Desktop Publishing Software Recommendations Needed

After you take a look at iCalamus, let me know what you think. We'll trade information.




Will do. (Hoping to start looking at it today as soon as I finish posting here.)

Scott Grabinger wrote:
----not related to original question----

"juicer?" You mean that I spent all those hours in the lavanderia and could have had orange juice while waiting? Next year I'll know better.

Doing more research, another word for drier is asciugatrice -- probably the most common usage.

Those are the kinds of nouns I have most trouble with when speaking.

ashyugatreeche?

Pronunciation is not really my problem, I spent years hanging out with Italian (girl)friends. It has always been gender and grammar that got me. That and the silent pronouns.

P.

Scott Grabinger wrote:
Peter,

I'm sensitive to our drain on resources, pollution of our environment, and careless use of energy.

Some years ago (many I suppose) I was told by more than one source that turning your computer on and off uses more electricity than leaving the machine "asleep" or on standby. Is this a myth?

A complete and total myth. I actually had a local enviro agency put a meter on my supposedly asleep Alum. iMac and it was alarming how much power it was consuming. The myth has more to do with the effect on the computer's hardware.

Unfortunately perpetrated by an almost uniquely North American mindset that doesn't want to believe it is no longer "business as usual".

It may not be apparent inside America, which becomes sharply defensive at any suggestion of being wrong, but it is so in your face to everyone else.

That was why the Papua New Guinean delegation got a spontaneous storm of applause when he told the USA at a UN meeting on climate change a couple of years ago, "If you are not going to do anything about it, +at least+ get out of the way." For the first time the USA was so shamed, that it did not vote against the motion. It did not vote for, just didn't vote against it.

Mind you we have our own set of troglodytes in the Opposition here, who are fighting a Carbon Tax tooth and nail, probably because their family trusts are heavily invested in the coal industry.

Scott Grabinger wrote:
I asked iStudio about the kinds of pdfs it generates and information about image quality and color control. The following is their long response:

----From iStudio----
Images are embedded in iStudio Publisher document (.ispx) files in
their original formats. Exporting a PDF also embeds the images in the
PDF file at their original resolution and compression level, so
there's no loss of image quality.

They can't have it both ways claiming they use OSX's quartz filters and the images retain their original resolution in .pdfs. The Quartz filter will reduce the resolution to 72dpi in all cases of shadows, reflections, and transparency. That includes text.

P.

They can't have it both ways claiming they use OSX's quartz filters and the images retain their original resolution in .pdfs. The Quartz filter will reduce the resolution to 72dpi in all cases of shadows, reflections, and transparency. That includes text.

Are you saying that (1) placing a 300dpi ICC-tagged RGB photo and (2) placing a 24pt line of type on top of the 300dpi photo and (3) applying transparency to the 24pt line of type has the consequence that (4) the 300dpi photo is downsampled to 72dpi or (5) that in the stack that makes up the blend space the resolution of the photo is reduced under the type, or what are you saying here?

There is no user interface to interact with the different classes of object in a blend space, so there is no way to control the transparency flattening. Working out the matrice of what Apple's algorithm does would be a bit of a job - they should simply publish it instead of this non-sensical situation. One may speculate that if they licenced the normaliser from Adobe, as the Adobe PDF/A evangelist says, then they might not be in a position to do so.

It's like buying a car and then discovering that in the user guide the sections that describe how to work the gears, the brakes and the steering wheel don't work because the tire manufacturer has a deal with the tarmac manufacturer. It is utterly absurd. The reality is that the ICC model and the Unicode model are necessary for graphic information processing, but marketing mayhem makes it a secret how anything in fact works.

Henrik

Technical comments below:

----From iStudio----
At present, iStudio Publisher creates PDF files using Mac OS X's
inbuilt services. It provides no specific options or settings for PDF
processing, although you can add your own PDF processing using Mac OS
X's Quartz filters.

UI issues and implementation issues with the Quartz filters have been documented. ColorSync Users List discussion since PDF/X-3 was introduced. Among other things, no cross-rendering (Perceptual to printing condition, Relative Colorimetric or Absolute Colorimetric from printing condition back to proofing condition for studio display/studio printer).

