PC newbie seeks WYSIWYG word processing software for Windows XP

[Guest sukitawdry]

My word processor over the last twenty odd years has been a Tandy WP-2, something closely resembling Clive Sinclair's Cambridge Z88.

 

Its great plus was an ability to display a WYSIWYG view as characters were being entered. It allotted an equal space to each character, like a typewriter, and had an ASCII output, so the print out conformed exactly to the screen image. The only exception was when mark up codes needed to be entered to define underlining, where the solution was to finalise the text and then add the codes just before printing.

 

The incorporation of simple financial accounts into text was easily accomplished. Overwrite could be selected, ensuring no movement of text on the left of screen for example, while columns of figures could be entered and lined up accurately on the right of screen. The setting of top, bottom and side margins, as well as characters per line and lines per page, was achieved by entering numerical values into a set-up menu.

 

But upon moving to Microsoft Word on a Dell after the WP-2 died, such simplicity proved elusive, since Word doesn't display a WYSIWYG view as characters are entered. And that low resolution screen is, unbelievably, more wearing to look at than that of the WP-2. As for incorporating simple financial accounts, forget it!

 

Does anyone know of a word processing programme, capable of operating within Windows XP, that would return to me some of the capabilities of the absurdly simple WP-2? It should have :-

 

1) A work screen that's as wide as possible and with a better resolution than the fatiguing one of Microsoft Word.

 

2) An ability to display a WYSIWYG view of equally spaced characters as they are entered, as on a typewriter, and include an overwrite facility.

 

3) An ability to display a WYSIWYG view of proportionally spaced characters as they are entered and include an overwrite facility.

 

 

4) An easy method of setting margins, characters per line and lines per page.

 

On-line word processing programmes may provide some or all of the above, but are these requirements not achievable when on public transport with a laptop unconnected to the internet? Your suggestions would be most gratefully received.

[maynardvdm]

Hi

 

Have you tried this:

 

OpenOffice.org - The Free and Open Productivity Suite

[Guest sukitawdry]

Dear maynarddvm,

 

Not yet. It looks a little daunting to a beginner like me, but I'll let you know how I get on and many thanks for the tip. Was this enquiry too "off topic" for it to stay on the forum? Since I'm a newbie and ignorant of forum etiquette, your feedback here would be appreciated.

 

Kind regards, sukitawdry

[Guest Wolfeymole]

To be honest Suk I can't see how you can compare a 20 year old word processing machine to Microsoft Word and the abilities that Word has.

 

The size of the page can be viewed from as little as 25% of the screen size up to 400% and more.

 

You can either chose to display or hide formatting marks.

 

An overwrite facility is built in.

 

The formatting options in Word are massive along with line spacing, tab setting etc..

 

You can import financial information via external data such as a spreadsheet, the list goes on.

[Guest sukitawdry]

Dear Wolfeymole,

 

Thank you for your email and for confirming that there is an overwrite option in Word.

 

Did you read my original posting in any detail and, if so, did you appreciate that there are some in the world who have virtually no previous experience of PCs and who are only now (I'm sixty four) taking their first nervous steps in that direction because, up until now, there's been no need to?

 

I ask since it clearly wasn't my intention to "compare a 20 year old word processing machine to Microsoft Word and the abilities that Word has" and I don't think that I did. What I did, though, was to ask how something specific that I had achieved with elderly technology could be identically achieved with a modern piece of software, since my limited experience of Word, and searching on Google, hadn't revealed to me that it could. And, interestingly enough, nothing in the two responses I've received has indicated that it is.

 

Thank you, also, for volunteering "You can import financial information via external data such as a spreadsheet, the list goes on" but that is something that would be beyond both my capabilities and needs. And we can only agree to disagree about Word's screen since, as I said, I found it hard going on the eyes, certainly far harsher than the email I use.

 

From your response, I felt it unlikely that I'd hear from anyone on the forum again. And the only piece of advice I received, after my posting was so quickly whisked off the board, was to check out OpenOffice.org. From their forum archive, it wouldn't appear to offer what I need, although their screen seems a slight improvement on that of Word.

 

I am extremely sorry to have taken up the time and energies of both you and maynardvdm. I had supposed that a "forum" was a public meeting place for an open discussion where "We are all members helping other members. After all, no one knows everything and you may have the answer that someone needs." and hadn't appreciated that an enquiry from a mere beginner would have been treated quite so off-handedly.

 

Kind regards, sukitawdry

[Plastic Nev]

All too often it is assumed that some level of knowledge of computer use is known, where quite clearly many come for help without that level of knowledge.

