Using SoftMaker TextMaker

[KennyC]

While starting use to this app I found some things that may help other's. While writing a doc I noticed some of my words at the end of a sentence were hyphenated, now some may not want this to happen, I didn't because I was reading this at a meeting and for me it is easier to read without hyphens. Also I had to change my margins every time I started a new doc but under preferences there was no way to set a default there like there is for text & font size.

To get your doc's to open with a default format you need to change the NORMAL DOCUMENT TEMPLATE, go open finder and in my case under KEN select SoftMaker>Templates2018>English and open normal.tmvx, set the things you want when you open a doc to start writing, like margins etc then save that normal doc. Now when you start a new doc you won't have to readjust again unless there is something you want different. For some reason opening preferences doesn't give you a default document setup in one place.

Hope this may help someone.

 

[toMACsh]

Thanks!

I've been having a little problem with printing TextMaker files. I haven't determined if it's the software or my printer. Even when I remember to check "print in black and white" (Why isn't that the default?) it prints in a faded turquoise color. Usually, when my black cartridge runs out, the printer just refuses to proceed. I know it's getting low, but this never happened before.

 

[chscag]

Actually for users of MS Office, setting the Normal Template to your own liking is something you learn very quickly. Glad to see that SoftMaker also uses the same procedure. I haven't made up my mind yet about buying the full program and will wait until Apple goes public with 10.15.X. I do know that there are some things that the free version doesn't include that the pay for version does.

 

[Slydude]

Thanks!

I've been having a little problem with printing TextMaker files. I haven't determined if it's the software or my printer. Even when I remember to check "print in black and white" (Why isn't that the default?) it prints in a faded turquoise color. Usually, when my black cartridge runs out, the printer just refuses to proceed. I know it's getting low, but this never happened before.

I'm having a different problem printing. I have a table consisting of 7 or 8 colmns rougly and about 19 or 20 rows plus some additional text that is essentially a header and footer. The documennt is designed to print in landscape mode. When this document prints roufhly half of the first column does not print. As a result some information is missing and the final column isfarther from the right edge than it should be.

Initially, I thought margins had somehow gotten changed. Pull the document into LibreOffice and everything prints fine.

 

[MacInWin]

Sly, I wonder if the software has some "no print" zone it considers before it sends it to the system to be printed? So it basically is ignoring what the printer engine can do and has internal limits. Not sure how to overcome it. But you can test for it by sending it to the printer, then changing it from 100% to something smaller, say 90% to see if the cut off remains the same. If it does, it points to a bug in the print routine of the spreadsheet software, I think.

 

[Slydude]

Good tinking Jake. I discovered that little problem late one night while printing something I needed for work the next day. I'm going to experiment with this a bit more when I have time. Typically when I reduce the scale of the printout, which is what I think you're suggesting, it alters the layout of the page in such a way that things are no longr layed out correctly.

For now I have other programs that can read the file for printing purposes. Even tough it is layed out like a spreadsheet, the document was originally a Microsoft word table. I have Office 2011 but need to find the file and code for a re-install. I'm not going to spend time on that since macOS 10.15 is projected to break that program. Can't justify the cost of upgrading it unless I absolutely can't avoid it.

 

[MacInWin]

Sly, what I had in mind is that in the printer dialog box that the OS throws up, there is a box for scaling the print job. Here is what it looks like when I set up to print from Safari:


The idea was to change the "100" to something smaller, like 90 to see if what the application is sending is already cut off. I suspect it is. One way to get around that might be to change the paper size in the app to be larger, then use the scaling in the print dialog to get it to fit properly. It's a workaround, not a solution, but it might work.

 

[Slydude]

That's whhat I thought you meant. I've used that trick with other printers at home and at work when a line or so of print has been clipped at the top and bottom of the page. In other programs making that change has borked up the formatting / layout. That might not happen with this program.

When I have a bit of time i'll experiment more and see if I can isolate the issue. I'm definitely going to try your idea of using a larger paper setting giving up on this. That didn't occur to me at the time and probably wouldn't have.

 

[KennyC]

Thanks!

I've been having a little problem with printing TextMaker files. I haven't determined if it's the software or my printer. Even when I remember to check "print in black and white" (Why isn't that the default?) it prints in a faded turquoise color. Usually, when my black cartridge runs out, the printer just refuses to proceed. I know it's getting low, but this never happened before.

I wish I had some advise about printing but I haven't a printer on my mac yet. So I've been spending most of my time learning the mac and playing with this software and a couple db software programs to try to get past not having Access on the mac.

 

[KennyC]

Found differences with copy & paste compared to Word.

When I saved info I wanted from the web in word when you copy & pasted it, it gave you the opt to save as source or save as target which worked great IMO. With TextMaker to invoke a choice you use Shift Control V and a box comes up with three choices, Formatted Text (RTF) Formatted Text (HTML) and Unformatted Text. The unformatted works the best if you want it to like how you have your normal document setup but it doesn't carry over the text that was in bold like your headings so you need to change font size and bold manually and doesn't carry over hyperlinks either. No big deal just a few extra steps. Hope this helps.

Edit: for some reason when I choose unformatted text it doesn't follow my normal doc all the time. Line spacing is also different. And it changes numbers like 1,2,3 to 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc.