PLACE A PICTURE IN A TEACHTEXT FILE? (3.2) ---------------------------------------------------- I recommend the shareware program Belgian Postcards by AIGS and Karl Pottie. While the interface is not very well thought out, it does make placing pictures in TeachText documents easier than any other utility or technique. HOW DO I MAKE A TEACH-TEXT DOCUMENT READ ONLY? (3.3) ----------------------------------------------------- Use ResEdit or any other file typer utility to change the file's type to 'ttro.' The above-mentioned Belgian Postcards will also save (and edit) files in this format. -- Elliotte Rusty Harold Dept. of Mathematics elharo@shock.njit.edu New Jersey Institute of Technology erh0362@tesla.njit.edu Newark NJ 07103 ..