Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps
Path: utzoo!censor!geac!alias!panders
From: panders@alias.uucp (Pat Anderson)
Subject: Re: Book Format question?  What to use?
Message-ID: <1990Dec4.161128.27561@alias.uucp>
Summary: MS Word setups for your format
Keywords: PageMaker, Word, Nisus, DTP, Word Processing
Organization: Alias Research, Inc. Toronto ON Canada
References: <8521@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM>
Date: Tue, 4 Dec 90 16:11:28 GMT



From postnews Tue Dec  4 11:06:02 1990
In article <8521@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM>, larrym@sail.LABS.TEK.COM (Larry Morandi) writes:
> We are trying to convert our product manual to something that we can do
> entirely on the Mac (previous version was done with custom macros and
> ditroff on Unix).  I've been looking mainly at PageMaker, Word, Nisus,
> FullWrite, and a few other options, but they all seem to have major
> problems with the format we used (and ideally would like to continue
> using).  The items that seem to give problems are:
>(...) 
> 1.  Wide left margin that is used for headers of various sizes, which can
>     wrap.  Something like what follows (of course it doesn't work very well
>     without fonts and sizes...)
> (...)
>     Of course, the left column should be a different font, and the one just
>     under a line is a major head and in a larger size than the next one.
>     (A good example of this format is the Symantec Utilities for the Mac
>     documentation for version 1.0, the violet & gray cover, they changed
>     the layout for version 2.0.)
>(...) 
>     I can lay this out in PageMaker, but I don't find any way to tie the
>     two text blocks together so that if I add more text to the right column,
>     the left column follows and stays lined up.  I can sort of do this with
>     table stuff in Word, but that gets pretty kludgy.  FullWrite sidebars
> 
> Does anyone have enough experience with any of these programs (the ones I've
> tried or the ones I haven't) to give me any clues to accomplish the above
> tasks?
> 				    Thank you very much,
> 				    Larry Morandi
> 
> E-Mail:     larrym@sail.labs.tek.com          AppleLink:  AdvTech

There are better ways to create the two columns you want with microsoft
word than by using tables. Here's how I do it:

In document setup, set the margins. When creating a manual for 8.5 x 11" paper,
I set top and bottom margins to 1 in, the left margin to 2.25 in., and the
right to 1.25.

This gives the body text specifications. For the body text, specify a 
paragraph border of a vertical hairline spaced 9 pts from the text. 

For the headers to appear in the left margin (which is set 1.25 inches wider
than the right one), I use the following settings in the Format -> Paragraphs
box:

Indent the left margin 0.181 in. Open up the Position dialog box, and
set Horizontal to Left, Relative to the Page. Set Vertical to In line,
relative to the Margin. Set Distance from Text to 0.375 in, and
the paragraph Width to 1.125 in.

Of course, to avoid having to do this for every paragraph, I set up a style
sheet. Once the first header style is created, lower level headers can be
based on it.

I haven't found any answer to the page numbering system you're looking for.
It seems the only way around it is a lot of manual labour.

...pat. anderson
documentation specialist
Alias Research Inc.



