Checking Page Proofs in Acrobat Reader
December 29, 2004 – 12:00 pmIn our shop, when a book is ready to go to press, we create a PDF (Adobe Acrobat) file from QuarkXPress, and that’s what we send to the printer. But before sending the book off, we print it out on paper and review the pages to make sure that they’re numbered correctly, that the running heads are right, and so on. (We actually have quite a checklist.)
All of this checking means turning those paper pages many, many times, and if you’ve been reading this newsletter very long, you know how much I dislike unnecessary work. Thinking there must be a better way, I turned my attention to the free Adobe Reader:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
Guess what I found?
1. Open the press-ready PDF in Adobe Reader.
2. Click View > Fit Page to display a whole page at once.
3. Click View > Page Layout > Facing to display two whole pages at the same time.
Now press the PAGE DOWN key to see each set of pages at the same time, with the even pages on the left and the odd pages on the right. PAGE UP, of course, takes you up.
If you have the full Adobe Acrobat, you can add comments, highlighting, and other markup to the PDF file for any last few corrections that might need to be made:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatstd/overview.html
This a great, fast way to check page proofs–one I’ll be using from now on.
If you’re interested in seeing pages two-up in Word itself, you’ll find instructions here:
http://lists.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=17162695 02
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READERS WRITE
After reading last week’s article on pasting tracked revisions, which noted that on a Macintosh pasted revisions are made permanent, Erika Buky wrote:
Actually, I was pleased to discover the other day that it ain’t necessarily so. Using Word 2001, I was able to paste 35 pp. of marked-up bibliography into the main document using the Spike.
As you’re aware, putting something on the Spike deletes it from the original document, though you can undo that change once the text has been spiked.
[Editor’s note: In addition, you’ll find a copy-to-spike macro here:
http://lists.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=17016977 40
And for more on the Spike itself, look here:
http://lists.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=17015843 33]
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Wordmeister Geoff Hart wrote:
I’ve had a problem problem for some time with illegibly small type in the Word spellchecker, on both the Mac and the PC. The text displayed in the spellchecker is generally small but readable, but every now and then it decreases to an illegibly small size if the author has used a small font for their body text: you can’t zoom in on the text in the dialog and zooming in on the text before you open the spellchecker doesn’t help at all, there’s no preference (Mac) or option (PC) setting to set this type size directly, and no amount of exploring in the bowels of Word has revealed an obvious solution.
Hilary Powers (a familiar name to readers
The key trick is that you can’t manually change the font size from the Font menu or from the toolbar: doing so loses all the font-size information that the author applied manually or by means of styles, and removing the font size change via the “remove manually applied formatting” shortcut (Command-Shift-Z on the Mac, Control-Spacebar on the PC) loses you italics and boldface, among other things. Not acceptable.
The solution? First, “select all” the text: Command-A on the Mac, Control-A on the PC. Next, hold down Command-Shift (Control-Shift on the PC) then press the < or > keys. Each press (respectively) decreases and increases the font size _to the next size listed in Word’s default list of font sizes_. If you press the > keyboard shortcut three or four times to enlarge the text, all the text will become legible in the spellchecker. When you’re done, “select all” once again, then use the < keyboard shortcut the exact same number of times to restore the text to its original size.
Clearly, this is an awful lot of work just to solve a problem that should have a more elegant solution. It works in an emergency, but surely there’s a more elegant (and simpler) solution? Any suggestions gratefully received.
Geoff followed up with this message:
Last week, I wrote to CEL asking for help with a problem viewing dialog box text in Word; in particular, I found that the spellchecker dialog box often displays the text being checked in an illegibly small font. With Hilary Powers’ help, I found and reported on a solution that involves temporarily changing the font sizes in the document. Details available in the CEL archives from last week.
Hilary also suggested another option, which works much more effectively: use the built-in “accessibility” features of the operating system. These features are designed to help computer users with visual or other disabilities to use their computer much more easily. As these settings affect the performance and behavior of the entire operating system, they also work in any program–even Word.
Here’s how to solve the dialog box problem on the Mac using OS-X (I’m sure some kind Windows user can provide corresponding Windows details):
* Open System Preferences (under the Apple menu).
* Under the “System” heading, select “Universal Access”.
* Click the LARGE button labeled “Turn on zoom”. Close the dialog box.
* Until you return to this dialog box to turn off this setting (by clicking the LARGE button labeled “Turn off zoom”), you can zoom in an out while using any program: Command-Option-= (equals sign) to enlarge the display; Command-Option-[-] (the minus sign) to zoom back out again. Mnemonic: above the equals sign is the + sign (+ = increase); the “minus” sign means “decrease”.
Works quite nicely, though it’s not nearly as elegant a solution as being able to set the font size preferences directly in Word–something I still hope someone will be able to tell me how to do.
If you, gentle reader, have a solution to Geoff’s problem, please send it in.
Many thanks to Erika and Geoff for their messages and tips.
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RESOURCES
Adam Engst of TidBITS has published two Take Control books by Matt Neuburg (in Adobe PDF format) on Microsoft Word 2004 (that’s the latest Macintosh version, but much of the information also applies to Word 2003):
Take Control of What’s New in Word 2004:
http://www.tidbits.com/takecontrol/word-1.html
Take Control of What’s New in Word 2004: Advanced Editing & Formatting
http://www.tidbits.com/takecontrol/word-2.html
Both books have good information on using Microsoft Word, but I especially like the advanced book. The site describes it like this:
“Make the most of your investment in Microsoft Office by learning Word 2004’s new features! Turn to Word expert Matt Neuburg for the best strategy for upgrading to Word 2004 and handling the 80 fonts that Word installs, complete with info about four fonts you should not delete and those you can delete to avoid conflicts, shorten your Font menu, and make Word launch faster. Save time and increase accuracy when typing and pasting text with smart buttons. Discover the new Navigation Pane and three workarounds to an annoying bug that may bite you. Learn how to use Notebook view effectively. Read an overview of important changes to Unicode support, styles, and using markup, plus find out what’s new with AppleScript and what Microsoft put in the Toolbox. Bonus! Summaries of ten changes to preference panes, six subtle changes to menus, and three important changes to commonly used dialogs. (73 pages, Version 1.0.)”
Not sure you want to take the plunge? A free 27-page excerpt is available on the site, but the book itself is only $5.00. That’s not much for the valuable information you’ll receive, but in addition, Adam has created a special 25% discount coupon for readers of Editorium Update. That coupon is:
CPN41202EDT
To use the coupon and buy the books, click here:
That link will automatically select the more advanced book for you, since that’s probably the book most readers will want. It will also automatically apply the coupon and discount. By the way, the discount is good for the entire order, so if you get anything other than the Word books, the discount will apply there too. That’s an affiliate link, so buying the book also helps support Editorium Update. Thanks!
You can learn more about TidBITS here:
Many thanks to Adam for making this discount available.
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THE FINE PRINT
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