Re: Subject: Re: Cocoa Book / ok, ok.
Re: Subject: Re: Cocoa Book / ok, ok.
- Subject: Re: Subject: Re: Cocoa Book / ok, ok.
- From: "Brian E. Howard" <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2002 13:21:05 -0500
On Monday, December 9, 2002, at 12:35 PM, Chuck Toporek wrote:
When an author is working in Word, XML, or DocBook SGML to produce
their book, those files get converted to Frame when when the book
comes into production. "Conversion" is part voodoo, in that things can
happen, like double hyphens being converted to em-dashes, and missing
slashes from HTML/XML tags in code examples (e.g., <barf\>) suddenly
disappear. After a book gets converted, we typically have a few days
to review the conversion and find problems. We have to be really
careful to look for and catch these things, but they can sometimes
slip through.
It's worth noting that Word does a lot of nasty things to text as it's
entered, one of which is auto-converting double hyphens to em-dashes
and messing around with single and curly quotes, as well as doing some
odd things with backticks. To get around this, you need to turn off
all the automatic stuff by doing the following:
1. Go to Format --> AutoFormat
2. Click on the Options button
3. AutoCorrect tab
--> uncheck "Replace text as you type"
4. AutoFormat As You Type tab
--> uncheck everything in the "Replace as you type" section
5. AutoText tab
--> uncheck "Show AutoComplete tip for AutoText, Contacts, and
dates"
6. AutoFormat tab
--> uncheck everything in the "Replace" section
Then you should be safe for working on a tech book or documentation,
because Word (foolishly) assumes we're all typing business letters.
The real problem, as I said in my last post, is that you "Publishers"
are _NOT_ typesetting your books! You are farting around with crap
like M$ Word, and page layout programs that are designed to produce
pamphlets, not books. Real typesetting means TeX in todays world; all
else is forth rate at best, as there is no second or third rate! I own
several of your books, and the typography in every one of them is
horrible. On a positive note, the second edition of "Learning
Cocoa--With Objective-C" is a big improvement over the original
embarrassment. kudos to you and the author for that.
Brian E. Howard
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