iDied Update; Publishing Thoughts

Well, we lost everything since the end of January, except for about 600 kidpics burned to CD at one point. (See previous post.) Both computers suffered catastrophic hard-drive failure. One of them - the new G5 iMac, less than 3 weeks past warranty expiry. Nothing. recoverable.

That's rather sad.

And figuring out which CD's we've added in the last year, and now lost, is going to be exciting and interesting work.

All my computer-using life I've been a haphazard backer-upper. You never think it's going to happen to you; certainly not the double lightning strike. Man, now I've got that old-time religion. I'm never going to let this happen again. Awful.

Costing us an arm and a leg to get the two machines back, wiped clean of all the personal stuff we really value.

Belle lost quite a bit of work on her novel, but she thinks she can do it again, and better. I don't think I had any writings that weren't also somewhere else. But I'm sure in 3 months I'll be smacking my forehead remembering that big old draft that is now gone.

You could cheer me up by buying something through Amazon on the sidebar. If you are feeling like buying something through Amazon.

Hey, I've got a question - maybe for Glenn F. (thanks for the helpful speculation about power conditioning, old friend.) Suppose, just suppose, I wanted to set up a small e-press - a publishing house. And suppose I wanted it to be the case that authors could do as much as possible to prepare their own documents. That is, I want to lighten the typesetting and page layout load that falls to editors as much as possible. Presumably this would involve giving authors some choice of templates or layouts or especially stringent requirements for tweaking, say, an MS-Word doc. But the real question is: what desktop publishing applications might facilitate this venture. There are the big commercial ones. I've downloaded a 30-day freebie of InDesign, because I'm used to GoLive and Photoshop, so I figure probably I'll pick it up OK. But it isn't really realistic to expect all potential contributors to this venture to learn, let alone own, such heavy-duty, expensive stuff. Open source? Scribus? I've never really messed about with such things, but I have a sense that it's still probably a bit daunting.

OK, the project is something I've sort of sketched at the Valve (here and a bit more here). You don't need to click over to get the punchline, which is: a co-op publishing house where academic authors essentially 'pay' to their works peer-reviewed and edited - pay by doing doing the same for others. (You might 'pay' for having your book published by contributing peer reviews of six other projects, or whatever turns out to be a good number.) The idea would be that the publication is primarily electronic: clean, attractive HTML; spiffy PDF; and a POD option - maybe from Lulu. Everything free (except you pay for the POD if you want it. And if authors wanted to stick on a little commision, fine. Sell as many of those as you can, but don't expect to sell too many because you are also giving it away.) I figure I can get people who write at least this well.

There's an academic respectability issue for this project, but leave that to me for now. And the technical question raised above: how to optimize the submission so that it is as easy as possible to convert into HTML, and as close as possible to the final product that is to be turned into nice PDF? Without it being that it is too hard to authors to figure out all this without taking a mini-course in desktop publishing? (There isn't any question that SOME demands would fall to authors, probably above and beyond those they might get elsewhere. They'd just plain have to figure out what was needed from them.)

Thoughts? (Obviously a lot of this is vague.)

Comments

[claudia]

Yikes. I feel your pain - I've just trashed my laptop hard drive by feeding it coffee. Also lost all my data, back to April when I last backed up everything. Lots of kids pictures, among them the first pictures of our newborn. I find this the hardest bit to swallow. I shall be better about updating pix in the future.

[Doctor Memory]

There are professional data recoverly places that can probably get most of the data back from those drives. They're pricey, but it could be worth it -- 3 months of novel is a lot of ouch.

In re the open source prepress issue, you might want to look into LyX, which is a free graphical frontend to TeX, which is still the preferred tool for technical typesetting in a lot of circles.

[ogged]

Oh, that really sucks. But ditto what Doc Memory says: that data most likely isn't irretrievably lost.

[Kieran]

I strongly agree with ogged and DM: it'll probably cost 5 or 600 bucks, but you can almost certainly get that data back.

