[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

The downsides to this are that (1) Very little formatting is permitted in
comments (compared to ordinary text), (2) if you display or print the text
without the "markup," the comments will disappear, and (3) no, there isn't
any very good way to print the comments separately. If they're the only
markup, you can select "List of markup" in the Print dialog, but you have no
choice about the way they're presented. Comments are intended to be a
"reviewing" tool, used in the process of preparing a document (especially
when the effort is collaborative), not as part of a finished document.

If this document is purely for your own personal use, I'd say that this
approach might be satisfactory, but I wouldn't count on it for anything to
be printed and distributed (unless it's just for student handouts).

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"
wrote in message ...
I've been evaluating choices from your various comments (with all the pros
and cons of the different approaches), and while doing so came across a
file
I created a few months back for a study I was doing of Aristotle's
Poetics.
In it I used "comments" as the way to tie all my analysis and commentary
to
specific lines and words in his text. I had forgotten about this
technique,
but I'm now looking at it and wondering if it would perhaps be the best
way
to go. It would let the main text be easily numbered by MSWord (i.e., in
the
case of other texts that don't already have traditional line numbers).
The
original text could be set at perhaps 35 or so points wide, thus leaving
the
right side of the page for as many comments as may arise.
Are there are drawbacks to this approach that you might know of? Can I
later aggregate all the comments into its own file, if need be?
Thanks.


"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:

If you need automatic line numbering, then you may want to go back to
square
1 and use ordinary text (with line numbering) for your Greek text and
marginal frames for the commentary. Note that frames cannot exceed one
page,
so that could be a drawback. You *could* use connected text boxes, but
the
marginal frames have the advantage that they can be part of a paragraph
style (as described in
http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/MarginalText.htm).

The alternative would be to enter the line numbers manually; if you want
numbering every five lines, say, you'd pretty much have to just use four
line breaks and a number in series to match your parallel text. I think
this
would be not only difficult but subject to a lot of problems, especially
if
the parallel text is not absolutely uniform (i.e., no extra space
between
paragraphs, no changes in font size, etc.).

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"

wrote in message
...
Hi,
I didn't realize that the text going from one row to the next (in a
given
column) would all stay together. That's very good, and solves that
concern I
raised.

Regarding the numbering, if I'm not doing the Aristotelian corpus or
the
Platonic corpus (with their respective traditional numbering systems
which
I
would enter manually), but giving some works a new set of line
numbers,
how
to do? I can't get auto line numbering to work in a table, and even
if I
did, the line numbers would presumably be in the same column as the
text --
which is ok I guess, if I could get it to happen...
Thanks again.
(Hope it isn't as hot down in your neighborhood as it happens to be up
in
the NorthEast this Independence weekend!)
John Gillis

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:

Your text is not broken into "rows." It's broken into columns. You
can
easily select a column and paste it into a new document, then use
Table
|
Convert | Table to Text, separating with paragraph marks. So no real
problem
there. As for the line numbers I was assuming a column for those;
that
is,
according to your description as I understood it, you'd have a
column
for
the primary text, a column for the line numbers, and a column for
the
commentary.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"

wrote in message
...
Thanks again!
I have to run off to an event in a few minutes, so I'll review
what
you
said
in the morn, but re the tables I have two potential problems:
1. This breaking of the primary text into long "rows" in the
table,
means
that the text is really broken, in the sense that if I ever need
to
put
the
text of that particular book, e.g, "The Categories" in some other
doc,
I
have
to paste each row of text out and reconstruct it the new file.
Not
impossible, since it might only be 20 or 30 "rows" per file, but
still
an
occassional pain in the butt.
2. not sure how line numbering would work. Would I need to do
them
manually? I'm referring not the the manual Bekker numbering, but
if I
was
numbering a text that currently doesn't have accepted numbers,
thus
would
want to use Word's line numbering feature.
(Re my use of text boxes, apparently no way to put line numbers in
the
text
of a text box, so that is a bummer....)

I'll have to look up marginal frames in the morn, since I don't
know
what
those are.

I'm glad I don't have to right this response in Latin, since my
Latin
from
high school is terrible grin
Thanks
John Gillis
New York City

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:

Two superior options leap to mind. As I read your description, I
at
first
thought that perhaps marginal frames would help (see
http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/MarginalText.htm).

On balance, however, I believe what you need is a three-column
borderless
table. You can make the columns the desired width to accommodate
the
proportional amount of text in them, and text in one column will
flow
from
one page to the next as desired. Although Word is never happy
with
very
long
tables, it is much more tolerant of them than of multiple text
boxes
(not to
mention that the maximum number of text boxes that can be linked
is
32).
Word shouldn't have a problem with a 20-page table at all,
however,
provided
that you start a new row from time to time (what Word really
doesn't
like is
long single-row tables; it's best to try to keep row height to
less
than
one
page). Whenever you need to "synch" the text, you can start a
new
row.
If
there are any headings or other breaks in the text, you can also
split
the
table for them, and that will make Word even happier.

In a previous life, I was a Latin teacher, with an M.A. in
Classics
(Emory
1972), so I'm eager to help with this project if I can.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"

wrote in message
...
Thanks much for the insights.
--I didn't know how to disable the drawing canvas thingy, and
you
solved
that easily.
--Also I didn't know about the 2 pages per sheet feature. I
looked at
it
but I'm not sure yet if it adds anything to my project. And
since I
need
the left text box to be smaller than the right, I kind of
doubt it
will
work
for me, since it splits page equally.

What I'm trying to do is set up a template that can be used
for
scholarly
analysis of classic texts.
The format I want to establish is actually three-fold (even
though
I
talked
in my initial post of two side-by-side boxes.)
1. left side: portion of text (e.g., Aristotle's works)
flowing
from
left
text box to left text box, and so on to end. This box is not
full
height
page, and only goes to about "4" to the right, in the measure
scale
along
top
of page)
1a. (? in same text box or not? -- inclusion of the famous
Bekker
line
numbers (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekker_numbers for
description
of
these line numbers), adjacent to lines of original text.
2. right side: text box (wider and taller than left text box)
for
commentary
on classic text. This commentary will often be referring to
specific
line
numbers from left box. This text also flows, and won't
necessarily be
exactly across from exact text it is referencing, since if
there
is a
lot
of
commentary it might run down the page faster.
********
Aside from the Bekker numbers, which have to be entered
manually
in
the
text
since they are not conventionally sequential that would work
in
Word,
there
are new texts into which I plan to add an entirely new line
number
system,
and here I will probably use the Word numbering system,
starting
with
"10000"
for example, assuming they will flow from one text box to the
next
on
the
left.

Any suggestions on how to set up this kind of document would
be
welcome.

John Gillis

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:

You definitely want to get rid of the drawing canvas
(disable it
on
the
General tab of Tools | Options). But if you have a drawing
canvas,
you
also
have a version of Word that allows you to create two pages
per
sheet
(on
the
Margins tab of Page Setup, choose "2 pages per sheet" under
"Multiple
pages"). You'd still need the text boxes in order to have
the
parallel
text
structure, but at least it would be easier to create
header/footer
text,
etc.

If you'll tell us more about what you're trying to
accomplish,
we
might
be
able to help more.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to
the
newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"

wrote in message
...
One further note -- the two text boxes per page are inside
a
"drawing
object". Perhaps this is my problem....?

" wrote:

Hi,
I created a doc with 20 pages landscape mode and placed
two
text
boxes
per
page side by side, linked such that the left hand box
links
all
the
way
down
thru page 20 (and all the right hand boxes are also
linked.)
Then I
cut
and