We are considering adding support for PDF settings
in the future. That's not to say iStudio Publisher creates poor
quality PDFs, and in fact we've made several design choices about the
PDF creation process that results in PDFs suitable for high quality
printing.

OK, to be precise ...

Images are embedded in iStudio Publisher document (.ispx) files in
their original formats. Exporting a PDF also embeds the images in the
PDF file at their original resolution and compression level, so
there's no loss of image quality.

Source resolution is honoured. But what happens to deviceColour, is there control of the assumed source ICC space in assigning or is the assigned source ICC space ALWAYS the Generic xxx Profile set supplied by Apple? For instance, if I know the source is in fact an ISO 12647 space, does Apple's SWOP TROO1 get assigned anyway?

iStudio Publisher can be used as part of a colour-managed workflow.
Document images and other coloured document artifacts (lines, fills,
text, etc) are all tagged with ICC colour profiles, which are stored
in iStudio Publisher document files and are transferred to the PDF.

Per object on a point and pick principle (this object will have fill source ICC space x and stroke ICC source space Y), or on a class-based principle (all objects of this class and that colourant model will have source ICC space x), or what would the above imply? PS and PDF permit per-object colour management with any combination of no colour management, PS colour management, and ICC colour management.

ICC colour profiles can be changed during document editing. Some
printers may require colors to be set to CMYK at document edit time.
For more information about setting CMYK colours, please see the
iStudio Publisher Help page "CMYK colors".

Does this imply that pointing to and clicking on a placed object will display that object's embedded ICC source space(s) and permit manual override per object and per space and per rendering intent? The issue is where the application intelligence for per object colour management stops, because it can be taken all the way in principle. There are interfaces to do that, but there are probably not many users who work with them.

iStudio Publisher creates PDF files with font subsets embedded, which
ensures all font information remains available to remote viewers even
if they don't have all of your document's fonts installed on their
computer. Embedding font subsets involves only including the
individual font glyphs (characters) that are actually used in your
document rather than embedding complete fonts en masse; it helps to
minimize the PDF file size.

Bad idea. Font subsetting appeared in Apple PDD and Adobe PDF in 1993-93 for display and licencing reasons. In PS following Adobe Technical Note 5012 of 1993, updated in 1998, only the font program is embedded whereas any tags that tell of the meaning of the glyphs may be stripped including the CMAP. In the update in 1998, the idea is introduced that the application is responsible for figuring out the meaning of the glyphs and writing a CMAP - which is NOT the same as the actual font CMAP - out as a table and sticking that into the PDF.

PDF 1.6 and higher supports embedding of the intact SNFT indices, no subsetting and stripping away of the glyph run instructions from input to the CMAP through input to the GSUB/GPOS reshaping and on to output of the glyph run as imageable composition. Downside is that OpenType is application-dependent (unintelligent transform, intelligent rendering mechanism) and application-dependent so even registered tag behaviours may not be supported by some specific application whereas the application-independent model of AAT is not supported by Adobe as per its decision of 1997. Application-dependent ICC imaging and application-dependent Unicode imaging is awful - the thrust of FOGRA's argument against application-dependence still stands, but Apple would not licence and it went south from there.

iStudio Publisher controls and sets the
position of each and every character in the PDF rather than relying on
the use of default PDF layout algorithms, so you can also be sure your
page layout will be faithfully reproduced.

The marketing manager for iStudio Publisher needs to get with the program. Characters are non-imageable and do not by definition have the property of being positioned in x-y design space. Glyphs are imageable and are what is positioned.

Henrik

In my experimentation, OSX's quartz filters takes any area of transparency, or overlapping transparent objects, and renders it at 72dpi.

Text will remain vectors only if it is on top and has 100% opacity. Any degree of transparency and it is all rendered as LoRes bitmaps.

I have managed to crack some of the filter settings but not all.

We agree on Apple's duplicity. It looks like a backroom deal has been struck to not cross over into Adobe's territory, but nobody is talking about it. The worst thing, is that Apple has done everything to mislead its users and after the problem surfaces, walk away from them.

I, like many, are struggling to still support the now mythical role of Apple as a creative-friendly platform.

