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Level 2

403 points

Preview Update Bug? (+ iBooks 2 textbook font options)

Two related questions:

1) Is anyone else getting a situation where after you preview your book several times (10 or more in a session), if you change the master chapter or section layout, at some point the previewed text gets really small? I am trying 14-18 pt font sizes in the body text and when previewed on the iPad (2 or 3) it looks closer to 10pt. I have tried clearing the previewed book off my iPads, disconnecting and re-connecting, changing the fonts again, saving and then previewing but I can't get the body text to look anything close to the size I've created.

2) ...which leads me to: I don't see any options in iBooks 2 for users of iBA books to change the font size. Is this what everyone else sees or do you have font sizing options like in regular (ePub) iBooks?

My understanding is we're creating "fixed font" layouts with this app so whatever we preview it at and then publish it, that's what the reader will see (and without option of changing the font size). Is this correct?

Thanks in advance for any insights.

Mac OS X (10.7.3), 14GB RAM, Radeon 5770

Posted on Apr 9, 2012 1:11 PM

28 replies

K T

Level 7

23,877 points

Apr 9, 2012 3:28 PM in response to Dan-o

Just to follow up and let you know chem book lets me adjust font.

Dan-o Author

Level 2

403 points

Apr 9, 2012 3:32 PM in response to Dan-o

The only solution I found to this was to copy out the text to Pages, make sure it was all the correct size, delete the old sections from the iBA book. Create new sections and paste the text in, then regenerate the preview. Between that and my last attempt I also quit both apps, disconnected my iPad, reconnected, relaunched, then the preview... so my hunch is there is a problem with the Apply Changes button.

I believe (and if you guys test this and can confirm it I'll file a bug) if you set up a section template, then add text to actual section pages, then change the format of some of that text... you're not able to apply changes from the master any longer. It's like customizing the section kills the link between the master text formats and that part of the book....

Apr 9, 2012 3:33 PM in response to Dan-o

Dan-o wrote:

Is there a way we can highlight a chapter / section / text box and tell iBA to "revert all the copy in this part of the document to what is in the master layout"?

You can use the layout view in the left pane and then right-click on chapter or section and select "Reapply layout to Sections". That might help.

Michi.

Apr 9, 2012 3:39 PM in response to Dan-o

Dan-o wrote:

I believe (and if you guys test this and can confirm it I'll file a bug) if you set up a section template, then add text to actual section pages, then change the format of some of that text... you're not able to apply changes from the master any longer. It's like customizing the section kills the link between the master text formats and that part of the book....

I just experimented with this. It appears that "layout" includes the positioning of elements on the page, such as the size of text frames, but doesn't include individual text formatting. I'm not sure whether that's intentional or not.

If you have applied styles consistently to your book (every bit of text has a defined style), could you make the changes you need by changing the style(s)?

Michi.

K T

Level 7

23,877 points

Apr 9, 2012 3:39 PM in response to Dan-o

Sorry if I missed it....did you also delete existing previews before puhsing another?

Cachs glue can be tricky to overcome. If your authoring/editing process is such that you're rubberballing layout versus just added content, you may want to practice with a sample book first, to learn what works reliably w/your content, and then apply that workflow to your books going forward.

Good luck in any case.

Dan-o Author

Level 2

403 points

Apr 9, 2012 3:45 PM in response to MichiHenning

Short answer to your second question, probably so. But I am trying to use a mix of canned styles. What also seems to be true is that highlighting some text and adding Bullets or Numbers, is not the same thing as going and finding a "Body Bullets" or Body Numbers style... even if you're using Body text.

Answer to first theory: The odd thing is, if I use that red button on clean chapters with newly pasted text, the font changes there DO propogate. They only seem not to if I change some part of the text to a new style or unstyled. But I would think in that case everything except that newly or unstyled paragraph would keep on changing.

Regarding "Reapply to sections", does that perform the same function as the red button that shows up when you change the master (assuming there is content in teh book that uses said master)?

