Word 6 Mac

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> A few months ago Microsoft (finally) released new versions
> of its popular Mac word processing/dtp (MS-Word) and
> spreadsheet (MS-Excel) programs. Buying into every new
> version of a program is a pricey proposition though and I
> wonder if anyone out there who has seen the new versions of
> either would care to give the rest of us a run down of the
> improvements that might matter to a paleontologist

I haven't used Word 6 for Mac myself; the following information is
based on (1) Microsoft propaganda, (2) Tonya Engst's
(tonya@tidbits.com) review of Word 6 in TidBITS #239, (3) various
postings on Word-Mac.

The general feeling seems to be that Word 6 is a bloated, sluggish,
RAM and disk space hungry monster, and that running it on anything
less than a high-end Mac is really not feasible.

As to features useful for palaentologists, I guess that depends a lot
on one's own style of work and resources. I should think that
AutoCaption (cross-referencing figures and tables), Character Styles,
and Mixed Page Orientation would be the most useful new features. But
I understand that WordPerfect 3.1 and FullWrite 2 also offer similar
features.

SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS

  - System 7 or later.
    
  - 2 to 3 MB of RAM, and often 1 MB or more for things like
    WordArt or Microsoft Graph or Equation Editor.
    
  - 10 to 27 MB of disk space (you could theoretically go
    lower than ten, but ten is a practical bottom line).
    
  - A 68020-based Macintosh or faster. However, if you plan
    to run Word on anything less than a 68040-based Macintosh or a
    Power Mac, you'll find it pretty much unusable.
    
  - NOTE: There is as yet no native PPC version of Word 6
    for, so it won't run any faster on a PowerMac than on a 040 Mac.
    
  - A 640 x 480 monitor is not essential, but using Word 6
    with a smaller screen will be a real pain.


NEW FEATURES OF WORD 6

Macros and AppleEvents

    Word 6 now supports macros (WordBasic) and scripts
    (AppleEvents and AppleScript). Simply put, one can record a
    set of actions/commands that one performs frequently, and
    then invoke them with a single keystroke.

Word Fields

    Information kept in previous versions in glossaries can now
    be inserted and updated automatically using Word Fields.

Templates

    Word 6 supports templates, which may include, in addition
    to text/graphics, macros, command settings, and toolbars to
    be used with that particular type of document.

AutoCorrect

    AutoCorrect substitutes automatically the typed text with a
    predefined text. E.g., one can type "withe", and when one
    hits the spacebar it will automatically replace it with
    "with the"; or one can define "hyps" as an alias for
    "Hystrichosphaeropsis", and AutoCorrect will replace the
    former with the latter automatically.

    NOTE: Several utilities which do the same thing have been
    available for quite some time, e.g. Riccardo Ettore's
    TypeIt4Me (shareware) or Thunder (commercial).

Multiple Level Lists

    Word 6 supports multiple level lists, which can be bulleted
    or numbered.

AutoCaption

    Word 6 supports automatic cross-referencing of tables,
    pictures, or equations. That is, one can configure Word to
    add automatically a label to an inserted figure (e.g.
    Figure 8) and refer in the text to that label. If later one
    deletes a figure or adds another one, Word will
    automatically change the label numbers and the references
    in text to those numbers.

Multiple Undos

    Several level of undos are now supported.

Grep-style Find and Replace

    The Find and Replace function now supports grep-style
    (regular pattern matching) searches. For instance, one can
    find all occurrences of the string "Genus " followed by a
    string of lower-case characters (a-z), irrespective of the
    exact sequence of characters.

Character Styles

    Word 6 supports, in addition to Paragraph Styles supported
    in previous versions, Character Styles (i.e. you can define
    a style -- 9-point size italic, for instance -- and apply
    it to several characters, instead of to the entire
    paragraph).

Unequal Columns

    Word 6 supports columns of unequal widths.

Mixed Page Orientation

    Before Word 6, you could not have landscape and portrait
    pages in the same document. Word 6 solves this problem by
    making orientation a section-based format.


-- 
  Florin Neumann
  florin@quartz.geology.utoronto.ca