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Mac outliners, one-pane, modeless and general-purpose like text editors?
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Posted by JohnK
Jul 3, 2009 at 09:11 PM
Stephen R. Diamond wrote:
>In some ways, Word’s outliner is more powerful than any
>dedicated Windows outliner. I wouldn’t try writing a book on Word start to finish
>because of only a single deficit: the inability to select and drag multiple headings
>in outline view. I wonder if the Mac version has this capability. (I’d guess the answer
>is ‘no.’)
>
I wouldn’t try writing a book in Word because when I last tried editing a large document in Word, the program kept choking.
The document was in excess of 100,000 words, so it was novel length. And, unlike a novel, it had a lot of formatting. What was interesting was that I rescued the situation by transferring the document from Windows Word (which was struggling) to the Mac version of Word, which saved the day.
That was four or five years ago. I’m sure Word has improved. But if I were to write a novel tomorrow (and that’s unlikely), I would use Word (for Windows) only in conjunction with the excellent Chapter by Chapter (http://pagesperso-orange.fr/sebastien.berthet/cbc/index.html), which eases organisation.
There are many other options, of course.
Posted by JohnK
Jul 3, 2009 at 09:15 PM
Oh I do wish we could edit posts on this forum. The post above should read as follows (apologies for the confusion):
Stephen R. Diamond wrote:
>In some ways, Word?s outliner is more powerful than any
>dedicated Windows outliner. I wouldn?t try writing a book on Word start to finish
>because of only a single deficit: the inability to select and drag multiple headings
>in outline view. I wonder if the Mac version has this capability. (I?d guess the answer
>is ?no.?)
I wouldn?t try writing a book in Word because when I last tried editing a large document in Word, the program kept choking.
The document was in excess of 100,000 words, so it was novel length. And, unlike a novel, it had a lot of formatting. What was interesting was that I rescued the situation by transferring the document from Windows Word (which was struggling) to the Mac version of Word, which saved the day.
That was four or five years ago. I?m sure Word has improved. But if I were to write a novel tomorrow (and that?s unlikely), I would use Word (for Windows) only in conjunction with the excellent Chapter by Chapter (http://pagesperso-orange.fr/sebastien.berthet/cbc/index.html), which eases organisation.
There are many other options, of course.
Posted by Cassius
Jul 4, 2009 at 01:24 AM
JohnK wrote:
>I wouldn’t try writing a book in Word because when I
>last tried editing a large document in Word, the program kept choking.
>
>The document
>was in excess of 100,000 words, so it was novel length. And, unlike a novel, it had a lot
>of formatting. What was interesting was that I rescued the situation by transferring
>the document from Windows Word (which was struggling) to the Mac version of Word,
>which saved the day.
—-
My experience with Word for Windows 2000 has`also been less than perfect. I often was the lead editor on technical documents with several authors. I learned to always produce the document in several parts. There are good reasons for this:
1. If different authors use different formatting, combining these authors’ contributions into one document without first standardizing the formatting of each contribution USING A SINGLE PC TO DO IT will result in a mess.
2. If one contribution has a “bug” in it, combining this contribution with the others into a single, “final” document can result in the the entire document being affected. ALWAYS save the individual parts so you can track down the “guilty part.y”
Another problem that I have proven occurs with WinWord documents (and may also occur with Excel documents) concerns emailing them. Some, perhaps all, email programs can and do change formatting in Word documents. Worse, these changes seem almost random: One has to proofread the entire document to find the changes. As a result, I now only email Word documents as zipped files. It seems to help.
-c
Posted by Tom S.
Jul 4, 2009 at 06:13 PM
Stephen R. Diamond wrote:
>Does the outliner in the Mac version of MS Word have any significant capabilities that
>the Windows version lacks?
>
>In some ways, Word’s outliner is more powerful than any
>dedicated Windows outliner. I wouldn’t try writing a book on Word start to finish
>because of only a single deficit: the inability to select and drag multiple headings
>in outline view. I wonder if the Mac version has this capability. (I’d guess the answer
>is ‘no.’)
This can be done with the Word 2008 on the Mac. I can type in three headings with text underneath, collapse them, select the first two and drag them and it moves everything.
Tom S.
Posted by Franz Grieser
Jul 4, 2009 at 08:09 PM
Stephen
>In some ways, Word’s outliner is more powerful than any
>dedicated Windows outliner. I wouldn’t try writing a book on Word start to finish
>because of only a single deficit: the inability to select and drag multiple headings
>in outline view. I wonder if the Mac version has this capability.
I am not sure I understand what you mean.
Word 2003 and 2007 for Windows have that capability:
You can highlight 2 and more headings (if they are not contiguous you have to hold down CTRL while selecting them) and move them to a new place in the outline.
However, that only works as long as the headings are at the same hierarchy level. You cannot move around HEADING1 and HEADING2 at the same time.
Franz