I prefer to do the writing or typing first and determine the layout later. I
concentrate first on getting the words right. Word makes this much easier
because you can fiddle with formatting indefinitely and experiment with
style definitions to propagate changes across an entire document.
As for the PDFs, it appears that it is not the printable area that is
shrinking but the print area; are you sure you're printing with "No
scaling"? Could this be a result of printing to a specific printer?
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org
"Bert Coules" wrote in message
...
Suzanne S Barnhill wrote:
Your printable area shouldn't shrink when printing to PDF; if so, it
should be possible to redefine it in your PDF software.
I've experimented a fair bit with this, and whatever settings I adopt in
my PDF reader (Adobe Reader 9) the printable area *does* shrink. The
page-by-page formatting remains absolutely spot-on, but the margins (top
and bottom as well as left and right) all increase, with a subsequent
reduction in the font size. I can see no reason for it and it's somewhat
baffling.
I took to Word like a duck to water; it has always seemed more intuitive
to me. Part of that, I'm sure, was that Word was the first Windows word
processor I used, and the GUI made everything easier; WP was slow to move
to a GUI and made a hash of it at first...
Ah, that didn't affect me, since I continued to use WP 5.0 for DOS long
after I first (reluctantly) installed Windows for other reasons. I saw no
need to move to a GUI version, partly because the DOS software already did
everything I required, and partly because I was very familiar with it and
didn't want to start learning all over again.
I suspect that how well you take to either program depends at least
slightly on what type of writing you do and how you do it. For me, the
linear approach makes perfect sense: You set up a number of conditions
(margins, font, spacing and all the rest) then enter text until you need
to change one of them. Make the change, then off you go again. Simple,
obvious and logical!
Bert