Microsoft Word 3.0

Microsoft Word is not someone's idea of what WordStar should have been, it's not the fastest word processor around, perhaps it's not the easiest to learn to use. Microsoft Word, instead, takes a unique approach to word processing on IBM personal computers.

What's so different about Word? First, it formats text efficiently and easily, no matter what the requirements of your document. Style sheets help manage this formatting power. Word uses a mouse in the same way that Apple's Macintosh computer does; it's an unusual twist on the IBM PC. Outlining, table of contents and index generation, footnotes, and multiple text windows help with creating complex documents.

Formatting is Word's forte. It doesn't use control codes like WordStar's ^S and ^U, not even hidden codes like WordPerfect. Instead, Word applies formatting to the text itself through menu commands, speed formatting shortcuts, or style sheets. For example, you might format a paragraph as justified, first line indented one-half inch, with one blank line after the paragraph. Once formatted, the paragraph remembers its format; no matter whether you add text at the beginning or end or move it somewhere else, the paragraph always retains its correct format.

It's easy to modify formats with Word. If you don't want a paragraph indented, just place the cursor anywhere in the paragraph and reformat it. You don't have to locate and delete a tab stop or hidden code.

Formats in Word are of several types: character, paragraph, tab, division, footnote, and running-head. Each format provides formatting options appropriate for its task.

Character formats, for example, apply styling such as bold, underline, and italics to either individual characters or whole sections of text. Besides these common attributes, Word can format characters as small capitals, double underlined, struck through, super/subscript, and uppercase. If your computer has one of the graphics adapters that Word supports (the IBM Color Graphics Adapter, IBM Enhanced Graphics Adapter, or the Hercules Graphics Card), all these attributes appear on the screen, even the italics and small capitals.

Character formats also control the font style and size of the text. These variations don't appear as such on the screen, but Word is faithful to the format changes and line breaks that font changes cause. A large font, for example, places fewer characters on each line than a small font; Word knows this and displays the text accordingly.

Paragraph formats affect an entire paragraph, controlling attributes like the alignment (left, right, centered, or justified), the indentation, line spacing, whether a paragraph should be kept on a single page, and the blank space before and after the paragraph.

Division formats control the format of the entire document or a smaller section of text. Items like page size, top, bottom, left, and right margins, and the placement of headers and footers are controlled by division formats. Word's flexible page numbering is another type of division format. Text columns also fall under division formats.

Word works very well with tabs, controlled through tab formats. You can set up regular left-aligned tabs, as well as centered, right-aligned, and decimal tabs. All tab stops can have one of several leader characters associated with them. Headers and footers are controlled through the running-head format.

You can access many common formats through Word's speed formatting. To underline, for example, press alternate-u; pressing alternate-i gives italic text. It takes fewer keystrokes to use speed formatting than to apply the formatting through menu commands.

One thing that distinguishes formatting in Word is its measurement. Most word processing programs make measurements in characters or lines, such as ten characters for the left margin and six lines for the top margin. Word makes these measurements in inches, centimeters, printer's points, or 10 and 12 pitch characters, whichever you prefer. The advantage is that if you instruct Word to leave one inch as the left margin, you can change to any size type and still retain one inch of white space at the left of the page. With other programs, the ten character left margin may be one inch of white space when printing in ten character per inch Pica, but upon switching to 12 character per inch Elite type, the margin shrinks to 10/12 inch.

Word's style sheets are the key to managing this formatting power. A style sheet is a special document that stores formatting instructions. Each style has a two-character key code and a name, followed by all the characteristics of this format. For example, a style sheet might look like this:

SP	Paragraph 1			STANDARD PARAGRAPH
	TMSRMN 10/12.  Flush left (First line indent 0.4").
SR	Paragraph 2			SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATION
TMSRMN 10/12 Bold.  Flush left, space before 2 li, space after 1 li (keep in one column, keep with following paragraph).

