Gordon Woolf's Blog

Coping with long URLs

URLs are one the most difficult things to cope with in written material, whether that is text in printed form or on the Web.

One way to solve this in layout programs such as InDesign is to specify the URL as having "no language" (you can even set up a character style to specify "no language" as the language). InDesign will then only break the line when it has to and will not insert a hyphen.

But in most such programs, the way to deal with URLs has improved in the last couple of versions. The biggest problem is that if the URL is broken in a word which is in the program's hyphenation dictionary it will make it impossible to just select the web address and either click on it or copy it into a browser winodw. To a computer, the hyphen turns iot into aan entirely different address.

It is also common to use a "discretionary line break" linked with a character style to put the DLB after the @ sign or before the dot of .com

Some time ago (CS3?) InDesign's internal rules for line breaks changed to include the slash(/), back-slash(\), underscore(_), ellipse(...), commercial-at(@), any dash (en-dash, em-dash, etc). They also added some algorithms that allow breaks at periods within URLs but not abbreviations... that was definitely getting better at the time I stopped keeping track and is by no means easy to achieve.

There may now be even better ways to solve the problem and I would be surprised if it cannot also be done in the latest QuarkXPress.

My main point is that there are now ways to ensure that a web address is not broken by adding a hyphen and proofreaders should feel confident in marking bad URL breaks and perhaps even suggest some of the possible solutions. In checking proofs it is also worth ensuring that if an address does include a hyphen, it is one that is meant to be there and not one which may have been added because of a line break that no longer applies.

On web sites those responsible should also ask why they are using long URLs in a visible form, though I have to admit I have been guilty, as it does ensure that if web text is copied for use in other media that the URL is copied, and not just the text of a link. Where that is not likely, just embed the full address in the HTML code as an href attribute.

For MS Word the advice is to enter the URL in both the address and text-to-display boxes of the edit hyperlink dialog. You can then add a space within the text of the URL without upsetting the link, or better still, use the zero-width space character or a no-width optional break after a character in the URL such as a forward slash. This character has no shortcut key but you can allocate one in the insert special characters dialog if you need them often.

If you have a better way, let me know.

Windows 7: should it be Windows Silver?

November 1985 saw Windows first shipped in the USA and not long afterwards in Australia. So I wonder why Windows 7 wasn't called Windows Silver?

I can still see quite vividly that MSDOS screen in front of me at the newspaper in the small High Country town of Myrtleford that required me to click on a file entry to start the runtime version of Windows which then started the desktop publishing program PageMaker.

I'd already used the same program with Apple Macintosh in Western Australia but a PC was half the cost. And had used Xerox Ventura on a PC with the GEM "graphic environment management" system on top of DR (Digital Research) DOS, but Windows was still a massive advance.

Businesses weren't buying Windows because they wanted to but because it enabled the program they needed to run. Even the most hard hearted accountant could see that new equipment was worth buying when it would pay its full capital and running costs in less than six months compared to how the job had been done before.

The hardest job, a year or two later, was persuading newspapers in the bush that they really needed a network to transfer files, and that "sneaker net" with a shoebox of 5.25" disks had had its day.

Nonsense outlasts sense

If you want to insert some dummy text in a Word document, start a new paragraph, type =lorem() and hit Enter.

This will add three paragraphs of Lorem Ipsum characters in your document but if you want more text, use the formula =lorem(m,n) where m is the number of paragraphs and n the number of lines that should be included in each of these paragraph. Be warned it is not very accurate.

In OpenOffice type dt and press the F3 function key. Less control, in that you cannot vary the lengths or specify para numbers, but you can repeat as needed.

There are dummy text plugins for either program which give more control and many layout programs
have an option to "fill with placeholder text".

But you may wonder about the name Lorem Ipsum.

Those are the first words of what, supposedly, is some text set in the earliest days of movable type. The story goes that it got shoved together after it fell on the floor and was thereafter used to fill space until the actual typesetting was ready.

