I don't mean to criticise the tutors, but there's loads of things OCR doesn't tell you. This probably isn't a full list and don't take anything I say as definitive but I did do all the CLAIT New and Plus exercises and all the Practice Assignments.
Save the publication on the network or the machine you are using. Working on a floppy disk is very slow.
There is only one Undo.
If the width of a publication will fit into A4 portrait width and you set it to landscape, it will change back to portrait as soon as you exit the 'New' dialogue. You can't do anything about this.
Make sure the control palette is visible and use it, at least for positioning. Some things can be keyed in there directly, though not, unfortunately, positions.
Do make sure you switch to the master page before setting guides, columns, headers and footers and styles.
Create a style (based on 'No Style') for Headers and Footers. If the margins are narrow and you use the 'Body' style, they may overflow once you set the 'Body' style.
Put left, right and centre-ed header and footer elements in separate text boxes. Once they're correct it could be a good idea to group them in case you have to move them.
There is no automatic date or file name. So don't waste time looking for them.
Set up styles while on the master page. Base all styles on 'No Style'. It's great to have them cascade if you know what is required in your document but you don't, and you do not want changes to one style affecting another.
Beware of using any fonts other than Times New Roman and Arial. You have to choose fonts in some assignments but I would recommend sticking with something very common. It's great to experiment with different fonts, but they can have very different widths and kerning even though they are the same point size. You can end up with text that will not fit in boxes, and a publication where it is very difficult, or perhaps impossible, to balance the columns. (Some applications let you work in absolute measures).
If a range of font sizes is specified, I think it is best to pick something in the middle of the range or just below, but you may want to increase these at the end of the first section of the Practice Assignments. Maximum values for all styles are probably a really bad idea, though there is one assignment where I couldn't get it to balance otherwise.
Always select the arrow tool before amending a style.
Set the first line indent of the 'Body' style to zero. Ask your tutor about this, and ask if you are allowed to change it in order to help with balancing columns. OCR seem to expect it to be zero and you might not be allowed to change it for the last part of the Assignments, but they don't say.
Turn hyphenation off in 'Body' style and 'Hanging Indent'. It's almost the very last thing you are asked to do and it may cause you to have just ruined the column balancing you've spent hours on when there is no time left.
Check widows and orphans in the 'Body' style and probably in the 'Hanging Indent' and 'Table' styles. OCR does not tell you to do this but does expect it.
You may not be supposed to have any 'before' and 'after' spacing on sub-headings. If you do have it you are probably not supposed to change it in order to help with balancing columns in the last part of the Practice Assignments. Ask your tutor about both of these. Some of the tutor's examples do have before and after spacing.
You are probably not supposed to have any before and after spacing on any style. Since I wrote that I have been criticised for not having 'after' spacing on Body - Paragraph style. A definitive answer on this and wether you are allowed to change it when balancing columns, would help with balancing columns.
Make sure you go to the first page before starting on the content.
After placing the text, make sure that there are no excess carriage returns before and after paragraphs and sub-headings. Spacing must be consistent but it isn't always consistent in the text files.
Check what you have done before you click anywhere else or you will lose your one and only Undo.
There is only one Undo. If you decide to fix something and you make it worse, consider starting again before you make it even worse and then do have to start again.
You may need to indent bullet lists or tables in order to move them away from margins or the edges of drawn boxes. Do this by changing the 'Left' and 'Right' in the 'Paragraph' specifications of the style. Always select the arrow tool before changing a style. For extra safety, go to the master page. If you have the text tool selected it will change the nearest piece of text even though it is not selected.
You may need to move body text away from an adjacent drawn box border or some other element by moving its column container. You should probably use a guide and watch the 'Control Palette' for the position.
Don't cut and paste text unless you absolutely have to. I've had text go missing, you can break the autoflow and get odd spacing effects at the top of columns.
If you have some sort of inset box which is not part of the text flow, with spaced out text, drawn lines and boxes etc. consider grouping some or all of them so they're easy to move or you may need to re-size the whole thing to help with column balancing. This might seem obvious but OCR doesn't mention grouping.
With the above sort of boxes; OCR doesn't seem to worry about exact spacing. You should probably use some guides, and use one temporarily in conjunction with the control palette to check spacing, but you don't have time in the Practice Assignments to work out the spacing and make it exact.
In some of the exercises, images which are supposed to be used behind text, are of the wrong type for the brightness and contrast to be adjusted with 'Image Control'. If you want to mess about with this, they need to be converted to greyscale, or in the case of colour images (I think) converted to .bmp bitmaps or GIF's in an image processing application.
The default standoff of 4mm on an image is a bit large particularly at the top and bottom in conjunction with leading on text. It usually looks better if you reduce it slightly (in the 'Text Wrap' dialogue) and it might help with balancing columns. You might want to increase it slightly at the sides but beware of ending up with too much space at top, bottom or sides.
The default spacing for 'Hanging Indents' is a bit big. You may want to, or possibly need to, reduce it slightly.
If you use irregular text wrap, sometimes you seem to have to arrange the image to the back. Sometimes it's OK.
Always select the arrow tool before amending a style.
There is only one Undo.
Changing the 'Leading' and possibly font sizes, messes up text alignment near dropped capitals, but in the last part of the Practice Assignments you are often asked to remove them anyway so check this before fixing them unnecessarily.
Remember there is only one Undo. Save your publication whenever you are happy with it. Saving a series of temporary files is probably not worth the trouble but when you start the last part of the assignments save under a different name so as to retain the version from the first part.
OCR don't tell you to balance the columns at the end of the first part of the Practice Assignments but it's probably a good idea to do this approximately, by changing image and font sizes. Make the images a bit on the large side. Hopefully then your font sizes will be OK for the last part. In the last part they mainly (amongst other things) ask you to delete a sub-heading and paragraph, insert a table that's about the same size and increase the 'leading' so then if you make the images a bit smaller, hopefully it'll be OK, but beware of headings landing at the bottom of columns.
The 'Balance Columns' utility only makes them the same length. (Wonder if it restores broken autoflow?)
Watch out for whether printer's marks or crop marks only are required.
There is an odd problem, probably with the printer, in the Learning Centre, with some greyscale images printing with the image transparent and a black background. This can be fixed by un-checking 'Allow Printer Halftones' under 'Colour' in the Print dialogue. Doesn't seem to make any difference in CB8.
I think it is useful to go to StartàSettingsàControl PanelàFolder OptionsàView and uncheck 'Hide extensions for known file types'. Otherwise you can't always tell what the files in Windows Explorer are. (This is more important when doing web pages.)
The fonts which were available with Windows 2000 but were not installed with Windows XP are in:
X:\2000 fonts , but you should probably ask your tutor before installing these and install them correctly, don't just copy them into the Fonts folder.
Good Luck. I think it's very unreasonable that there should be so many things not stated and a lot of luck involved in balancing columns. Depending on your choice of fonts, sizes and possibly font styles, line thicknesses and various spacing you could have a publication that takes fifteen minutes to balance or could be almost or completely impossible.
Tony Hargreaves