Book Writing Software
Alan
Thanks,
Alan
Stan Horwitz
> What is the best book writing software for the Macintosh?
That would depend on your definition of "best" and the type of book you
want to write. For example, the author of a book on chemestry would have
much different needs than the auhor of a book on romance.
Hariga Ben
(in message <3ACFE4D7...@mac.com>):
> What is the best book writing software for the Macintosh?
LaTeX? (depending on the content)
h.B.
--
Håriga Ben
lur...@excite.com
Ned Mantei
Framemaker is well suited for technical books with numbered
illustrations, index, footnotes, notes in margins, etc. It has the
reputation of being very reliable for long and complex documents. There
have been many reports in discussion groups of documents being corrupted
by MS Word as soon as they get to be more than 20 pages or so.
Whatever you use, I think it is wise to keep multiple backups, including
some of the versions from the preceding times you worked on the book. If
the document is corrupted, you still have a slightly older good copy to
work with. If I were writing something that took as much of my time as a
book, I would also keep backups at another site (home vs. office, for
example).
--
Ned Mantei
Department of Cell Biology, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
CH-8093 Zurich, Switzerland
Patrick James
(in message <01HW.B6F66F720...@news.m.iinet.net.au>):
> On Sun, 8 Apr 2001 12:11:21 +0800, Alan wrote
> (in message <3ACFE4D7...@mac.com>):
>
>> What is the best book writing software for the Macintosh?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Alan
>>
>
> If you're looking for something for the creative process, try Z-Write. For
> the technical production, probably Nisus.
If it's a novel then "Story Project" by Abelgratis may be of interest for
the formation of the story.
Story Project comes from here:
<http://www.tep.abelgratis.com/>
--
Patrick
Nisus Writer - *Powerful* Word Processor
aes
Especially if there is any technical or math content at all, then TeX,
and specifically the Textures implementation of TeX for the Mac from
Blue Sky.
If you have any programming or markup skills at all, and are working
with a professional publisher, you can "macroize" your input by marking
it up using simple macro names for each logical element in your
manuscript -- e.g.
\chaptertitle{Chapter One: How to Start Your Own Dot.Com}
and creating your own very simple definitions of these macros for
printing draft copies.
Then when you're ready to publish the book, you or your publisher can
hire a free-lance TeXpert to define more sophisticated definitions of
each of these macros to meet the specific style that they define for
your book.
Doing this has major advantages, including:
* Much cheaper typesetting, hence lower final book price -- you turn in
an electronic file instead of a paper manuscript; the copy editor edits
this file and the publisher touches it up on screen; and the final TeX
source can go directly into a high-end typesetting machine, without ever
being re-keyed.
* Very much shorter time to market, for same reasons.
* Much less work for you, especially the dreary task of proofreading..
Once you take typos out in the draft versions, they're out forever, and
there's no re-keying of the whole book to put in a lot of new ones.
* Finally, TeX is really interesting and fun to work with.
An alternative to choosing your own set of macro names is to use the
LaTeX macro package, which has a predefined set of macros -- but only if
your publisher says they'll accept LaTeX input. (The problem is, the
LaTeX package is very complex, making it difficult for the publisher to
make style changes if the built-in LaTeX definitions are exactly what
they want.)
(Also: learning all the LaTeX macros and their syntax is nearly as
complex -- and much less fun -- than learning "real TeX" for yourself.)
It may be possible to accomplish all of the above in Word also, using
Word styles, IF your material is not too complex and your publisher will
accept Word input.
Charles Martin
I like Mariner Write, some will argue WordPerfect, some will argue Nisus.
Still others will say FrameMaker.
You're asking about book WRITING software, so I have to say that WP or
Nisus is probably best for your needs.
--
_Chas_
(non-spammers should use "chasm" at mac-dot-com instead of the email above!)
"If Bill Gates had a nickel for every time Windows crashed ...
oh wait -- he does."
Marc Zoutendijk
> What is the best book writing software for the Macintosh?
>
There is no book writing software, you have to do all the writing
yourself!
But if you can do that, I'd suggest Nisus writer.
Marc.
--
Marc Zoutendijk (ma...@xs4all.nl) - http://www.xs4all.nl/~marcz
Pay for your bugs, buy Windows!
