I used MSWord 4.0 in the early 90's to write a book and it was
possible to specify unique headers and footers for multiple sections within a single document. It was necessary to insert section breaks first, of course. Header and footer commands then became local to the section in which the cursor was located when the command was issued (or so I recall). Not exactly simple, but certainly workable. I don't use Word now, but I'd be surprised to find that they lost this feature along the way.

Hi, Let me just say that I HATE Word. It's awful. I agreee with most of your complaints. Your article has convinced me to try Mariner. Nonetheless, there are some errors in your article worth mentioning.

For widows and orphans, Word has "Keep lines together" which I typically assign to control-k. A black square appears next to the paragraph letting you know it won't break across a page.

Headers and Footers are a pain in Word, but you can make them work and set a "different first page" as well. Every "section" in Word (separated by Section Breaks) can have its own header/footer. Although I admit, they are a pain, they are there as features. There's also an even/odd option.

What I'm really curious about is graphics. I hate the way Word lays out graphics and forces you into conniptions to make them stay where you want them. Plus, if you copy and paste a Word figure out of Word and into something else, heaven help you. Plus there are longstanding problems with pictures being dragged and dropped rather than "imported" into Word. How many hours I've lost on that

Last thing. People say that Word Mac is better than Word PC, but I gotta tell you, it's sooooo slow on even my fastest Macs. There are these 3 second pauses between the application of formatting, or even hitting delete. Why?? And scrolling is so slow, it's like they're not using native Mac rendering or something. I hope Mariner is better.

Thanks again for your review.
Ken

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Anonymous wrote:
Last thing. People say that Word Mac is better than Word PC, but I gotta tell you, it's sooooo slow on even my fastest Macs. There are these 3 second pauses between the application of formatting, or even hitting delete. Why??

I won't use Mariner software because they spam me on a fairly regular basis. I haven't seen anything from them lately because I have the mailer auto-delete their spam before it gets to my inbox.

Just use the blue split bar at the top of the right scroll bar...

That really says it all... well, except that many of its features are ill-conceived and/or difficult to make work.

I won't defend Word. I dislike it also. But it does split windows; control widows and orphans; allow diffferent headers and footers on odd and even pages, and a different set of headers and footers for each section; and allow you to control whether or not rows of a table split across pages.

Word crashes on me occasionally, but much less often that yours does.

Are you using Word 2004 for OS X?

You can open and save basic Word files, but if the file includes anything more complex than that, you are out of luck. I was looking for an alternative to Word and tested multiple apps. The only one that has good .doc support was OpenOffice; the rest of the word processors have basic .doc support.

The problem that frosts me most often in word is its continuing attempts to auto-format anything I number or letter--it never gets it right, and occasionally wil take a document that's perfectly formatted, and completely jumble the numbering-lettering scheme to the point where I have to start over.

The controls for this need to be more obvious and flexible.

Mariner Write sounds worthwhile to try, but your review of Word contains several glaring errors.

Simply select all the rows in a table and go to Table Properties, there you can uncheck the "Allow to break across rows". No doubt one could also define a table style to handle that, too.

Your font problems no doubt are due to style sheet definitions. Can you be more specific... Word does not arbitrarily change fonts, but follows definite rules, as if whether you change the font or not!

Obviously something is corrupted in your system somewhere or with Word... have you tried trashing its settings file and the Normal style and restarting. Word is typically rock solid (except when interacting with Excel!).

Word has had split windows since version 5 or even earlier, maybe version 4. What it doesn't have is logical controls over where the cursor ends up after unsplitting! It doesn't return to where you last where which would be the best thing for it to do.

Explain more about what you want the headers/footers to do. Word has complete flexibility over them. And automatic footnoting and even automatic numbering. Now, I haven't used line numbering in ages, but it looks as if Write may have a better implementation.

The biggest problem with Word is that it's made by Microsoft!

Still, don't mean to dwell on the mistakes. Your review of MW is intriguing, with a nice touch, well written, and includes some great screen shots. Save as PDF makes good sense, and a close all windows icon is nice too.

