FAQS! FACTS! FAX!  194 (13/01/00)

BOOK LEARNING

The Reverend Jeremy Thompson (F!F!F! December 16), does not need Lotus WordPro to produce booklets as he will find that Blue Squirrel's ClickBook will do the job excellently and easily and the software is not at all expensive. We use it for our church's annual report and it has been a Godsend, literally.  You can find Blue Squirrel at www.bluesquirrel.com.

Brian McConnell

Printing booklets in Word 97 is not quite as complicated as you suggest. My method is to lay out the page in landscape. Set the right margin equal to the left margin plus 5.8" (half the length of A4), this will create A5 pages on the left-hand side of the sheet. Print the even-numbered pages then put the sheets straight back into the feeder, i.e. so that the last sheet printed on the first pass will be the first sheet printed on the second pass. Switch left and right margins, creating the same A5 pages, but now on the right-hand side. Print the odd-numbered pages and it’s ready for the double-sided photocopier.

Barry Seagren

Lotus WordPro does a good job of making booklets, but you might like to try a program that sits between any Windows application and your selected printer driver, namely Fine Print for Windows 95/98 version 3.60 obtainable from many software sites - try downloading this shareware from http://www.softseek.com/files/review?UTFP10679sw.

It works best if you set it as the default printer so that it intercepts all print jobs and lets you decide then if you want a booklet, double-sided or just a normal print. 

Michael Lager

Some good ideas, thank you to everyone who wrote in.

BUS STOP

Is it possible to set up a direct cable connection between the USB port on my desktop computer and the USB port on my laptop so that the computers can
share files and printers?
David Hobart

It can be done but under no circumstances connect the two machines together by USB cable as you will almost certainly destroy chips on one or both motherboards. You need a device called a USB ‘Bridge’ or ‘Adaptor’, available from specialist PC suppliers, but it’s not a very satisfactory or cost-effective solution and quite honestly you would be better off with a conventional PC-to-PC communications package or a local area network (LAN) system.

SCAN PLAN

I recently installed a program that interfered with the working of my computer, so I uninstalled it. However, this has had the effect of removing the facility for the computer to run Scandisk on re-starting when it has been switched off after a freeze. How can I get Scandisk to load automatically as it was before?
Ed Weaving, Carshalton. Surrey

In Windows 98 the option to switch disable Scandisk after a bad shutdown can be found by typing ‘msconfig’ in Run on the Start menu; select the General tab and click the Advanced button. In Windows 95 you can put a Scandisk shortcut into the Start-Up folder and specify when and how it is activated, full details is in Windows Help, select the Index tab and type Scandisk in the keyword search field.

SHORT AND SWEET

Some months ago you gave a tip as to how to make a shortcut on the desktop to create new mail off-line in Outlook Express. I have now changed my computer and forgotten how to do it. Could you please re-state it for poor unfortunate souls like me? I promise to write it down.

S. Wade

Right click on the Start button and select Explore to open Windows Explorer, right-click into an empty space in the right hand pane, select New and Shortcut. In the Create Shortcut dialogue box type ‘mailto:’ (minus the quotes) in the Command Line field, click Next, give your shortcut a name (e.g. sendmessage) and click Finish. Drag and drop the icon from the Start menu onto the desktop or make a copy by holding down the Ctrl key whilst dragging and dropping.

RING AROUND?
Does anybody know of a readily available font, which has each of its characters enclosed in a box, or a circle, or is there an easy method to create a box or circle round each character in a font?
Mike de Jong

We are not aware of such a font, though there’s bound to be one somewhere, any suggestions? We tried a few experiments in MS Word, the most promising was to insert a box (Insert > Symbol), followed by a lower case character, go to Font on Format menu, select the Character Spacing tab, set the Spacing to Condensed and reduce spacing by between 3 and 4 points.  It’s also possible to insert characters into drawing objects but this is even more time consuming, so if anyone has a simpler solution we and Mike de Jong would very much like to hear from you.

FRACTIOUS MAC

The problem with fractions on a Mac (F!F!F! December 16) is one that we often have to deal with when producing illustrations for professional books. In Adobe Illustrator type the top number, then an em-rule, then the lower number and then a space. Reduce the point size of the numbers to about 75% of the original, use baseline shift (positive and negative) on each of the three elements to get the relative vertical positions right, and then use tracking (kerning) to vertically align the three components. When it comes to the next fraction, copy and paste the first one, undo the tracking, amend as necessary then reapply the tracking. We use a similar technique in our typesetting programs, so it should be possible to achieve in a word processing package, which I assume is what you are using - you don't say what program. It sound complex, but is easy when you get used to it (and less fiddly than trying to use a slanted line / between numbers)
Mark Spedding

I type the number/number then highlight it and reduce to a size that seems appropriate.  It isn't perfect, but it is easy to do and it does not intrude as much as fractions of the same size as text.
Andrew Kevorkian

The best way to create fractions on a Mac, in Word 98 is as follows: using 12 point type first key in the nominator, select it then change it to superscript, switch off superscript, then type Option + Shift + 1 (this gives a better dividing bar than forward slash) next type your denominator select same and reduce point size to one more than half i.e. 7 points if you are using 12 point type 6 if you are using 10 points but you can experiment to find your own preference. If you want old fashioned fractions there are two special fonts available (Helvetica and Schoolbook) they have a horizontal divider, but I have no experience using either of them. If you are using a lot of fractions it would save time if you go to Tools, go down until you get to Superscript. Click and Drag this to your toolbar (between existing buttons, it doesn’t stick if you put it on the end) then you can just click on this new button to set your nominator and switch it off again. Dennis Jeeps

Thanks for the suggestions.