Jerry Kindall
(Marc Zoutendijk) wrote:
> Alan <kd7...@mac.com> wrote:
>
> > What is the best book writing software for the Macintosh?
>
> There is no book writing software, you have to do all the writing
> yourself! But if you can do that, I'd suggest Nisus writer.
_If_ your publisher accepts electronic submissions, or if you will be
swapping revisions back and forth, I would suggest Word instead. It has
excellent revision-tracking and annotation features and of course
everyone's going to have it.
If you will be laying out the book yourself (this is pretty common in
some technical fields), get yourself a copy of Adobe FrameMaker.
If you're just doing a manuscript and will send it in the old-fashioned
way, on paper, pretty much any word processor will do. I would
recommend almost anything _but_ Nisus Writer, which is perhaps the
clunkiest piece of Mac word processing software since WordPerfect. I
have to use it every day for production of a daily Mac newsletter, and
hate it with a passion. If you don't want to go with a Microsoft
product, AppleWorks is surprisingly good considering its price, and you
get lots of other stuff besides a word processor.
You can get some versions of Nisus and maybe WordPerfect for free, but
I'd pay the money for AppleWorks if you can at all afford it.
--
Jerry Kindall <mailto:je...@mlabor.com> Seattle, WA
Marc Heusser
Assuming you are both writing the content (ease of use is important) and
want to produce the book yourself (power to deal with many pages,
crossreferences, indexes as well as decent typesetting), I'd strongly
recommend Adobe FrameMaker (newsgroup comp.text.frame).
It is easier to use than Word, and does not break like Word when dealing
with longer or more complex documents.
It will allow you to write the content while you already see the page as
it will be printed (true what you see is what you get). And it's often
easier to use than Word (more consistent). If you ever decide you want
the whole book to look differently, it's a snap -just change a few
definitions and it's done.
Marc
--
Marc Heusser
remove the obvious CHEERS and COM... from the reply address to reply via e-mail
Gregory P. Starr
Heusser <marc.h...@CHEERSheusser.comMERCIALSPAMMERS.invalid> wrote:
> In article <3ACFE4D7...@mac.com>, Alan <kd7...@mac.com> wrote:
>
> > What is the best book writing software for the Macintosh?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Alan
> >
>
> Assuming you are both writing the content (ease of use is important) and
> want to produce the book yourself (power to deal with many pages,
> crossreferences, indexes as well as decent typesetting), I'd strongly
> recommend Adobe FrameMaker (newsgroup comp.text.frame).
> It is easier to use than Word, and does not break like Word when dealing
> with longer or more complex documents.
>
> It will allow you to write the content while you already see the page as
> it will be printed (true what you see is what you get). And it's often
> easier to use than Word (more consistent). If you ever decide you want
> the whole book to look differently, it's a snap -just change a few
> definitions and it's done.
>
> Marc
Well, if there's any mathematics involved, TeX/LaTeX is the only real
choice. I'll trust Donald Knuth over anyone else any day ;-)
--greg
--
Gregory P. Starr, Professor of Mechanical Engineering
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.
http://www.me.unm.edu/~starr
John Rethorst
the "To," "Cc," and "Newsgroups" headers for details. ]]
In article <marc.heusser-9701...@news.bluewin.ch>, Marc
Heusser <marc.h...@CHEERSheusser.comMERCIALSPAMMERS.invalid> wrote:
> What is the best book writing software for the Macintosh?
What kind of writing, and do you mean just composing and editing text,
or creation of camera-ready copy? Other responses rightly suggest the
benefits of FrameMaker and LaTex (especially for technical books). My
two Mac books were published by Henry Holt using Quark Xpress. For an
example of a relatively basic 200-page book entirely formatted in
WordPerfect 3.5e, including illustration lists, index, extensive tables
etc., and which used Applescripts and macros for some of the process,
see
http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/Archive/text/wp/johns-wp-scripting-guide.
hqx
John
George Fowler
<no...@mail.com> wrote:
> What kind of writing, and do you mean just composing and editing text,
> or creation of camera-ready copy? Other responses rightly suggest the
> benefits of FrameMaker and LaTex (especially for technical books). My
> two Mac books were published by Henry Holt using Quark Xpress. For an
> example of a relatively basic 200-page book entirely formatted in
> WordPerfect 3.5e, including illustration lists, index, extensive tables
>
> etc., and which used Applescripts and macros for some of the process,
> see
> http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/Archive/text/wp/johns-wp-scripting-guide.
