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MS Office Forum / Word / Page Layout / June 2004Gripe about Word and image placement
I just sent the following to the MS wish list about a pet peeve of mine. What do you all think about this flaw? Over 15 years ago WordPerfect was smart enough to move an image or other object to the top of the next page if the remainder of the current page wasn't big enough to hold it--and to fill the remainder of the current page with the text that had been typed in after the image. It was smart enough to adjust references to these objects automatically: If the paragraph before the image said "See the picture {below}", where {below} indicates a reference code, then when the image moved to the next page, {below} would be changed automatically to {on page X}. As text was added or deleted, the reflowing occurred automatically, so that if the image once again could fit directly where it had been inserted by the user, it would. Why in the world, in all this time, has Microsoft not seen fit to do this with Word? Does Microsoft really think it's attractive that when an image two-thirds of a page high flows to the next page, it should leave a quarter-page or half-page empty gap on the page before it? Or does Microsoft think its users don't like word processing to be *too* automatic, that we like manually moving our images around every time we revise our documents?  SignatureHarlan Messinger Remove the first dot from my e-mail address. Veuillez ôter le premier point de mon adresse de courriel. Word does this already. RTFM, perhaps? Or do you just like griping? > I just sent the following to the MS wish list about a pet peeve of mine. > What do you all think about this flaw? [quoted text clipped - 16 lines] > think its users don't like word processing to be *too* automatic, that we > like manually moving our images around every time we revise our documents? Hi Jezebel, > Word does this already. Only under some circumstances. Under others, it doesn't. Cindy Meister INTER-Solutions, Switzerland http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Sep 30 2003) http://www.word.mvps.org This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail :-) Of course, you're right. But that's true of nearly everything. It doesn't work at all under water. > Hi Jezebel, > [quoted text clipped - 11 lines] > follow question or reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail > :-) Hi Jezebel, > Of course, you're right. But that's true of nearly everything. It doesn't > work at all under water. > I'm considering how to best say what I want to say... I guess it depends on what your purpose is, replying to postings in these groups? I've seen various motivations in the eight years I've done it: - a compulsion to help - showing off - wanting to repay for receiving help - a simple love of answering questions - a need to interact with others No matter what the motivation, something that's very important to me, personally, is that the information given is as accurate as possible. Even if the original poster isn't going to listen, someone else may come along with a similar concern and actually want a useful/factual reply. Of course, these groups are what the collective makes them. No one can dictate the content or attitude in the messages. And I'd be one of the first to howl if anyone tried <g> But you have so much to offer, that it always hurts me when I see such a back-handed slap in the face as an answer. > > > Word does this already. > > > > > Only under some circumstances. Under others, it doesn't. Cindy Meister I'm sorry you see that as a slap in the face. Or a Surbiton Fish Dance? Seriously, it wasn't meant as such. Entschuldigung. > Hi Jezebel, > [quoted text clipped - 27 lines] > > Cindy Meister Hi Jezebel, > I'm sorry you see that as a slap in the face. The "F" in RTFM gets my back-hairs up :-) Sorry if I over-reacted. Cindy Meister Hard to think of an alternative: "RTM" lacks a certain je ne sais quoi. I thought back hairs were illegal in Switzerland? > Hi Jezebel, > [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > > Cindy Meister Hi Jezebel, > I > thought back hairs were illegal in Switzerland? You've lost me on this one... The Swiss occasionally consider themselves the hedgehog in the middle of Europe, so if not backhairs, then spines <g> Cindy Meister >Word does this already. RTFM, perhaps? Or do you just like griping? What manual, smart-mouth? Microsoft Help has been largely useless since Office 2000 and I haven't seen a manual since Office 97. I have seen no options on the graphic properties dialog to do what I've described, and I've looked with every new version of Word. Do you know how to do it, or are you just pretending to be brilliant? SignatureHarlan Messinger Remove the first dot from my e-mail address. Veuillez ôter le premier point de mon adresse de courriel. Hi Harlan, I've actually discussed this issue (and the related one about keeping a picture on a certain page), in person, with people on the Word team. It's not that they don't know there's a problem. Or even feel it would be nice to fix it. What's getting in the way is how Word was originally designed to work. (And WordPerfect was designed quite differently, just BTW) Word was conceived as a word processing application, primarily concerned with dynamic text flow. "Floating" graphics are foreign objects for the text flow, that the text flow has to deal with; this requires certain "compromises". For one thing, any object has to be attached to a paragraph, and when that paragraph moves to a new page, the graphic moves with it. Text also cannot flow past graphics that stretch across the entire width of the page. And the real obstacles come from when and how the layout triggers. Basically, trying to incorporate maximum graphics flexibility would mean that Word could end up never being able to finish laying out a page because the graphic positioning and reflowing of the text would go into a loop. Word's layouting capability has improved tremendously in the last decade, but it remains a word processing application. For more demanding layouting, you need to use an application designed to do just that. Publisher or PageMaker, just for example. > Over 15 years ago WordPerfect was smart enough to move an image or other > object to the top of the next page if the remainder of the current page [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] > think its users don't like word processing to be *too* automatic, that we > like manually moving our images around every time we revise our documents? Cindy Meister INTER-Solutions, Switzerland http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Sep 30 2003) http://www.word.mvps.org This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail :-) >Hi Harlan, > [quoted text clipped - 18 lines] >end up never being able to finish laying out a page because the graphic >positioning and reflowing of the text would go into a loop. No doubt there could be heuristics to figure out that such a situation has occurred and notify the