Working with Documents
Unlike a program, which is something you generally purchase, a document is usually something you
create on your own. Or, it might be something that you downloaded from the Internet or received as an
e-mail attachment. You use programs to create, edit, view, open, print, and save documents.
You might be tempted to think of documents as being like “real-world” documents, such as typewritten
letters, memos, and such. Although those things certainly are documents, the term has a much broader
meaning in computers. Whereas a program is something you “run” on your computer, a document is
anything you create, edit, print, or view from within some program. Hence, photographs, music files,
videos, Web pages, and so forth are all documents in the computer sense of the term.
Creating a document
If you’ve never created, saved, or opened a document before and you want to try it, you can use the
following steps, right now, to create a simple document using the WordPad program that comes with
Windows XP. Here we go:
1. Click the Windows Start button and choose All Programs Accessories WordPad. The
WordPad program opens on your screen as in Figure 3-3 (although initially the document
area will be all white).
Figure 3-3: WordPad open in the desktop
2. Type some text. Whatever you type automatically appears within the large document area
of WordPad’s open window, as in Figure 3-3.
Tip Unlike a typewriter, you don’t want to press the carriage return (that is, the Enter
key) at the end of each line when typing in a program. Text will automatically word
Windows XP Bible
.