flemmings | (no subject)

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Henh. Discover by accident how to make the pixellated fonts look solid(er). Control Panel- Display- Appearance- Effects button-- Use the following method to smooth the edges of screen fonts- and select Clear Type. At some resolutions this may do horrible things, as it does in IE for some people, but suddenly everything is much clearer. (And to my eyes, smaller as well, but that may be an illusion.)

Of course, now I wonder if I've altered font sizes here in IE somehow, but I don't think you can do that through the Windows control panel. In fact, I don't think you can set default IE font size period, which is vexing.

Even Word's fonts look better than they did, but 2003 is still having trouble with Courier 13. What font face and size do you guys regularly write in?

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Any plain serif font that isn't Times New Roman. Garamond and Georgia and Century are generally acceptable on the Mac, but nothing but Linux Libertine displays to my satisfaction on the netbook. I usually keep the font size set at 12 and nudge the zoom between 85%-110% if I need the text larger or smaller.

The advantages of a Mac, I guess, is that you /can/ zoom between 85-110%. I wish Word wasn't so klunky that way. 75- 100- 150 and/or page width.

I don't have access to 2003 anymore, but you should be able to type any % size you want into Word. It gives you menu defaults of 75, 100, 150, but you don't have to use them.

Late to this - so probably irrelevant now but my two cents agrees - you should be able to key in any size zoom. I switch from Times New Roman(11pt) and work at 110%, to Arial or Verdana at 10 on 100%.

This may sound odd but the switch in font/font size use to relax my eyes believe it or not!

But now that I have new super-duper variable progressive lenses and probably can work with whatever the 'puters throw at me ... I don't have time to sit down and play. Oh the irony. Hah!

I can't make anything 110%. I can type in a new value but it doesn't change the text size, and switches back to the old value once I take my cursor out of the font size box. Am I missing a step here?

Sorry dear ... I cannot help you there. Really you should be able to just key the value in, press 'enter' and it should work. I would have no idea why it will not stay the size you want it. So sorry. Not a tecchie person so cannot help.

Press enter. So simple when you know.

I type it, in but the minute I put the cursor back on the text, the box reverts back to the previous setting. Are you supposed to press something to make the new number take effect, or did it take effect right away when you did it?

Ha! I have 2003 on the old computer in the basement. Looks like this question is solved, but if you have further questions, at least I have a way to check for you.

I'm so used to highlight -> perform action -> effect, that enter never uhh entered my head. I associate that key with online, for some reason.

I prefer sans-serif fonts. So Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, most often. Usually 10 point. Office 2007 (which I'm forced to use at work), defaults to the sans-serif font Calibri (an improvement over its earlier default of Times New Roman, which I despise).

10 point at what resolution? Those look smallish to me, and in Word 2003 prints a solid black (as if it's been bolded) that's, well, disconcerting after the non-bold courier I'm used to.

The earlier Offices at least let you change that default, whatever the later abomination requires. I don't even *have* Calibri.

My work monitor is 21" and runs at some ridiculous resolution like 1200x1600.

Aaagh. And you can read a 10 pt font at this resolution? Or do you bump up the zoom?

I think it's more that I keep the monitor close to me.

I don't even *have* Calibri.

I had the same problem with Microsoft 2000, but sans-serif fonts are easier on the eye for masses of words. Word 2003 should have Book Antiqua, which looks quite like Calibri, and shows quite well with font 11.

Interesting, but 11 looks bitsy bitsy to my eye. And that's at the second lowest resolution this monitor is capable of. Either people must work from laptops or like

summer_queen up there, sit right on top of their screen. Whereas I'm (measures) 80 cm from mine for choice.

Heh, I actually like Times New Roman, usually a 12pt.

I would suspect it's an odd number font size problem. Word prefers to increment fonts by evens. Does 12 Courier look any better/worse?

This problem with Calibri happens a lot -- our Mtl office upgraded to Office 07 and started sending us docx documents in Calibri, which of course fucked the formatting all to hell and back when we opened them in Office 03, w/o Calibri. :p Stupid M$.

12 Courier looks smaller, basically. Word 2000 was quite happy to save things in 13-- is why all my docs are that font. But yeah, 03 really doesn't know what to do with it, and the spacing is weird when I write in it. (The other thing is that Word 2003 has very very blue toolbars in XP. I keep poking at themes and colours but nothing turns it into the nice pale blue of Win 98/ 2000.)

Ohh, MS and its non-backward-compatible idiocy. Other OS are looking tempting, but they don't have the wp software Windows does.

One of the first things I do with XP is switch it all to "classic mode" (themes, start menu, everything I can find). But you're right, even so, the colours are off. (which makes matching screenshots a royal PITA.)

If there was a NoteTab for Mac, I would be ecstatic. I've tried a couple text editors, but they default to a tiny font. >.> (Like 8?) And just aren't ... well, they aren't NoteTab. :p

As much as I love Scrivener for keeping my novel organized, it just seems like overkill for the rest of my haphazard writing.

First I'd heard of NoteTab. Aside from opening tabs, what particular virtues does it have that Word doesn't?

Ahh, Scrivener! That's the name I was trying to recall.

It's also a fairly powerful HTML editor, which is why I fell in love with it originally, back when I was hand-coding websites. It can do colour-coding and checking that all your HTML tags match up and behave properly.

It's small and portable enough that I can run it off a flash drive, which means that I can work on files at work, without having to install it and leave a history of my open docs behind on that machine.

I write in Arial. If I print it off, I change the font to Times New Roman or Courier.

Mh. What font size? And at what resolution?

Basically, ever since I lost the monitor whose natural ratio was probably 800x600, and that I kept at 620x400, font sizes have always seemed too large or too small-- or, basically, the wrong size.

oh, right! Well, I work between four different computers so the resolution is all over the place. My primary laptop is 1600 x 900 which is an odd size.

I've just opened the latest fic I'm working on and it's actually calibri 11pt, which seems to be the default for Office 2007. Oh, and now I see that older fics are times new roman 12pt and arial 12pt.

I think it really depends on if I started a story in notepad or not.

(throws up hands in despair) Calibri 11pt at 1600 x 900? How can you even read it?

At the end of a long work-day of staring at computer monitors I do tend to up the size of my browser fonts and I'll zoom in for my Word documents. ^_^

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