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This is Michael Keller, a hand-bookbinder in Ontario, Canada. Forgive my ignorance if this message is in any way inappropriate - as I am still trying to figure out the mechanics of messaging within the "TRIBE" format. I just received/replied to an e-mail from another member of Bibliotheca, and now realize that some messages are not automatically posted to all members as in other 'Groups'. So, with apologies to the original poster, I am sending my reply to all, in the hopes that someone else in Bibliotheca may have something to add to the topic...
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"I ran across you by looking through the membership on bibliotheca, and I see you say you're working on printing books in signatures. I have been looking for applications that do this nicely. I'm told Word2003 will be able to do it in some limited way at least. But other than that, it all seems to be expensive addons for page layout programs. "
"Have you found any good programs for doing this more easily than the tedious page-at-a-time methods? I've been expecting this as a feature of word processors for a decade now. sigh."
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R***,
This is a pretty big forest you've stepped into [re.: signature formatting with a word processor]. Briefly, I believe this is the single greatest problem standing between all of us who actually know how to make 'real' books, and being able to use all of the recent technological advances currently available (at least in the Western world) to the average person - to do just that.
After much experimenting and gnashing of teeth, I settled on Word Perfect (ver. 6 / windows). Besides being one of the most complete word processors around (IMHO), its "booklet" printing option will automatically juxtapose the pages. It does require some extra fiddleing however...
Primarily, I subdivide the finished text into 16-page smaller files; adjust the justification of first and last paragraphs appropriately; adjust pagination, etc. . Then it is just a matter of printing each signature file seperately as an individual *booklet*.
I have just completed Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" [in an aesthetic manner consistent with 18th Cent. printing - but thats another story] and am very pleased with it. My greatest difficulty right now is trying to come up with language to accurately (yet concisely) describe this new concept to the general public. I will be adding a "turn any e-text into a 'real' book" section to my binding website <kwic.com/~bkeller/binding> soon; and find myself hard-pressed to explain this *electronic-fine-printing-unique-single-copy* thing in vernacular English. For example: any word that implies multiple copies (i.e. edition, publish) is necessarily misleading - as each 'copy' is made-to-order and therefore unique [presentation page(s), date of printing in colophon, etc.].
I would be most grateful for any ideas / arguments towards accurate and descriptive promotional wording.
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"Thanks in advance. Good to meet you. Hmm. I should also ask... you have "fine / private press" as one of your interests: are you a printer as well? I've done some fine press work, and becoming a fine press printer is one of my dreams."
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Good to *meet* you too, R***, but I must never be confused with someone who actually does 'real' fine letterpress printing. Other than a personal interest, and the occassional small project with a few fonts and my little Kelso clamshell, I hold no claim whatever to that Craft / Art Form... and applaude anyone who does (or aspires to it).
Regards,
Michael Keller
Bookbinder
Walsingham, Ontario
CANADA
_______________________
"I ran across you by looking through the membership on bibliotheca, and I see you say you're working on printing books in signatures. I have been looking for applications that do this nicely. I'm told Word2003 will be able to do it in some limited way at least. But other than that, it all seems to be expensive addons for page layout programs. "
"Have you found any good programs for doing this more easily than the tedious page-at-a-time methods? I've been expecting this as a feature of word processors for a decade now. sigh."
_______________________
R***,
This is a pretty big forest you've stepped into [re.: signature formatting with a word processor]. Briefly, I believe this is the single greatest problem standing between all of us who actually know how to make 'real' books, and being able to use all of the recent technological advances currently available (at least in the Western world) to the average person - to do just that.
After much experimenting and gnashing of teeth, I settled on Word Perfect (ver. 6 / windows). Besides being one of the most complete word processors around (IMHO), its "booklet" printing option will automatically juxtapose the pages. It does require some extra fiddleing however...
Primarily, I subdivide the finished text into 16-page smaller files; adjust the justification of first and last paragraphs appropriately; adjust pagination, etc. . Then it is just a matter of printing each signature file seperately as an individual *booklet*.
I have just completed Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" [in an aesthetic manner consistent with 18th Cent. printing - but thats another story] and am very pleased with it. My greatest difficulty right now is trying to come up with language to accurately (yet concisely) describe this new concept to the general public. I will be adding a "turn any e-text into a 'real' book" section to my binding website <kwic.com/~bkeller/binding> soon; and find myself hard-pressed to explain this *electronic-fine-printing-unique-single-copy* thing in vernacular English. For example: any word that implies multiple copies (i.e. edition, publish) is necessarily misleading - as each 'copy' is made-to-order and therefore unique [presentation page(s), date of printing in colophon, etc.].
I would be most grateful for any ideas / arguments towards accurate and descriptive promotional wording.
_______________________
"Thanks in advance. Good to meet you. Hmm. I should also ask... you have "fine / private press" as one of your interests: are you a printer as well? I've done some fine press work, and becoming a fine press printer is one of my dreams."
