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• • April 18, 2016 at 3:49 pm #84102
    Tara Mayberry

    Member

    Help! I’m formatting a book for print, but then need to export to ebook format as well. The author has typed all chapter titles as “Chapter One” — in camel case. Okay for print, I just set the paragraph style to “all caps”, but when I export to EPUB, they go back to camel case. Is there a global change to UPPERCASE, without having to manually change each one? Thanks.

  • April 18, 2016 at 5:18 pm #84107
    Ari Singer

    Member

    I believe it happens because you set it up to be all caps through the Character panel options or character style options. While that does give you all caps, be aware that they are not ‘real’ all caps. To prove that, just turn off all caps and they return to how they were before. So this is just like applying a paragraph rule to a paragraph, which can get lost when exporting to an ebook because the paragraph rule is merely a ‘presentational’ attribute so to speak. The same goes for the ‘fake’ all caps.

    The solution to this is to convert it to ‘real’ static undoable all caps. You do that from the Type menu > Change Case > UPPERCASE. This changes it to real static all caps. If you have to do a lot of them this can get exhausting. And unfortunately, as far as I know, you can’t do that through Find/Change (unless, of course, you type in the actual replacement in all caps. But for variable chapter names this can be exhausting).

    I think the best way to do it is like this:

    Define a new shortcut for the Change Case to Uppercase menu (such as Shift+Ctrl+5). Then fire up the Find/Change dialog box. In the Find What field enter the string that you need, Or just use the Find Format option. Then hit Find Next. When any text gets selected in the document hit the shortcut (such as Shift+Ctrl+5) to change it to all caps. hit Find Next again, and hit the shortcut again. Do this over and over until all instances have been changed.

    • April 19, 2016 at 3:22 pm #84135
      Dwayne Harris

      Member

      ^^That sounds like such a pain in the ass.

      My company has recently been given instructions for how our files need to be for eBooks and that is one of the things we need to do.

      What sucks is that our running heads are based on the chapter tiles and the running heads are Upper and Lower Case (not all CAPS). So it has always beneficial to use the palette for CAPS and have the Chapter Title typed Upper and Lower case. It was ideal.

      Now it seems that eBooks and how they are structured is making life harder for designers and folks like me who paginate the books in InDesign. With all these things we have to do differently now, it takes longer to do a job. And the publishers want things done quickly and cheaply.

      I may start a post with a list of what we can and can’t do according to the publisher’s eBook guru and ask if all of it is necessary.

      Example: We are being told we can no longe use the “keep together” option. We use it when paging to avoid widows at the top of the page, keeping heads with text, etc., but they are saying to have it turned off when it goes to eBook.

      We are working on a script to “fix” a lot of things being demanded, but sometimes they want to start working on the eBook right at the first pass, and that is not going to work well.

      The eBook guru only knows about eBooks, I believe, and nothing about InDesign. And the problem is we are working on the printed book but also at the same time trying to comply with eBook rules. And that really can’t be done.

      And–each style has to have a paragraph style? For example, I have a job with a lot of extracts (flush left, paragraph indent left and right. Line space above and below). I have one instance where an A head falls below the extract, and I can’t simply remove the line space below the extract to fix it. I have to create a new style of that extract with no space below. Talk about overkill.

    • April 21, 2016 at 8:27 am #84174
      Aaron Troia

      Participant

      Dwayne,

      As someone who is in a similar position to you (I share print with a coworker but I do all the ebooks), I use Keep Together and havent noticed it causing issues on export.

      But I agree with the having the overkill paragraph style list, when you have your paragraph styles mapped to a stylesheet, it makes it so much smoother of an export if everything has a paragraph style and isnt using style overrides because those dont come through when you export to a custom stylesheet and dont generate any of InDesigns CSS. Yes it’s overkill, but it saves tons of time on the back end, especially when you’re doing both.

      Aaron

    • April 21, 2016 at 1:21 pm #84182
      Dwayne Harris

      Member

      Aaron, I definitely agree that it saves a ton of time on the back end for the guys and gals who do the eBooks. And 99.9999 percent of the time everything has a style sheet. But I do know it takes more time on my end (the front end). I don’t mind that as much except for the crazy deadlines I’m under, designers not doing their part on the front-front end, etc. And have to explain to my bosses why it took me longer to do a certain book than expected.

      And the publishers want everything done at rock-bottom prices, not taking into account the extra work involved.

      I guess that’s my gripe.

      And I’m glad you’ve seen no issues with the Keep Together. Many book publisher’s designers have never used the feature and to them it seems alien or something. Even when I explain how much time it can save, they don’t want to use it.

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