Learning MS Publisher the Hard Way

[kevin_standlee]

As we seem to actually be inching toward finalizing Westercon PR 2, I went back to work on it this afternoon. As things have slipped so badly, I need to also fit the Westercon Bylaws into it. This is a challenge, and turned into even more of a challenge when I discovered that Microsoft Publisher 2003 doesn't understand strikethrough type. That's bad, because we use strikethrough in the Bylaws and Agenda to show when words are being struck and underline to show when they're being added.

After hunting around a bit, I determined that about the only way to preserve the formatting was to paste in MS Word objects, one per page of bylaws, laid out at the same exact size and margins. At least it worked, but the objects stand on their own and don't "flow" from page to page the way I would prefer they do.

Even printing the bylaws in eye-watering 7-point type, it still takes five digest-sized pages to print them. I'd much prefer larger type, but it means more expensive PR pages. I do include a note on the first page referring people to the Westercon Bylaws Web Page for a more readable copy.

Mind you, if it turns out that we're a page short somewhere (the PR has to be assembled in four-page signatures), I can always increase the point size. Unfortunately, since it's really five separate documents, that would mean having to paste the pieces in separately all over again.

And before anyone asks: I'm using Publisher because it's the only tool I have that will produce a digest-format publication without having to do it manually, which is what I'd end up doing in Word if I had to do so. And it's not worth my while to buy a "real" page layout program like InDesign, since I don't have to do this very often, and my employer has no need for it either.

Comments

[solarbird]

And it's not worth my while to buy a "real" page layout program like InDesign
Hey! Do not harsh on the Publisher!

...even if we never did implement strikethrough support, our text handling roxx0rs otherwise.

(Even if I am not on the team anymore, I defend that codebase! I saw the latest version and they're still totally using my UI code. That makes me laff.)

[buddykat.livejournal.com]

And it's not worth my while to buy a "real" page layout program like InDesign, since I don't have to do this very often, and my employer has no need for it either.

You can download a free 30 day trial of InDesign though.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Don't you love the way computers sometimes make things harder?

I remember when a colleague was trying to design the master for a poster. She had a finished text layout, with a properly-sized space where the picture was to go. She had the picture in a separate file. But when she tried inserting it, somehow everything got screwed up.

So I said, "Since this is going to get photocopied anyway, why don't you just print them out separately and cut-and-paste the picture in?"

[flick.livejournal.com]

I just do stuff like this in Pages, export as a .pdf and then use a .pdf to booklet conversion tool called Cocoa Booklet.

I would have thought there would be a PC equivalent, somewhere.

[redneckotaku.livejournal.com]

I don't even really do graphic design, so I can't offer much in the way of help on this one.

[galtine1.livejournal.com]

Um, I've done several PRs in Word. And you can change the page sizes, do Journal or Book layouts, textboxes that feed into the next text box....

If the PR isnt going to be overly fancy like a program book, then you should be able to do this in Word.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

As far as I can see, to do this requires rejigging the entire document every time you change the number of pages in the booklet. That is, you have to manually set it up so that the side-by-side booklet pages match up the way they do in a booklet, with (for a 16-page digest-sized document) pages 1/16 on the same Word "page." If you then discover that you need to add more pages, your layouts are all screwed up. You can't just define the pages in Word as 5.5 x 8.5 and tell it to match them back together and print it as a booklet later. (If you can do this, I've never figured out how -- I just end up with 5.5 x 8.5 individual pages printing out centered in letter-size sheets of paper, one per sheet, and if you want a booklet out of that, it's manual cut-and-paste.)

If it's the only way I could get the task done, I'd do it that way. I've certainly done my share of manual cut-and-paste in my life. But since I do have a tool that will let me work on the pages in their natural order (that is, the way they'll appear to the reader) and then worry about putting them in the necessary order for printing the signatures only at print time, then I'd rather use that, even though I get an annoyance with strikethrough type.

This does suggest to me one reason why a certain Worldcon's publications lost all of the formatting of the WSFS Papers, though. There's nothing in Publisher's documentation that I can find that says, "We don't support strikethrough type." You have to learn it the hard way.

[galtine1.livejournal.com]

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HP030729501033.aspx?pid=CH060829651033

Also, I just did a test-print of a 6page document asking it to print 1,3,5,2,4,6....and low-n-behold it did print it in that order.

And Word for Vista has strikethrough and double-strike.

And then if you want "2-up" you need to change the number of pages to a sheet, when you go to print options, make sure to say 2-to a page, and then enter the pattern that gets you pages 4/1 and then 2/3. I just did this as well, and if you need to do "manual duplex" then make sure to skip the "insides" and just print the "outsides" then flip and go BACKWARDS through the insides".

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Hm, that might work, although it still requires manual work instead of being able to tell the program "just do it." Thanks for pointing me at that. I'd not found anything that would produce what I would want, and I may give it a try later. (I'm too far down the road on this PR to want to restart it, though.)

Word has had strikethrough type for as long as I've known; possibly from the beginning. It's only Publisher that doesn't support it natively, although it does when you embed the Word document within it.

[hai-irouchuujin.livejournal.com]

Kevin:

Send me PDF files in order and I'll be happy to generate a booklet for you.

And if you need help in the future, ask. 100 page zines every two weeks are a bit much, but I can probably find time to work in a 16 page document every once in a while. Particularly if I don't have to do "static" stuff like a calendar. :) I need to find some justification for buying Adobe Creative Suite.

Jack