> Alvaro Deibe Diaz wrote:
>
> > Try to force Word to treat ligatures right (you know: substitute ft, fi
> > and other special pairs of letters with special symbols, easier to read)
> > (you think it is exagerated? Then inspect carefully a well-made book, or
> > any newspaper). Try to convince Word to keep with the task and do the
> > correct spell check once 'fi' and 'ft' are substituted. And so on... (I
> > think I am getting boring)
>
> > Now the good news: IT CAN BE DONE in Word. I've done it. BUT it
> is easier
> > in other more-publication-oriented systems. Is the extra large effort in
> > Word worth it? I think no.
>
> Well, what you describe is not anymore about writing a common paper. This
> is about book or newspaper publishing. While Word can be coerced
> into doing
> much of that, it wasn't meant for that. So yes, I guess I would use a
> publishing program for that, too.
>
> But the start of the thread was not about publishing a newspaper. I don't
> think that the papers that most produce in their everyday activities
> require these complexities.


Word is concerned with a single document, whereas a newspaper deals with
multiple documents (aka articles).

Newspaper/magazine editing is a whole new game where you get to learn about
frames.  (Word does frames, btw).  For that you'd use Publisher, Quark or
FrameMaker.

A frame is like a text box, it just sits there, and you fill it up.  A
typical magazine page with 3 columns is in fact 3 separate frames.  The
frames are linked.  When one fills up, the text flows to the next.  If you
have too much text, the excess is lost (well, not visible).  If you do that
in Word (using columns), you end up with a new page.

The frames can be anywhere so long as they are linked, and can include that
sad last page in some publications that contains the last few paragrahs of a
dozen articles (continued on page...).

Now you know why journos are obessed with word count.  They write to fill a
pre-determined amount of space.  If they miss it, either the editer gets
annoyed, or their article gets hacked.

Tony

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