> hqx
For academic writing (simple text formatting, simple graphics and
tables, lots of footnotes) I think there is nothing better than Word
5.1a/Mac, with perhaps a little Word 2001 if the author needs something
more powerful (perhaps for tables or graphics). I've probably prepared
20 books (I'm a small academic publisher) using this combination. Word
2001 really is a page-layout program, as well as a web browser,
can-opener, and nuclear physicist.
George Fowler
gfo...@mac.com
Charles Martin
bedw...@home.com (steve) wrote:
> gfo...@mac.com (George Fowler):
> Yeah and I bet your prepress people shudder when you bring word output
> into them to be printed. <vbg>
Only if he inserted any kind of graphics into it.
George Fowler
st...@hayseeds.dynip.com wrote:
> Yeah and I bet your prepress people shudder when you bring word output
> into them to be printed. <vbg>
We haven't EVER had any problems printing from Word 5.1a. Make .ps
files, give to printers, enjoy the results. We have had an occasional
problem with Word 98 and 2001, but not awful.
$0.02, not a penny less.
George Fowler
gfo...@mac.com
Charles Martin
bedw...@home.com (steve) wrote:
> True, it would be easier but the fact remains that prepress systems and
> Word don't work very well together. Imposition hates dealing with these
> files. If one insists on using word, in my experience - on our equipment,
> an Acrobat file is much prefered. YMMV of course.
No, my mileage doesn't vary one bit. MS Word (other than perhaps 5.1a) and
prepress are a bad match.
In fact, I get to spend this weekend showing someone who put together a
200-page report in Word how to "do it right the first time." Whee.
sbt
Dickmeis <lamb...@mac.com> wrote:
> In article <slrn9dhi6n.d...@hayseeds.dynip.com>,
> bedw...@home.com (steve) wrote:
>
> > ... I have to admit though that Word 2001 Mac is a good
> > word processor compared to Word '98.
>
> Hi,
>
> care to expand on that? I'm currently trying to decide whether W2001 is
> worth the upgrade from W98 and I'm having a hard time figuring out any
> significant differences. What's better from your p.o.v.?
>
> Regards,
>
Tables work a lot better, for one. Data Merge beats the old Mail Merge
from start to finish, for another. The graphics tools eliminate most of
the need for image-editing applications to preprocess your graphics.
Finally, it doesn't lock up my Mac nearly so often as 98 did (i.e. I
don't have to be nearly so careful about what is running concurrently).
--Spenser
Marty Sachs
sbt <dogb...@chaseabone.com.invalid> wrote:
> Tables work a lot better, for one.
I find that editing large complex tables in 2001 is painfully slow
compared to '98. I had to downgrade back to '98 for this reason.
-Marty Sachs
sbt
Sachs <msa...@uiuc.edu> wrote:
I haven't noticed a performance difference, either way. The advantage
to which I was referring is that large documents with tables in them
don't seem to become corrupt any longer -- an all-too-frequent
occurrence with Word 98.
--Spenser
Marty Sachs
sbt <dogb...@chaseabone.com.invalid> wrote:
There was a fix (upgrade) for this problem in '98.
-Marty Sachs
Ron Shepard
sbt <dogb...@chaseabone.com.invalid> wrote:
> I haven't noticed a performance difference, either way. The advantage
> to which I was referring is that large documents with tables in them
> don't seem to become corrupt any longer -- an all-too-frequent
> occurrence with Word 98.
I haven't noticed much difference, either performance or functionality.
In fact, there are a few "bugs" in Word 98 that live intact and
unchanged in 2001. They changed the appearance of the windows a little,
that's about it as far as the features that I use.
If you do see a performance difference, you might try upping the memory
in the Get Info box to see if it makes a difference. I do this for both
'98 and 2001 (try 6MB or 8MB). It is possible that the cosmetic
appearance changes in 2001 require more memory or something.
