Gripe about Word and image placement

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

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

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?ZmluaXN0ZXJyZQ==?=,

1 - this thread has lots of bickering but nowhere explains how to get rid of the blank spaces.

2- I am student and have spoken with dozens of others who have tried to get Word to do

this and no one has ever succeeded.That's because Word was not designed to let text move above/below pictures in order to
fill up any blank space that may be left on the page. If you let text flow AROUND, on the
left or right, it will do that. But not above/below.

So, if you use Word. Have to insert graphics. And the text may not flow AROUND them. Then
insert the graphics after all the text is present (final editing stage).

3- incidentally, everyone I have ever talked to about Word and Windows finds they create

frustration, tensions and helplessness. I simply have never had a conversation where
anyone was satisfied with them. This is not true of any other product or service.Perhaps this is because
- Each person's expectations vary, and the products try to satisfy everyone as much as
possible ("you can't satisfy all the people all the time")

- The products try to do more than one, very specific task, which raises expectations
just that much more

- and also make it more difficult to figure out how to do a particular task

A "normal" telephone is simple: all you can do is dial, talk and listen. A telephone with
integrated switchboard, voice mail and address book is a lot more complex. One either
needs to read the "F" manual (RTFM), get some training, or spend a lot time playing with
the functions to learn how to use these additional capabilities. Windows/Word are orders
of magnitude more complex than a fancy telephone

Personally, I used WordPerfect exclusively for five or six years, before being introduced
to Word. I hated Word, when I started with it; after three or four years, I found
WordPerfect thoroughly frustrating. The fact remains that there are some things
WordPerfect did (and still does) much better than Word, and vice-versa. If someone needs
complex mailmerge capabilities, and doesn't want to get deep into programming, then they'd
better use WordPerfect. If you want to really control formatting and enforce how a
document looks, then Word is the better tool.

I challenge you to find an explanation of those litter anchor symbols in the Word help system.

Try as I might, I can't figure out to what you're referring. Which version of Word? And
can you give me an example of a Help topic?

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or reply in the
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[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I challenge you to find an explanation of those litter anchor symbols in
the Word help

system.
Try as I might, I can't figure out to what you're referring. Which version of Word? And
can you give me an example of a Help topic?

I believe what finisterre meant was, "I challenge you to find an explanation
in the Word Help system of those little anchor symbols." If you search for
"anchor," one of the hits is "Position graphics and text," which includes a
section headed "Position a drawing object in relation to page, text, or
other anchor." Another of the topics that comes up is "Troubleshoot
graphics," which contains a wealth of useful information.

 

[finisterre]

When I search for 'Anchor' , no result entitled 'Troubleshoot graphics' comes up. It'll be interesting to see how this problem gets twisted around such that the expectation of two people on different computers getting the same Help search results comes to be described as an unreasonable demand made by people who need to be told that a computer is more complicated than a phone and that a screwdriver is not the tool to use for hammering nails. (as Cindy M - not Suzanne Barnhill - does.)

I've read the section entitled 'Position a drawing object in relation to page, text, or other anchor' numerous times over the years and still don't understand it. My challenge remains for anyone to figure out what anchors do based solely on that Help page. Perhaps someone here will claim they came to understand anchors based on that page alone, in which case I admire your intelligence and that of the other millions of customers who evidently find Word so desirable. Sadly, though, my colleagues and I aren't quite as quick and remain in the dark about the anchors.

At any rate, I will, actually, print out this discussion thread and show it to my professor when he complains about the blank spaces in my PhD dissertation, as proof that I can't do anything about them except manually as the absolute last formatting step. All this hassle is really for him, not for me ;^P

 

[Margaret Aldis]

Hi finisterre - or whatever your name is today ;-)

You won't get any argument from me that the Word Help is woefully
inadequate. Nor any advocacy that Word is necessarily the tool you should
use for this job.

Nevertheless many of us *have* managed to work out how Word's positioning
works, and amazingly without the benefit of a PhD in computing too ! It does
take some research and experimentation, after which the words on the Help
topic do prove to be a correct description - though insufficient
explanation - of the effect of the dialog parameters. You don't need to do
this, though, because people who've gone before answer questions in these
groups and put explanations on the web - a quick google turned up this, for
example:

http://www.rdg.ac.uk/ITS/info/training/notes/word/graphics

My suggestion for the best that you can do within Word's positioning model
is given as an answer in the less-gripey thread you started. The key point
is that Word, for better or worse, implements floating graphic positioning
with respect to an anchor *on the same page*, not *as soon as possible
below*. You could argue this is more often the user's real requirement (need
the figure visible when the reader reads a particular reference or
explanation) and the mechanism you describe harks back to how it had to be
implemented in batch-setting systems (when processing sequentially, hold the
graphic in a diversion until there is space on the page).

But maybe you should explain to your prof the difference between a draft for
review and copy for proofing? Or maybe he's trying to encourage you to be a
real man and use LaTeX? ;-) (Actually, I'm not kidding, if you are writing
an academic paper you might find that is a better tool for your purpose.)

--
Margaret Aldis - Microsoft Word MVP
Syntagma partnership site: http://www.syntagma.co.uk

When I search for 'Anchor' , no result entitled 'Troubleshoot graphics'

comes up. It'll be interesting to see how this problem gets twisted around
such that the expectation of two people on different computers getting the
same Help search results comes to be described as an unreasonable demand
made by people who need to be told that a computer is more complicated than
a phone and that a screwdriver is not the tool to use for hammering nails.
(as Cindy M - not Suzanne Barnhill - does.)

I've read the section entitled 'Position a drawing object in relation to

page, text, or other anchor' numerous times over the years and still don't
understand it. My challenge remains for anyone to figure out what anchors do
based solely on that Help page. Perhaps someone here will claim they came to
understand anchors based on that page alone, in which case I admire your
intelligence and that of the other millions of customers who evidently find
Word so desirable. Sadly, though, my colleagues and I aren't quite as quick
and remain in the dark about the anchors.

At any rate, I will, actually, print out this discussion thread and show

it to my professor when he complains about the blank spaces in my PhD
dissertation, as proof that I can't do anything about them except manually
as the absolute last formatting step. All this hassle is really for him,
not for me ;^P

 

[Margaret Aldis]

That is the only name I have ever used in this website.

My apologies - I thought from the way the thread flowed that you were the
same person who started the gripe - hence my assumptions that your PhD
thesis would be in computing.

 

[Tim Cole]

Seeing this a bit late, but I wonder how you would feel about such a graphic
if it were a captioned image intended to be viewed in the preceding
paragraph? I've found problems like yours pretty easy to overcome in Word
without Word Perfect assuming it knows what I want to do.
As far as Word Perfect: I remember an arrogant, expensive, difficult to
learn word processing package whose files could not be incorporated into any
other application without considerable reworking. Only when the threat of
Microsoft Word and its intuitive approach began to strongly appeal to the
multitudes of frustrated users is when Word Perfect decided to change its
corporate tune! As a result of its over-indulgence in itself, it lost the
market, as well as Lotus and PageMaker, and maybe some other similarly
un-attuned apps.
For the record, I abandoned WP-5 for a more intuitive, but admittedly less
delivering WordStar 5. When MS Word improved, version by version, I thanked
God for free enterprise and a suite of apps that was intuitive in approach
and more affordable for the common user. There are Microsoft haters who
will dig and dig and dig just to find the one peeve that they can use to
justify an unreasonable claim.

and I am,
Tim,
a common user of apps