Pdf's from Indesign

[Henrycat]

Sorry but this week i really don't have much time to write here in the forums.

But i would like to hear some opinions of my ebook design/template.

Link


In the rar there in the "Final" version, which is my current layout for the ebooks i convert.

There is also a a pdf with a hyperlink, and another with buttons.

This were files i made when i started to mess around with the lastest version of Indesign CS so they aren't finished

I couldn't find any way to make the buttons works on the Iliad... maybe someone could give me an idea to make them work. Or maybe the viewer just doesn't support them.

I would like if you could give opinions of the layout, fonts, etc.



When i find some time i'll post a quick how-to on how to quickly convert a BAen RTF to PDF.

Tomorrow i should upload the indesign file so everyone can mess around with it.

I forgot to copy it to my CF this morning

[MikeB]

Sorry Henrycat. Does not seenm to be a way of downloading without subscribing to RapidShare's Premium Service! There seems to be a free download limit of three times.

[haasiesoft]

Originally Posted by MikeB

Sorry Henrycat. Does not seenm to be a way of downloading without subscribing to RapidShare's Premium Service! There seems to be a free download limit of three times.

No, download is OK. I you download without premium account you have to wait for 20 sec. befor the download button appears.

haasiesoft

[ath]

Originally Posted by Henrycat

I would like if you could give opinions of the layout, fonts, etc.

Layout -- can't say, since I don't have an iLiad to check against. No obvious complaints, though, apart from expected lack of manual adjustment (p. 259 is not nice ...) in a more-or-less auto-converted document. (well, perhaps ... see below)

Fonts -- I count 9 of them, and even duplicates of some? This suggests some kind of problem: there should be no need to have two Gentium, and two Gentium-Italics embedded.

If you insist on using Gentium as text face, I think you could do without either Palatino or Georgia or Bookman -- there seems to be little reason to use them for so little. But the absence of a Gentium-Bold is embarrassing: I suspect it would be better to use a more complete typeface family.

In general I've never had good luck with TT fonts in PDF -- it looks like there something wrong here, as well. Not sure what, but the Gentium italics look quite bad. Hope it looks better on the iLiad.

I'd like to see a TOC, even if only as a set of bookmarks. Difficult to know what is inside the book otherwise.

I'm not sure if it is a good idea to lock a text so hard to the iLiad ... it only means it won't look good anywhere else. The lack of bottom margin makes it difficult to read on PC screen ... lose the last line on the page, and it would
improve a bit for general reading ... but I also think the pages already are too short for sustained reading: there are too many page feeds.

More detailed comments:

Normal asterisks are in the right positions for footnotes: they don't work very well as vertical ellipses, unless they're tweaked: I suggest dropping them a point or two until they are centered on the line, so as to avoid the uneven look. Easily done with a character style. (Match with hyphen or possibly bullet for vertical positioning.)

Horizontal ellipses (...) need to stay together (p. 7, l. -8): either use non-breaking space or thin space (which I think looks better). Gentium may even have a '...' that looks half-way decent

p. 367 is weird -- should that table be on the next page?

[MikeB]

Originally Posted by haasiesoft

No, download is OK. I you download without premium account you have to wait for 20 sec. befor the download button appears.

haasiesoft

For whatever reason, it simply won't let me download even after the waiting period.

[Rosentredere]

Originally Posted by ath

… apart from expected lack of manual adjustment (p. 259 is not nice ...)

This should be easily fixed via the keep-options in the paragraph settings.

Originally Posted by ath

p. 367 is weird -- should that table be on the next page?

Looks like the table was not inserted as inline-graphic, also the wrapping seems to have been done manually.

[ElaHuguet]

I think the font should be slightly smaller, for my taste, more like a book-size font (around 10pt, I think), which would avoid having so many pages. I don't mind the specific iLiad formatting, and since the icon space provides a decent lower margin. I agree with Ath that too many fonts is not too nice, if avoidable. Generally? Good job.

[High 5]

I have downloaded OpenOffice, thanks to a posting by ElaHuguet and I must say that I am impressed with the ease with which you can make pdf files with this excelent and free Msoffice clone.
The layout and style of any file can be easily adjusted to the Iliad.

[ElaHuguet]

Glad you've liked it, I found it better than I expected, it has many functions that MSOffice lacks, but I haven't quite changed over yet, because I'm so used to Office, and can manage it really well.

[Henrycat]

Sorry for the delay, but i have been very busy at work updating images and text references. After spending the whole week doing this i really, really, didn't have the will to mess around with Indesign -_-''

Things are almost done so i will be making some more tries Wednesday or Thursday. I should have internet working this month so i will be able to post at home

Lol, i was showing one of my roommates how easy it was to change fonts to various text elements, and forgot to revert the changes i made

I will probably use two fonts, since i like to distinguish the Titles/subtitles/text, and having a serif, and a sans or egyptian font helps in that aspect.
Just one of my paginating quirks

I was looking for a free font family to use in my conversions (and to give with the template), and initially considered Vera, but the serif doesn't have italics, ad then i found gentium and didn't notice it didn't bring the bold variant

I’ll try the Lido in my next conversion to see how it works (yes it is complete... i think...)

If Indesign shows the font then it works ok in the pdfs.
I actually like the true italic of the gentium. I don't remember if i embedded all the fonts, so maybe you are seeing another font on the pdf...