Apple seems to have decided that any remaining creatives are unlikely to shift, if they haven't already done so given the treatment handed out to them. So it can safely ignore them.

Peter

I, like many, are struggling to still support the now mythical role of Apple as a creative-friendly platform.

As pointed out by Chief Editor Jonathan Seybold in 1985 when he played matchmaker for the marriage of QuickDraw and PostScript, the graphics primitives and graphics commands for the digital graphic display should be a superset of the graphics primitives and graphics commands for the digital graphic printer. Similarly, the Chair of ECMA TC46 on ECMA 388 Open XPS makes the selfsame point with regard to XAML as a superset of XPS. Microsoft does not support Adobe Type 1 under the Presentation Foundation of Windows 6 and higher, Apple supports Adobe Type 1 since a MASSIVE amount of Type 1 was sold to the Macintosh. Similarly, Apple supports PS and EPS as intermediate to PDF which crashes the ICC imaging model and the Unicode imaging model, but Microsoft does not.

It's a game, a gamble if you will. PostScript predates Unicode and ICC portability and repurposing by a decade, what do you do with a platform where the older user base will not budge because it is locked into a technical myth about a 'user-friendly creative platform' that was not at all user-friendly. PostScript level 1 imaging was impossible, it was based on CEPS, OPI and EPS DCS with Type 1. PostScript level 2 imaging was impossible, the PostScript CMS was what a developer has rightly called the printer's harakiri - there was no way to predict what the press would print using the in-RIP CRD, and no way to be sure that CSAs and CRDs were in fact honoured in downloaded instead.

To move the Macintosh market means to dismantle the technical myth about PostScript. That also means educating lower and middle echelons of Apple marketing and management. This, then, becomes a question of whether the company can cope with constructive criticism, considering that it's internal technical marketing has collapsed in the past. I had constructive and positive discussions with Carla Ow-Chu, Ken Applebaum and, despite differences, with John Zimmerer, but there is no Product Manager for Colour and Imaging currently. John supervised the guides on colour and advanced typography for 10.3 and 10.4 before leaving for X-Rite.

Henrik


Reference:

http://lists.apple.com/archives/colorsync-users/2003/Nov/msg00362.html



Henrik

FOLLOW_UP:

If yesterday (Monday) is any example of how busy my days will be like over the the next few weeks, I had better post my comments now instead of waiting. (Wife is pre-op for knee replacement surgery, dad is getting about 4 months of medical appointments out of the way so he can take an extended vacation out of area to avoid the winter weather, and, of course, it's Thanksgiving week.)

Not sure my comments will be of any help since I appear to have different goals than you. But here goes... Spent the weekend looking over iStudio, iCalamus, and InDesign CS4. As advertised, all three are primarily layout applications with varying levels of impressive graphic handling features and limited/unimpressive "book" authoring/building capabilities. While I would obviously use them for the laying out of an advertisement, create a magazine article, or publish a newsletter, I don't relish the thought of authoring a "chapter and verse" text with them. However, if your book is more of a photo album with limited text flow, it might be suitable fo for your purpose.

Unfortunately, my main concern is productivity. There are hundreds, possibly thousands, of public domain works available on the internet which I wish to custom format and repurpose for use on my specific eBook readers over the next several years. Some are things I would would not buy if I had to pay for them. Others are out of print and/or simply hard to find. Nearly all are published using different stylistic formats. They range from texts for my grandchildren (Tom Swift, the various Wizard of Oz volumes, etc.) to nostalgia pulp fiction from my youth (by writers like E. E. "Doc" Smith, Heinlein, H. Beam Piper, Andrea Norton, etc.) to texts by various masters of covering everything from plays to philosophy. Using Pages, I can repurpose 4-5 Tom Swift books, 2-3 works with limited graphic content (e.g., The Skylark of Space or Skylark Three), or a single heavily graphic piece in a day. On the other hand, it took me most of a day to import and reformat the first 7 of the 19 chapters in The Skylark of Space using InDesign CS4.

