New features being added to the CD-ROM, creating an index, preface
Lots of fun to report this week.
THE GOOD NEWS FIRST:
I'm putting all the photos collected over the past few years on the CD-ROM along with all the resources I can add, such as the electronic version of Miller's "History and Genealogy of the First Settlers of Colchester County....." among others.
Using a CD-ROM allows me to include all the material scanned in Nov 2004 in Seattle which is one researcher's work over 20 or so years photocopying material throughout New England and elsewhere.
Also, I'd several times looked through the several CD-ROM encyclopedias I have for various presidents, prime ministers, kings and queens so decided to make the ultimate list of sovereigns and prime ministers/presidents, so those tables will be on the CD-ROM.
I was going to include several other register reports on Hart, Jarvinen/Freeman, Newcomb, etc. in the book but with it reaching 1,500 pages and going to two volumes, those will be on the CD-ROM. Newcomb ends up being 300 pages. The others are mostly under 50 pages.
THE CHALLENGES:
I don't know what is wrong with my copies of Word97 and Word2000 because drag and drop clearly has a little check mark next to it but I can insert a picture from a file and it goes in ok but the only way to move it across the page is to modify the margins and I cannot put two pictures side by side. Well, I do have Wordperfect 8 which I haven't used in a long time and wouldn't you know it but it makes using pictures a dream. Drag and drop at your pleasure, resize, put captions under them and everything works like I thought Word should. I guess I'll have to get the latest version of Wordperfect after all.
So I now have two nice pages with my picture, Paul David Whidden's families color picture (he is co-author, having provided info on John/NH/1662 descent to the current day) and David Graham Whidden and his wife's B&W picture, Helen Henritzy Whidden's B&W picture taken about 1940-50 and Elsie Thoresen's (she provided 7,000 individuals in the WFNS supplement but asked to be mentioned as a contributor) color picture.
The body of the book has pretty much the same format throughout, though the bibliography is two column format and the index is three column format. However, the preface has many different formats, including tables, bold text, tables, graphics, bulleted lists and other features and every once in a while find the whole preface has gone bold on me or margins changed or the current option I can't seem to fix: the first line extends further to the left than my margin and the remaining body is further to the right than the margin. Doesn't let me fix it no matter what and the stupid tiny icons Wordpert uses don't let me play with tabs/margins/etc. like I've gotten used to Word. However, Word didn't work as I expected in creating table of contents (toc) entries and seems to put in headings without my chosing them merely based on bold and font size settings. Wordperfect reveal codes (I never dreamed I use that feature again but it's proven invaluable here) let me identify and remove the offending codes and set font size/bold/toc entries as I wished and it WORKS!!!!
In the meantime, I have started saving multiple copies of the preface to recover from when something "seems to happen on its own." Also finding hitting undo instead of making more changes is a good idea. One of the hazards of being a touch typist is you've entered a lot of typing before you realize you should have "undo"ed and have gone beyond the level of undo supported. I thing my ideal wordprocessing program would be a combination of the way Word and Wordperfect work. I doubt if such a program exists, though.
I am now half way through printing the first draft of the final copy of the book and manually created the toc entries so contents is three pages. Haven't linked preface and the body of the book yet, thus the need to manually create those entries which gave me another chance to go through the entire 1,500 pages and make minor changes. Of course, will now have to redo the index but hadn't yet printed that. Will in the next few days.
Lots of progress since the last notes.
Cheers, Ray
THE GOOD NEWS FIRST:
I'm putting all the photos collected over the past few years on the CD-ROM along with all the resources I can add, such as the electronic version of Miller's "History and Genealogy of the First Settlers of Colchester County....." among others.
Using a CD-ROM allows me to include all the material scanned in Nov 2004 in Seattle which is one researcher's work over 20 or so years photocopying material throughout New England and elsewhere.
Also, I'd several times looked through the several CD-ROM encyclopedias I have for various presidents, prime ministers, kings and queens so decided to make the ultimate list of sovereigns and prime ministers/presidents, so those tables will be on the CD-ROM.
I was going to include several other register reports on Hart, Jarvinen/Freeman, Newcomb, etc. in the book but with it reaching 1,500 pages and going to two volumes, those will be on the CD-ROM. Newcomb ends up being 300 pages. The others are mostly under 50 pages.
THE CHALLENGES:
I don't know what is wrong with my copies of Word97 and Word2000 because drag and drop clearly has a little check mark next to it but I can insert a picture from a file and it goes in ok but the only way to move it across the page is to modify the margins and I cannot put two pictures side by side. Well, I do have Wordperfect 8 which I haven't used in a long time and wouldn't you know it but it makes using pictures a dream. Drag and drop at your pleasure, resize, put captions under them and everything works like I thought Word should. I guess I'll have to get the latest version of Wordperfect after all.
So I now have two nice pages with my picture, Paul David Whidden's families color picture (he is co-author, having provided info on John/NH/1662 descent to the current day) and David Graham Whidden and his wife's B&W picture, Helen Henritzy Whidden's B&W picture taken about 1940-50 and Elsie Thoresen's (she provided 7,000 individuals in the WFNS supplement but asked to be mentioned as a contributor) color picture.
The body of the book has pretty much the same format throughout, though the bibliography is two column format and the index is three column format. However, the preface has many different formats, including tables, bold text, tables, graphics, bulleted lists and other features and every once in a while find the whole preface has gone bold on me or margins changed or the current option I can't seem to fix: the first line extends further to the left than my margin and the remaining body is further to the right than the margin. Doesn't let me fix it no matter what and the stupid tiny icons Wordpert uses don't let me play with tabs/margins/etc. like I've gotten used to Word. However, Word didn't work as I expected in creating table of contents (toc) entries and seems to put in headings without my chosing them merely based on bold and font size settings. Wordperfect reveal codes (I never dreamed I use that feature again but it's proven invaluable here) let me identify and remove the offending codes and set font size/bold/toc entries as I wished and it WORKS!!!!
In the meantime, I have started saving multiple copies of the preface to recover from when something "seems to happen on its own." Also finding hitting undo instead of making more changes is a good idea. One of the hazards of being a touch typist is you've entered a lot of typing before you realize you should have "undo"ed and have gone beyond the level of undo supported. I thing my ideal wordprocessing program would be a combination of the way Word and Wordperfect work. I doubt if such a program exists, though.
I am now half way through printing the first draft of the final copy of the book and manually created the toc entries so contents is three pages. Haven't linked preface and the body of the book yet, thus the need to manually create those entries which gave me another chance to go through the entire 1,500 pages and make minor changes. Of course, will now have to redo the index but hadn't yet printed that. Will in the next few days.
Lots of progress since the last notes.
Cheers, Ray
posted by Unknown at
12:44 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home