I have in the past seen even a lack of knowledge in the ability to copy and paste, one of the first things taught in most of the basic computer courses.

 

Many people come to computing without having been to any form of course or further education facility as also I did. I had to learn from scratch myself with the odd bit of help from friends.

 

To go to your particular problem and give some more meaningful help I would like some more information from yourself as to the problems you are having. On the basic start of this, you state you have a problem, and that is the low resolution you mention and covered in question 1.

1) A work screen that's as wide as possible and with a better resolution than the fatiguing one of Microsoft Word.

 

To try to answer that, first, how big is the screen in total that you have? and also how much of that screen is covered by the page in Microsoft Word?

I will hopefully show you how to get the best out of this program before we look for alternatives.

 

There are many avenues to explore, and this can even be down to lowering the screen brightness if glare is causing fatigue.

Edited April 18, 2009 by Plastic Nev

[Guest sukitawdry]

Dear Plastiv Nev,

 

Well, your kind and generous response was a very pleasant surprise when I checked back today, just to make sure that no other replies were awaiting attention. Thank you so much.

 

This forum was of great help in directing me to OpenOffice.org. And a question to that forum brought an almost instantaneous response that, in just a very few words, told me all I needed to know. Because I like the idea of an "open" standard, the fact that it forms the basis of a new ISO standard and that the screen is kinder on my eyes than that of Word, I'm an enthusiast for OO already. I'm also persuaded by the several arguments on-line against Word which, incidentally, I latterly realised my XP suite doesn't include. It's the cut down cousin, WordPad, that's present - another reason for going with OO.

 

On reflection, it might have been wiser to have given more thought to my original posting and reduced it to the more concise version sent to OO, but first thoughts about almost anything are rarely the best and, anyway, experience is a great teacher! So, although I'm extremely grateful to maynardvdm for the OO tip, I think that Wolfeymole probably needs to get out more and should realise, as you say, that there are beginners in the world, feeling their way, who are likely to make use of this forum. If he'd like to learn how to dispense with the unhelpfully astonished and vaguely patronising tone, as well as how to make the kind of model response to a newbie that gives directly helpful advice, he really couldn't do better than taking a stroll over to http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?p=322861#322861 where he'll see exactly how it's done.

 

Again, thank you for your generous interest. It's very greatly appreciated.

 

Kind regards, sukitawdry

[Plastic Nev]

Hi,

Glad that the Open Office is of use to you as recommended by Maynard.

 

Now we know that you do not actually have the full version of Microsoft Word, and only have Word Pad, that goes a long way to explaining why you were having problems.

Good luck with Open Office and I am sure you will find it will do all you need.

Nev.

[Guest sukitawdry]

Hmm.....I don't know about that. WordPad's screen may well be different from Word's for all I know, but that's still no reason to jump on a newbie with a general nag about Word's wonderful capabilities EXCEPT what the enquiry's about! As I say, see how it's done elsewhere. Nevertheless and all, thank you very much Plastic Nev and maynardvdm.

[Guest Wolfeymole]

There seems to be some issue here regarding 6 lines of text from me trying to help you.

 

You have slated me and accused me of being condescending and patronizing since then which is quite outrageous.

 

You have constantly referred to your confusion over different aspects of just what a computer is capable of.

 

It seems to me that you would be better off enrolling with Learn Direct to discover what a Word application is capable of rather than constantly berate me.

[Guest Wolfeymole]

You took this issue elsewhere obviously.

 

This is what the Administrator at that site said;

 

Use a font like Courier New. You might also try right aligned tabs and/or decimal tabs.

This is what I said;

 

You can either chose to display or hide formatting marks.

 

An overwrite facility is built in.

 

The formatting options in Word are massive along with line spacing, tab setting etc..

It's the same thing.

[Guest sukitawdry]

Dear Wolfeymole,

 

 

If I have caused you any offence, and it certainly seems that I have, then I am happy to apologise to you unreservedly here in public, which I most certainly do. Please do me the courtesy of allowing me to explain some of my expectations and experiences of this forum.

 

I am fully aware of the capabilities of computers in general, having been involved professionally for many years with their use in the fields of image manipulation and the editing of motion pictures, somewhat more demanding tasks than mere word processing you will agree. But I am aware of their capabilities in this field also, although not similarly involved, having preferred to leave this in my working life to my PA. My own limited personal word processing needs have been met quite satisfactorily for over twenty years by much simpler technology which, as we all must, eventually died.

