Re: Company Wide Change from WP to Word

[David Mitchell <mitchell -at- SOLAR -dot- SKY -dot- NET>]

> Our company President has directed that all WordPerfect x.x documents be
> converted to Word 6.0c!!!  We have been told NOT to argue the decision.

It's too bad you weren't involved in the decision.  I think it should
be up to the writing staff how they go about creating their
documents. That said, I am a huge Word fan.

One major overall complaint follows...

Master Documents do not work!  I have lost work in testing
this feature and I have known 5 others who have lost files or
significant work trying to use this feature.  You can construct long
documents using INCLUDE fields and other techniques, but steer clear
of Master Documents in Word.

> 1.  What are we facing?

Generally, Word 6.0 is solid.  I use it to produce technical
publications of average length (100-500 pages).  We chose Word over
other publishing tools (such as Frame and Ventura) because our
clients preferred Word for on-line viewing.

> 2.  Do you have any advice on graphic conversions?  We have a lot of linked
>     graphics in our WP files.

Many of our older documents were Word Perfect 5.1 documents.  Most
had a bitmap every page or two.  Again, most of that came in cleanly.

> 3.  Any idea how long it will take on average for each page?  We use headers,
>     footers, TOC & index coding, chapter oriented page & figure caption
>     numbering cross-referencing, and headline styles.

I don't really count conversions on a page-by-page basis.  I find
that once you get the first few pages done, patterns in the work
start emerging. Then, it's WordBasic time!  :-)

I haven't converted anything that used all of those features in
WordPerfect.  Hopefully, someone on your staff is familiar with Word?
There are some fundamental differences between the programs.  If not,
let me recommend three books that will help you grok Word.

The Word Companion, by the Cobb Group, published by Microsoft Press.
Good Word overview and general reference.

The Underground Guide to Word for Windows, by Woody Leonhard,
published by Addison-Wesley.  This is a must read.  It explains the
why behind most of the features in Word.  It's the first step to
becoming a Word freak.

The Hacker's Guide to Word for Windows, Second Edition, by Woody
Leonhard, Scott Krueger, and Vince Chen ( <-- I think).  This is the
Word master reference.  It's horrible to look at--really, typography
gone bad.  It's also poorly indexed.  That said, it is the only book
that I will not let leave my desk at work.  It documents almost every
bug I've run across in Word (and I've hit most of them!).  It's
approach is centered around WordBasic, but since WordBasic commands
directly correspond to Word commands, the bugs are often the same.


> 4.  Would WIN95 Word 7.0 help?  Beta copies are available now, but would Word
>     6.0c use its files?

I haven't seen this.  I am not brave enough to use Beta for
production publications.
David Mitchell (mitchell -at- sky -dot- net)
GTW s+:- v+++ W++$>++++ po--- b++ e++ u-