I'll add a Toc to my next conversions.

I'm making this conversions to the Iliad, and if need be i would make them again.

Don't take this the wrong way but i just want to make files i like to read on the Iliad :|

Didn't think about that, will add a style for the asterisks in the template.

Another thing i'll take a look, shouldn’t be that hard to use thin space.

Was messing around with the image and forgot to place her in the text again

I could (and probably will) reduce to 11 points, but i "bought" the Iliad to read comfortably, and i read with the Iliad about 40cm away (my belly when i'm laying down). I don't think there is to little text per page, or that I change pages too quickly, in fact i have some printed books that have less text

If anyone would like me to try anything else in Indesign just let me know.

I'll finish my template and produce an how to of how to convert the baen rtf with 4 easy steps:
- Open template
- import text/image
- replace text styles of the document with template styles
- check fonts/errors

Later i will add a more detailed how to of various things i do to clean up the conversions.

Ex:
- delete <empty space>Begining of text
- delete End of text.<empty space>
- Delete extra “enters”, etc

End of section

Begin section

to

End section
* * *
Begin section


Just some quick steps, of how i do things in an orderly, and easy, way.


If anyone knows of a way to make Indesign find single lines in the beginning of a page it would be great (to deal "quickly" with orphans).

[Rosentredere]

Originally Posted by Henrycat

If anyone knows of a way to make Indesign find single lines in the beginning of a page it would be great (to deal "quickly" with orphans).

You just have to use the options under Paragraph Style Options/Keep Options. There you can set the number of lines at the beginning/end of a paragraph that will be kept on a page.

[Henrycat]

Originally Posted by Rosentredere

You just have to use the options under Paragraph Style Options/Keep Options. There you can set the number of lines at the beginning/end of a paragraph that will be kept on a page.

I could do just that, and Indesign would steal the last 1/2/3 lines of text from the previous page to add to the next one... I really don't like the look or the idea of "non full" pages though :| (the previous page would have an 1/2/3 empty lines at the bottom)

I would like to have some kind of wildcard combination i could input in the search, so i could find orphans. If there was something like:

^begin_page^1line_of_text^p

Probably doesn't exist, but if it did then i could simply go about finding orphans, and tweak the Kerning, Tracking and Horizontal Scale of the text in the previous page/pages so the orphan text would go to the previous page...

If anyone know of an automated mode to to this i would apreciate

[Henrycat]

Just wanted to put the conversion of around the world i've been making this week whenever i get a bit of free time in my work computer.

Link (seems to be working ok now )
http://www.freewebtown.com/henrycat/...080%20Days.pdf

I'll upload my aesop conversion when i can. The files are bigger because they have illustrations.

The Table of contents works but you have to double tap it with the pen. I have also added a link in the top right corner to the TOC, so you can access it anywhere in the book (take a look in windows before trying in the Iliad).

If anyone finds errors, things i should change, feel free to point it out and i'll try to update the file when i can.

[ath]

Originally Posted by Henrycat

JIf anyone finds errors, things i should change, feel free to point it out and i'll try to update the file when i can.

Nice typeface -- new to me. (For those who like it, it's free: see http://www.stormtype.com/free.html )

Obvious problems:

Hyphenation. Page 13: Passep-artout is quite ugly (but easily fixed). There are some other hyphenations I would not accept myself, but you may have different taste -- I would not leave add-ed, or cab-in for instance: never bring over less than three letters to the next line.

'--' must be converted to em-dash. (There are even a few instances where '--' has been broken over two lines!) If the em-dash seems to long, reduce width to 2/3rds or so by a character style.

You got the 'Change apostrophe the wrong way around -- words in which the first part has been left out use a right apostrophe: ’em, ’op-o-me-thumb, etc. So: ’change. (This is one of the problems with Gutenberg texts ... you have to do all quotes yourself, and verify that they are correct.)

Minor fixes:

Words in all caps are easier to read when they're spaced out more than usual. Try tracking of 40 or 50 or so for chapter titles. (Also TOC entries).

The table of contents ... well, it's useless unless you know the chapter you want. The subtitle needs to be included as well for finding the chapter with the right contents. It could, I suppose, be argued that a search function could be used for that -- but in that case it would be more useful to drop the TOC and rewrite chapter numbers in roman letters to make them possible to search for as well. In a pure e-book, page folio references are not needed, and TOCs should probably be modified accordingly.

In this case, I think I would have done it:

"Ch. 1 in which Phileas Fogg and Passepartout accept each other, the one as master, the other as man.

Ch. 2 in which .... etc."


Polishing:

The spacing before ! and ? is a bit too tight in this typeface -- it's particularly visible with the ? which nearly bumps into the preceding letter. Add at least a hair space before !?:; to improve this -- perhaps more will be needed. (Some typefaces have this space built in.)

I'd use optical margin justification -- Type | Story ... and set whatever line spacing you use.

I would drop the '.' after 'Mr.' and 'St.' -- it's a bit old-fashioned style. Similarly, I'd write to-day, to-morrow etc. in one: today, tomorrow.

And I'd probably invert the quotes: using single quotes for outer quotes, and double for inner. It often saves useful line space without decreasing readability. (Single right quotes have to be handled manually, of course, so it may be overkill for your purposes.)

And I'd probably look common abbreviations over as well.

[bowerbird]

layout nerds! how fun! :+)