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Constructing With &
Deconstructing Word

Been there, done that. With Bill Gates' Word (that which everybody else likes to call Microsoft Word, or Word XP, or Word 2003), considering the writer and editor and desktop publisher in me, I have the most incredible software in the world. And I have the experience to prove it, the publication to show for it. It's the Potter to the Clay. BG's Word: On one hand, I can construct with it; on the other hand, I can deconstruct it. Like so:

(1) Constructing With BG's Word

As of the 1st week of May 2006, I have been for the last three and a half years the Editor in Chief of THE MOST ADVANCED SCIENCE JOURNAL IN THE WORLD. I refer to the Philippine Journal of Crop Science (PJCS), which on the 6th of May came out with its December 2006 issue; since the next issue is April 2007, that makes our journal PJCS advanced by a year, or 365 days. A world record, I believe. And you know what? We did it with BG's Word.

It was something impossible to do: Get hold of a technical journal that is a thousand days late and make it up-to-date in no time at all - immediately. Not too fast! I knew what the journal needed was a one-man-band: a competent editor who happened to be a competent writer who happened to be a competent desktop publisher. I had always been a writer since high school; I had been editor for years – now, which program should I use to be a better and faster desktopper myself? It took me a year to find out; in the end, I returned to an old flame. I tried Adobe PageMaker and I found out, like many a beautiful woman, she was too complicated for me. I tried MS Publisher, and she was beautiful and less complicated but still too slow for me. She didn’t excite me enough. So I chose MS Word over PageMaker and MS Publisher. I wasn't too sure, but I had been using MS Word since the People Power Revolution in my country, and so I thought she would make me the happiest man on earth. She did.

Because, suddenly, there was MS WORD XP - SHE HAD EVERYTHING I HAD ALWAYS WANTED ON MY DESKTOP, including a way to drag an object across a page or across pages. MS Word XP was a perfect match to my needs. Later came MS Word 2003, and she was even more perfect. I was in heaven. And so we made our journal not only up-to-date but well-advanced than all other journals in science in all the world, including the United States. To top it all, with all the shortcuts I know using MS Word, all the while I have been enjoying my desktop work, I became like a lover at play, making love to the page. After that, knowing and feeling good enough to exult, I created an information base (iBase): http://cropsciencephilippines.blogspot.com. I created that iBase in about a week, all 100 MB of it and, looking back, it looks like I had been lusting all the way to the knowledge bank.

Before this, did you know that Word XP is not simply a word processing software but a very powerful, very versatile desktop publisher? I affirm; I confirm. Word 2003 is even more so. I don't know about Word 2000 - I jumped from Word 1997 to Word XP, and it was like I jumped from the 20th to the 21st century. I've been using BG's Word since Word 4 (remember WordStar 4?) - no graphic interface yet - so Word XP is like 7th Heaven. If you are new to Word 2003, today you shall be with me in Paradise.

Always using text files from BG's Word, often importing photographs from Adobe Photoshop, occasionally copying graphs and tables from BG's Excel, I have with our PJCS singlehandedly created the only technical journal in the world that has adopted Word 2003 as its own desktop publisher, designing the cover and inside pages, formatting texts, layouting tables and graphs and images, revising and correcting and printing camera-ready pages, entirely with this software. You better believe it. If you have doubts, visit the website I told you above and read your heart out. Blessed are those that have not seen and yet have believed.

I created that blogsite actually in March 2006. The reason you can see a monthly archive dating back to January 2004 is that I simply changed the month and the year before I saved each and every post so that I can have many monthly archives. Total uploaded files are about 100 MB, and I wanted to distribute the pages for less bulky browsing, never mind the false '2004' as year of posting. Each entry in each post has the correct date entry anyway.

There is in fact an even earlier blogsite that I created and have all but forgotten till now: http://wordpro.blogspot.com. This blogsite says you have my word: BG’s Word is a world-class desktop publishing software. I posted the message ('Setting world records with Microsoft Word') 26 August 2005 yet, some 9 months ago, a month after I started my own blogging. Which means BG's Word is in an advanced state of composition.

With BG's Word, formatting columns is not a problem anymore, even mixing single columns with double or triple columns. I do it all the time. Click Format, Columns, Number of columns and select or type the number you want, OK. Be sure you are on Print Layout (click View, Print Layout if you are not).

Can you drag tables to anywhere within the document? Now you can. For this, you have to learn the art of the DRAWING CANVAS. I can't discuss it here now, but I can tell you one thing: with that artist's canvas, you can insert a table and drag it to anywhere you want, and all the time parting the waves of text you meet. You can also resize it, either make the box around it disappear or enhance it or embellish it.

