Publish with a word processor

Home Office Computing, Sept, 1994 by Lori Grunin

WHEN IT COMES TO SOFTWARE, MANY OF US WOULD rather fight than switch. Even when familiar products no longer meet our needs, we'll keep using them just to avoid scaling the learning curve.

Thankfully, software publishers have given our faithful old word processors the ability to handle graphics, lay out pages, and use standard typefaces and have added other features once considered the sole domain of desktop publishing programs.

Consequently, the line between the publications you can produce with a word processor and those you can produce with a DTP package has blurred considerably. True, word processing programs simply can't do certain things, such as produce four-color jobs to take to a print shop or service bureau. But they are well suited to projects that have a continuous flow of text and don't need precisely aligned graphics, such as reports, simple newsletters, and fliers.

All of the more powerful word processors--whether they're for the PC or the Mac--support such de rigueur publishing features as multiple columns and frames (boxes that hold a block of text or an illustration) around which you can automatically flow text. Remember, though, that many of these features have been added only in the latest versions. If you're still clinging to WordPerfect for DOS 4.2, for example, doing real DTP may require that you invest in an upgrade, and it may bear as little resemblance to your current package as Microsoft Publisher.

That said, if you use one of the top word processors, you can stretch it pretty far. You can publish some documents using your word processor with great ease while, in other cases, you may have to try a few tricks. But sometimes, it may not be worth the effort.

How Far Can You Go? Although it lacks automatic drop caps and drawing tools, MacWrite Pro stands out as a very capable DTP-like package on the Mac. Here's why. It allows you to wrap text around irregularly shaped objects and it handles frames fairly fluidly--you can place one anywhere on the page, even across columns, or anchor one to a specific paragraph. When you anchor a frame to a paragraph, that frame travels with that paragraph wherever it goes--which is critical when you want the picture of your new product to appear next to the first reference about it in your company newsletter, for example. Without anchoring, you'd have to manually relocate that picture every time you moved the accompanying text. In addition to the typical paragraph styles. MacWrite Pro also supports character styles--named character formats that can be applied to selected text instead of an entire paragraph.

On the PC, Microsoft Word for Windows, Lotus Ami Pro, and WordPerfect for Windows all prove strong for DTP work. Word and WordPerfect dance circles around their Mac-based counterparts: For example, Word for the Mac's drawing tools are less sophisticated and WordPerfect for the Mac can't wrap text around irregularly shaped graphics (this should change with the next Mac releases of these products). The DOS versions of Word and WordPerfect are relatively equivalent to the Windows versions in features, but they don't function quite as seamlessly.

Word and WordPerfect (for Windows) both have character styles, and Word also gives you automatic drop caps for easily creating eye-catching first letters that serve as design elements. Drawing tools in both Ami Pro and Word are more integrated than in WordPerfect, which makes adding simple objects (such as lines) go more smoothly. But WordPerfect--unlike Ami Pro and Word--lets you manually change the spacing between characters (kerning).

There are easy ways to do fancy layouts (business forms, faxes, memos, and letterheads) with your word processor, too--just check out such third-party templates as Streetwise by Design for Word and WordPerfect.

The Indirect Route To use some of your word processor's publishing capabilities, you're going to have to be prepared for a little hassle. For instance, Word's drop caps are not executed elegantly in any of its incarnations: Even though creating a drop cap is a one-click operation, the program actually extracts the first character of the paragraph and sticks it in a little frame around which the rest of the text wraps. Try searching for that word, and it's tough to find--the program no longer considers that first letter part of the word. But not all DTP packages do it better. PageMaker's method, for instance, is even clunkier.

With a little creativity, you may be able to simulate capabilities your word processor doesn't even have. For example, if your package is missing automatic drop caps, put the first letter of a paragraph in a frame by itself and multiply its point size by about three or four.

A word processor's lack of alignment tools poses certain types of layout problems. Working with tabs to create three-element banners (such as one that has a publication date on the left, subtitle in the center, and issue number on the right) can be frustrating, especially if any of the elements consists of multiple lines. So can generating a typical resume layout with the dates down the left side and the job descriptions down the right. But a word processor's table editor makes jobs like these a snap if you just envision the project as a grid instead of a free-flowing page and treat the elements in it as cell entries.