*Damn* it. Help?

[tahnan]

OK, now I'm really, really frustrated, too frustrated to ask for help in blank fricking verse. I beg for your help.

I need Microsoft Word to be able to print "square double brackets": but not just "[[" and "]]", but the slightly-overlapping version that you can see in this image:



I have been using the {advance} field, which moves the following text a number of specified points, to move the second bracket back until it overlaps the first. The major disadvantages of this approach are: first, changing the font size creates a corresponding change in the relative location of the brackets, and second, Word seems to treat the {advance} field as a space for the purposes of (a) respacing justified text and (b) line breaks. As a result of the second, a line where the spacing is sufficiently wide causes the overlapping brackets to appear as two brackets separated by a space (minus the two points the second bracket has been moved back). Though--and this is the part at which I got immensely frustrated--when I copied the paragraph in which that happened into a new document, it got it right, treating the field not as a space, but as part of the word, so that '[{advance}[text]{advance}]' was kept close together as a single word, and not as if it were '[{advance} [text] {advance}]'. Again, the exact same text, copied from one document to another, and I can't find any particular font or paragraph setting by which they differ.

I hope that made sense. At any rate, I'm now in need of a way to either create the double brackets without the {advance} field, or to make the {advance} field behave properly. Please, please help.

I may find myself writing megamacros to convert my entire Word file into a LaTeX file, after all. antihip seems to have had so much fun doing so...

Comments

[fuldu.livejournal.com]

I thought you could get those in Word's equation editor, but a quick scan didn't turn them up. It would have likely created different (possibly worse) problems than {advance} anyway, so it may be just as well. I'm pretty sure Word invariably treats equations as having spaces on either end for the purposes of line breaks, so it's unlikely that would be solved, for example.

You can make them in OpenOffice's equation editor and I'm sure the conversion from Word into OpenOffice would be smoother than a Word -> LaTeX conversion, though I've had enormous difficulties with equations (natch) in the other direction, so I wouldn't recommend making the switch lightly.

[cnoocy]

Do you have a font that contains unicode characters 301A or 27E6?

[silkblade.livejournal.com]

I don't know if this will work any better than what you've already got going...

Select the two brackets:
-go up to Format
-choose Font
-click on the Character Spacing tab
-change 'Normal' Spacing to 'Condensed' Spacing
-1.5 pts seems to work well for Times New Roman.

I can't seem to figure out how to get Word to copy and paste the formatted ones correctly. If you type in a few you can use ctrl to select all of them at once and change all their formatting at the same time.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Aha! Marc's suggestion is the right one, but yours is the one I can get to work. :-) You rock.

[silkblade.livejournal.com]

Ah, good. I'm glad it worked. :) I stayed late to figure it out.

I tried to find the symbol for it but man even knowing the Unicode # didn't help me find it. I found out which font has Katakana in it's symbol list though...

[silkblade.livejournal.com]

Hm. Strangely, when I tried to copy just the brackets it doesn't copy the formatting. When I copied the whole sentence around it worked but when I copied a whole phrase, one would work and the other wouldn't. My guess is it has something to do with the formatting of the spaces/letters around it but I can't quite find a good way to always make it work except putting periods on the outside of the bracket.

[aneequs.livejournal.com]

\begin{overlysmug}
This is a good example of why I wrote my thesis in LaTeX. Basically, I was tired of hitting the screen every time I got Word rage.
\end{overlysmug}

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

I know. But I just don't have time to both write a dissertation and teach myself LaTeX. And I really need a WYSIWYG editor for all these formulae...I mean, how the heck did you read "$\lambda P_{\langle e,t \rangle} \lambda Q_{\langle e,t \rangle} \forall x_{e} [P(x) \rightarrow Q(x)]$" ?

[aneequs.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I taught myself LaTeX the summer before I started dissertating, as a procrastination device. But reading the formulas isn't so much of a problem...after you've been staring at them for months, you know them pretty well anyway...

[aneequs.livejournal.com]

Heh heh, you said "formulae". Nerd.

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

This seems to be what happens to me whenever I think, "Oh, this is a small / simple task, I should be able to do it using this Microsoft product." Eventually I reach a point where it just won't do the job for me, and I end up dumping the whole thing to text and moving forward using vi, perl, and postscript.

That said, I appreciate your not wanting to learn a non-wysiwyg tool. Just wanted to say I feel your pain.

[mrmorse.livejournal.com]

Microsoft has perfected artificial intelligence. Their products figure out exactly what you want to do, then do everything in their power to prevent you from doing it.