[ben wolfson]

I dunno how feasible it is for laptops, but for desktops you can have sort of a poor man's continuous backup with a two-disc RAID 1 array.

[Jonathan]

I have some proficiency with Quark and Framemaker, for what it's worth. Many presses use Quark, I believe.

[ben wolfson]

And the technical question raised above: how to optimize the submission so that it is as easy as possible to convert into HTML, and as close as possible to the final product that is to be turned into nice PDF?

Requesting submissions as rich text? Word exports to it, I'm pretty sure, and it would go over better than expecting potential authors to learn some dialect of TeX if they don't already know it.

[ben wolfson]

The point being that it's a more tractable format than is Word.

[Max]

Oh jeez. My sympathies. I agree with all the other folks above--don't trust Apple's service folks to do data restoration on those disks--get them back and take it to a specialist, if you want.
But also, this seems like a tailor-made advertisement for Google's (presumed) plans for net-centric computing. You'd never have to worry about losing baby pictures or novels again. (Whether you feel like letting a large corporation in Mountain View, CA control all your data is another matter.)

No suggestions on the pre-press front--tho' InDesign isn't shockingly expensive with an educational discount (which maybe the majority of your submittors would have available?) and is very easy to use compared to some nice wholesome open-sourcey granola.

Also, if I buy all my relatives Arrested Development DVDs for Christmas, can I do it through your link, or does it need to be one of your recommended reads/watches?

[jholbo]

No, please buy away Max. Just click through and anything you buy will do. And you are right about the educational discount. You can get Adobe's Creative Suite surprisingly inexpensively, given what high end stuff it is.

Thanks for the advice, everyone. Happy Thanksgiving.

[Nick Caldwell]

Online academic publishing is a topic close to my heart, as in a previous life I was involved in designing an electronic cultural studies journal, and I'm kind of stealth-starting up a web application that will handle the entire workflow of producing a peer-reviewed electronic academic journal.

The data input stage -- getting the document into a usable form online -- isn't an easy problem. For one thing, you probably don't want to rely too much on an online data entry system for long documents. I mean, it's doable, but you tend to have to rely too much on not accidentally hitting the browser refresh button and losing all your content.

Really, what you want is a locked-down template in a sane document format, such as Open Office (it's all XML inside, which means very, very short steps to virtually any other kind of document format imaginable).

And, for the love of all that's holy, you don't want authors making ANY layout decisions. Dear God, no. Online documents require very careful decisions to be made for the sake of readability and accessibility.

Hum hum. Sorry, I could bore for England on this topic.

[bryan]

not recommended to do yourself, but shows possibilities http://www.hackaday.com/entry/1234000840067578/

[Paula Helm Murray]

I feel your pain. Last January I had my laptop stolen out of my car (stopped at the vet's to pick up my cat's ashes, was there less than 3 minutes, only door unlocked was the driver's door....)

That day someone called me who sounded like he was crack saying 'I think I found your little computer' then "oh, heck you can't call me here!" (a lot of pay phones do not receive calls due to drug action).

the KC in 2006 list is totally lost We're making backupsof the KC in 2009 database into our Yahoogroups list nw.

[Keith]

That's defintiely a big ouchie.

On the publishing end, I've been using InDesign to set a book I wrote an dillustrated and while it is user friendly (especialy the CS2 version), it's a bit much to expect authors to learn, unless they're obsessive about the design and tactility of their book. A few magazine publishers that I've looked into accept submissions in Rich Text Format so that should be pretty easy to handle, especially since you can import RTF and Word docs into InDesign.

[Miriam]

Speaking as an author who has had to do CRC, I think we should have as few options as possible. Seriously.

