Word Tricks Introduction - Word Processing - Articles about Computing

This is the first real article on Word Tricks. The previous dictation was a general article on how to teach computerization.

Word is not my favorite word processor. I have used many word processors over the course of time, both multilingual Hebrew-English word processors and English word processors. Word does not have the best features of these programs to say the least.

However, there is no question that it is the overwhelming favorite in businesses and offices and it is the format in which data is exchanged � ignoring the threat of viruses � throughout the world. This series on word processing will therefore concentrate on Word and my knowledge of other word processors will help me know which features could have been included in Word so that we can find ways to improve Word to make it the best possible program despite its many limitations.

The other word processing programs which I do enjoy more are as follows:

Word Perfect. Poor Word Perfect went through a number of changes over the course of its frantic life. It peaked with Version 5.1 for DOS which was a splendid and easy to use program and at which it maximized the power of DOS. Version 6.0 for DOS brought the DOS capabilities to new heights as it was able to work in graphics mode and do many things with more precision and accuracy than any other program in the world. It�s trick was the F11 key which allowed people to see exactly what was going on behind the scenes and would be able to reveal the codes, it was indeed called Reveal Codes, and in which the user could have the ultimate flexibility in working with the program.

Unfortunately, WordPerfect went through a number of bad business decisions and today no longer holds the market share that it held before. This is unfortunate because it deserved better attention.

Bilingual and Hebrew-English word processors. Today, Word has control over the word processing market of the world including work done in Hebrew. We will therefore stress Word in our work.

However, several other good programs should be mentioned as well since they are still used in some offices which require Hebrew around the world.

WordMill is no longer being produced. That was the first serious word processor after WordStar in Hebrew. It was prepared using archaic programming languages. The document size which was an important factor in those days was doubled as each row of characters had a secondary row explaining to the computer how to deal with the letters. Printing in all but the most recent version involved an absurd task of first going through a sometimes lengthy pagination process and the new document which resulted from this process was the basis for the print job.

Therefore if the slightest change had to be made the computer operator would have to return to the original document not the paginated document, make the change, and then repaginate the document before it could be printed. Thus, computer operators learned not to bother making trivial changes. A missing comma was added by hand � it just wasn�t worth making the change.

This WordMill was preceded by WordStar a veritable program which was able to do many of the tasks well before its time and some of these tasks were not fully implemented in many other programs today. However, it took a great deal of contorting to be able to actually produce a Hebrew mail merged document using WordStar and even some of the basic tasks which are done quite easily today involved many steps which did not necessarily follow any logic.

WordStar was the program which gave us many of the shortcuts which we use today. If today you can copy, cut, and paste using the Control C, Control X, and Control V keyboard shortcuts don't think that they were invented by Bill Gates. He took them from WordStar just as he took the Control Enter page break shortcut from WordPerfect. NOTE TO MYSELF: Please add this to the WordPerfect section.

Today WordStar can still be used in many applications in many systems in which a plain text editor is required. It can probably prepare plain text much better than Notepad because it doesn�t offer any additional features and it can then be easily converted from WordStar format to plain text.

In the foreign language versions including Hebrew the conversion does become a bit more complicated. The Hebrew programs today recognize the location of foreign language characters in a different way and in a different position from WordStar. It therefore does require a conversion program beyond the WordStar conversion program to shift these characters. However, WordStar was an excellent program in its time and it did a great deal to help promote the PC to the position that it has today.

Another Hebrew word processing program was Einstein. This was my favorite program and it is rare for me to day this but it actually had no bugs. It was a small program. The entire program took less than 100K even in its most advanced versions. It was also the most copied program and development of Einstein never continued into the world of Windows. It was fast, easy to learn, and very very effective.

True, there were people who saw what they thought were bugs in the program. However, they just did not understand the philosophy or thought behind its production and a few sessions of training helped them to understand how to benefit and make the most of the program.

EinsteinWriter was based on WordStar completely skipping over the stage of WordMill. It took the steps that WordStar has but made each one shorter, more systematic and organized. A good typist could produce work very quickly with Einstein and probably finish the job much faster than she would with today�s Word program. One advantage of Einstein for touch typists is that it was before the days in which the mouse became popular. Thus, everything was done with the keyboard. A rick home I and I don't know the source once said that if our Creator wanted us to use a mouse then he would have given us a third hand. I�d like to give him a hand of applause for making this wise comment. It is true that the present day word processors actually do slow down the typist.