It has remained virtually unchanged for hundreds of years, which is more than can be said for any language, so nonsense has outlasted sense.

Jack's an artist. That's what we need for the layout

It is a common question: The illustrator for my book is a talented artist, but should I ask him (or her) about doing the book layout?

It may also be suggested with magazine layout: he's a good artist, we should ask him to do our newsletter.

The real question should be to ask whether he has any experience and whether he wants to do the work. Then the publisher, or self-publisher, should ask himself or herself if they have time to cope with problems.

In a recent case the artist was being honest, and would have been prepared to put the time in (at his cost) to find out all the technical information he needed to know. However, there should be at least one person who has the professional knowledge of what makes a good book or magazine layout in the team.

The danger lies in the fact that publication layout and file preparation for printing is detailed, systematic work, and the skills for that are seldom those needed to be an artist and illustrator.

There are a few who manage to combine both skills but they are a minority and deserve every cent they can command. They will, for example, know that the uses of a book cover for thumbnails on the web or in catalogues and ads and possibly for posters as well as for the cover itself, puts severe restrictions on artistic talent.

More common are those designers and layout people who can take other people's illustrations and turn them into good looking and good working covers and pages and produce files which will print without problems. The person who creates good publication files and the illustrator and graphic artist may use much of the same software, but they tend to use it in vastly different ways.

The kind of questions one could ask someone who may be able to do this work could be whether he or she knows the common standards for relative margin widths, on the differences in specifications for different binding methods, and, for example if this includes, as is most likely, an all color cover, the maximum ink levels according to the printing process and paper stock.

He or she may not know the detailed answers but should know what you are talking about (even if you do not). Then (especially if there is time to go elsewhere if necessary), by all means give him or her a go.

'Large print' is not just type set larger

An interesting suggestion I saw on a publisher forum a while ago was to produce a large print edition and to just reduce the pages of this to make the standard edition. The logic was that some of the readers for which the book was intended were sufferers of diabetes, which often brings sight problems.

Unfortunately the internationally researched standards for large print books, are not just an enlarged form of normal typesetting. And there is a big difference in producing books for those who are substantially sight impaired, and books for those of us who may have a slight deterioration in sight within the normal ranges of variation with age.

A chapter in the current edition of Type & Layout (the book by Colin Wheildon republished by The Worsley Press) -- although this is a chapter in the additional material by Geoffrey Heard -- does describe how preparing a book for the non-fluent reader is different to preparing a book for a fluent reader who may have minor sight problems, or no problems at all.

Just one quick example: although Wheildon's research showed that for reasonably fluent readers, justified serif type is by far the most readable, that is not true for someone who is less fluent, either through education or sight.

The chapter also includes information on the alternative of "Clear Type", a standard developed by the Royal National Institute for the Blind, with standards which, while being acceptable to a wide range of those with site problems, is more acceptable to others. While tending towards sans faces it does accept fonts with a good serif definition such as Bookman.

I would therefore warn against producing a smaller version of a large type, or even "Clear Type" book as a normal edition.

If the text of a book is correctly tagged in its preparation it would be a very simple matter to run it through with alternative layout specifications. I'd estimate an hour or two in a program such as InDesign, maybe even less in an entirely tag based layout program such as TeX.

There will need to be an entire new round of research into legibility on ebook readers.

Software that refuses to die

How many software programs from 1994 are you still using?

When I upgraded to Windows 7 and chose the 64-bit version, I expected to say goodbye to some of the pieces of software that I've used for many years.

But my barcode creation software, UPCTools, bought in 1994, refuses to die...it just keeps on working, now with its fifth operating system since it first ran in Windows 95 (or was it Windows 3.1?).