BTW, there was/is a download fix at the MS site for the table problems
in Word '98. After installing it last summer, I haven't had any
problems with tables.
I remember when a good word processor would run in 32KB of memory and
fit on a 400KB disk (along with a system, in fact), it still astounds me
to see MS Word take up 300MB of disk space and require 8MB of memory to
run well.
$.02 -Ron Shepard
Charles Martin
> In article <slrn9dhi6n.d...@hayseeds.dynip.com>,
> bedw...@home.com (steve) wrote:
>
> > ... I have to admit though that Word 2001 Mac is a good
> > word processor compared to Word '98.
>
> Hi,
>
> care to expand on that? I'm currently trying to decide whether W2001 is
> worth the upgrade from W98 and I'm having a hard time figuring out any
> significant differences. What's better from your p.o.v.?
I think it's worth the upgrade. There are a lot of mac-only or mac-first
features in it, and the whole interface has been MUCH revamped for more
elegant operation. The Project Gallery actually has templates that don't
SUCK ASS, and overall the program seems more responsive.
Depends on what you mean by "significant differences," of course. I find
that the revamped interface allow me to work better/faster with it, so of
course I find that significant.
This page:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/office/2001/word/word_default.asp?nav
index=s2
(sorry if the URL broke, just reconnect it)
...has links to breakdowns of the new features over Word 98. Hope that
helps.
Charles Martin
Lambert Dickmeis <lamb...@mac.com> wrote:
> In article <slrn9dhi6n.d...@hayseeds.dynip.com>,
> bedw...@home.com (steve) wrote:
>
> > Bottom line though, don't give your prepress department Word or Claris
> > Works documents if at all possible.
>
> Hi,
>
> so if Word and Appleworks are out, what would you suggest?
>
> I'm asking in a general way about both file formats and word processors.
> Which app(s) and which file format would you recommend for a thesis
> (>300 pages text, >1000 footnotes, >250 illustrations)? I don't know how
> it will get published.
Thanks so much for asking!
I wouldn't say Appleworks, Word et al are "ruled out," you can use them
fine. Just do the text part in Word or whatever and then flow that into
Pagemaker, InDesign, Quark or (probably the best choice for your
particular needs) Adobe Framemaker.
Based on my experience (and not being fully up on Word 2001 yet), I'd
suggest the following strategy:
1. Prepare your text in whatever wp program you like. Mark footnotes but
don't use "headers & footers."
2. Prepare the footnotes as a separate text file.
3. Have someone (if not yourself) set up a "master page" in your DTP
program of choice that includes "footer room" at the bottom (I'm assuming
you want to use the "old" MLA style of footnotes appearing on the same
page they are referenced on; I haven't done a thesis layout in quite some
time so the style may have changed)
4. In the DTP program, link your text from one page to the next as normal.
Drop in illustrations where they need to appear.
5. Start the footnotes list on the first page that needs em, and then link
it to the "footer boxes" on the pages you need it to.
6. Print.
There may be variations in this advice depending on how you want the
document to look and/or how footnotes will be handled in your thesis, and
someone else more knowledgable than me may have a better strategy, but
remember this if nothing else: add the illustrations to the DTP program,
NOT the wp program, and you will for the most part be fine.
Charles Martin
bedw...@home.com (steve) wrote:
> stare...@myhairyballs.com (Charles Martin):
> >| In article <slrn9dhe6r.d...@hayseeds.dynip.com>,
> >| bedw...@home.com (steve) wrote:
> >|
> >| > True, it would be easier but the fact remains that prepress systems and
> >| > Word don't work very well together. Imposition hates dealing with these
> >| > files. If one insists on using word, in my experience - on our
> >| > equipment,
> >| > an Acrobat file is much prefered. YMMV of course.
> >|
> >| No, my mileage doesn't vary one bit. MS Word (other than perhaps 5.1a)
> >| and
> >| prepress are a bad match.
> >|
> >| In fact, I get to spend this weekend showing someone who put together a
> >| 200-page report in Word how to "do it right the first time." Whee.
>
> Have fun Charles. =)
Heh.