Apr 9, 2012 3:49 PM in response to Dan-o

Dan-o wrote:

Regarding "Reapply to sections", does that perform the same function as the red button that shows up when you change the master (assuming there is content in teh book that uses said master)?

No. It seems that the red button is simply a confirmation step. Confirming the changes does not affect existing pages. But, if you then go do the corresponding section, right-click, and re-apply changes, the changes you made to the master are propagated through to the content pages.

Michi.

Dan-o Author

Level 2

403 points

Apr 9, 2012 4:00 PM in response to MichiHenning

Actually, with clean text and layouts, it does change the pages and the previews in the thumbnail column. That's what threw me off originally. It would work sometimes and not others.

Here's what I can do right now, as long as I don't monkey with the font styles in the body of the documents:

1. Highlight the section master

2. Make a change to the text block and/or font

3. Click the Apply Changes button

Result: the thumbnails will all update and if i click any of them, they resemble the master now...

However, if I right click and try Reapply layout to Sections, I get a warning saying I am about to change X pages. But when I do that, the result seems to be the same as clicking the red button (visually anyway). Also after I do the red button I no longer have the contextual option, so it seems the only differences between the two are the warning dialog and something to do with overrides being lost.

So maybe the button leaves overrides intact. Anyone know what an override does? Is that just a fancy way of saying "something you changed from the set template"?

Apr 9, 2012 4:05 PM in response to Dan-o

Dan-o wrote:

So maybe the button leaves overrides intact. Anyone know what an override does? Is that just a fancy way of saying "something you changed from the set template"?

An "override" is any change that makes the text deviate from a predefined style, such as applying formatting to a section of text (e.g. applying bolding to a word without applying a "Bold" character style). At least, that's the definition that's used by most word processors.

It's not clear to me whether re-applying the layout includes or excludes paragraph and character styles. From my brief experiment, it appears that the layout changes, but not the character style. Not sure why you are seeing different behavior. The red button for me updated the layout, but not the body pages using that layout. It was only after I re-applied the layout that the body pages updated as well.

Michi.

K T

Level 7

23,877 points

Apr 9, 2012 4:06 PM in response to Dan-o

Speaking of clean text and layouts... Layout in landscape - edit in portait.

If you're mixing those efforts, iBA may be working at cross purposes with your expectations :)

Dan-o Author

Level 2

403 points

Apr 9, 2012 6:45 PM in response to K T

I was actually doing Landscape only because I can't figure out what I'm supposed to do with that sliding divider thing at the top of every section in portrait, plus going portrait makes some of the interactive widgets pretty useless. It's more of a visual book so the wide format is the way to go for my purposes.

Dan-o Author

Level 2

403 points

Apr 9, 2012 6:48 PM in response to MichiHenning

Well FWIW I'm considering font sizing to be part of that master layout change. Not talking about styles per se.

Example: if you change the size of the text box and change teh font and font size, all those things will propogate in the scenario I described. The Override thing might make sense now... maybe using the button leaves the overrides in place (hence no warning), while the menu function kills the overrides and switches everything to be exactly as outlined in the layout.

Dan-o Author

Level 2

403 points

Apr 10, 2012 1:29 PM in response to Dan-o

FYI in case anyone sees this on their system, it is definitely a bug. I just encountered it again after several successful previews. All of a sudden the text goes small. I'm about 95% sure this is some type of cache corruption issue. Unfortunately iOS abstracts all that stuff so we can't delete it. I filed a bug report though.

This is a major problem because once it happens you no longer know what your document looks like and how it is flowing from page to page... anyone else who sees a situation where your previewed text suddenly becomes smaller on iPad without changing the font size, I recommend you report it so they get complaints from multiple people / fix it sooner.

And possibly this is related to the bug where content placed in the Notes section in one book, then shows up later in other books where it was never placed.

Preview Update Bug? (+ iBooks 2 textbook font options)