Admittedly it now runs in XP Mode, but I can select it from the Start menu of Windows 7, and then just use the UPC Tools menu item "copy" to copy the result in to InDesign (which was no more than a twinkle in the eye of some of the software people at Aldus when this software was written by Jerry Whiting at Azalea Software). The barcode fonts, which were in Type 1 Postscript format, installed in the Windows 7 font folder by just dragging them in en masse. When viewed now within InDesign those fonts show up as just one font with eight styles (to suit three inkspread requirements plus half height versions. 

Yes that is Windows 7 and the software running does say Copyright 1994. Some software was written with the future in mind!

Incidentally, to get software that runs in the XP virtual environment to show up in the Start menu of Windows 7 you have to put a shortcut in the "All Users" subfolder of the Start menu in XP and then reboot your PC. It took me a while to work that one out.

Of course I'm not suggesting you should buy the 1994 version of UPCTools but if you are looking for barcode software that will work in to the next decade, You'll find lots of info about barcodes in general at http://www.azalea.com/FAQ/

Overall, I'm happy with the decision to upgrade and the computer with its extra memory is performing well -- not a BSOD since the upgrade, though I was previously thinking it had to be replaced.

Which page layout program?

I recently added a feature page to this blog titled The DTP contenders: which page layout program for you? which lists very brief comments and contacts for some 17 page layout programs. Some you may never have heard of but many may provoke disrtant memories and you'll be surprised that not only are they still around but that they have been updated.

Most have free trial versions which give the opportunity for you to see whether they suit your purposes but also produce a file which will print -- from your own computer printer or by the printing company you intend to use.

I welcome your comments. Already several changes have been made based on responses to my tweets when I first revised the page from the original much shorter version which was published many years ago.

As well as the link in this blog, you will find the page under DTP Contenders in the menu bar near the top of this page.

Errors in newspapers: there should be fewer

Much as I enjoy stories of errors in newspapers (one of the best I've seen was out local newspaper which had "headline in here" in 144pt - 2" - type, an error that I caused to be seen on TV and in the book Type & Layout), they are not happening *just* because of new systems. They have happened even in manual days because of the rush to get the first edition on the streets.

It has always been one of the benefits of living in a country area or one distant from the production point. (The UK newspaper the Guardian became known as "The Grauniad" by Private Eye because of all the spelling errors there was no time to fix.) What should be noted is that most such errors are soon fixed and the vast majority of the readership will have seen nothing odd.

When I was a subeditor on one of Murdoch's newspapers I recall the deputy editor looking at the first edition and shouting at the copy desk: "Well we got it out, now let's turn it into a newspaper". And that was in hot metal days.

The normal setup for newspaper staffing is that galleys, or their equivalent, are read either in printed proof form or on screen, originally by proofreaders, now more likely as part of the copyediting process.

At this stage the copyeditor should take out rude words in the slug because they too often get through to print. The slug is the abbreviated text used to identify a story, originally one word, now more often a kind of suggested headline. As a newspaper editor and chief of staff I banned this kind of dummy head; even if the person writing it would not want it to be the final one it should be something which makes sense and helps clarify what the main point is of the story. If the writer can't write any kind of headline, then it often idicates that the writer is confused.

The headline itself is usually added on the page layout so may be seen only by the person doing the layout of the page. In the past, errors and questionable headlines were often picked up by the compositors, i.e. those who put the page together in metal or phototypesetting, but those people no longer exist. It is therefore most likely the end of the compositor which leads to more errors getting through -- they'd even take a hammer to the plate on the press if necessary since it was sometimes preferable to ensure that no one could read it rather than let an error go through. You can't effectively take a hammer to a digital press, though I'm sure there are many who would have liked to.

The proofreaders who were reading the page proofs might still have been reading the proofs when the press started. On a newspaper with a large or growing circulation, the plate with those changes might then sit by the press until there was a paper break and the press had to be stopped unless there was some danger of legal action. There were trucks, trains, buses and sometimes even aircraft waiting for the newspaper bundles. A little embarrassment for a journalist or editor was not a consideration.