 

When that happened, I bought a nice new, shiny Dell laptop, but my many professional colleagues of former years could offer no suitable solution to my query, despite having been avid Word users themselves for many years. No one had required an equally spaced character font, as I did, and several denied that any such thing was available in Word. So, in view of this feature's fugitive nature, the forum route looked like a good bet. It seemed reasonable to assume that, if I gave a full background to my needs, the chances of an accurate reply might be increased. The tip to check out OpenOffice was valuable and appreciated, but I was a little mystified at seeing my posting removed from the main forum. Then, you weighed in.

 

The sub-text, that is to say, the unspoken message behind your posting, seemed to read something like "Oh, for crying out loud, Word is a great programme with limitless capabilities, which you really don't appreciate. It's silly of you to think that your tired old machine can compare with it and, by the way, you'll have to find out how to get precisely what you want from the programme yourself, because we're much too busy to tell you". You may very well protest that this was not what was intended but, without any direct instruction on how to achieve what I wanted, this response struck me as being about as useful, and about as welcoming, as a slap around the face with a cold fish. So yes, it struck me as "unhelpfully astonished and vaguely patronising". I said nothing about condescension.

 

Now, I should add that, although not the possessor of a PC until fairly recently, I have certainly used them to venture on-line in Internet cafes to pursue some of my other interests, like audio. And one of the abiding characteristics about forums (fora?) is exactly what Plastic Nev picked up on - there is often a flavour of the initiated talking in abstruse technical language to the initiated, making a range of assumptions about the background knowledge of the posters. I don't now doubt that you were trying to be helpful in your response, but you didn't take that necessary step backwards to see if what you had said actually matched what was asked, nor gauged its usefulness. That is what I meant about "not getting out enough", which, seemingly, is almost an occupational hazard for busy administrators, apparently locked in their hermetically sealed worlds.

 

Indeed, you ably confirm this yourself by assuming that your own comments and the precise instructions of how to achieve what I wanted, courtesy of the OO forum, are "the same thing". No they're not, and doubly not to a newbie, and it beggars belief that a forum administrator is incapable of distinguishing their vastly differing utility to an enquirer!

 

It does no one any credit to maintain that "You have constantly referred to your confusion over different aspects of just what a computer is capable of" since I don't think that you'll find this expressed anywhere in my postings. It is quite true that I was misled by the vendors into thinking that Word, rather than WordPad, resided on my Dell, but that is entirely unconnected with the failure of anyone on this forum to come up with a precise answer to my query, which I found elsewhere.

 

I am grateful for your suggestion "It seems to me that you would be better off enrolling with Learn Direct to discover what a Word application is capable of rather than constantly berate me". But you see, aside from the exact answer to my question, the doubtless many other capabilities of Word, heresy though it may be to admit to on a forum like this, are of absolutely no interest to me, now that I can do with it what I need to do with it (oops, OpenOffice rather).

 

Constantly berating you? A couple of statements that reflected my response to what I took to be the sub-text of your reply? Do me a favour!

 

There, now that didn't hurt, did it Wolfeymole?

 

 

Kind regards, sukitawdry

[Goku]

Hello Sukita. The matter seems to have drifted a bit off-topic. If you still need an alternative for the older technology, here is an article whose writer seems to share your way of thinking.

 

By the way, Wolfey didn't mean to confuse you or be unhelpful. He just assumed that you had a little experience in computers and therefore didn't detail the process. And forgive me but the other Administrator's remarks were also not too user friendly. Though he did tell you what to look for, he did not tell you where which could have confused someone with lesser experience.

 

And by "constantly berate me", Wolfey refers to the mention that you make of him in your every post but one. Thanking Maynard and Neville while frowning upon Wolfey's behaviour indeed provides a sense of berating.

 

By the way, trivial though it may sound, searching for your question actually needs much more knowledge and expertise of computers because as you rightly say, such technology is extinct today and therefore it is very rare to find a suitable application.

 

I do not mean to take sides but simply want you to acknowledge the fact that you are a valuable member and are always welcome to post any questions or doubts you may have. Hope that cleared the confusion. :)

 

-- Goku

[Guest sukitawdry]

Dear Goku,

 

Many thanks for your post. Being a fan of Kurt Weill, I adopted from the jazz standard Mack the Knife, from his Threepenny Opera, the nom de plume Suki Tawdry, a pal of Jenny Diver. But I dearly wish that I hadn't now! It's not until you see the names combined, without the space, that certain unfortunate possibilities occur - I'll leave it to your imagination, but one poster in an unrelated forum accused me of gross and vulgar sexism. I must say that "Sukita" is a personal best for me although, in view of your location, both reasonable and understandable!

