10 replies to this topic

[zhangrau]

I'm using the Reports | Publisher feature to prepare a book for electronic publication. Since the requirements for ebook publication are very specific, I know that I will need to do LOTS of additional editing after saving the Publisher report as a PDF or RTF file - I haven't decided yet which will be better for my intermediate report.
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Here's some questions:
1. Why isn't the Reports | Lists | Individual List available within the Publisher?
2. Why isn't the Reports | Lists | Place List available within the Publisher?
3. Why doesn't the Reports | Publisher | Forms | Individual Summary get included in the indices for Names and Places?
4. Since R-L-IL is NOT available, I'm using the Publisher | Narrative | Descendants report to include unrelated individuals. This means I'll have to edit the intermediate report to remove lots of occurrences of "Descendants of" from headings, endnotes, etc. - but that should be easy in a good word processor. It would be nice if there was a way to do this inside the Reports | Publisher options.
5. The Reports | Publisher | Text Page does NOT show it's title in the Chapters sidebar. Why not?
6. Is there a limit to the number of chapters that can be included? My book will include hundreds of individuals, so I'm anticipating at least 1,000 chapters. Will that be a problem?

[TomH]

All good questions that only the developer can answer. I think you have answered your own uncertainty over PDF vs RTF; because you expect to extensively edit the intermediate report(s), RTF to MS Word is the way to go.

[zhangrau]

Actually the PDF and RTF versions of the Publisher output have differences:
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1. On my current test, the PDF is 38 pages, the RTF is 39 pages.
2. PDF headers have underline border, and footer have overscore border - both in black. RTF headers and footers have outline borders in gray.
3. PDF version has one blank line below each page header; RTF version has two blank lines below each page header.
4. Numbering of footnotes has a problem. In the RTF version, the current page 19 includes footnotes 80-102, correctly numbered. In the PDF version, the number 84 is skipped, and the proper 84 is re-numbered as 85 and duplicated - which means the PDF page 19 includes footnotes 80-103 which is NOT correct). This is the only error in footnotes that I've spotted, so far, but it certainly indicates that there is some sort of problem in converting to the different PDF and RTF formats.
5. The extra line below the RTF header caused the extra page indicated in my first note. The bibliography fits one page in the PDF version, but spills over to a second page for a partial line in the RTF version.
6. In the Index of names, in the RTF version only, the last entry does NOT have the paragraph indent.

[Renee Zamora]

Unless you have a lot of RAM on your computer I doubt you could generate a book with 1,000 chapters. RootsMagic could handle it but only if your computer had enough resources to handle such a beast.

What program are you opening the RTF file of your book in. You should be using Microsoft Word but some of the more recent versions of Word are not outputting like it used to.

[zhangrau]

My computer is an ASUS G74S with an Intel i7 @ 2.2 GHz and 12 GB of RAM. I have 119 GB free space on my C: drive, and more than that on the E: drive where I save my genealogy databases and reports. Win 7 Home Premium and RM 6.3.0.2

My RTF reports open in MS Word 2003, but I also have MS Word 2010 available. I have RTF files set to open by default in 2003 because that's the version preferred by the website I use to publish my ebooks.

I have created some PDF reports in the Publisher that were over 14,000 pages (with Place Index only - Name Index and Bibliography turned off). These have allowed me to find duplicate places that were not given identical names.

[Jerry Bryan]

6. In the Index of names, in the RTF version only, the last entry does NOT have the paragraph indent.

I've never played around with Publisher, but for just plain old narrative reports I use RTF format with Microsoft Word. In this environment, indexes almost certainly will have to be rebuilt by Word no matter what you do. And when they are rebuilt with Word my experience is that they are correctly indented including the last entry.

However, the index entries are not correctly white-spaced when they are rebuilt by Word because modern versions of Word default to a style sheet that causes a blank line between between each entry in the index. The solution is to highlight the index and apply an older style sheet to it, such as the 2003 style sheet. Most modern Word style sheets are total pieces of junk in my opinion because they make it very difficult to use a carriage return to format single spaced lines, and this is the problem that indexes run into.

The modern Word style sheets assume that a single carriage return is the beginning of a new paragraph and that the new paragraph should be separated from the previous paragraph by a blank line. On it's face, that's not an unreasonable sounding mode of operation. Problems only manifest themselves when you try to use a carriage return for single spacing or when you try to rebuild an index. It is possible even with modern Word style sheets to force single spacing for a carriage return with a "shift + carriage return". But I know of no solution for the white space problem with the indexes except to apply an older style sheet to them. And in the case of the carriage return problem, I'm just much happier with using a double carriage return for a blank line than I am with some smart-alecky new-fangled style sheet trying to outsmart me.

Jerry

[zhangrau]

Paragraph styles in MS Word 2003 (what c24m48 is referring to as Style Sheets) can be easily edited for paragraph indents and line spacing. As I said above, the standards for publishing an ebook are very specific, including restrictions on the types of paragraph indents and number of multiple blanks lines allowed sequentially. Once I get the project into MS Word 2003, there will be several hours of editing and re-formatting required.

But I'm more concerned about the problem of INCORRECTLY numbered footnotes described above.

[TomH]

But I'm more concerned about the problem of INCORRECTLY numbered footnotes described above.

However, that seems to be a PDF problem so it does not block you from proceeding down the path of RTF - Word ---> ebook publisher.

[zhangrau]

Yes, but most of the reports that I prepare for friends and family are saved as PDF format, so the incorrect footnote numbers are still a problem.

[TomH]

I should have added, based on your having 20-30 footnotes on a page, that RM reports have had a problem when the space needed by the footnotes runs up against the space needed for the text, e.g., what if the footnotes for a minimum block of text need to run over to the next page... You are safer to use endnotes. I wrestled with this, none too successfully, and wrote about it some time back - http://forums.rootsm...with-footnotes/. The problem was not only with this one report but others, too. I would not be surprised that the PDF misnumbering of or wrong content in the footnote is related.

Also maybe related:
http://forums.rootsm...ontinued-pages/
http://forums.rootsm...xport-rtf-file/

And for continued supply of PDF reports, perhaps try printing from the Preview or from MS Word to a PDF printer such as CutePDF instead of using the built-in PDF writer. If Preview and RTF are correct, then so should the PDF printed from them.

Edited by TomH, 24 July 2013 - 02:09 PM.

[zhangrau]

I normally use endnotes rather than footnotes, but decided on footnotes for this project. That decision was primarily based on the fact that as endnotes, each chapter's endnotes are separated by a header paragraph, and numbering restarts for each paragraph. With footnotes, the numbering is sequential - which I greatly prefer.

I have three different print-to-PDF drivers loaded (Adobe PDF, BullZip PDF, and CutePDF) and they all behave a little differently with web pages (frames and CSS coding, for example, get interpreted differently by the different PDF drivers).