BTW, almost as if by magic, a company called SoftMagic has announced what
looks like a "turnkey" suite of software apps for magazine publishing on
OS X. While this does not change whether OS X is ready for mainstream
publishing yet (it isn't,) this plus the recent update indicate that
change is coming at a very fast pace.
The website's details look impressive. You may want to go check it out --
www.softmagic.com.
Charles Martin
bedw...@home.com (steve) wrote:
> Yeah I was just there for some darwin related stuff. I'm grabbing Darwin
> 1.3 as I write this. It's going on a second partition on my G3, I'm fed
> up with the installation problems the ppc Linux distros seem to have on
> my hardware. Linux seems to work best on intel. BTW it's interesting
> that the new Darwin has a i386 installer. ;)
While I am sure (and backed up on this by SJ himself) that Apple will not
be doing a port of OS X to Intel, I *do* think Apple will play an *active*
role in making Darwin -- and by extension OS X -- the best programming
environment out there. I'm sure one of Apple's goals is to make it easy --
on whatever box you're using -- to write programs that could work on MacOS
X (as well as UNIX and Windows, of course).
Hariga Ben
(in message <lambertd-D03D3D...@news.t-online.com>):
> so if Word and Appleworks are out, what would you suggest?
>
> I'm asking in a general way about both file formats and word processors.
> Which app(s) and which file format would you recommend for a thesis
> (>300 pages text, >1000 footnotes, >250 illustrations)? I don't know how
> it will get published.
LaTeX?
lch...@uswest.net
software.
Patrick James
(in message <3ADE3622...@uswest.net>):
I think Ruth Rendall already has it.
--
HT
any Microsoft product. Too many bugs plague the programs and the users.
To write anything, may it be a book, may it be an article, it doesn't matter,
WordPerfect 3.5 or newer (when available) would be the program of choice.
There ae, however other programs available, and they can outperform most
common writing and publishing software. I will try to post the website where
you may download the software, and all kinds of plug-ins, like languages and
physics, chemistry and other specific additions, by Tuesday. I downloaded the
software about a year ago, and tested it extensivley in English and German,
while a friend tried Polish and Russian, and we found it to be great. I
believe it was called Alpha..., but I had to conform to Word, due to a shared
computer in the ofice. The program, by the way, does offer to save files in
different, most common formats.
HT
==============================================================
Posted with Hogwasher. Mac first, Mac only:
http://www.asar.com/cgi-bin/product.pl?58/hogwasher.html
==============================================================
T. K. Boylan
<h...@techie.com> wrote:
> I have to disagree with the last post! First of all, I would stay away from
> any Microsoft product. Too many bugs plague the programs and the users.
>
> To write anything, may it be a book, may it be an article, it doesn't matter,
> WordPerfect 3.5 or newer
I agree about staying away from Word. While I haven't tried Word's
latest iteration, the previous ones had nasty habits of destroying
book-size documents. I lost at least one whole chapter and had to
re-write it. Then it was the Make Book function.
I'd go with Framemaker. It's quite a bit more potent.
-Kelley-
Shyamsundar Vaidhyanathan
recomend framemaker. It is probably much more powerful and robust and
coming from the unix world to me it was as if it was made for me.
Shyam
Phil Dobbin
Try Nisus Compact first (it's free) and then multiply by a 1000 and you'll
get some idea.
--
"It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand.
I beat people up."
Muhammed Ali 1977
----------
In article <200520010427549358%t...@NOSPAM.zenmac.com>, "T. K. Boylan"
Stan Horwitz
> I have to disagree with the last post! First of all, I would stay away from
> any Microsoft product. Too many bugs plague the programs and the users.
> To write anything, may it be a book, may it be an article, it doesn't matter,
> WordPerfect 3.5 or newer (when available) would be the program of choice.
On a Mac, I would stay away from WordPerfect. The program is an orphan. I
used to be a big WordPerfect fan. I had all my docs written in it and I used
my Mac to hold my sister's docs. After one OS upgrade, WordPerfect printing
stopped working properly. Installing an update that came weeks later did
no good. All the while, Microsoft Word handled those very same files fine.
Since that time, I use Word and I have not had any problems with using it
to compose documents of a fairly complex nature such as having graphics
embedded within text, tables, etc. It has worked well and it continues
to work well, even after I upgraded to Mac OS X.