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Display Pitch |
The information in this document applies to:
WordPerfect® 5.1 for DOS
Problem
Solutions: The information in this paper attempts to answer four questions about display pitch: What is display pitch? Why do we have display pitch in WordPerfect? What problems does display pitch create for customers? What can customers do about display pitch problems? What is display pitch? Display pitch is a measurement that WordPerfect uses to determine where features that have "left edges" will be placed on the screen to avoid text overlapping. Those features include columns, tables, tabs and indents, and graphics boxes. Automatic display pitch is "on" when you start WordPerfect. Essentially it looks for situations where text may overlap, and when it finds overlapping text, it adjusts the display so there is no longer a problem. You may have noticed that when you are typing columns and change to the Small font attribute, the "white space" between columns expands. This is an example of display pitch adjusting the screen to avoid overlapping text. Display pitch does not affect the way text is printed. Why do we have display pitch in WordPerfect? Why does WordPerfect need to adjust the screen? What causes text to overlap? Why don't pre-5.0 versions of WordPerfect have this feature? To understand some of these things, we must understand a few things about the hardware environment. Background Personal computers have two modes for display. The first, text mode, is the most common display mode. The second, graphics mode, is becoming more popular. Both modes have advantages and disadvantages, and WordPerfect uses both modes. In text mode, the screen is composed of an 80x25 grid of "cells," and each cell can contain one character. ROM BIOS contains the information for the characters that can be used in the cells, so when you type a letter, it is a very quick operation to display the pre-formed character in a cell. The width and height of each cell are identical. Thus, the advantage to text mode is that it is the fastest mode for entering text, but it is nearly impossible to tell anything about the actual font you are using. WordPerfect uses this mode for text entry and editing. In graphics mode, WordPerfect can create any font by turning on or off a series of pixels. In the View Document screen for example, WordPerfect uses information from the .PRS file to determine the appearance of the characters you have entered, including the vertical and horizontal size. WordPerfect also uses the WP.DRS file to represent the character in either a serif or sans-serif font (in normal, bold, or italics). The advantage to using graphics mode is that the display font can be identical to the font you want to print. You can easily see where characters will actually appear on the printed page. The disadvantage is that graphics mode is slower than text mode. An example of graphics mode in WordPerfect is the View Document screen. Why does WordPerfect need to adjust the screen? Knowing the difference between text mode and graphics mode, we can begin to understand the problem. Since some printed fonts are proportionally-spaced (each character doesn't occupy the same amount of space), the text screen can look different than the printed page. In Figure 1, (graphic left out) you can see a text screen from WordPerfect. On the top line of the screen are five W's. On the second line of the screen are five a's. Since all characters occupy the same amount of space in text screens, you have no real visual clue as to the amount of space the characters will actually occupy on the printed page. If, however, we move the cursor to the end of each line and note the measurement next to "Pos" on the status line, we can see in Figure 2 (graphic left out) that the two measurements are different. Assuming that the font is the same for both lines of text, we can tell that W's must be wider than a's. When we use View Document to view the lines of text in graphics mode, we can easily see that the W's are wider than the a's as in Figure 3 (graphic left out). At this point, there is still not much of a problem in text mode. WordPerfect can change the number of characters it allows on one line of text to at least let you know how many characters will fit on one line of the printed page. In this example, we would be able to type more a's on one line of the text screen than W's. Sometimes the text will extend beyond the right edge of the screen, but you can still use the cursor to display it, and it is still editable. Obviously, users will not often exclusively type wide letters on one line and narrow letters on another line, but they will change fonts within a single document, and using different font sizes causes the same effect. Using text mode is always faster than using graphics mode, but the on- screen location of text may be deceiving. For example, two characters that are both 2" from the left margin on the printed page may not align on the screen in text mode. What causes overlap? When you use certain features in WordPerfect, it is important that text in the text mode aligns as it will on the printed page. These features are any features which use absolute measurements to create "new left edges," such as columns, tables, tabs, indents, and graphics boxes. The previous solution of simply allowing more text on a line without worrying about correct alignment doesn't work well with these features since text may overlap. Consider the following sequence of screens: In Figure 4 (graphic left out), you see a WordPerfect document with columns. There is no problem with column alignment since the text is in the same font and each line is about the same length. In Figure 5 (graphic left out), we change to a smaller font halfway down the column. WordPerfect knows that this font can have more characters on a line than the previous font, but when WordPerfect begins to allow more characters on the line, text in column 1 begins to overlap with text in column 2. The text in column 1 needs more room horizontally before it wraps if WordPerfect is to accurately represent the amount of text that will be on one line on the printed page. To remedy the problem, WordPerfect detects the overlap and recalculates the display pitch (the amount of space one on-screen character represents). Figure 5 (graphic left out) shows how WordPerfect has adjusted the display pitch to move the left column edge of column 2 to the right and prevent text overlapping What factors cause WordPerfect to adjust display pitch? Display pitch is originally calculated for the document initial font. Two conditions must exist on the current screen before WordPerfect will adjust the display pitch. 