Using frames to control layout gives you so much power and flexibility it should come with a red cape. With a little ingenuity you can solve all sorts of problems. For example, KWord helped me with a vexing photo printing problem. Once upon a time my printer would not make borderless prints of any size. After beating my head on the problem for too long KWord gave me an easy workaround: insert my photos into a KWord document, size them, then print the page. Then I cut them out using a good rotary paper cutter. Just a little extra work for perfect results. (Yes, I know that lots of word processors can do this, including OpenOffice and Abiword, which is a good thing, because spending gazillions of dollars on snooty desktop publishing software is not as fun as it sounds.)

To do this, click on the little blue "Create a new frame for the picture" icon on the left border. This opens a file selector. When you select your picture the cursor changes to a cross, so you can draw a frame and insert the photo with one operation. Right-click on the new frame to open the frames menu, and then use the Frames/frameset properties to set the size and position. Keep in mind that this sets only the display size; it does not change the file size. So if you have a image file of 100KB, you can set the display size to a pinpoint and it will still be 100KB. This is the classic method for creating dumbnails, which are thumbnails that have been reduced this way, instead of resizing them with a real image editor.

In case you were wondering, a routine system update cured the printing problem. I assume it got an updated CUPS driver, but who knows- the ways of the printing gremlins are mysterious.

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