CrossEyes 2.2 - Dec/Jan '04

CrossEyes 2.2

“I miss the Reveal Codes.” This is usually among the first complaints a Corel WordPerfect user has when working with Microsoft Word. Why? Because it’s useful to see what is going on “under the hood” to understand how a document is formatted, or to fix a formatting or layout problem. CrossEyes fills this gap for Word users.

It’s important to note Word handles formatting codes quite differently than WordPerfect. In WordPerfect, an inserted formatting code affects all text following it, until another code is inserted to change or turn off the feature. In essence, it’s very linear. In Word, there is a hierarchy of formatting codes at multiple levels, with the lowest level detail (direct formatting) overriding the higher-level settings. New and inadequately trained Word users often heavily apply direct formatting because it’s faster and easier. However, this can create a minefield of formatting woes for anyone who has to work on the document afterward.

This is exactly where CrossEyes fits in. After a straightforward installation, it adds its own toolbar to Word with only two buttons: one to activate the CrossEyes Reveal Codes window and the other to close it — simple enough.

Opening the CrossEyes window reveals a clean layout. The window is resizable, and CrossEyes remembers the previous size the next time you launch it. There are two main views — Normal and Truncated. Normal displays the text and codes similar to WordPerfect’s Reveal Codes display. The Truncated view only displays the first and last word of each paragraph and the surrounding codes, to give you more of a birds-eye view.

CrossEyes provides more document navigation capability, which complements Word’s own methods to move through the document. CrossEyes allows you to navigate by paragraphs, section breaks, sequential headers and footers, footnotes and others.

The CrossEyes “Menu” button is quite useful. Among other things, it includes a document-based tutorial, a snapshot feature and the much-needed “What’s This” button. You also can customize the detail level of codes displayed. Clicking on the snapshot button produces a new Word document that contains the entire contents of the reveal codes window. It’s quite handy for troubleshooting a document. If the user holds down the “Ctrl” key and places the cursor over a “code,” it works on the formatting codes instead of the text. By simply mousing over the codes, CrossEyes lets you instantly see whether a code is style-, character-, paragraph-, or document-based.

CrossEyes also displays where the “Font” attribute has been set to hidden, as well as any text marked when the “Track Changes” features is on. You will have to scroll through the document to find it. Another plus comes when working with tables, especially when they are nested. CrossEyes can show you which level of embedded table you are working on, and even display the cell references (addresses). It also does a nice job displaying field codes.

Last, but certainly not least, CrossEyes was stable on my PC. It never caused any crashes or error messages within Word. However, after using it for awhile, I have several complaints, some because I had more functionality within WordPerfect’s Reveal Codes window.

There is a noticeable lag on slower PCs when typing or moving the cursor around in Word when the CrossEyes window is displayed. This is because CrossEyes needs to refresh its display to stay in synch with the Word window above. On faster PCs (say, more than 2GHz processors), the delay might only be a second or two, depending on the overall complexity of the document.

I can’t delete a formatting code in Word using CrossEyes 2.1. Pressing “Delete” results in deleting the next text character in the document. Instead, one has to figure out how to reformat the document manually. Ian Levit, Levit & James’ vice president, shed some necessary light on this: In Word, one can’t delete formatting codes. Instead you can only change its value. This is the inherent design of Word itself. CrossEyes can’t delete codes without damaging the document itself, and so it wisely doesn’t.

CrossEyes pops up the appropriate Word formatting dialog box when you double-click on most formatting codes. This feature saves a lot of time and made me more productive, but it doesn’t work for all codes.

Again, Word’s architecture is different from WordPerfect’s, so it’s not realistic to expect CrossEyes to magically make Word act like WordPerfect in this regard.

While not (Word)perfect, CrossEyes does a great job of taking the mystery out of Word documents. When you are crunched for time and need to reuse or fix up a document quickly to meet that deadline, this is an essential tool to have just one click away.

*At press time, Levit & James Inc., released Version 3.0 of CrossEyes with enhanced features, such as compatibility with screen readers and keyboard access to features, to comply with Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act.

Levit & James Inc.
(703) 771-1549

www.levitjames.com

Price: $75 for one to nine users. Contact company for more pricing options.

Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP

Reviewed by Jeffrey J. Beard, an attorney and legal technology consultant in Milwaukee. You can reach him at jjbeard@jjbeard.com.

Dec/Jan '04 Issue

PROS
It adds the much-needed Reveal Codes functionality to Word and is better than Word XP’s reveal codes.

CONS
The refresh lag can be annoying. There is no code search feature.

VERDICT
It’s highly recommended for organizations using Word, especially if they have prior WordPerfect users on staff or have heavily formatted Word documents.