Re: Normal Mode and WYSIWYG printing.

On Wednesday 13 December 2006 03:36 am, Tomas Frydrych wrote:
> The Normal mode is not WYSIWYG and is not meant to be WYSIWYG; in Word,
> from where I think the founding fathers borrowed the idea for the menu
> entry, it is a mode in which the use of screen real estate is maximised
> by eliminating margins, headers/footers, footnotes, and object
> positioning details.

I would like to echo what Ryan and Tomas have said (and I have no argument
with Jean)--normal mode (in Word) is not WYSIWYG, it is as Tomas describes
it, and for many is is an essential tool. In addition, Word has modes that
are closer to WYSIWYG (it's been a long while, I don't even recall what it
was called), and that mode is probably essential to a large group of people.

(And some people consider both essential--for me, I work(ed) in normal mode
and counted on Word to do the appropriate thing when printing, and only
rarely had to check that (usually if I printed something and it was really
not what I expected, for example until I learned to set the various widow and
orphan options appropriately.

In short, a good word processor needs both modes (as well as, imho, and
outline view mode, unless it is somehow incorporated in the normal mode).

Randy Kramer

> In spite of the menu entry nothing resembling the Normal mode has ever
> been properly implemented in AbiWord in spite of users asking for it. I
> personally have always used the Normal mode in Word far more than the
> Print Layout mode because it is far easier to work in if you are
> primarily entering text: you get bigger fonts for the same size of
> window, your lines always start at horizontal scroll position 0 if your
> page width does not fit the window size, and in Word is it far more
> responsive than the print-layout mode. On the down side, there are
> things that cannot be done while in Normal mode (like inserting textboxes).
>
> The place where the lack of a non-print-layout mode hurts most is on
> embedded devices; on a 19" monitor I can live 3" of unused space in the
> page margins all around; I am just about getting decent font size for a
> fullscreen AbiWord and page-width zoom. On 2" embedded screen I cannot
> afford that space; to fit an entire line on the screen, I have to zoom
> down to a level which makes the text unreadable.
>
> I do not think that the Normal mode being non-WYSIWYG confuses anyone,
> that is what at least people familiar with Word expect. But if there is
> general agreement that all AbiWord views should be WYSIWYG, then I
> suggest that we remove the Normal mode menu entry rather than revert
> back to the old behaviour.
>
> Tomas
>
> P.S. I have a patch sitting here to back port the Normal mode changes to
> stable. It is needed to build a usable AbiWord package for the 770 but I
> will sit on it a bit longer.
Received on Wed Dec 13 17:38:47 2006