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• • August 28, 2017 at 2:07 pm #97109
    Allan Colombo

    Member

    Hi everyone!

    I’m working in a publishing house and in the past few months and i’m getting really bitter with book feature.

    I had been created many books in the two different formats, with book feature and the only one document and so far, I can’t see the big buzz around the ID book feature. It’s piss me off cause I’ve been watching so many ppl telling that is greater, that has so many cool stuff that I feel maybe i’m not getting the right perspective.

    So here’s the thing, I feel when creating only one document, I feel that I manage my books so much faster and easily. Actually, I feel the greatest problem is: As a professional job, there’s no way to automate most of the work, because everything will be back on, sometimes you gotta update a thing, customatize exacalty the way the client requires, and so on…i feel like, only one document gains time and speed, because it’s simple, it’s only one document, only one source, only one style, etc… let me show other stuff too:

    swifting among documents (chapters). I used to type the current page number, where I would quickly go to the page problem, but for now, I can’t know which chapter, lets say page 243 belongs so I have to search chapter by chapter. Constally swifting among documents by itself is also a huge lost of time for me. Open chapter, close chapter, get a exclamation in the book panal, overrides warnings, arg…

    Style source: again, naturaly we have to change among the documents and add new styles, update new styles, that’s work.. and because of it, i feel very easy to get confuse and make any change that will affect all accross the documents.. I could easily make a devastating damage. Working with only one document, seems not that danger as multiples docs.

    I also did a few tests and I could see when exporting book using the books feature, takes a little bit more when you working in only one book document. Work is work, and sometimes we have to export thousant times till get the final version either because of a correction or because an update or anything else. So in this cenario, i can’t afford extra seconds..

    footnote: If I want footnotes to respect the order across docs, I have to set the option “starting at” for every doc. If I got a huge book, lets say, 50 chapters, i got to set for every doc. And to be honest, rarely I receive a book that doesn’t have footnotes.

    anyways.. i just wanted to point out few things and discuss a little.. I actually understand this is a long topic, and my post is huge, but if you help me in any paragraph here, we already win.

    thanks

  • August 29, 2017 at 1:08 am #97110
    Niels JÌürgen Pedersen

    Participant

    The Book feature is very useful, when you work on a very large doc with lots of links and pages. A doc with 1200 large placed images, and 600 pages and so on, can be almost impossible to work on in one single doc.

    If it works for you to work in a single doc – then do just that :) I my self only use the book fuinction one very large, complex doc’s.

    • August 31, 2017 at 6:11 am #97153
      Allan Colombo

      Member

      that’s what I exactly feeling in the last few projects. Unless i’m not working with thousand pics and chapters, i’m really considering to stick with only one document. Well.. that means.. rarely… cause regular books only contain text and couple images…

  • August 30, 2017 at 11:27 pm #97148
    Joel Wilcox

    Member

    I love the book feature whenever I’m working on any larger document. Basically, unless you an excellent and powerful computer, you won’t find it easy to deal with hundreds of footnotes. Repaginating a document that large would allow me enough time to take a coffee break before my computer finished one job.

    Now, in smaller documents it’s great to stick with one file. However, since footnotes usually reset themselves after each chapter anyway, and since chapters easily stand as their own sections, it’s much safer to incorporate changes in a book file. Reflowing one line of a 100-chapter book requires a second pass through the entire work if you want to make sure the text no longer shows up on the wrong master page–and don’t get me started on running headers in 100 chapters.

    I guess it all depends on your tech and your workflow. If you do a lot of academic publishing or have to deal with anything that has numerous chapters, it’s a ton easier to put each chapter as its own document and (excuse the term) “bookify” it. At least, that’s what I’ve found after typesetting numerous books in a series of academic reprints.

    • August 31, 2017 at 2:58 pm #97172
      Dwayne Harris

      Member

      There shouldn’t be a major reflow issue of reflowing one line. Sure it may reflow for a few pages, but one can easily lose a line by tracking or make a line (depending upon whether the book is going longs or shorts for bad breaks) and get the page break to it’s original break.

      I don’t understand why you have problems with running headers on that many chapters. Using the running head variable makes it super-easy.

      But I don’t do academic books, so it’s possible you face different challenges.

      To Allan: At my company we have to make out file one long document. No books. No separate files. Just one file. That is what many of the major book publishers I work with want and demand. I don’t do many 1,000 page books, but have done a lot of 800+ page books. Sometimes, and I mean sometimes, the publisher will let us break it up into two files. But we have to get permission first.

  • September 1, 2017 at 5:50 am #97187
    Allan Colombo

    Member

    Dwayne

    thanks for sharing this, that’s great to me. It’s good to see how it works in other companies, I got curious though. Why they requires only one document only? Is it any special reason? maybe, that’s only rules?

    • September 4, 2017 at 12:08 pm #97722
      Dwayne Harris

      Member

      Allan–I think they want one document for archiving purposes and also for when they make the eBook. I’m not sure if this is the norm or not, but it’s the rules of some of the major publishers we work with.

  • September 1, 2017 at 6:04 am #97188
    Allan Colombo

    Member

    regard running headers, I got a problem too. I’ve tried with book feature, but I can only partially solve my problem.

    Usually in my company we have to have a better use of the paper, so the problem is: as you guys talked, if I set master pages and lately make any changes, I got go throughout the doc to fix those pages that got out of order.

    If I set master pages with book feature, I got the same problem because I never know in which page (odd or even) my chapter is going to be ended. So, If I set the next chapter to be started at odd page with master page and if I have to do any change in the previous chapter, consequentially master page will get out of order.

    I can’t set either odd or even pages to be a master pages. Any thoughts that I could possibly solve this? is there any way to do that with variables maybe?

    • September 4, 2017 at 12:12 pm #97723
      Dwayne Harris

      Member

      I don’t think there is an easy way to do what you want. It’s simply the nature of the beast.

      There will always be reflow when major edit is done.

      I sometimes just add one page when I have reflow and I relink it, and then the rest of the book retains the master pages. Bu you do have to worry about spreads (such as for one line short or one line long for bad breaks).

    • September 8, 2017 at 6:29 am #97889
      Allan Colombo

      Member

      that’s what I thought..
      thanks for replying though!

  • September 8, 2017 at 9:30 am #97896
    Lindsey Martin

    Member

    The book feature is very much in need of an overhaul. Not being able to set the numbering of footnotes to continue from doc to doc in the book is inefficient and leads to errors. Synching styles takes a lot care if one uses many styles. I could go on at length. Nevertheless, I use the book feature a fair bit for the following reasons. [1] Most of front matter and back matter of my publications is boilerplate. It’s easier to plug the separate documents set up for each into a book than to copy and paste to a single document. [2] It’s easier to keep material from each author in a collection in a separate doc in a book, especially as each chapter will have unique stylistic requirements and I will have a doc identified by chapter and author for sending proofs. It’s also easier when the order of the chapters in the book is changed about. [3] ID does not retain the scope of search-and-replace operations very well and it’s safer to isolate global searches to a particular doc.

  • September 8, 2017 at 9:49 am #97897
    Lindsey Martin

    Member

    One more thing: when I use the author/date system of references, I find it easier to check citations if the list of references at the back of the book is in a separate doc that I can drag to my second screen.

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