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Writing and Publishing, Part 29:
Becoming your own publisher:
Design and Manufacturing Techniques Continued:
The Body of the Book:
In my last discussion, I briefly went over some of the functions
of PageMaker. I am not going to give a tutorial on PageMaker for
two reasons. One is, you may have a different page layout program.
More important, however, is that I am not qualified to give such
a tutorial. As I said, I can get the program to let me do what
I need to do, but there is an enormous amount that I simply do
not know. There are people who devote their entire careers to
understanding these publishing industry programs.
As far as using the program, the same pointers I gave for the front of the book will also apply to the rest of the book. I will still import WordPerfect files using the place command and place them within my document to create a visually pleasing and logical document.
There will be some differences in elements and layout for the center of the book. For example, I will start page numbering over with page one in Arabic numerals. This will make the front of the book a separately numbered part. As to layout, I like to have chapters begin on a new, right-hand (odd numbered) page. To do that, I will leave a page blank if necessary. This is all somewhat arbitrary. It's really a matter of personal style. There are no rules. we simply want to present a nice looking document.
I will also leave some extra white space at the top of the first page of the chapter. In a 6" X 9" book, I will leave an extra inch at the top. The chapter title will be in larger type with a different type face than the body text. I like to use Esprit Book, 18 point, bold type. In some case, if there are just a few chapters, I will use a separate page for the title. In that case, I will use a larger point size and center the title a bit above the centerline of the page.
In addition to text, many books will need to have graphic files placed within the work. This is especially true for how-to books. Even in some fictions, we may use graphics to set a tone or emphasize a point. Here is what I have learned about graphic files. First, the only kind of files which are acceptable to the book manufacturers are Tagged Image Format Files ( TIFF) and Encapsulated Postscript files (EPS). These are simply ways of formatting graphic information in a computer.
The TIFF files are what are called bitmap files. By that, we mean that each dot in the file is described by it's position and shade-of-grey or color. If you take a typical 300 dot-per-inch file, we find that a square inch of graphic will contain90,000 defined dots. It does not take a genius to understand that tiff files can get very large, very fast. 300 dots per inch is the dot resolution necessary to get good printed results.
EPS files, by contrast, are vector files. I do not pretend to understand the details, but instead of defining dots, the actual drawing elements are defined by lines and vectors. This makes for a much more manageable file.
For most drawings, it is appropriate to use EPS files. These files can be created in drawing programs like Adobe Illustrator. For photos, it is necessary to use TIFF files to make sure the printed output will look like a photo rather than a smear. Most photo manipulation programs can export the work as a TIFF file. There will be a bit more on this when I discuss creating Portable Document Format (PDF) output files for our printer.
The important thing to know at this point is that, for PDF output, the graphic files must be embedded. There may be other ways to do this, but I know that when I embed the graphic in the application, it will still be embedded when I create the PDF file. Embedded means exactly what the term implies. The graphic file becomes part of the application file. PageMaker does not require us to embed the file. The alternative is to keep the graphic file as a separate file. In that case, we would have a low resolution place keeper in the application file with a link to the high resolution graphic file.
Here is the tradeoff. With the graphic file separate, the application file will be somewhat smaller. However, if we move our application file, the link to the graphic file can get lost. This can cause some headaches when we go to create the PDF file. When we go to press, missing links can cause nightmares.
I have offered a great deal of discussion on various files. I have talked about word processor files which contain our source text. We also have graphic files for art work and photos. From our page layout program, we create application files. The two other types of files which will concern us are postscript (PS) files and PDF files. With all of this, it behooves us to consider some standard naming conventions, lest we get lost in our own jungle.
After some very confusing episodes, I have developed some standards for filenames. These work for me. For the parts of my book I like to use a base name and a two digit number from 00 up. I want the name to imply the placement of the file in the tome. Thus, for my upcoming book, "No-Count-Charlie," the front of the book will have the base name part00. This means the application file from PageMaker will have the name part00.p65. The file for the first chapter will be part01p65. The Postscript files will have the same base name with a .ps extension. For example part01.ps. Likewise the PDF file will be part01.pdf.
For graphics files, the convention is similar except that I name the files by chapter and number. Thus, the very first graphic to appear in chapter one will have the name c1part1. The second graphic in chapter on will have the name c1part2. Of course the extension will be either .tif or .eps. If there is a possibility for confusion, I will also make a table which will relate the graphic name to the chapter and page number.
Notice that all of my names have eight or less characters plus the extension. For folks who have gotten used to using the PC and Windows with long file names, forget it. Once you start working in the world of publishing and the world of the web, you must, necessarily deal with different platform issues. Not all platforms support long file names. Thus, I keep my file names to eight, lowercase characters plus the extension. This, I know, will always work. When files are embedded in pdf, the rules do not apply, but it is still a good habit to develop.
Next time, I'll get into a discussion of the end part of the
book; the supplemental information.
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