Why this affirmation of a particular software that is particularly hyped already? (What you have so far seen is only the tip of an iceberg, a sexy iceberg.) A more pertinent question is: Do I admire Bill Gates? (He didn't program BG's Word, did he? He didn't even program DOS, or MSDOS for that matter.) Do I own Microsoft stocks? (I don't even own Microsoft socks.)

I'm WOrDOg. I just love BG's Word and I love the word 'dog' - which characterizes my behavior toward BG's Word. What my experience shows is that you have to have dogged persistence, not canine devotion to BG's Word, not listening only to expert advice, but having a devotion to discovering for yourself bones buried anywhere in the back and front yard. Sometimes I do have dog day afternoons, but all that comes with the territory. I am the first and best example of the dawning of a new plain truth that Being A Dog Is A Man's Best Friend.

Bill Gates must be pleased.

What about quality of images embedded in BG's Word when a document is printed camera-ready? No problem. If your image has high quality in the first place, BG's Word will show you high quality - you can resize it simply dragging any corner of the image. (Lesson: Use a high-quality digital camera.)

But really, I can do more than resize an image with BG's Word: I love it so much I have taught myself to deconstruct the software itself.

(2) Deconstructing BG's Word

I'll take Bill Gates' Word anytime and bite it to pieces, with gusto. Logical and illogical pieces. I salivate when I consider what BG's Word can do for me - more when I consider what I can do to BG's Word. And I can do plenty. I can change the menu so that you can no longer recognize it. It's easy if you know Tools, Customize. (Right now, I have added to my BG's Word menu these items: Options, Saves, Math, XFactor; that is, Saves for all Word windows open (I'm a multi-Word user); Math for Tools, Calculate; XFactor for Tools, Customize.) So, to deconstruct BG's Word, let me present to you what I shall call here The ChaosBrains Menu:

@LETTER @THESIS @BOOK @JOURNAL @ NEWSLETTER @REPORT @CHAOS @BRAINS

where @ is the specific icon, CHAOS comprises my research, notes, drafts and my mild and wild ideas, like this one, and BRAINS contains a separate document template (doTemplate) for each ChaosBrains submenu.

Each doTemplate of mine will automatically assign margins, mix of columns, basefont and character spacing, heading levels with fonts and sizes and spacings, drop caps, drawing canvases big & small, text boxes of all sizes and shapes and settings, running heads and page numbers, page breaks and section breaks ... the works.

And to each BrainChaos submenu, I will reassign all the commands I think I need, my favorites naturally, a few of them being: Search & Replace Format, Previous Edit, First Line Indent, Hanging Indent, New Windows, Save All, Autotext, Autocorrect, Table Autoformat, Format Columns, Insert Page Number, View Outline. And, of course, Styles and Formatting (Templates).

Now, about commands, if you ask Word 2003 to list all the commands, it will give you a list of 1,071 commands (click Tools, Macro, Macros, Macros in, Word Commands, ListCommands, Run). The list is incorrect; for instance, it simply puts down 'Templates' as one command. This is BG's Understatement of the 21st Century! If you ask me, Templates (it used to be called 'Stylesheet') is the most astounding and the most useful single feature of BG's Word (starting with BG’s Word 4 that I remember). And yes, Templates is one of the open secrets of BG's Word being an excellent desktop publisher in itself; Templates makes BG's Word the quickest, the most versatile, the most compliant (if you know your macros), the most efficient to use. After 20 years of dogged use, I should know, or help me Word. To Templates, my word is its command.

You understand why I'm enraptured with BG's Word, because of its power to transform itself, or turn itself into something new or entirely different. With the magic spell of BG's Mouse, I can construct and deconstruct BG's Word itself by itself. That’s more than macro power: that's user power. BG's Word enables me to be the POWER USER that I want. 'Stay with me flagons, comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love' - that's from the Song of Solomon.

But that's only because I'm WOrDOg, a doggedly persistent user, a discoverer of bones in the ground and skeletons in the closet. Top Banana BG's Word is now too complicated even for Bill Gates, even for John Dvorak. A word by way of reminder: In a hierarchy, the top banana has risen to his level of incompetence.

Ultimately, any software should make itself EASY FOR ANY USER AT ANY LEVEL - meaning, there should be no learning curve at all. All I'm saying is that BG's Word - as well as any other pretender to an intelligent word processing/desktop publishing software - needs a paradigm shift like I DON'T need a hole in the head!