[jholbo]

Thanks for all the comments. Miriam and Nick, I didn't really mean to suggest that authors who surely don't know what they are doing should be invited to make decisions will will just be headaches in waiting. I can see the danger. I just meant that, as a publishing house, you might want to have - say - two 'looks' for your books. Suppose you publish e-editions of obscure Victorian novels, but you also publish Larry Lessig-style ruminations on the future of digital culture. You might want to allow for books that have a somewhat different look in terms of fonts and title styles and so forth. But that would just mean showing the authors samples of final product and saying: which of these is for you? Then making them use exactly the template for that look. (Admittedly, I'm getting rather ahead of myself, futzing with the ornamentation on the tower when I haven't even laid the foundation yet.)

[Nick Caldwell]

Hi John,

Part of my day job is cleaning up after other people who think they can "design", so excuse the vehemence of my earlier remark :-)

I wonder if this article at A List Apart might be of some interest?

Oh, and because I didn't say it in the last comment, my sympathies on the Mac death. Not fun at all.

[John Quiggin]

Commiserations. I have almost the same setup, which I thought was just about failsafe. Better think again.

[jholbo]

Thanks for the link, Nick. That's quite interesting. Commiserations accepted, John. May others learn from my mistakes.

[James Wimberley]

I agree with ben wolfson about using a second HD instead on a desktop.
From my cross-post over at CT:
A wonderful free recovery tool for non-geeks [using Windows, not sadly Macs] is Knoppix – a self-booting Linux distro with applications on a CD. I managed to salvage key data files onto a USB stick with Knoppix when my old (actually brand new) Windows HD died.

[Ryan Miller]

John,

Condolences on the HDs. As for the software question, you don't really want authors making individual styling/layout decisions, so what you actually need them to do is produce semantic markup so that the decisions that do need to be made aren't a pain, and can be done in a largely automated way.

At that point there are basically three choices: LaTeX, XHTML, or a proprietary SGML stylesheet. The first can be set with Lyx, and the second via Textile. There are various commercial software vendors that will allow you to generate SGML styled content for unknown fees.

The problem with OpenOffice stylesheets is that they too easily tolerate variation from the stylesheet, and authors will inevitably engage in such variations (probably without even realizing it) whenever they can't figure out how to make the stylesheet do what they want.

Then when you get semantic markup you can run it through the XLST of your choice to format it for import to Scribus for page-setting or a CMS for online publishing.

If you want more specifics, feel free to email me, as I probably won't remember to check back here.

[MÁRCIO INÁCIO FRANCO]

Congonhal/MG (Brazil), February 17, 2006.

Ref. My book GALLERY OF THOUGHTS

Dear Gentlemen,

I send to you a small sample of my book of the area the SOCIAL AND HUMAN SCIENCES. The original book is published in the Portuguese language, in Brazil, with 210 thoughts and reflexive analyses.

I would like to publish my book in English language.

I wait for your important answer for the e-mail

marcio.franco@plugbr.com.br

Regards,

(s) Márcio Inácio Franco/Author
marcio.franco@plugbr.com.br
Rua Prudente de Morais, 507 – centro
37557-000 – Congonhal/MG (Brazil)
PS: The book involves philosophy and proverbs

GALLERY OF THOUGHTS

(A small sample)

Author: Márcio Inácio Franco

Chapter I – MAN

WISDOM MAKES MAN BRING INSIDE HIS HOUSE SUN IN WINTER, AND SHADE IN SUMMER.

This idea, beyond its abstract and allegorical aspect, has also a literal one. Thus, literally, when someone is planning to put up an office or residential building, it is important to have north-oriented windows, mainly in bedrooms or any other room that requires both sunlight in winter and shade in summer. Hence, if we consider the South Hemisphere, during winter, the sun rises, makes each day and sets into the North hemisphere. So, if we open our windows to this North, we are supposed to get winter sun in our rooms all day long. On the other hand, since in our summer, sun places itself on the south of the planet; we are to have shade all day long upon those planned rooms, precisely in the hottest period of the year.

In brief, making use of the mentioned planning activity we will have houses or office buildings quite naturally much warmer in winter and chillier in summer. This planning is simple not only in terms of comfort, but also in terms of health effect, since we are going to build healthy, undesirable fungus-free and mould-free buildings.

