some simple basic standard text handling pls

[amoore]

Throughout 26 years of DTP, I have routinely composed the text directly in my DTP application (primarily Corel Ventura). That includes thousands of pages of software documentation, plus marketing materials and all kinds of other documents. I have rarely gotten content from someone else in Word files. When I have, I always run the text through an ASCII editor to strip it of all Word formatting and behind-the-scenes baggage. I don't even paste text from one Word document into another Word document without doing the ASCII routine first. I've been bitten too many times by Word's "peculiarities".

Similarly, I compose text directly in XDP. If I'm going to paste from anything, it's a txt file.

[Fin]

Same as amoore here, probably as many years. CorelDraw until I found Xara, thousands of pages of curriculum and game books, etc. Wouldn't dream of using Word for the very reasons as amoore stated and would NEVER import Word into a web page document without converting first to a text file. Word has better spell checker imho, but that's all. X9 has much better control of typography, me thinks.

Tom

[mwenz]

I am only at year 24 (1989). Started out using Ventura under the GEM interface on an XT, then an AT, and when I got my first 386 I thought I was in heaven. By my first 486 PC, I think Corel had bought Xerox's Ventura Publisher.

Most of that time I collaborated with others, all text was linked/imported into VP. Never had an issue. VP's scheme of being able to two-way text files was wonderful--as long as you could keep the others involved from mucking with the VP codes in the text files. VP is a product that I hope Corel is now kicking itself from killing off. Best long document layout application there was. I keep an XP Pro computer around just for updating tech and user manuals for a couple companies.

Well, I had been doing using the XP Pro with VP. I am now in the process of moving some of those documents into Quark, another application I have long used. As well as ID. And PagePlus. But in none of those applications do I author the originating text. None. A word processor is far better for writing than a layout application. Simply quicker, less obtrusive. Now, do I add last minute stuff? Sure. But I get text originally from other sources and import it. Edits from then on are in-app, but not the original flow. Typing in ID in a several hundred page illustrated manual is a PITA. If I could re-import and maintain formatting and, most importantly, anchored frames, I would.

Mike