Window size in word 5.1

[Shaddam IV]

Hello, when I open Word 5.1 on my Powerbook 160 running System 7.1.1, its document window covers the entire screen width (a little less than 640 px). I then manually shrink it a bit so that I see the icons (hard drive etc) on the desktop, to perhaps 580 px wide. When I save the document, and then - later - open it for further work, the document is again as wide as the entire screen.
In other words, Word does not seem to remember the document window size on save. Is that true? Is there an option in Word 5.1 to define the default document width? (Word 5.1 does not seem to use normal.dot; there's a settings file, but you can't directly edit it)
Thanks for any info on this topic! Have a great day, Karl

 

[Melkhior]

It was a while ago, but from memory Word 5.1a always opened a "full screen" window when opening a document.

On the small resolution of the era, and usually with just the one application running (or alongside maybe Excel 4 if you had enough memory and some dynamic inclusion of Excel stuff in the Word document, which didn't age well when you revisit a 30+ year old document...), it made sense to use all the screen area. That was sort of inherited from System 6 (single application only unless using MultiFinder) into System 7.

I don't remember a setting to change that either, but then I never looked for it. Yet you can reconfigure Word 5.1a menus in any way you want. I remember a story of someone wanting a simpler interface moving from a typewriter to Word, and ending with just "open", "save", "quit" (in File) and "bold" (in Edit). All that's needed for writing text, really

 

[PB170]

For what it's worth, I just tried it on my PowerBook 170 running System 7.1.1, and here new documents don't fill the entire witdh of the screen, but rather what I assume is the original Mac's 512 px screen width. From what I recall, it has always been like that. Also, it does remember the size and position of saved documents, so the feature is definitely implemented (I'm using version 5.1a). There's a section in the settings with options for how documents should open but window position is not one of them. Remembering window positions is a recommended feature in classic MacOS, so it makes sense to not have it as an option.

(As a side note, every Adobe app stopped honoring window positions after CS 3 and instead maximizes every window on open, which still drives me absolutely insane. Especially so as the in-window controls interfere with the dock at the bottom of the screen )