Re: Here's one for the "I Hate Doing Books in WORD" Fan Club

[Jack Shaw <jsh -at- SOFTWARE-AG -dot- DE>]

I've been fighting a battle with a book that has to be produced
on two sides of the Atlantic, on two sizes paper--European DIN A-4
which is longer and skinner than the second, 8-1/2 x 11", or "letter"
size. The tool is WORD.

The work is originally done on the former (A-4) and then exported
to our colleagues in the U.S. to run off in letter size for printing
in the U.S.

The problem I have is the fact that margins are set originally for
the A-4 paper size (it's a tad skinnier and longer than letter size).
We've tried lots of tricks to make the original margins and header/footer
offsets fit both sizes. But it hasn't worked, in my view, due to the
fact that WORD wants everything specified relative to the edge of the
physical page. In other words, if you set margins for the longer, skinnier
page and those margin settings get carried over to the letter paper
size, the body text gets reduced, and content slops over to the next
page--messing up the pagination, indexing and content page no's.

So my question is, does WORD have a magic way to specify page layout
that is NOT related to the physical page, but rather in "absolute"
terms--body of, say, 8.5 inches high and 7 inches wide and header
and footer above and below, respectively, by maybe 3/4"...all centered
on ANY piece of paper, irrespective of size...

Did I lose you? Am I getting through here?

Is anyone out there?

Mom?

Jack Shaw
Software AG
Germany