Possibly OT: How Verdana italic looks on Vista

[greenmorpher]

Hello Martin and all

I wrote a piece in NWP using Verdana (my screen font). It included some italics, which I made using the keyboard shortcut, command-i.

When my associate opened the document (emailed as an attached .rtf document), then italics showed up very much condensed.

The illustration shows how.

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard
Publisher, Editor, Business Writer
The Worsley Press

Get "Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes?" to deliver your words with real zing; and "How to Start and Produce a Magazine or Newsletter" to learn to step safely in the publishing minefield. Amazon or http://www.worsleypress.com

[Groucho]

Hi, Geoff.

In my opinion there's something wrong with your associate's fonts not with NW. Why don't you have him/her/it send the file back to you, so you can double-check it? Maybe there's no Verdana italic in Vista and the program made some substitution operating by guesswork. I remember Word, if Word is what your associate used, used to make such substitutions and not telling you. It was kind of frustrating. At least NW colorizes fonts.
But I'd double-check it.

Cheers, Henry.

[Elbrecht]

Hi Geoff -

my first impression too was: font substitution, i.e. quite a different font. But the screenshot is too low quality to really check. How about RTF vs DOC - any difference? Get your file back - saved in the dark - and you'll see...

HE

[greenmorpher]

He's away for a couple of days; I had in mind to conduct tests when he returned but thought I would put it up here in the interim just in case someone knew something. This is a media release I wanted to spread around a predominatly PC world, so I want to make sure it works right when it raches its destination.

He's not looking at it in MS Word, I don't think, by the way. I'll check that.

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard
Publisher, Editor, Business Writer
The Worsley Press

Get "Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes?" to deliver your words with real zing; and "How to Start and Produce a Magazine or Newsletter" to learn to step safely in the publishing minefield. Amazon or www.worsleypress.com

[Groucho]

Why don't you make a pdf?

Henry

[greenmorpher]

Henry asked:

Why don't you make a pdf?

In sending out a media release, Henry, I want to get free ink so I make life as easy as possible for the journalist who receives it. I want my copy -- as close as possible to how I have written it -- to slide quietly and efficiently into the columns of the paper or whatever.

To ensure this, I want to send out an .rtf file because whatever WP they are using at the paper, they can open a simple .rtf file. They can then top and tail it, and save the whole thing in to their system.

If I send a PDF, individual journalists might not have the capability to open a PDF. If they do have that capability, they might not have the capability to copy text out of it. If they can do that, they might not do it well. (Reporters need only very basic world processing so they don't necessarily have access to the latest tools.)

So at the end of the day, I oil the wheels by sending out an .rtf file that is the easiest thing for them to slot into the paper.

If I am buying advertising space, where I can dictate the layout and content because I own the space, I will send a PDF which the designers can drop straight into the space.

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard
The Ad Doctor Online

Win business with the recession-busting "How to make great ads for (sm)all business: 99 real world advertising ideas to kickstart *your* business today". See http://www.worsleypress.com

[Groucho]

Ah, I thought it was a read-only thing.

Cheers, Henry.

[Kino]

He's not looking at it in MS Word, I don't think, by the way.

It looks like WordPad whose RTF interpreter is buggy or not supporting as many RTF directives as that of Word, it seems.

I tested it with Windows 2000 SP4’s WordPad which opend a simple English RTF file in Veradona as Greek text! Oh, well. I reported the issue to Nisus Soft but perhaps it would be waste of time to try to fix it even if it is fixable. Windows 7’s WordPad opens the file normally and correctly.

Geoff, I think you’d better suggest him to open RTF files in Word or OpenOffice.

[greenmorpher]

It's a problem, Kino, because it is not so much how me mate Gordon opens them, it is how unknown journalists on magazines and newspaper open it. If the type looks odd, that degrades the media release in their eyes.

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard
Publisher, Editor, Business Writer
The Worsley Press

Now get "How to make great ads for (sm)all business" as a FREE bonus book with "Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes?" and "How to Start and Produce a Magazine or Newsletter". Amazon or www.worsleypress.com

[Kino]

But, Geoff, WordPad is a lame app closer to Simple Text than to TextEdit. Although Windows 7 version of WordPad looks more featured than that of Windows 7, it still lacks Page View, Text Colours, Footnotes, etc., etc. I think it is completely wrong to open a file in WordPad when style/formatting attributes do matter.

Edit: I think you’d better send files in binary doc format (not supported by WordPad) together with PDF (doc exportation may not be perfect). I always do that when sending a file to Windows people.