Conversely, buildings in the North hemisphere should have their windows south-oriented.

Besides, it is worth saying that the above thought and this attentive analysis will be able to inspire from the building owner, to the simplest brick layer, or the expert engineer or architect.

Making an exception, and writing about myself, I would like to add that , around 1996, I built a very small house, using that simple planning here published for the first time, and the result was exactly as assumed here. Thus, the planning I did at that time, the construction of the treated house and also the fact of experiencing the expected result, were the reasons which made me write that highlighted thought.

IF THERE IS ANY KIND OF POISONING, UNCONSCIOUS MIND PROVIDES MAN WITH NIGHTMARES CAUSING HIM FEAR OR EMBARRASSMENT, SO THAT HE STARTS SWEATING AS HE SLEEPS, WHICH ALLOWS HIM TO GET RID OF THE AILMENT.

IF EMBARRASSMENT DOES NOT SUFFICE, UNCONSCIOUS MIND BRINGS IN THE SAME NIGHTMARE A NEW SCENE –SOMETIMES IN SEQUENCE–, THIS TIME PROVOKING FEAR, AND THUS ELIMINATING TOXIN OR SWEAT IN WHICHEVER WAY. WHILE POISONING IS THERE INSIDE YOUR BODY, SUBCONSCIOUS WILL INSIST ON REPEATING THE PROCEDURES.

CONSCIENCE IS A BRIDGE OR A PLAN BETWEEN AN OUTSIDE FACT AND CARDIAC CENTER.

SINCE HAPPINESS CONSISTS IN ENJOYING WHAT WE HAVE, WE HAD BETTER DEVELOP EXPECTATIONS NOT GREATER THAN THE REALITY TO BE FACED.

BEFORE TRYING TO DEFINE WHO THE BEST IS, IT IS IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND THAT SOMEONE’S VIRTUES ARE NOT QUITE THE SAME AS SOMEBODY ELSE’S. SIMILARLY EACH ONE’S FAULTS DO NOT DELINEATE A TOTAL COINCIDENCE.

MAN IS PROVIDED WITH ACCESSORIES THAT ARE ABLE TO RESCUE HIM BACK TO NORMAL FROM THE WORST CONDITION, AS WELL AS TO DEVELOP HIM FROM NORMAL TO THE BEST ONE.

BEFORE, AND MORE IMPORTANT THAN JUST BEING ADMIRED, A MAN NEEDS TO BE RESPECTED.

THE FIRM INTENTION IN DISCERNING BETWEEN THE GOOD AND BAD CHARACTER IS ALREADY AN INDICATION OF THE PRESENCE OF A NOBLE NATURE.

IT IS NOT WISE TO OVERESTIMATE SOMEONE WHO LENDS YOU MONEY; SIMILARLY IT IS FOOLISH TO GET UPSET WITH THOSE WHO DO NOT LEND YOU ANY; THE FORMER MAY BE EAGER TO DRAIN YOU AND THE LATTER MAY BE TRYING JUST TO BE YOUR FRIEND.

IT REALLY DOES NOT MATTER TO BE FAMOUS, TO BE A WINNER IS WHAT REALLY COUNTS. ON THE OTHER HAND, BEING FAMOUS DOES NOT NECESSARILY MEAN TO BE A WINNER!

MIND IS THE SPIRITUAL BATTLEFIELD. TO CONQUER ONE’S HEART ONE MUST PREVIOUSLY PASS THROUGH HIS MIND, SHOWING A VICTORY.

PORTUGUESE DRAWS ATTENTION AS A RICHER LANGUAGE BY ITS VOCABULARY, VERB TENSES AND GRAMMAR RESOURCES. FRENCH AND SPANISH BY THEIR ENCHANTING SONORITY AND ENGLISH, IN TURN, BY ITS PRACTICALITY AND EXPRESSION OBJECTIVITY.