In the standard paragraph style, TMSRMN means Times Roman font, 10 point, with 12 point line spacing (a point is 1/72 of an inch). To format a paragraph with this style, first place the cursor within the paragraph. Then you can issue a menu command and get a list of all the paragraph styles, or you can hold the alternate key and press "sp," the key code for this style. Either way, Word associates that style with the paragraph.

The linkage between formatted text and the style sheet is dynamic, meaning that if you change formatting in the style sheet, the formatting of the text changes. How is this helpful? Suppose you need to change the first line indent from 0.4" to 0.5" for all the paragraphs in the document. With most word processing programs, this might be a lot of work. But in Word, all you need to do is revise the standard paragraph style in the style sheet. As soon as you do that--and it takes just a few seconds--Word changes the format of all the paragraphs associated with the standard paragraph style.

With style sheets, it's easy to maintain a consistent format from one document to the next. You don't have to remember the margins and tab settings from last month's report; just use the same style sheet. Style sheets are great for the office setting, as one person can devise a set of style sheets for office documents and distribute them to others who type the same documents. It's not necessary for all who use Word to master all the formatting options and techniques. As long as someone creates the styles, they're available for all to easily use.

No other word processing program for the IBM PC has anything quite like Word's style sheets. WordStar 2000 has a feature called a format, but these formats apply just a few characteristics to an entire documents. WordPerfect's macro capability lets you create macros to speedily apply commonly used formatting instructions; with a macro program like Superkey or Prokey you can do this with nearly any word processing program. None of these options provide anything near the power of Word's style sheets.

Entering and editing text in Word is more conventional with one exception: Word's use of the mouse. Scrolling the screen is especially effective with the mouse. By moving the mouse pointer to the scroll bar at the left edge of the screen, Word lets you scroll through the document at your own pace--one line or the entire screen at a time, depending on the vertical position of the mouse pointer. Furthermore, the length of the scroll bar represents the length of the document, leading to a unique method of scrolling called thumbing. If you place the mouse pointer at the top of the scroll bar and click both mouse buttons, you'll move directly to the top of the document. Clicking both mouse buttons at the bottom of the scroll bar moves to the end of the document; clicking at the middle of the scroll bar moves to the middle of the document. Of course, for moving directly to any page there's the jump to page command, but Word's thumbing--and the similar scroll bars on most Macintosh software--provide an efficient method of moving through the document.

The mouse also provides an efficient method of selecting text, important because to format, move, copy, delete, or apply other processing to a section of text, you must first select it. Word uses function keys to select predefined sections of text--a word, line, sentence, paragraph, or entire document. These selections are also available trough mouse selections. If the text you need to select doesn't conform to these predefined structures, you can "anchor" the cursor at one end of the text and move the cursor through the text you want to select, or you can point the mouse at one end of the selection and drag it through the text.

Word doesn't have built-in macros like WordPerfect, but Word's style sheets cover much of the ground that WordPerfect macros are used for. Macros are often used for boilerplate text; Word implements boilerplate through glossary entries. A glossary is a special document that contains a series of entries, each entry consisting of a name and the text associated with that name. You create a glossary entry by typing text, then copying the text to the glossary and supplying a name. To reuse the text, type the name of the glossary entry and press a function key (if you can't remember the name of the glossary entry, you can issue a menu command to get a list of all the glossary entries). Word replaces the name with the text. Word saves the glossary to disk, so the entries you make are available for later use.

Word works with windows, up to eight at a time. Each window can be as large or as small as you like, and can contain the same document or different documents. By using two windows to view the same document, you can scroll each window separately to compare the introduction and conclusion of your essay to make sure you've covered everything you said you would. Or you might use windows to edit two or more documents at the same time, copying and moving text and formatting from one document to another. With the mouse, it takes just a few seconds to resize the windows, so you can keep two documents active and shrink the one you're not using at the moment.

You can also open a special window for footnotes. When you create a footnote, you type it in the footnote window. Word updates the footnote window to show the text for footnote references marks currently showing on the screen.