1. There needs to be dissimilar character spacing on more than one line of text. For example, one line in a column must contain more characters than another line. This usually happens when you change fonts, but can even happen when you have more narrow characters (a's, l's, etc.) than wide characters (W's, M's, etc.). 2. You need to use one of the WordPerfect features that call for an absolute measurement. For example: a. Tabs and Indents--They must align text vertically. b. Graphic Boxes--Text that wraps around them must have an even right margin to give the user the impression that text is wrapping around something. c. Columns--The left margin of columns after column 1 need to be aligned and text must not overlap. d. Tables. All text within a cell must fit in the cell, and the left-most and right-most borders of the table must align. Why didn't pre-5.0 versions of WordPerfect adjust for display pitch? Prior to WordPerfect 5.0, WordPerfect did not account for proportionally spaced text. Characters and line breaks on the screen did not necessarily represent text as it would appear on the printed page. We had no way of knowing how a font change would effect the spacing of characters. For a long time, this wasn't much of a factor. Few people had proportionally spaced fonts, and few people used multiple fonts. When 5.0 was developed, however, the concept of intelligent printing was introduced which meant, among other things, that WordPerfect knew specifics about character spacing and could correctly calculate the number of characters that would fit on one line of the printed page. Prior to 5.0, WordPerfect counted the number of characters and wrapped the line of text when the number of characters exceeded the number of characters an "average" font might fit on one line. Display pitch wasn't needed because WordPerfect did not make adjustments for different character widths or font changes. Left edge features aligned, and text did not overlap. What problems does display pitch cause for customers? Regarding display pitch, customers generally complain about two things. The first is simply that display pitch adjusts. The second is that when it does adjust, it doesn't re-adjust back to the way it was before when the factors causing it to adjust are removed. One example of the first complaint can occur when customers type text around a graphics box. When they type the text, they notice that the graphics box moves slightly. Each line causes the graphics box to move even more. Even though the customers have not changed fonts, the slight differences in characters widths cause one line of text to extend further horizontally than the one before it which in turn causes display pitch to adjust the space between the text and the graphics box to avoid overlapping text with the graphics box. Another example is when customers are typing in a table and change to a smaller font in column B. Suddenly, instead of the entire table being displayed on the screen, only a giant column B is displayed and the rest of the table doesn't fit on the screen. Display pitch is working as it should, adjusting the display so that the left-most and right-most table columns still align and text doesn't overlap, but the effect frustrates the customer. The second complaint is fairly self-explanatory. Display pitch adjusts to compensate for overlapping text but doesn't readjust when the factors causing the overlap are removed or are no longer displayed on the screen. What can you do about it? Customers with the complaint that display pitch adjusts text on the screen have few appealing options short of waiting for a version of WordPerfect that lets them create and edit text in graphics mode. WPCorp. has announced plans to create such versions of WordPerfect for the Windows and OS/2 PM platforms and is shipping a version for the Macintosh. The customers can change display pitch to manual and enter a display pitch measurement, but this can produce two unfavorable results. First, overlapping will probably occur. This may seem acceptable, especially when the overlapping text isn't displayed on the screen, but is not a good solution because once the text does appear on the screen, it will appear as if some text is missing and will probably cause confusion (and another phone call). Customers with the second complaint have an easier solution. Once a factor causing overlapping text is not on the screen, either because the customer deleted it or because the customer has scrolled beyond it, all the customer needs to do is rewrite the screen (Ctrl-F3,r or Ctrl-F3, Ctrl-F3) to re- adjust the display pitch. Other times the display pitch is re-adjusted are when the customer chooses a new document initial font (there are many reasons why customers should use a document initial font rather than choosing a base font at the top of the document, and having a good display pitch is an example), re-selects the printer, or clears the document editing screen. For your information, the reason we don't automatically re-adjust display pitch after the factors causing overlapping text are removed is because we feel it would be disconcerting for the document to appear to "zoom in" and "zoom out" as the customer scrolls through portions of the document where degrees of overlapping may vary. Dealing with calls Try to identify which aspect of display pitch the customers are frustrated with. If they are frustrated that display pitch adjusts at all, you might need to educate them about the feature. We are looking at improving the display pitch documentation to eventually help the education process. If they are frustrated about the screen not re-adjusting when the factors causing text overlap are removed, explain the screen rewrite option and mark the hot list for the display pitch re-adjusting heading. Development is in the process of watching the hot list numbers and trying to determine what they can do to eliminate customer frustration and telephone calls to Customer Support. |
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