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Friday, October 28, 2005 Word Let's start by saying you should never, ever, set books in Word. You can, but under no circumstances should you think you're doing anything but a hack job. Word does all kinds of funky things because it assumes you're a moron. It's holding your hand and telling you what it thinks is the best for you. It wants to write you a term paper, and that's about all it's good for -- it's not supposed to publish you a book. For example, it's thinks it's a good idea to link references in text or turn URL into hotlinks. Who the fuck publishes a book with hotlinks?!? Yeah, that's elitist, but screw it. I've been trying to plow my way through a mess created by authors using Word and these people are dumb as f'ing posts. There's a tag-style; Body No Indent, right? It formats the text so the paragraph will have no indent at the top (and by the way, who, but grade school children think a half-inch is an acceptable indent?!?) And a different tag, Body Text, for regular indented text. That's the way it should be. Except in place where they've used Body No Indent for Body Text, they just add a tab at the beginning of the paragraph instead of selecting a different style. This is exactly why Word blows for setting text. In a real layout program you just CAN'T screw with a style like that. If you want to have an indent, it has to be part of the tag. You can't make it up as you go -- which is clearly what they're doing here. If you try to, you get zero results immediately. Which forces you to correct your half-baked mistakes. Word baby's you. It says, "Oh, it's okay, you screwed up, but here's a cookie. Let's make it better with a minimum amount of effort on your part." They don't want you to have to use your brain. It's just that down the line you've screwed yourself because you've introduced errors that are a nightmare to track down and you've learned nothing. Text design and layout can be a chore. It's a thankless job that never gets the props it deserves. Because a good layout is transparent. Nobody ever looks at a book and says, "Man, that's sweet the way the text flows so smoothly. And the bullets are just streamlined!" But bad design is a throbbing, puss-filled wart on the end of your nose. Everybody knows a shitty layout when they see it. Which is why it takes some actual skill to make it work. And why nobody gets it. Anyone who's played with Word or it's bastard cousins this way thinks they got mad skillz. They're ready to take on any job and why desktop publishing is both a boon and a bane at the same time. You don't know what you're doing. Sit down and shut up. posted by Evil Wayne | 1:33 PM 2 comments 2 Comments: Shit! (quietly moving brikwars.doc to the recycle bin)
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