Outlining is a new feature for Word 3.0. The outlining implemented here doesn't have all the features of stand-alone outlining programs, but Word's outlining provides a quick way to create an outline. Then you can enter text under the outline headings. Later on, you can move sections around the outline, and Word will renumber the outline.

Word also creates a table of contents or an index. When you decide what items you'd like to have in the table of contents or index, you mark them with special codes. Then you generate the table. Later, if you edit the document so that the page boundaries change, you can regenerate the tables. A table of contents or an index is an impressive addition to a document, and now Word makes including them quick and easy.

Word's merging is quite flexible. The main feature that sets Word's merge apart from others is its conditional tests. The conditional test lets you perform different actions based on the value of a merge variable--printing a different paragraph for males and females, or printing different message based on the amount of a contribution. Word, using its built-in sort feature, can sort a mailing list. Word easily accepts files from most database programs, so you can maintain a mailing list with almost any database program you like, and print letters with Word.

Word's ability to control printers, especially laser printers, is legendary. Word supports a tremendous variety of printers, so it's highly likely that your printer will be on the list. Most importantly, Word controls printers very accurately. Word knows the individual widths of every character, important for proportionally spaced fonts. That's also where Word's habit of measuring margins and tabs in inches helps out--when you're using a proportional font, there is no such thing as "space five characters over," as each character has its own unique width.

Happily, Word 3.0 is not copy protected, meaning that it's easy to install on a hard disk drive. That's good news, because a hard disk drive is necessary for Word to work best. Word constantly references the disk drives while you're working; a hard disk drive helps eliminate pauses while this happens. Also, Word evidently uses the program disk for a work file, because sometimes you'll be notified that the program disk is full, even though you're using a different disk drive for the document. With a hard disk drive, this is much less likely to happen. Word 3.0 is faster with most operations than its previous versions, and although it won't set any speed records, Word is now fast enough to hold its own against many popular word processing programs. Still, the best environment for Word is a machine faster than the basic PC or XT with the 4.77 Mhz 8088 processor.

One complaint with Word is that you have to paginate your document. That's because Word doesn't keep track of the pagination as you type; the only time it inserts page breaks is when you repaginate or print. Word isn't a page-oriented word processing program like Multimate or Displaywrite 3, so it's unusual that you have to paginate. Also, unlike most programs, Word doesn't tell you what line of the page you're working on.

Word comes with an excellent interactive tutorial in two versions for keyboard-bound users and those who use the mouse. Whether it's easy to learn and use Word depends on the individual. Some users, especially those who first learned word processing with a conventional program like WordStar or WordPerfect sometimes have trouble making the transition to Word's unique way of doing things. Those learning word processing for the first time often do better, as they don't have the old methods to forget. But mastering Word, especially if you desire to produce complexly formatted documents, will take some time. It's well worth the effort, though, because once you've mastered Word, you'll be in control of a powerful, time-saving word processing program that will competently meet all your needs.

Who should use Word? And how does Word compare to other leading programs. First of all, remember that Word is a full-featured program that takes time to learn, and it's priced accordingly. Therefore, if your needs (and budget) are modest and you don't want to spend a lot of time learning a complex program, then Word isn't for you.

Compared to other leading word processing programs like WordPerfect and Multimate, Word stands up very well in terms of overall features, and in areas like formatting, provides unparalled power and flexibility. WordPerfect, for example, has a reputation as being easy to learn, but to use WordPerfect, you have to spend a lot of time managing its hidden codes that control formatting. Word, of course, doesn't use hidden codes, but instead uses its own way of formatting. Word doesn't have much reputation as a "corporate" word processor, but its style sheets make it ideal for the office setting where many people need to produce consistently formatted documents. Those using laser printers will be impressed by Word's control over them. That's probably a clue to Word's best customer--the person who is concerned with the appearance of documents and wants precise control over formats. For these people, Word is without reservation the best word processing program to use.