Excellent Typesetting, Part 2
February 2, 2005 – 12:00 pmYou may have noticed that I haven’t sent out a newsletter for the past two weeks. What have I been doing? Researching. I’m still trying to work out some ways to do excellent, automated (for the most part) typesetting, starting with a Microsoft Word document. In particular, I’m interested in the following:
* Excellent hyphenation and justification.
* Automatic footnotes.
* Unicode support.
Automatic ligatures would also be nice.
In the last newsletter, I laid out this theoretical procedure:
1. Edit a book in Microsoft Word.
2. Open and format the edited document in OpenOffice.org Writer.
3. Export as a LaTeX document using Writer2LaTex.
4. Open the LaTeX file in LyX and create the typeset Postscript file.
5. Use GSView or MacGSView to view the file and convert it (via Ghostscript) to PDF.
All well and good, but Writer2LaTeX doesn’t actually preserve the formatting done in OpenOffice.org Writer, and LyX seems to have a bug that keeps it from importing a LaTeX file. (Grrr.)
Next week, I’ll explain a similar procedure that actually does work and is not difficult to use. In the meantime, here’s a procedure that does *not* use LaTex but still produces passable (but not excellent) typography:
1. Download and install the OpenOffice.org software:
2. Install two custom dictionaries for the Writer module. You can download those dictionaries here:
http://www.editorium.com/ftp/OOoDictionaries.zip
The first is an H&J dictionary based on the TeX H&J engine. The second is a customized hyphenation-exception dictionary. Installing these dictionaries vastly improves hyphenation and justification in Writer.
To install the H&J dictionary, go to the OOo program folder and then to the dictionary folder. On my PC, the path is:
C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org1.1.4\share\dict\ooo
Rename hyph_en_US.dic to hyph_en_US_old.dic.
Then put the new hyph_en_US.dic into the folder (it takes the place of the old one).
To install the hyphenation exception dictionary, click Tools > Options > Language Settings > Writing Aids. Under “User-defined dictionaries,” click the New button and create a dictionary called “Hyph_Exc.dic.” Make sure its checkbox is checked.
While you’re there, turn on the ALTLinux LibHnj Hyphenator. Then go down to “Options” and turn on “Hyphenate without inquiry” and “Hyphenate special regions” (which basically means footnotes). Set minimal number of characters for hyphenation to 5. Set characters before line break to 2 and characters after line break to 3. Or whatever you like.
Then, go to your wordbook folder. On my computer, it’s here:
C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org1.1.4\share\wordbook\english
Delete the existing Hyph_Exc.dic (which is the one you just created) and replace it with the new one.
3. Set up Writer (Tools > Options > Text Document > General) to use points as the default measurement unit.
4. Open your edited Microsoft Word document.
5. Create page styles(!) using the Stylelist. Set your margins so that the text block is a multiple of your body-text leading. For example, if your leading is 15 points and you want 30 lines per page, you’d set margins so that your text block comes out at 450 points. Set First Page to have Left Page following, set Left Page to have Right Page following, and set Right Page to have Left Page following (Organizer tab).
Typesetting in Microsoft Word itself would be much easier if Word had page styles. Again, you can ask Microsoft to add this feature:
6. Set up your paragraph styles, using “Exact” line spacing. I haven’t been able to figure out what the “Leading” setting does, although it sounds intriguing. You’d think that if your text point size was 12 and you set leading to 3, you’d get the same thing as exact line spacing of 15, but that’s not the case. If you know what this actually does, I’d sure like to hear about it.
7. Modify your body-text style so that the width is scaled to 99% (on the Position tab). Typesetting purists will howl at this, but the point is to reduce Writer’s loose word spacing. This would be unnecessary if we could persuade the OpenOffice.org development team to implement the equivalent of Microsoft Word’s Tools > Options > Compatiblity > “Do full justification like Wordperfect 6.x for Windows” feature, which you can learn more about here:
I highly recommend that you contact the development team and make a lot of noise about this, which you can do by writing here:
They’re particularly concerned about keeping compatiblity with Microsoft Word, which makes a good argument for why they should include this option. (You might as well ask for an option to adjust word spacing while you’re at it.)