 

Before nervously coming to this forum, I did a fair bit of research on the Internet beforehand, so that I wouldn't come across as a complete idiot. You will be gratified to know that your link was one of the items I came across. The arguments presented there seemed to make a great deal of sense, as far as intensive use of word processing was concerned but, since my requirements were never likely even to approach that level of sophistication, and since they also didn't tackle my particular problem, I researched on. Interesting though.

 

For those who are even remotely interested in the issue (!) I present below the full text of my correspondence with the OpenOffice.org forum on Writer, the word processing part of the OO suite :-

 

ME "Can Writer be configured to provide exactly equal spacing for all characters, like a typewriter? I need this facility because I sometimes incorporate simple account information in text and need to have the columns of figures line up correctly (although I don't want or need specialist accounting software). This means an equal spacing of all characters on the screen and an identical (WYSIWYG) print out. All suggestions would be gratefully received, but please know that I'm very, very new to PCs, so do take it gently!"

 

ADMIN. "Use a font like Courier New. You might also try right aligned tabs and/or decimal tabs."

 

ME "Near instantaneous, concise, dead accurate advice that worked. Outstanding!! Very many thanks, too!"

 

I think, Goku, that the valuable clue is in the font which, unlike the great majority of fonts in Word, isn't proportional, as many of my former professional colleagues weren't aware of. With that simple bit of information, it's a cinch to change the font in Writer and voila!

 

Kind regards, sukitawdry

[Goku]

Many thanks for your post. Being a fan of Kurt Weill, I adopted from the jazz standard Mack the Knife, from his Threepenny Opera, the nom de plume Suki Tawdry, a pal of Jenny Diver. But I dearly wish that I hadn't now! It's not until you see the names combined, without the space, that certain unfortunate possibilities occur - I'll leave it to your imagination, but one poster in an unrelated forum accused me of gross and vulgar sexism. I must say that "Sukita" is a personal best for me although, in view of your location, both reasonable and understandable!

Lol, Sukita, don't have a clue what you are talking about. I wouldn't accuse anyone of vulgarity unless it was in plain English.

 

Before nervously coming to this forum, I did a fair bit of research on the Internet beforehand, so that I wouldn't come across as a complete idiot. You will be gratified to know that your link was one of the items I came across. The arguments presented there seemed to make a great deal of sense, as far as intensive use of word processing was concerned but, since my requirements were never likely even to approach that level of sophistication, and since they also didn't tackle my particular problem, I researched on. Interesting though.

Yes, it does take a bit of research and with the write keywords and search engine, you can find nearly everything you want. I am sure there is a more fitting application to suit your need out there simply waiting to be discovered!

 

I think, Goku, that the valuable clue is in the font which, unlike the great majority of fonts in Word, isn't proportional, as many of my former professional colleagues weren't aware of. With that simple bit of information, it's a cinch to change the font in Writer and voila!

Yes Sukita but that isn't all. We all assume a certain level of user's experience before we post our replies. The Administrator there assumed that you had knowledge of basic workings of a computer and therefore provided a short hinting reply. Wolfey, instead from your detailed first post, assumed that you had quite a wealth of knowledge and could find your way around Word. It is just a matter of perception. I myself try to be as detailed and provide step-by-step instructions wherever possible.

 

Once again, you are welcome to post any doubts or questions you may have. :)

 

-- Goku

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Here's the comparison to Word and Open Office Writer.

 

Word costs money, Open Office Writer does not.

 

Both programs are 99% the same so if you can accommodate OO then you can then you can understand MS Word.

 

At no point was your Username questioned although I felt like doing so as it leapt out at me as "Suck it Audrey".

 

Your thread on the Open Office site amounted to 3 posts, this will be the 16th here, some thing's not quite right is it mate?

 

I reiterate and suggest that you take a course in word processing so you are fully aware of just what these programs can do.

[Guest sukitawdry]

Dear Wolfeymole,

 

 

Well spotted! And you're right, it wasn't on this site that the dastardly accusation was made. As to your comparison of the length of this thread with the brevity of the exchange on the Writer forum - I'd say QUITE! I doubt I'll be taking up your suggestion of a course for reasons already stated.

 

Since I really don't have anything more to say than what I've already said, continuing to fence with you here would be repetetive, redundant and tedious for both of us I'm sure, so this correspondence, certainly as far as I'm concerned, is now closed. But, if anybody else out there would like to burn up scarce world resources..................

 

Kind regards, sukitawdry

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Feel free to post any any other PC issue you may have Suky.

 

Kind Regards

Wolfeymole