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Text editors
One of the main reasons for people to buy computers (specially before the multimedia games and Internet become so popular) was having a text processor, a “sophisticated typewriter ”. This kind of program, like a key piece of the domestic computers and office software, is without a doubt one of the tools more poorly understood and badly used of the world. It has been used like a fancy typewriter, but that is only the start of what it may offer us. A text processor and a good printer (laser or inkjet) can be regarded more as a professional press than as an old mechanical typewriter.
Texts: with or without formatting?
Certainly the first text processors, combined with a rudimentary matrix printer, did not offer much more that the venerable and noisy Olivetti. But that was quite a long time ago. The processors have incorporated features that enter the desktop publishing field, and even professional edition in these last years.
The quality of a document prepared in Word, StarWrite, Wordperfect or a similar program, does not have anything to envy to the product of a printing press. But the program will not do it on its own; a few criteria of page layout must be considered, typography as well and, especially, good taste and common sense (the less common of senses, at it is often said.) Some of the interesting benefits incorporated in these modern processors facilitate much obtaining such results. Each program handles its own code and the files they generate usually are specific for each program, and frequently only for the version in which they have been prepared. This is the source of many problems to open documents of a processor in another one, or to use different versions in a given application.
To prevent having format problems, many experts recommend to first, write simple texts without worrying about letters, sizes, spaced... the style will be applied when all the text is written already. Additionally, the text without format can be saved (.txt format) to reuse it if it is necessary, in any other program.
The programs work in a wysiwyg mode (what you see is what you get, theorically at least.) Usually, a word processor has several display modes, and they tend to work faster in normal / draft mode. From time to time you may check the preview mode to see what it will look like when printed.Adapting the program interface.
These toolbars on the top part of the screen facilitate applying style to the text: it is always easier to click some icon once than unfolding the corresponding menu and drill down to the wished option. Since the bars of icons are configurable and usually they are over-populated, we can eliminate all those rarely used buttons and, keep those we use frequently. For example, to make text bold, it is enough to click on the icon with .N.... and if we learn some keyboard shortcuts, we can save even more time, traveling less from the keyboard to the mouse and from the center of the screen to the menu bar. The most practical shortcuts are those related to edition tasks: copy, cut, paste... to see the combination of keys which activates them, just take a look next to the options of the menu Edition: Ctrl + C: copies the selection; Ctrl + V: pastes; Ctrl + X: cuts. The main ones are learned immediately and they will save you lots of time.
Although all present day processors work with the mouse, for moving around in the text it is still faster to use the keyboard: the direction keys (the arrows) allow a fast and fine movement, and in combination with other keys they allow fast selections. If you don’t use them, and you are a regular text writer / editor, take a few minutes to check out your program help or your manual, because learning these simple selection and movement keys will mean a huge time saving each day.
Typesetting control.
The text processors are able to make a good typesetting. A series of recommendations must be considered, and we will mention some here. The options can be accessed in different menus and palettes for paragraph and character formatting.
Small caps / versals.
If we use text in capital letter for emphasis, or if we want to include abbreviations, like the UN, NATO... is preferable to use small capitals “pequeñas minúsculas” more elegant when combined with normal lowercase text than all caps words. There are a number of fonts specifically designed to work like versals (SC variants, from small caps): it is preferable to use these if you can. The programs may simulate them with any font, but it is not so professional, barely acceptable. If you don’t have the real stuff, try it if it looks better with faked small caps than with the ordinary capital letters.
Conversion capital to small letters and vice versa
If we have problems with texts that include parts in capital letters which should be lowercase or sentence-style, starting in Capital, then in lowercase,it may be solved quickly without rewriting. For example, in Word, we chose Format - change to Capital letters and Small letters and automatically will be fixed according to what we indicate. The next article of this section treats this matter in detail.
Including graphics and illustrations.
Although the examples of clipart included with most programs usually are dreadful, you can also get original images in standard formats, like bmp, tif or jpg. We have diverse options to place the image and to surround it with text, even following the irregular contour of the image.
Text in columns
It can be easily applied to the whole document; the columns can be symmetrical or non symmetrical, and you can choose the space between them. The implementation of this feature isn’t as sophisticated as in desktop publishing program, but it may suffice.
Using tabs and tables
They allow an exact distribution of the text and data in columns and rows. This option is necessary for listings, indexes... if we chose to use a table, we can specify the size of the cells, the type of contour, color of the cells, and much more.
Automatic spelling correcction
Although automatic spelling and grammar correction isn’t free from some exasperating tics, it does offer some interesting details: automatic conversion of normal quotes ' " ", into typographical quotes ’ “ ”, replacing two consecutive hyphens -- for an em dash, —, putting the first letter in a sentence in capitals, ant many more details. A quick language spelling correction is available in most programs, and it just takes a few moments to check a whole document. In most applications you can add your own terms to the dictionary used by the program, making it flexible enough for any user.
Using styles
Using and managing styles is perhaps one of the most remarkable characteristics (and the most underused by users probably, in many cases by those users who would benefit more from styles.) With the styles, applying format to the text gets very simplified. If we defined the styles before beginning to type in the text, we will not have to take care to define size, fonts, alignment, spacing... with a single style definition it will be applied tens or hundreds of times, —without mistakes. Because of its singular importance, especially for long documents and Web pages, we discuss it with greater detail in another section of this Web.
An additional benefit of the styles —beyond the control and automation of formatting tasks— is how easily we can obtain a table of contents or index, generated automatically by the program from the Titles of level 1, 2 level... body text, etc. and, in addition, we can also use a very useful function, the Outline of the document, which allows to visualize the structure of the document and to move quickly from a section to another, on the basis of the style definitions. This function is specially useful for writings in which it is important the structuring and relation of the parts within the whole (for example, the the contents of a Website.)
More details on text processors and advanced text treatment in the following page: text and desktop publishing.