8. While you’re modifying your paragraph styles, set body-text as Register True, turn on pair kerning, and make sure the style is set to do automatic hyphenation. Under Text Flow, set Hyphenation to take place automatically. Set Maximum number of consecutive hyphens to 3 (or whatever). Make sure Orphan control and Widow control are turned *off.* Set headings to *not* be Register true.
Adjustment of widows and orphans needs to be done by hand–the old-fashioned way. Otherwise, page bottoms will not align. Fix loose lines by inserting optional hyphens as needed (CTRL + hyphen). Tell a word not to break by selecting it and then clicking Format > Character > Font > Language = None. (There’s a way to put this on a toolbar button or keyboard shortcut, but I haven’t looked into that yet.)
9. In your page styles, set Register True to on and use body text as the reference style. This sets the underlying grid to fit to the leading of body text, and you can set other styles to line up with this if you like.
10. After all corrections are made, find and replace “if” with the if ligature and “fl” with the fl ligature. It’s not elegant, but it works.
Following this procedure will, as I said, give you passable but not excellent typography, and it does provide for automatic footnotes and Unicode support without some of the difficulties of typesetting in Word.
Next week: From Word to LaTeX for the faint of heart.
This article is dedicated to my longtime friend Richard O’Regan, whose comments you can read below.
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READERS WRITE
Richard A. O’Regan and I have been exchanging email messages about various typesetting possibilities. Richard has been experimenting with typesetting footnotes in InDesign, using a plugin called Sonar Bookends InFnotes.
You can learn more about these programs here:
Richard wrote:
I promised to give you a report on my use of InDesign and InFnotes as a substitute for typesetting in Word.
I carried out some experiments after downloading the demo version of InDesign and I had a problem at first in that the Word footnotes did not appear as they should. I took this up with VirginiaSystems, and they fixed the problem over the weekend. It seems that my InDesign documents had a duplicate text frame below the visible one and the footnotes were being transferred there. However, their very helpful technician told me that they had now instructed the program to recognize the existence of duplicate frames, and they put out a new version of the program yesterday and asked me to download it. I did so, and so far this morning it works fine.
Is it worth the $195? I believe so and have decided to buy it. One might argue that one could accomplish much the same oneself. InDesign collects all footnotes as endnotes at the end of a document. You can draw a footnote text frame at the bottom of a page, count the possible number of footnotes that might fit on the page with the text, and then cut and paste the appropriate footnotes to the box. Then you can manually insert a separation line.
InFnotes does save some of this effort. It draws the footnote box and inserts the footnotes on the right page. You then do have to juggle the size of the main text and the footnote text frames to make them fit. This does require some effort, and after I suggested to the folks at Virginia Systems that the footnote separator of 1pt was too thick, they very quickly and courteously changed it to .25 in a new version of InFnotes which they sent me. They are very cooperative.
All in all, I think it is worth the $195 because it does speed up the process, and I have come to the conclusion that InDesign is actually ideal for typesetting books. Since it is useless now to use antiquated FrameMaker, I have just done a book in InDesign with a complicated format, without footnotes, that would have been a pain in Word. It was wonderful what it can do. And I packed innumerable chapters all into one document that also allowed me to produce a single PDF for the publisher.
I now have a second book in the series that does contain a few footnotes. I will use InFnotes with it this time.
I think I can recommend InFnotes and InDesign.
Many thanks to Richard for his helpful comments.>
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RESOURCES
Rajesh Haldipur sent a tip about a free program called CoolRuler. You’ll find it useful no matter what program you’re using for typesetting:
Many thanks to Rajesh!>
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THE FINE PRINT
Editorium Update (ISSN 1534-1283) is published by:
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