THE LAWSUIT IS THE LAW BATTLEFIELD. JUST LIKE IN THE CONVENTIONAL BATTLEFIELD, WITHIN THE LAWSUIT– UNDER OTHER NAMES – THERE ARE ATTACK, COUNTERATTACK, DEFENSE AND A RESULT.

DREAMS OR NIGHTMARES TEND TO MAKE MAN MOVE BACK TO PLACES WHERE HE HAS LIVED DURING HIS CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE.

Chapter II – MEMORY

MEMORY IS A FEELING THAT STORES PAST. FEELINGS ARE PLACED INSIDE THE HEART. FACT, THEN PRESENT, IS CAUGHT BY ANY SENSE, PASSES THROUGH THE BRAIN AND IS STORED IN THE HEART, ITS MAJOR MEMORY.

BRAIN MEMORY RECORDS ONLY A SHORT PAST; IT IS SUPERFICIAL COMPARED TO THE MEMORY OF THE HEART.

THE MAJOR MEMORY, THUS, EXISTS BECAUSE IT IS A FEELING: FOR, IT IS INHERENT IN THE FEELING TO EXTEND ITSELF BEYOND MATERIAL BOUNDARIES.

DEFRAGMENTER AND SCANDISK DEVICES OPERATE JUST LIKE OUR DREAMS: CORRECTING, REPAIRING, RECYCLING AND EXCLUDING MISTAKES OR MISJUDGMENTS VERIFIED DURING OUR DAY.

WHILE SLEEP RECOVERS OUR ENERGIES, DREAMS RECYCLE AND DEFRAGMENT THE STILL PENDING MISTAKES.

Chapter III – REASONING

WHEN CONSCIOUSNESS DITHERS, SUBCONSCIOUS MIND POSES THE DOUBT AND MAKES IT GO BACK TO REASONING. SUBCONSCIOUS, DIRECTLY LINKED TO THE HEART, PROMPTLY ASCENDS TO IT IN ORDER TO AROUSE CONSCIOUSNESS.

AS IF IN A HIGHER POSITION, FINDING ITS WAY THROUGH PECULIAR WINDOWS, REASONING MAKES USE OF MEMORY ELEMENTS, CHOOSING AND COMBINING THEM ACCORDING TO THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE DEALT ISSUE.

WHEN REASONING IS COMPLETED, IT TRANSFORMS AND ATTACHES ITSELF TO THE MEMORY, NOW AS PART OF IT, AS A CONCLUDED IDEA.

DEVELOPED REASONING CAN BE COMPARED TO CALIPERS, SINCE THEY EXAMINE AND PRECISELY TAKE THE MOST VARIED MEASUREMENTS, THE LENGTH, WIDTH, DEPTH; IT MEASURES STRAIGHT STRUCTURES, CURVED, CYLINDRICAL AND INTERNAL ONES.

Chapter IV – TIME

PRESENT TIME IS THE MOST RELEVANT OF ALL EPOCHS. THE VERY CONSCIOUSNESS OF PRESENT TIME PREVENTS AN ABSOLUTE DIVING EITHER IN THE PAST OR FUTURE REALITY.

PRESENT TIME MOVES WITH COMPLETE PRECISION, TRANSFORMING ‘PREVIOUS PRESENT’ INTO PAST AND ‘SUBSEQUENT FUTURE’ INTO PRESENT.

PRESENT IS DYNAMIC WHEREAS PAST AND FUTURE ARE BOTH MOTIONLESS.

PAST ENLARGES ITSELF AND FUTURE SHRINKS BY THE PRESENT TIME DYNAMICS.

PAST IS LIKE A SHADOW OF WHAT ONCE PRESENT WAS, WHILE FUTURE IS LIKE A SHADOW OF WHAT PRESENT WILL BE.

PAST IS LIKE THE AFTERNOON SHADOW AND FUTURE, LIKE THE MORNING ONE.

