Re: Qeustion about settings ....

[Chris von See]

Hi Becky - 

There's not really a perfect set of conversion settings that will make sense for every book.  Making all of the frontmatter/bodymatter/rearmatter appear in one file is okay, except that if the RTFs include images the resulting files can be extremely large and may cause whatever reading program you're using (Word, WYNN, etc.) to have problems opening them.  Generally speaking, here's what I suggest:

• The default settings put all of the frontmatter in one file but break up the bodymatter and rearmatter at the level1 boundaries; that seems to work reasonably well for most books, but if the levels are very large (such as when they represent parts or units instead of chapters or sections) even those files may be too large.
• Font size is an individual choice.  Users with low visual acuity may prefer larger font sizes for obvious reasons, but other readers may be fine with 12pt fonts.  A lot will also depend on the size and resolution of your monitor (low resolutions make letters look bigger).
• For some textbooks images are a must, but in others they just clutter things up.  Whether or not you include them in your RTFs depends on the material, on why you're reading the book and on the amount of critical information carried in the images.  Sometimes a good alternative is to leave the images out but include the alt text (if it exists in the XML file).  I would recommend not making the images larger than 480x360 since that's about as much as you can fit on a print page without having the image leak off the side.
• Generally speaking you can leave prodnotes out.

I did get the English book that you had Teresa assign to me a while back, and I'm using it to test the new and improved RTF generation support in the next release of TAMC.  When I get that ready for testing I'll definitely be giving you a shout - I hope you like what you see in the new release.

You can't imagine how glad I am that running books through TAMC is working out for your son (and saving you some time and effort in the process!)  It makes all this darned software development worthwhile :)  

Chris von See

Senior Geek

TechAdapt, Inc.

http://www.techadapt.com

ch...@techadapt.com

Save trees.  Print only when necessary.

On Nov 24, 2009, at 10:59 AM, bk...@madisoniep.com wrote:

Hey Chris,

I got another NIMAC file set for a Science textbook that Jason will be
using after Christmas break.  Same structure as other sets - opf file, pdf
file, xml file and images directory.

I was wondering if you have any recommendations on settings when use your
tool to convert from opf to rtf to load in Word and send to WYNN Wizard.
Previously I've just played around with the settings, like Levels, font
size, etc., to try and produce BEST output.  Ended up going with
selections that resulted in all body matter appearing in one file at 12
pt. font.  If you have any other recommendations then please let me know
otherwise I'll just go with previous settings.

Did you ever get that NIMAC file set for the English textbook -- think
that was one Teresa was going to assign to you??  Is so have you looked at
it and did you get extra numbers or is it just on my end?  When Jason is
assigned work from that textbook, I simply edit the page(s) (i.e. remove
extra numbers) and load pages in WYNN Wizard.  Works great for Jason.  He
does work in WYNN Wizard, prints it out, and turns it in.

Thanks,
Becky