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Derk Ederveen wondered: <<... we use Visio 2000 and Word 2000. Since
then our Word files containing annotated screenshots are 5-10 times
bigger, which makes it more difficult to process them efficiently. Our
procedure is as follows: - small PNG screenshots (<30Kb), 256 colors,
inserted into Word (Insert/Picture), no scaling (100%)>>
It's the PNG part that is likely to be causing the problem. PC Magazine
just ran one of their often-interesting tips about how Word stores
scaleable vector graphics of various sorts and other types such as
JPG--apparently by creating a bitmapped WMF version that it stores in
the file to facilitate screen display. Unfortunately, WMF is a lousy
format for bitmaps (so says PC Mag), and causes enormous file bloat.
<<Does anyone have any idea how we can prevent this increase in file
size?>>
In case that link breaks, here's Neil Rubenking's description of the
solution: "Close all open instances of Word and launch REGEDIT from the
Start menu's Run dialog. For Word 2003, navigate to the key
HKEY_CURRENT_ USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Options. Word
2002 users should change 11.0 to 10.0; Word 2000 users should change it
to 9.0. Look in the right-hand pane for a value named
ExportPictureWithMetafile; you probably won't find it. If the value is
not present, right-click in the right-hand pane and choose New | String
value from the menu. Enter the name ExportPictureWithMetafile and click
on OK. Then double-click on the newly created value, type 0 (zero) for
its value, and press Enter."
Things like this (and authors like Neil, who's been a never-ending
source of great advice) convince me that my subscription to PC Mag is
well worth the expense... and that the Windows Registry is the
worst-implemented, most user-hostile "seemed like a great idea at the
time" in all of computing history.
<<We're also interested in other screenshot annotation programs which
retain annotations as editable text, so the annotated screenshots can
easily be translated.>>
For a book I'm currently creating, I plan to use Photoshop or possibly
Illustrator. Both should work fine, though I expect you'll have exactly
the same problem with the graphics.
--Geoff Hart ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)
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