_______________________
Good to *meet* you too, R***, but I must never be confused with someone who actually does 'real' fine letterpress printing. Other than a personal interest, and the occassional small project with a few fonts and my little Kelso clamshell, I hold no claim whatever to that Craft / Art Form... and applaude anyone who does (or aspires to it).
Regards,
Michael Keller
Bookbinder
Walsingham, Ontario
CANADA
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Are you re-formatting Gutenberg texts? I've done a digital rebinds for software documentation, but I can't imagine doing a Gutenberg text. It would take forever to reformat the plain text line breaks...wouldn't it?
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Indeed, my source for Paine's Common Sense was Gutenberg, though I did find other e-text sources for it... just imagine the possibilities.
As for line breaks - if your word proc. allows you to import ascii text files with hard returns treated as 'soft' returns, this in effect removes them [i.e. nearly infinite line length] which in turn allows your pre-set margins, etc. to determine all formating.
However, with straight ascii text, you do have to go in and add things like italics, bold, whatever.
In the case of the above title, the typist very kindly indicated italics with all-caps.
And while I'm on the topic... straight ascii text also automatically eliminates the possibility of any "bad code" created by trying to import pre-formatted text from another word proc. which may not be entirely recognized by yours. -
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Michael,
I produce limited edition books and have found a method that works quite well for producing signatures.
I import the text into MS Word and layout the pages with headers, footers, numbering, etc., I then send the book to my printer with a program called "Quickbooks" from Blue Squirrel Software (about $50). Since I print the pages myself on a laser printer or on an inkjet, it works just fine.
This method won't do a proper job of imposition if you are sending to an outside printer. For that I use an older version of Ventura and convert to pdf files. Incidentally, Blue Squirrel also sells a low cost program to create pdf files. I haven't used it.
I hope this information helps.
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There are a couple of ways to approach this problem. One is to use an add-on to a word processing or layout program. The more flexible way (and the way professional printers do it) is to create a PostScript or PDF file and then manipulate that (rather than the original document) to get your signatures.
Professional imposition software costs lots and lots of money. However, there are free utilities which are sufficient for our purposes.
I do a lot of my typesetting in TeX anyway, so I generally use the imposition features provided with ConTeXt. There it's a matter of typing something like
\setuppapersize [A6][A4]
\setuparranging [2*4]
and the resulting PDF has A6 pages printed four-up on A4. ConTeXt can also include and impose arbitrary PDF pages, the source does not have to be TeX code.
I don't suppose it's worth installing TeX just to impose booklets, though, so basic one-job tools like pstops are worth looking at. They are not at all simple to use, but on the other hand you only have to work out the necessary incantations once, and then it's just a matter of writing it down somewhere safe for future re-use.
One other thing worth remembering is that a home inkjet or laser printer is not going to give you the kind of accurate registration that an offset machine is capable of. When you're designing your book take it into account that the printed area might "float" a little from page to page.
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I'll probably run the file through a simple conversion to change single new lines into a space and leave more than one new line alone. That way I can play with the width of the page in Open Office. I'm already using htmldoc, psbook and pstops to convert Linux documentation into booklets.
Thanks for your suggestions! -
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Someone else pointed me to this:
www.sandroid.org/GutenMark/index.html
It's a little program that converts Gutenberg texts into HTML so that you can print them. Windows, Linux and OSX versions are all available.
NEAT!
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What are the free utilities you mention? How many for Windows, and what input formats will they take?
I'm interested in TeX for a lot of reasons, and your example has me even more interested. Can you give us some more information on starting up with ConTeXt or other TeX applications, or where we should go for more information? Thanks! -
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Well, I mentioned pstops, part of the psutils suite. I'm pretty sure there must be a Windows version floating about the net. The input format is PostScript, so you need to produce a PostScript file from whatever application you are using. This is simpler than it sounds, just install a PostScript printer driver and "print" to a file.
On TeX:
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX is not a bad overview
www.tug.org will keep you reading for a weekend ;-)
www.pragma-ade.com/ has the deal on ConTeXt.
I've uploaded a screenshot showing ConTeXt in action on my puter.
TeX systems do involve some commitment to learning what is going on. You can't fumble your way through like you might with a WYSIWYG system. In general, things that are difficult or flaky in WYSIWYG systems are relatively simple in TeX -- however, the reverse is also true. -
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Hmm, except I haven't uploaded anything because the server won't let me :(
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A word of warning on guten. texts... proofread them carefully. If you're spending time resetting the text, it's well worth taking the extra step to make sure there's nothing daft in there. They are often poorly checked and littered with errors, particularly in the punctuation.
I usually use BBEdit to clean up the plain text (it's got one of the most flexible search and replaces I've seen in a friendly text editor) and then an ancient copy of Quark to set the type properly for printing.
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