Gordon Woolf's Blog

The strange case of uP and dOWN

What is the most annoying key on your keyboard?

For me, and maybe for you, it is the CAPS LOCK key. It seems to get in the way whenever I intend to hit the Shift key. If I'm lucky I may be in Word or some other program which allows me to highlight the mess which results and hit the command to change case, but in others there is no option but to delete and type the phrase or sentence again.

In Word 2010 you go to the Home tab and then in the Font area click on the Aa button to select from a wide choice including lowercase, Sentence case, Capitalize Each Word or tOGGLE cASE.

The CapsLock is a remnant of the old typewriter keyboard that has continued to exist to this day and has survived the many changes in computer keyvoards over recent decades which has seen the number of keys and the positions of some of them go from 83 on the original IBM PC to 104 for the US, Australia and most other countries, though many European layouts have 105 and some in Brazil and Japan have 107 and 109 respectively.

But there is something you can do about that caps lock key, and even about the strangest key, the one labelled SysReg. SysReg is also named as PrtScn, which doesn't actually print the screen but does put a screen dump or image into memory ready to be pasted in an image editor program such as Paint ot even Photoshop.

So, how do you get rid of CapsLock? 

The answer lies in Windows Registry Editor. In Vista and Windows 7 you can search for the local machine code control keyboard layout and replace the scancode which activates when you press the CapsLock key. It then involves entering a sequence of around 20 hex codes.

But there are easier ways. For example, go to:
http://www.randyrants.com/2006/07/sharpkeys_211.html
and download SharpKeys

I went for the MSI version. When installed, press the Add button, select the "Special Caps Lock" with code 00 3A and change it to the default which is "Turn Key Off". You could also change it to another version of the Spceial Left Control key which may be more helpful in reaching many control key combinations.

Think carefully before selecting to write the change to the Registry (you do have a back up of that, don't you?). Then you need to reboot to see it take effect. Though the program says for Windows systems up to Vista, it does work with Win7 too.

You can also download another program, KeyTweak, from http://webpages.charter.net/krumsick/
I've read equally good reports of that but have no practical knowledge.

There are other websites you may find helpful, such as How-to-geek at:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/disable-caps-lock-key-in-windows-vista/

That page includes a downloadable set of .reg files to do what I've just done or to a Shift key or to swap the Caps Lock with the Scroll Lock key that may be sitting up there on the right between SysRg and Break. Did you even know you had those? Break dates back to the teleprinter and telegraph. It was a way for operators at each end to know that outlaws or bushrangers had not cut the line. When did you last need to know that?

This article appeared first in the November issue of PC Update, the magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group. It may be reprinted at no cost under Creative Commons conditions with Attribution.

Nonsense outlasts sense

If you want to insert some dummy text in a Word document, start a new paragraph, type =lorem() and hit Enter.

This will add three paragraphs of Lorem Ipsum characters in your document but if you want more text, use the formula =lorem(m,n) where m is the number of paragraphs and n the number of lines that should be included in each of these paragraph. Be warned it is not very accurate.

In OpenOffice type dt and press the F3 function key. Less control, in that you cannot vary the lengths or specify para numbers, but you can repeat as needed.

There are dummy text plugins for either program which give more control and many layout programs
have an option to "fill with placeholder text".

But you may wonder about the name Lorem Ipsum.

Those are the first words of what, supposedly, is some text set in the earliest days of movable type. The story goes that it got shoved together after it fell on the floor and was thereafter used to fill space until the actual typesetting was ready.

It has remained virtually unchanged for hundreds of years, which is more than can be said for any language, so nonsense has outlasted sense.

Give your Printing Problems the Binary Chop!

The Binary Chop isn't a new form of karate. It reverses the power of the computer by calculating using two digits, the equivalent of on and off, just as the computer does.

There are many problems with printing — in fact as a consultant, I have more calls about printing problems than any other aspect of desktop publishing — but the most common problem can easily be solved using the Binary Chop.

This problem is that a file just refuses to print.

Firstly, check that a known good file will still print. If it does, then it is almost certain that the problem is with the non-printing file, and not with your printer or network. You could also try creating a PDF of the file. And, if that works, try printing from the PDF.

Here are a series of other steps to take:

1. Make a copy of the file under a new name and check whether this prints (sometimes the process of re-ordering and compression in file size which occurs from a Save as… command will solve the problem).
2. If you are on a network, try printing the file from the computer to which the printer is attached (which may also enable you to check whether the printer begins to accept information and whether this continues for some time before the printer returns to Idle mode. You can also check this on networks by following the progress of the job from your computer using the network software).
3. Using the copy of the file, try printing without graphics by using the Omit graphics selection under print Options if this exists. If the file prints then selectively delete and restore graphics files until you isolate the one causing the problem.
4. If the file has multiple pages, send half the pages, then the other half. This is the first application of the Binary Chop; by halving the non-printing pages each time, until you can isolate, hopefully, a single non-printing page. If you have more than one non-printing page, look for typefaces or graphics which they have in common.
5. Take one non printing page and cut and paste half the objects to a new file. Try both halves. If one half prints, you know your problem is almost certainly in the other half. Either way, continue halving the number of objects until you isolate a single object which will not print. See below for a solution if both halves print but not the whole.
6. If everything else prints, go back to the original page, make another copy, delete just the offending item, and, hopefully, your page will print.
7. Replace the offending object, which may be a graphic or a piece of type.

But does it look OK in print?

Have you noticed an increasing use of yellow and cyan for headlines and text in otherwise well designed magazines. I wonder if this unreadable print is a result of on-screen proofing where light colors do tend to show up more clearly than when printed. When this problem occurs in multiple issues I wonder whether graphic designers ever look at the finished product. Maybe the on-screen version is regarded as the final version and no longer is there the thrill of having someone pick up a first batch from the printer and throw a copy on to ever desk at the publisher's. With everything now seen on screen in what we are told is what it will look like in print, have we collectively lost the excitement of seeing "the real thing" -- and why? The problems of light type and the loss of readership and understanding it causes are dealt with in Type and Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes, the book by Colin Wheildon.

What font should I use?

Someone asked the other day: "What font should I use to be sure that it will be easy to read?" There has been one piece of publicly available research carried out in the English-speaking world into what fonts and styling in text makes it easiest to understand the content. This was by Colin Wheildon in Sydney in the 1980s and was republished three years ago as Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes. It was carried out by printing sample articles of the kind intended for magazine or newspaper use and measuring the comprehension by asking questions to show whether the participants understood the content. There's a downloadable extract of the book at http://worsleypress.com/type/ and the book is available from Amazon as well as elsewhere. A couple of comments: This is based on whether the font choice and styling actually work, not whether they look good, and it is a book not only unpopular but campaigned against by some graphic artists. It also applies only to English speaking countries -- the very limited tests in European countries infer that sans may do relatively better than serif in that region. It was also mainly conducted with narrow columns -- newspaper and magazine style rather than books. I'd also better declare my interest -- I played a role in returning the book to print though I no longer have any ownership in the business which does publish it. It is sad that this is the only work which is based on research rather than opinion. Some work has been done privately on behalf of major publishing groups and associations but is not publicly available.