Basically, I had complaints with all of the applications tested. Each had a somewhat limited option for the placement/import of external source files -- a problem shared by Pages. iCalamus, for instance will import an HTML file directly but does not seem to have an auto-flow option. Pages will not import such files directly but can paste the inline contents of such a file without flowing problems. InDesign will neither open/place such a file nor paste text if it contains images/shapes but does have an auto-flow feature. Both iCalamus and Pages drop shapes like chapter sub-dividers but InDesign accepts them and drops the text as mentioned above. One thing that amazed me about InDesign CS4 was the fact that its inline image handling seemed inferior to that of Pages and, even though I followed the "white paper" step-for-step, I was never able to get an ePUB to export a chapter containing an image. Another general problem is the actual building of a chaptered text. Most layout applications require the user to create independent chapter files which must later be assembled as a book (i.e., a different file) if it even has a "book" support feature. Pages does not have this problem thanks to its separate layout-word processor layers. Did not find dedicated "book" support features built into iCalamus but may have missed them. Assumed the PDFCleark Pro "add-on" was meant for this purpose as it seems to allow the iCalamus user to export assemble individual iCalamus PDF pages in any order and add dynamic annotations like a TOC and/or Index (auto detect mode for index looks a bit "iffy"). Actually, this "add-on" may be a handy utility application in and of itself that combines the look and feel of Preview with some of the limited text editing features of Pages. (BTW, it also will import HTML files directly for editing and export to PDF.)

Not sure this is what you were looking for or not. Went to your public profile are to see if you had posted an e-mail address. Finding none, I posted these abbreviated comments while waiting for dad to get ready. (Taking him to get the car cleaned, see his doctor,pick up medicine, and do some shopping on base.) Hope they are of some help.

P.S.
Have also downloaded QuarkXPress to see what it can but will like not be able to get to it (or a closer look at PDFClerk Pro) this week.

Scott

I highly advise against using a DTP like Word Processor to write a book.

Even if you have a visual book with a great deal of images, it is best to separate the two processes of graphics creation and writing. Once you have the "Words and Music" sorted out, then orchestrate them in a full layout program, if you must.

If it is a commercial publication, few publishers want the world's best author churning out the world's worst DTP. No matter what it says on the +"New Improved, 50% whiter DTP Software, - Now with added verbs!"+

For Authors the best choices are Scrivener and Ulysses :

http://www.freeforum101.com/iworktipsntrick/viewtopic.php?t=47&mforum=iworktipsn trick

Peter

Thanks for all the detailed information. It's a bit disappointing because none of the options seems a great application for writing a book.




Not a problem, Scott. Didn't really take detailed notes or make an intensive study in this case. While it may be disappointing that no one application seems to be well suited for all aspects of authoring, layout, book building, and export to all hard/soft copy paper/electronic publishing mediums, this is probably to be expected at this time. The requirements for such a universal multi-purposing application are still being defined by writers, publishers, and device manufacturers.

Probably doesn't help you but here is a quick FYI... At 4:28 EST this AM received word that Amazon had just released an update for older Kindle devices which includes a PDF reader. Am currently scrambling to sideload a number of files to my Kindle 2 for testing while out of town attending the "clan gathering" tomorrow. Preliminary tests indicate the Pages dynamic annotation, auto generated TOC may not be compatible with it but then, it wan't compatible AZW files based on its use either. (Will likely have to test a manually generated bookmark-hyperlink TOC alternative sometime after I return.) In any case, am now leaning towards PDF as a multi-purpose, single format export and keeping Pages as my application of preference for eBooks. Realize this does not really suit your needs where printed documents and/or dealing with printers/publishers having specific commercial requirements are concerned. Still, thought it might be of interest if considering publishing for mobile devices down the road since it seems that some sort of PDF reader software is being included to almost all newly/soon-to-be released eBook devices.

none of the options seems a great application for writing a book.

It might be helpful to find someone who has done a lot of the same thing you want to do and see what they use. For example, if it were an ebook, these folks have done a number

http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/

I know that their process uses Word (both Mac and Windows for different purposes) and then Adobe Acrobat to create the pdfs.

They also offer the books in printed form via a service:

http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/print-on-demand/

Amazon had just released an update for older Kindle devices which includes a PDF reader.

How does one get this?

Never mind about the Kindle update, I see it is not for the Kindle 1.