We may actually see fewer errors as newsrooms change over from a print first attitude to one of web first, so the more carefully researched and probably longer print version would have already appeared in two or three versions on the web. Any errors which get through to print will have happened in the final rewrite stage.

The future of news stories is seen in a quote from the consultant brought in by Vance Publishing chief Peggy Waker (even though that's a magazine group): "Instead of researching and writing a lengthy print article, then repurposing it for the Web, the new process would run in reverse: posting a first take of breaking news at 200 words, following with an update at 400 words, then producing a longer second-day story, which would subsequently be repurposed for the print publication." See http://bit.ly/3dDiBU

Ms Walker also tells of expecting an outcry when the web and press editing teams were merged, and not just for single publications but for the whole group. Unexpectedly the large open editorial room was popular -- as it used to be when most publishers were like that.

I'm also pleased to see that computers are now significantly quieter. When I first changed from paper editing the increase in noise level and the size of the monitors meant there was a massive divide between editors. No longer could you read out a questionable phrase to no one in particular, confident that if something was wrong you'd get a shout from a fellow editor nearby. I suspect that as editors get physically closer once more, those co-operative days which caught so many errors will be back.

Do-it-yourself publishing

"I've just got a price for laying out my new magazine/book/other printed project and it is a lot of money. Should I buy InDesign or QuarkXPress to do my own layout?"

That's the kind of email I get directly or see on email lists and forums just about every week. I'm an enthusiastic user of InDesign but the last thing I'm going to do is tell such a potential publisher is to rush off to the Adobe web site and buy it.

The first thing I'll ask is: "Have you costed in the time and training (either personal or by means of reading and practising)?"

I'm all for such a person learning to use InDesign if he or she will take the time to learn to use it and, in the case of a book, will use it for many other tasks in future.

After many years of using Ventura, then PageMaker, I did not do a book in InDesign until I had worked on a number of smaller jobs to make sure that I could work efficiently in the program. It is a very powerful program, but that makes it very easy to do a bad job.

There is also the likely situation that a newcomer will get quoted a lot more for a layout job by a designer than an experienced publisher would be charged for the same work. The book layout jobs I take outside of my own books, I do only for experienced publishers and know that, most times, I will only have to do the job once, so can quote lower prices. As an extreme example, when I did tabloid newspaper layouts I quoted $20 a page for work from newspaper publishers -- and $100 a page for anyone else. Subsequently I just stopped doing the $100 a page jobs as they were not profitable, whereas the $20 a page was.

Yes, the would-be publisher should by all means buy InDesign but should also realize that this involves learning yet another skill. Do you have the time for that? In general the answer has to be "no" unless you can find a skilled person who is prepared to charge you on a basis that they are also teaching you to do the job. That designer will expect and deserve a high fee -- but it may be the cheapest long term solution for the publisher.

How to start a publication

I get asked this question every month. The latest was:

I’m in a church that does not have a magazine and they want one. Can I start it? All I have ever produced is a sales newsletter for a firm I work for.

My reply is that I would be surprised if, in a typical organization of a few hundred people, I would be surprised if there are not other people who have had at least as experience as you -- perhaps for a school, business or service group. They may be a starting point and you can share your past experience.

Also look at what is being produced by other organizations -- and it is common for copies of locally produced publications to be sent to local libraries, so the librarian may also be a good contact. And while you may decide that your needs can be served by a home-produced publication, perhaps photocopied, a call at local printing businesses may also produce samples of publications, and an indication of other services, such as someone who can set up templates in a word processor or page layout program and help train in their use.

This kind of enquiry may also help to give some idea of costs, depending on what services have to be paid for and what can be done on a voluntary basis. You also have to make choices on whether a publication can be at least partly financed by advertisements, and how you will obtain editorial: can it be all produced by you and your members, or will you need to seek outside contributions.

Several of the chapters in my book "How to Start and Produce a Magazine or Newsletter" look at various ways of organizing a magazine and at the many levels of production from photocopying or laser printing to digital printing and to the uses of commercial and specialist printers.