| jamesbritt said: > getting the PDF just right was important to me. i respect that. how were you generating the .pdf? * > Since the user can set the font and text size > the idea of page size goes pretty much out the window. what pagesize did your .pdf have? that's what i meant. if you put each section on its own e-book screen, and
make the sections small enough to fit on one _screen,_
or two, or three, they'll also fit on one/two _pages._ * > Using CSS page-break doesn't quite help, > since it presumes what has come before > and how it fit on the page. i'm not sure i understand. so -- for the sake of others reading this thread --
let me explain further. when you create the e-book,
if you segment the book into small-enough sections,
it'll generally work, across almost all situations,
no matter how the person has configured the fontsize.
so there, a "screen-break" comes before each section,
and before-and-after images you want to fill a screen. conversely, for the .pdf, you _know_ the pagesize, and
the fontsize as well, so you know where pagebreaks are,
and you add/delete/change until you get what you want. * > What's needed is orphan/widow control > and "keep with next" so that, for examples, > related sections can be rendered on one page > or the next but not split across pages. it would be nice if the programs had enough smarts to
do this automatically; until then, you do it manually. but you don't need indesign to do it; you really don't. i'd be happy to show you how i'd do your book, if you'd
be interested in seeing it, if you send me a copy of it. * > In practice, though, I found I needed to > aim for some sort of highest common factor > across popular devices, keep test-viewing > the results, and drop anything too clever. that is the approach that is needed these days, yes. -bowerbird |
let me explain further. when you create the e-book, if you segment the book into small-enough sections, it'll generally work, across almost all situations, no matter how the person has configured the fontsize.
That's probably true enough for ebook readers (and I got good results for just epub using my CLI tools) but once I went to InDesign for the PDF layout using it for epub generation was no big deal and that was where I was making final changes to the text.
i'd be happy to show you how i'd do your book, if you'd be interested in seeing it, if you send me a copy of it.
Thank you. If you (or anyone else following this thread) wants to grab it I put up links at http://osc.justthebestparts.com/grab/
(If you need the actual markdown files I'd have to see about packing those up. I was writing the book as a Webby-generated site using a combination of Markdown and ERB. I had some scripts that would then use that same generated HTML to package it up as epub. )
It would be great if I could use command-line tools to generate the PDF while not sacrificing the precise look and layout I want but I'm deeply skeptical this can be done without a visual tool and manual adjustments to adjust things for aesthetic reasons. (Or without learning LateX. :))