Week 3 1

Computer Applications for BusinessBS 1904

Week 3

More Word Processing

Week 3 2

Business Application Packages

Last Week» Sources of Information» Written Communications

– Getting it right– Clear presentation– Convincing your audience

This week» Organizing your files» Digital Imaging» Practical – More Word Processing

– Styles, Layouts and Tables, Inserting into your document

Week 3 3

Organising Files

The KAC environment gives you an M-drive» Centrally-held space on RAID – Redundant Array of Inexpensive

Disks» Accessible from every “College desktop”» Be sure to back up your critical files to diskette

» It’s up to you how to organise the m-drive» Avoid the default (desktop) folder» Try to store things in a relevant folder

with a memorable name» Key requirement is to be able to find them again

Letters m:\lets01\

Projectsm:\projects\ Desktop

Root DirectoryM:\

Week 3 4

Navigating and Creating Folders

By default, do all your work in Windows Explorer» Press Start, Select Programs, and it’s near the bottom» Better still, put a shortcut on your Desktop

– Start Explorer, and make sure it’s not full-screen– Click on C:\windows in the Left pane– Find explorer.exe in the Right pane– Using the R mouse button, drag the file on to the desktop– When you release it, you’ll get chance to Create a shortcut

In Explorer, it’s easy to create a new folder» Click on the parent folder in the L pane» Pull-down File, select New, then Folder» It’ll appear in the R pane, and you can overtype the name

Week 3 5

Finding Files

Best way is to know where to look!» Logical naming of folders is the key thing» Possibly by subject area (course, project, private)» And within the folders, sensible file names and types

Explorer can help here too» Use View menu to get detailed view, and Toolbar» Use View then Options to stop hiding file-types» Click on column headings of R pane to sort contents

– Descending date order is my favourite– Puts active files at the top of the list

And if all else fails, use Tools menu and Find Files» Practical: please find Notepad.exe on the C: drive

Week 3 6

Digital Imaging

Why use Images?» Getting (and keeping) attention» Improving communication

What kind of images are there?» Vector and Raster graphics

How do we get them into the computer? » Drawing them directly» Cameras» Scanners

Practical» Taking and editing pictures

Week 3 7

Why use Images?

Getting (and keeping) attention» Pictures can make direct appeal to emotions» People remember information better if it comes through several

senses» Avoids distraction by audience “reading the words”

Improving communication» Complex ideas often expressed well by diagram» Eye can take in much information at once –

compare looking at map with hearing directions» Photo of Mount Fuji beats a verbal description

Week 3 8

What kind of images are there?

Vector graphics» What we do with a pen or brush –

pictures made up of lines and fill-in colouring» Draw tool in Microsoft Office produces this» Very efficient to store; say where lines start and end

Raster graphics» What a TV does – splits image up into lines of dots and displays colour of

each dot in sequence» So do computer screens, and most printers

Photographs are a bit like raster graphics, but the dots aren’t in straight lines; they’re tiny random grains of silver halide

Week 3 9

How do we capture images?

Drawing them directly» Draw tool creates vector graphics for you

Traditional Film Cameras» Use light to affect chemicals

» Grains are very fine – billions of them in a slide

Scanners» Used to “raster” a slide or picture

» Resolution is always worse than the original

Digital Cameras» Cuts out the photographic stage

» Image shines directly on to electronic matrix

Week 3 10

Resolution

Measured in pixels (picture elements), for example:

» Computer screens are 640*480, 800*600 or 1024*768

» Printers are 300 dots per inch, or 600, or more

Resolution is a major determinant of quality

» A slanting line must appear as a series of little steps, but you don’t want to

be able to distinguish them

» Digital Cameras are usually measured like displays

» Scanners like printers – 600 dpi is usual

– What matters is optical resolution (number of pixels)

– Many scanners imitate better resolution by interpolation

Another factor is how many colours it can “see”

Week 3 11

RGB – Adding Colours on a Display

Colours on a screen are made by adding Red, Green and Blue light» One gun to shoot electrons at

each colour phosphor» The eye puts them together

Usually work with 256 levels of each colour

» Gives us 16 million shades

Red

Blue

Green

Turquoise (or Cyan)

Magenta

Yellow

Week 3 12

Printing is different

When you print, all you can do is to subtract a colour from the light

that’s falling on the paper

» Turquoise ink absorbs the red, reflects Green & Blue

» Yellow absorbs Blue, reflects Red and Green

» So if you mix them, only the Green light is reflected

We normally print with four colours of ink

» Turquoise (or Cyan in American)

» Magenta (Pink)

» Yellow

» Black (saves having to use all the others together)

Makes it difficult to match colours on paper & screen

Week 3 13

What’s in a Scanner?