PRESENT EXISTS DYNAMIC AND PRECISELY SECOND AFTER SECOND…

Chapter V – THE PROBLEM

A MAN CAN INQUIRY ANOTHER MAN; HOWEVER A CREATURE CANNOT INQUIRY ITS CREATOR.

WHENEVER POSSIBLE, MAN SHOULD SPEND LESS THAN HIS ACQUISITION CAPACITY. IT’S A MATTER OF CAUTION AND COMMON SENSE, SO AS NOT TO LIVE A BREACH OF ECONOMIC CONTRACTS AND INSOLVENCY DURING RAINY DAYS.

Chapter VI – NATURE

EACH DAY AND EACH NIGHT ARE JUST LIKE AN INHALE AND AN EXHALE OF LIGHT RESPECTIVELY.

EACH RAINDROP PRODUCES THE SPECIAL SOUND GENERATED BETWEEN ITS TIMBRE AND THE TIMBRE OF THE OBJECT IT FALLS ON TOP OF.

Chapter VII – TRUTH

ON THE ONE HAND, THERE ARE WORDS WHICH PURELY REFLECT TRUTH; ON THE OTHER HAND, THERE IS THE SUBSTITUTION OF TRUTH BY OTHER MILD AND ILLUSIVE TERMS.

AT FIRST, EVERY MAN PREFERS TRUTH: MISAPPREHENSION HOWEVER KEEPS HIM APART FROM IT.

Chapter VIII – PATIENCE

JUST LIKE ANY LIQUID OR METAL HAS ITS OWN BOILING OR MELTING POINT, EACH MAN IS GIVEN A PARTICULAR CAPACITY FOR SUFFERING.

FAITH IS QUITE ENOUGH EITHER TO REMOVE A MOUNTAIN OR TO BEAR ITS OWN WEIGHT.

A CHRISTIAN MAN SUFFERS OFFENSES AND SPIRITUAL INJUSTICE MUCH MORE THAN SOCIAL INJUSTICE.

WHEN SOMEONE REMEMBERS SOMETHING WITH SADNESS, IT IS IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER WITH COURAGE AS WELL.

PATIENCE IS ONE OF THE BEST GEARS TO WIN!

BEYOND THE LIMITS OF PATIENCE WE CAN FIND THE UNDESIRABLE ANXIETY. FOR MAN, IT MAY BE BEST TO EXTEND PATIENCE LIMITS THAN TO FACE ANXIETY.

Chapter IX – INTELLIGENCE

GREAT IDEAS COME FROM BOTH LEFT AND RIGHT HEMISPHERES OF THE BRAIN BUT THE GREATEST THOUGHTS COME FROM THE SOUL.

TO POSSESS GREAT PHYSICAL EYESIGHT DOES NOT SUFFICE; SPIRIT SHOULD NOT BE BLIND AS WELL.

Chapter X – ABSOLUTE

JUST LIKE NOTHING COMES FROM NOTHING, EVERYTHING COMES FROM THE WHOLE.

AT FIRST, UNDER THE EFFECTS OF MATERIALISM, MAN LONGS FOR A SUPERMAN, WHEREAS UNDER THE EFFECTS OF THE SPIRIT, MAN SEEKS FOR JESUS CHRIST.

ONLY GOD CAN SEE FROM EVERY ANGLE AND AT THE SAME TIME.

WHEN WORKING IN MEDICINE, GOD DOES NOT CHECK IF THE PATIENT HAS A GOOD INSURANCE PLAN OR IF HE IS BEING ASSISTED BY THE PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE.

IT DOES NOT MATER THE LIKELIHOOD OF CONQUERING THE WORLD; NONETHELESS IT IS GREATLY VALUED TO LEARN THAT CHRIST HAS WON DEATH AND RETRIEVED ETERNAL LIFE FOR MAN.

GENUINE FEELING COMES FROM GOD, BUT SENTIMENTALISM HAS EVIL ORIGIN.

WHILE MAN’S SOUL HAS A FEW CUBIC MILLIMETERS, GOD’S SPIRIT FILLS HEAVEN AND EARTH.