Dear Open Office

[rolanni]

Dear Open Office:

I'm a writer. When I open a word processing program, I want to process words. I appreciate that I will, at the beginning of my relationship with any new word processor need to invest some time discussing with it how it should behave and what my requirements are. My requirements are, I like to think, modest. They are these:

*That the default page margins be 1.0 inch (ONE INCH) all around. Not 1.25 inches, not .79 inches. ONE INCH. Every page. Of every new document. One inch, all around. Forever and ever, amen.

*That the default font be Arial 12 point. Not Times New Roman. I loathe looking at Times New Roman, if you must know, though I'll admit that it's better than looking at Courier. I can live with Times New Roman, but I don't wanna. I want Arial, on every page of every document, headers, yea, and even unto footers. If, after sober consideration, I want to change the font to something else, I'll do that manually, and gladly.

I realize that these are small things on the Cosmic Scale of Things, but I've just been forced to migrate to a computer I didn't really want to buy by the untimely and unhappy death of a computer that I liked Just Fine, Thanks, and I'm a little testy. And I will remark that it is just these sorts of teensy little unimportant aggravations that make me reach for WordPerfect rather than Open Office.

Bad temperedly yours,

Rolanni

Comments

[planetalyx.livejournal.com]

Yours in cyber sympathy.

[merlinpole.livejournal.com]

Arial?!! I long for the day I can eradicate it from any computer screen I look at. I hate Arial. I have an astigmatism and am not fond of sans serif fonts to start with, and Arial in particular I dislike. Why oh why is it the default on so many things, such as e.g. Visio?

I use Times Roman a lot for stuff I write in high tech work, it's what I use as proportional font when writing test plans and test procedures and descriptions and such for people to read discussion and description, where word counts etc. are not something that apply--nobody on salary or paid per hour drafting stuff to go into a user manual or for specs or requirements is usually paying all that much attention to the number of words involved, one isn't getting paid by the word count, what matters is "can someone read and follow this stuff?" The thing about Times Roman is that it's among the easiest typefaces just to -read- and takes up less paper for the information. Yeah, it might be boring, but it's legible... Arial is nowhere near as easy for me to -read-, and it takes up more space... and on drawings and spreadsheets and such that one is trying to print out and read on 8.5" X 11" paper and still have be legible, that's a major consideration.

[merlinpole.livejournal.com]

Oh, for monospaced fonts I use Courier or so, or relatives of it. I'm not that fond of the Courier that Microsoft uses, but it's lightyears ahead of Arial, for me. And as regards Monaco on Macintoshes, avert, avert, AVERT!!

[trolleypup.livejournal.com]

Rawr! Arial-big ick! TNR-ick. I rather like Souvenir for printed text. And whenever I can get away with it, I'll use Johnston (and if you recogize that one, you *are* a geek[1] too!)

[1] not a computer geek, another kind.

[(Anonymous)]

Arial?!! I long for the day I can eradicate it from any computer screen I look at.

Not fond of Serif fonts on a computer screen in general, alas; though I can bear with Garamond. I think it has to do with the amount of air between the letters. I used to be quite fond of Courier, when it was the default type element for Selectrics, but I can barely stand to look at the thing Microsoft calls "Courier" on the screen. And, like you, if I'm going to be looking at something for hoursandhoursandhours, I had rather it was something I find soothing and easy to deal with.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

And the above is from me. Forgot to sign in.

[(Anonymous)]

Not fond of Serif fonts on a computer screen in general, alas; though I can bear with Garamond.

Garamond is very nice. I'm not sure I understand the serif/screen interaction, though. What sort of screen resolution do you normally work at?

If you need sanserif, I find Marigold or Lucida Sans to be easier on my eyes, in the long term, than Arial. Trebuchet MS is pretty good, too, and at least manages to distinguish 'I' from 'l', so that 'Illinois' doesn't look like a rank insignia for sergeants.

[merlinpole.livejournal.com]

I rather like Souvenir, too. Johnston I'm not familiar with.

Font geek I take it?

[trolleypup.livejournal.com]

Yeah, have lots of fonts, although, so far, I have managed to stay out of the morass of designing.

Johnston is...very well known to the general public, just not under that name:

"Depending on context, the term `Johnston Sans' is used in this text to refer to Johnston's original 1" sanserif type designed in 1915/16 for the London Electric Railway Company..."[1]

London Underground (http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tube/) no longer uses the original Johnston, having replaced it with New Johnston.

A licensed version of the original Johnston is available from P22 (http://www.p22.com/products/london.html)

[1] Johnston's Underground Type by Justin Howes.[2]

[2] To which I just lost a chunk of time.