[Lexicog] Preparing one's Shoebox dictionary for the publisher?

[David Frank]

Susan Gehr wrote (3/4/04):

Not that I am anywhere near this point, but I am wondering about how one
would submit their dictionary to the typesetter, if they've done their work
in Shoebox?

Do you just give them the Microsoft Word file, or make a PDF, or...?

I'm interested in hearing your successful examples and dire warnings on the
topic.

response from David Frank:

It MAY not be enough to put your dictionary manuscript into Microsoft Word
format. You should check with the publisher what kind of input is required.
I will explain...

Our dictionary of St. Lucian Creole was published in St. Lucia by the
Ministry of Education, using a local printer. Before traveling back to St.
Lucia to deliver the manuscript to the publisher, I called from the States
and asked the printer whether the manuscript needed to be in photo-ready or
electronic format. Since there was some color involved, we decided that
electronic format would be best. What I didn't imagine -- and what the
publisher didn't tell me before I arrived back in St. Lucia for a week-long
visit -- was that Word for Windows format was not acceptable. It had to be
either in Pagemaker or Microsoft Publisher. They were not set up to do an
easy conversion. I am slightly familiar with Publisher but don't find it
easy to port from Word for Windows to Publisher even though they are both
Microsoft products. Anyway, I didn't have Publisher installed on the laptop
computer I had with me, and we only had Pagemaker to work with once I
arrived there to hand over the manuscript. I had to figure out how to use it
real fast. As I was in St. Lucia primarily for a conference, I had to work
in my off hours every day into the wee hours of the morning converting my
manuscript into Pagemaker.

You may think that most printing houses could take Word for Windows format
as input, but it is good to check. While I was going through this
frustrating experience, I consulted with a friend who has done a great deal
of publishing with major publishing companies, and he said that he thought
the use of Publisher or Pagemaker was pretty standard. I'm sure that there
are a few other specialized programs that publishers alternatively use, such
as Ventura, which we authors would not normally be familiar with.

I have recently learned a trick that would have helped me, though. I did
some work with another print shop here in the States that requires the use
of Publisher or Pagemaker, and he told me that an easy way to go from Word
for Windows to Pagemaker was to put the manuscript into PDF as an
intermediate stage. If you have the manscript ready to print, you can
produce a PDF file that can easily be pasted to Pagemaker. Actually, I think
you may have to have a separate PDF file for each page of the manuscript,
but I am not sure.

The things that gave me the most problem in porting from Word for Windows to
Pagemaker were the graphics and the headers across the top of the page. I
had the headers just the way I wanted them in Word for Windows. I could not
automatically generate them just the way I wanted them in Pagemaker and had
to edit the headers on each page. That introduced a possibility of error
that I didn't see the need for in this case. Automatic header generation is
great as long as it does what you wanted, which is not always the case.
Typesetters prefer something more flexible, even if it is less automatic,
and they get that with Publisher or Pagemaker or Ventura.




Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
     http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lexicographylist/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
     lexicographylist-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
     http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/