Scanner bounces a strip of white light off the picture» Examines narrow line of reflected light in thousands of CCDs

(electronic photo-detectors)» Unit then moves on to look at next line

Can scan once for each colour, or all at once

lamp detectors

Carriage moves along on rail

Picture on glass plateLid to hold picture flat

Week 3 14

Practical Scanning

Scanning usually involves two stages

Pre-scan shows you everything on the plate

» Low-resolution, so fairly quick

» You select area of interest from display on the screen

Then scans this area at full resolution – quite slow

File produced can be huge

» At 600 dpi, a 10” * 7” image is 6000*4200 dots

» At three bytes per dot, that’s 75MB!

» Software usually lets you compress it

Week 3 15

Optical Character Recognition

If the image you scanned is text, it would be nice to be able to code it for editing – OCR does this

» Relies on limited number of characters

» English alphabet is moderately easy – 70 shapes

» Even here error-rate is significant (2% = 10 per page)

» Works best with Arial and other sans-serif fonts

» Less good with accented languages (French, Czech)

» I expect it’s hopeless with Kanji!

With a spelling-checker, it can be worth using OCR

» Even re-typing introduces some errors

» Main problem is when page layout is complex

Week 3 16

Using a Digital Camera

Cuts out the scanning stage

» Image is focused directly on CCD array in camera

Prices still high, but dropping fast

» Typical resolution is 1024 * 768 or better (megapixel)

Image stored in camera

» Compressed immediately to save storage

» Usually in electronic memory (sometimes removable)

» Sony make one that stores to diskette

Downloaded to computer

Week 3 17

More Word Processing

Chapter 4 of Knight covers this topic (Ch.8 in 1st Edition)

Elementary but vital» Traps for those who are used to a typewriter

» Undo & Redo are best buttons on the toolbar (also Save)

Styles» Avoid changing format of individual paragraphs

» Instead, use a style that matches the text structuresuch as heading, list, quotation, example

Columns» Try using Format Column and see what happens

Tables» Often preferable to column format when columns related

Week 3 18

Obvious to Some

A word-processor is not a typewriter

» The key puts a paragraph mark character into your file, it doesn’t just move the cursor

» Let the words spill to the next line automatically

» Only use when you want to start a new paragraph

Spaces and proportional fonts don’t mix

» The space bar produces spaces about as wide as an n

» If you space across to get the cursor under a word,it won’t quite be in the right place

» Need to set and use Tabs (preferably in the style)

Explicit Page-breaks can be dangerous – why?

Week 3 19

Revising Styles

First thing is to get Normal right» Has to be done with Format Style» Modify Paragraph to get space in front of each paragraph» and Font to get a reasonable size (e.g. 12 point Times)» and Tabs to allow for:

– indent (say 1.2 cm)– text starting near the middle of the line; – Right tab at end of line to let you push something hard right

Type then modify stuff you need to, such as headings» Good idea to use a built-in style, and modify that» Pull down style name, click on the name, then choose» Or type your new style name into the style box

Week 3 20

Simple Layouts

Styles will get most things right, for example

» Headings usually include the paragraph attribute “keep with next”

» this avoids Widowing a heading at the bottom of a page

For multiple columns, think what the purpose is:

» “Logical pages” on a sheet: Use Format Columns

– Text will just flow from column to column

– Can look odd when L column has heading and R doesn’t

» Related items, as on an agenda: use tabs or a table

– Tabs are simple, but a pain if text doesn’t fit

– Tables allow word wrapping within a cell

Week 3 21

Tables

Easy to set up a table with columns of equal width» Can then drag boundaries to get what you want

» But make sure you do it to the whole table

Traps for the unwary» You can merge cells to get complex effects, but with unexpected side-

effects (column 2 is made up of all cells that are 2nd from right – they need not be vertical stack)

Best thing is to try it» Note the internal margins around the words you type

» Do you need special styles for cell contents?

» What about column and row headings?

Week 3 22

Properties and the Insert Menu

File Properties let you define file-wide attributes such as Author, Title, Subject

» These then act as “Fields” you can insert into the text

Other Fields are automatically defined, for example

» Page number, document name (freddo.doc), date, time

» Particularly useful in footing text

You can also insert Symbols

» That’s how I got things like into this presentation

» Useful for mathematical symbols, Greek letters etc.

» and things like dashes (which are NOT hyphens)

And automatic table of contents

» Based on headings (another reason to use styles)

Week 3 23

Questions ?