Einstein was prepared during the old PC and XT days in which there were ten not twelve function keys in two columns on the left side of the keyboard. This keyboard was far more intuitive for touch typists who were then able to feel what needed to be done in order to produce their work without ever looking at the keyboard. They could concentrate on the monitor on the screen and on their document. This resulted in a tremendous increase in speed. You might also mention that the split keyboard also slows down a Hebrew typist since the "�" key is in a bad location.

Today�s keyboard and programs are for executives who want to lean back in big armchairs and accomplish things as if by remote control with their mouse. This is certainly a luxurious way of working but it definitely does not increase the speed of a good typist.

True, today�s programs do have keyboard shortcuts but none of them are anywhere near as effective and as smooth and convenient as those easily available in the old DOS days, before the days of the mouse.

Perhaps move this into Word Processing � The Good Ol� Days.

Einstein is no longer marketed anywhere in the world. It also will not work properly in today�s computers. There are ways to force it to work by running it from a diskette rather than from the hard drive. In this way you can read old versions of your document and work with them. This little trick is very important for many of my clients who come sometimes almost in tears because they want to be able to read their old documents and they were not able to because the new computers cannot understand Einstein features.

What has really progressed in bilingual word processing since the early 1980s?

The truth is that not much has really happened. Basically, word processors today are prettier but the basic work is the same. Since they are so dependent on the mouse the productivity increase in other aspects is reduced by the dependency on the mouse and that makes the total increase in productivity much less that before. The effects that the programs have are basically the same except that now you have many features that can be automated although there were macros that could have done some of these things and some things exist which didn�t exist before, such as automatic numbering and bullets. The resulting printout is of course prettier today but that�s based on the improvements in the printer as well as the fact that today computers use fonts in a much more efficient way.

Have we really progressed then in word processing? When we take into account the fact that today�s secretaries don't really use any more for the most part don't use any more features than they used to, then basically they�re doing the same as in the WordStar, WordMill Einstein days. They basically put text on to the page and then print it out and rarely do any more. If they have a box around it it�s a graphic box that they were able to have before anyhow. The advances in word processing which do exist on a much more advanced level are not used by the typical secretary but everybody�s going to have to go out and get Word anyhow and to use it.

What�s new in bilingual word processing today? Now that the advances in word processing everything that is available in international word processing the state of the art is now available for any individual or specific language. That means that there is indeed a great advance in bilingual word processing and the concept does not really exist.

Anybody with any computer using any recent version of Windows can do anything and can have all of the full features that anybody else can have no matter what language is being used. The concept of developing a word processor for a different language would be eliminated as long as nearly everybody in the world bases on the Windows platform and the Windows platform allows multilingual and right to left as well as left to right word processing the multilingual or bilingual word processing concept is pretty much dead. The global village has become a reality and now everybody can use every language with ease no matter which computer they�re using anywhere in the world.

Of course, bilingual word processing with right to left languages is indeed a difficulty because there are certain rules that have to be followed even in right to left languages there are times in which there is an insertion of a left to right language or a number which still goes from left to right and those who are not used to using the bilingual or bi-directional work processor may be confused by this new found ability. It may still be necessary to learn how to deal with these issues as well as punctuation and special symbols and those that are on top of the number keys which operate differently when working in a bilingual environment.

Sorting Excel or sorting spreadsheets or databases with mixed right to left and left to right languages may be confusing as well. Our series will discuss these issues in order to explain how they work. Ultimately it is clear that everybody works in a bilingual or multilingual environment will be able to learn all of these aspects. The problem is that the aspects change from time to time.

In the year 2000 for example the hyphen changed. Instead of always using a left to right hyphen there now is a left to right and a right to left hyphen. You might say what�s the difference? A hyphen looks like a hyphen or a hyphen is a hyphen. NOTE TO MYSELF: Turn this into a separate article about the hyphen.

However, that is not the case. It matters when you add on a bet dash number.