Quote:
Originally Posted by andyh2000
Shouldn't these edits for length then be made in the source document, and then you run the source to PDF conversion process again giving you a corrected single source document and a corrected print output PDF? Or is the source-to-PDF process so horrendously hand-cranked that you only want to do it once?
For info I am peripherally involved in single source to multiple output publishing in higher education - we go from quasi-XML to online PDF, print PDF, epub, content managed VLE sites and probably other formats that I don't know about. We've gone through (and are still going through) a lot of pain trying to morph a print-centric process into a multi-output one.
Andrew
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Hi:
In a word (vis-a-vis, "is the source-to-PDF process so horrendously hand-cranked that you only want to do it once?")...
yes.
We never started out to be a print or POD house. As I said, we're geeks, not publishers. The angst we've gone through, trying to make a decent-looking POD product, as part of, not in lieu of, an ebook process has been surprising to us, as well. We had so many requests for it (and intially, because people would ask AFTER their epubs/mobi's were done, we were reverse-engineering it) that we caved and started that process...the only way it really works is to edit the source (which at this point--the PDF point--is
actually in OO, specifically due to some Word bugginess that doesn't facilitate output to PDF properly) and re-output the PDF--and then find where the next problem with hyphenation or Orphans, etc., occurs.
ALSO: vis-a-vis xml->xslt, man, I had high hopes for those, I really did. However, given all the mystery effluvia that Apple does over here, and Amazon over there, and Nook (with the dreaded RMSDK from hell) doesn't allow over THAR, (or, rather, allows but doesn't display correctly), I don't see xml translations really working.
Geeeze, I wish they did.
@mrploppy: Yes, we could kern it "slightly," but in many cases, it's either impractical or...whatever. There's a reason that print layout people, who do nothing BUT this, get as much money as they do. I know I was shocked when I first tried to find print layout services--as a consultant service--for some of my clients. Most of my clients, who are small imprints or self-pubs, can't afford a grand-to-$2500 (or more) for print layout. So they use us--or they pay Createspace $400 or $600 bucks for the whole enchilada.
@CommonReader: As I'm not a publisher, I can't speak to that. The initial gist of the thread wasn't about processes, but it came up, as to "how simple it is to..." and I thought some perspective on what really happens in "the making of..." would be useful.
@Elfwreck: thanks, I should have thought of some DP texts--but I'm scrounging some up from various commercial buddies, replete with the dreaded Abbyy "red," which I think will be interesting to those who've never proofed genuinely raw output. Maybe not.