user that the layout won't work as requested. >Word's layouting capability has improved tremendously in the last decade, but >it remains a word processing application. WordPerfect was a word processing application, and yet they made it work. Your explanation doesn't really get into why Word can't do the same thing. > For more demanding layouting, you >need to use an application designed to do just that. Publisher or PageMaker, >just for example. Or, apparently, a competing pure word processing application named WordPerfect. I shouldn't have to resort to Publisher or PageMaker: I still only have one stream of text running from the beginning to the end of the document. And the computations really aren't that complicated. Word does figure out when it needs to put a graphic on the next page. There shouldn't then be any difficulty back-filling behind the graphic with the text that "follows" it. Let's put it this way: I'm a programmer, and *I* can easily work out the algorithm for this. SignatureHarlan Messinger Remove the first dot from my e-mail address. Veuillez ôter le premier point de mon adresse de courriel. Well, that's answered my question, anyway. You do prefer griping. > >Hi Harlan, > > [quoted text clipped - 43 lines] > way: I'm a programmer, and *I* can easily work out the algorithm for > this. Hi Harlan, > WordPerfect was a word processing application, and yet they made it > work. Your explanation doesn't really get into why Word can't do the > same thing. WordPerfect is based on a very different concept: the formatting is stuck right into the text ("Reveal codes"). Word is more "object-based". Formatting, layout, etc. are based on tables of data, with pointers in the text to the information. In some respects, the one has advantages over the other; and in others, these are disadvantages. So, WordPerfect does the layout as it "reads" the file from front to back. Word doesn't do it that way. > I'm a programmer, and *I* can easily work out the algorithm for > this. Based on a "new empty framework", perhaps. But if you had to fit it into Word's core code, and not break anything else, I wonder just how far you'd get :-) If WordPerfect is more suited to your needs, then please, do use it. As a colleague of mine says "Horses for courses"; use the tool that will do the job. Cindy Meister INTER-Solutions, Switzerland http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Sep 30 2003) http://www.word.mvps.org This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail :-) > Hi Harlan, > [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > respects, the one has advantages over the other; and in others, > these are disadvantages. A linear scheme with embedded codes and a hierarchical scheme implemented with pointers are isomorphic. The correspondence between them is trivial. > So, WordPerfect does the layout as it "reads" the file from front > to back. Word doesn't do it that way. It reads the components of the page by tree navigation rather than linearly. It still follows a well-defined order from start to finish, and it still has to know for each component what formatting to apply. There really isn't a difference. > > I'm a programmer, and *I* can easily work out the algorithm for > > this. > > > Based on a "new empty framework", perhaps. But if you had to fit > it into Word's core code, and not break anything else, I wonder > just how far you'd get :-) I would do just fine. I'm curious whether you're a programmer--the answer will determine whether I'm informing you or arguing with you. :-) > If WordPerfect is more suited to your needs, then please, do use > it. As a colleague of mine says "Horses for courses"; use the > tool that will do the job. That's rather a simplistic solution, given that how an application places images is hardly the sole consideration in choosing it. I believe that Microsoft could perfectly well add this, that it's *obviously* a desirable feature whose lack indicates a certain slovenliness on their part, and my main intent was to express that sentiment. You could just as well tell me to use Mozilla or Opera if I complained that IE is still, after five years or so, deficient in some key support for Cascading Style Sheets, but that would simply be avoiding the question of why Microsoft hasn't seen fit to finish supporting CSS2. > > Hi Harlan, > > [quoted text clipped - 21 lines] > to know for each component what formatting to apply. There really isn't a > difference. Good and well known examples of what I'm talking about are HTML and XML. These are stored linearly in text files, corresponding to WordPerfect (where the WP codes correspond to HTML/XML tags), but they are generally parsed by applications into and processed as a hierarchy of objects with pointers. Your web browser does this every time it loads another web page. As for output, an XML data editor could just as easily serialize the whole data and pointer structure out to a file, Word style, as save it in linear HTML or XML format, WP style. The differences between the linear tag-delimited format and the hierarchical object format with pointers are immaterial to the ability of the application to process the data. > > > I'm a programmer, and *I* can easily work out the algorithm for > > > this. You flatter yourself. > > > > I'm a programmer, and *I* can easily work out the algorithm for > > > > this. > > You flatter yourself. You flatter yourself by imagining you have the psychic ability necessary to know whether someone who is a total stranger to you does or doesn't have a particular set of skills. Either that or you have a such a glorious opinion of Microsoft that you assume flat out that anything useful that they haven't already implemented isn't possible. What a delusion that would be. Hi Harlan, > > Based on a "new empty framework", perhaps. But if you had to fit > > it into Word's core code, and not break anything else, I wonder > > just how far you'd get :-) > > I would do just fine. then I highly recommend you apply for a job at Microsoft and show them where they've gone wrong :-) Cindy Meister > Hi Harlan, > [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > then I highly recommend you apply for a job at Microsoft and show > them where they've gone wrong :-) Even though I've asked, you've avoided given me any indication of whether 1. you're a programmer--that is, whether you have any direct ability to assess the merits of the reasoning you're giving me--or 2. you're a non-technical person who is either a. repeating uncritically something that someone at Microsoft once told you, or b. assuming that if Microsoft hasn't added this feature yet, it must be because it's not possible.. Hi Harlan, > Even though I've asked, you've avoided given me any indication of whether > > 1. you're a programmer--that is, whether you have any direct ability to > assess the merits of the reasoning you're giving me--or that would depend on YOUR definition of a programmer :-) I program, but not C++ or anything like that. Cindy Meister |
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