Oh, and before the grammar police get you, It's "elusive" not "illusive"!

Sorry for the triplicate posting. The site gave me no feedback and I stopped the transmission to correct my own grammar error! Happened twice and you've ended up with 3 versions of the post!

Why isn't there an ability to delete one's comments? There should be. Perhaps because it's guest.

Just wondered if Nancy or others could compare Mariner to the other leading Word alternative, Nisus Writer, or others.

Try Nisus Writer Express 2.1. It is fantastic and definitely the wp for the rest of us.

The article has this bit:

"It [Word] is also, in my opinion, superior to AppleWorks as a word processing application."

Gee, I'd hope so. Word costs $200+, AppleWorks $79 (or free with many consumer Macs). One has to really need the added features of Word (or Mariner Write, for that matter) to fork over 2 big ones (or 3.5 big ones, if one wants Office and isn't a student or teacher). Nisus would be another option, if working with Word files isn't a big issue--it's also cheaper than Mariner Write.

LowEndMac has a recent review, although it doesn't go into deep detail.

http://www.lowendmac.com/designer/09.html

I like to support small developers and use their products (for instance, see Create from Stone Design <http://www.stone.com>), and was planning to move to Mariner Write when I switched to OS X ca. two years ago -- until I realized that for my purposes MW in OS X is actually less capable than it was in OS 9 and earlier. This is because, like AppleWorks (my WP of choice since it was ClarisWorks 2.x) and M$ Word, it is a "carbonized" app -- adapted from the classic version to work in OS X -- and not "cocoa" -- written native in OS X. Which means it doesn't understand Unicode. Thus, while Mariner Write in OS 9 can work in languages like Hindi/Sanskrit, using the Apple Indian Language Kit, in OS X it cannot. Nor can it work in/with any of the dozens of other scripts, including accented Latin-alphabet letters outside the standard option-key set, that OS X has made available. (The classic versions of Claris/AppleWorks, frustratingly, never worked with any of Apple's WorldScript I Language Kits -- Indian, Hebrew, Arabic: in fact, the only Apple application that worked with them was SimpleText!)

I'd like to see Mariner Write become a real OS X app, and will seriously consider it when/if it does. It will take a lot of work, though, as it will have to be largely rewritten. Meanwhile, for seamless OS X integration, including Unicode, Services (which carbonized apps can't use), and other neat OS X features, Nisus Writer Express and Mellel seem to be at the head of the pack.

I'm still making do with AppleWorks and TextEdit, hoping that rumors of a new Apple office suite written fresh for OS X might pan out one of these days.

BTW, in your Font Book article, one possible reason for fonts not showing up in AppleWorks is that AW is Unicode-deaf; with some Unicode fonts (e.g. the elegant Gentium) AW can use the basic 255 characters in the first two Unicode blocks (corresponding to the character set of a pre-Unicode font), but others, I've found, won't show up in the AW font menu at all -- though as you say they're perfectly usable in TextEdit, which as an OS X-native ("cocoa") app is Unicode-savvy. (I don't know about M$Word as I don't use it, but know it is like AW still just a carbonized app, so would expect it to have the same limitations.)

NisusWriter Express is OK, but it is as unstable as Word, so, I cannot use it. MarinerWrite is far stabler than the others.

I am really surprised that you prefer Word to Appleworks I find it to be easy -- Headers and footers, easy -- and cell contents seem to have always stayed where I wanted them. I am proselytizing just as you say you do. give old AW another chance. (But keep Excel ready to go)
Love to read your columns, always something pertinent. Julie Wallsh --also raised in the fifties

I use Mariner Write all the time with "Services." So you are wrong that it won't work.

I use Word Perfect alot. I have v.10 on my laptop. I have Word for Mac but most of the time when I want to make a document I go to TextEdit. It's really quite powerful and can open and save in word documents and deal with word tables. Check it out, it's on your hard disk, in the applications folder!