Andrew Douglas Pitonyak wrote:
Gary Schnabl wrote:
When exporting ODT to DOC, I either use the picture graphic by its
lonesome and add a caption below or else place the graphic and its
caption in two or more table rows. The latter is useful when a
screenshot of a toolbar or horizontal menu might be in the top row,
the second row might have two or three columns for describing what
those icons or menus are named, and then the third row contains the
figure caption. This avoids using hard spaces or tabs for layout
purposes for the definition section of the figure. Having differing
definitions for tab settings could be a problem if their definitions
are not identical for different users.
Interesting idea using a text table to add specific captions below
toolbar buttons; smart!
Special styles can be created for this type of table contents. Numbered
lists also work well for the inner captions. Anything to get rid of tabs
employed in the original...
I wanted to include some OOoAuthors chapters in my portfolio (DOC
format) on my recent Elance.com account--showing its editing changes,
etc. However that chapter used frames for most of its figures, and
those figure captions within frames were all messed up after the DOC
conversion. So, I made another ODT version and went in and just
pulled the pictures and their captions from the frames and inserted
them into tables for that conversion to DOC.
PDF might be another choice, but if it was useful in this case, you
would already know that... I only say that because I consider you
resourceful.
I sometimes use PDFs exported with the ODT editing changes visible to
show markup. But PDFs are not that useful for proofreading/copyediting
purposes unless somebody specifically wants printed markup on actual
paper using the PDF as the printer source. It's better having the DOC
source files for the changes. My PDF converter software often get the
source material out of the PDF file. However, if your system doesn't
have the correct typeface(s), the resulting DOC file will have justified
text converted with its hyphens from the PDF still visible. I had a
problem with one such PDF file tonight in that it substituted 13pt
Garamond for whatever exotic typeface the PDF had. So, that conversion
wasn't very useful with all those extra hyphens needed to be deleted. A
lot of manual Find & Replace edits would be necessary.
Adobe Acrobat has functions for inserting some older proofreading or
copyediting markup symbols on PDF files, but I don't have Acrobat--just
Nuance's PDF Converter Professional 4. Doing markup with that
application is possible using the pencil tool on the PDF file, but it
requires a steady hand otherwise it's not so pretty. Zooming temporarily
to a high magnitude, say 400% (the more, the better...) makes
old-fashioned markup with the pencil tool fairly easy, though. That's
becoming somewhat of a lost art.
I don't suppose you have an automated way to convert from frames to
text table...
I converted them manually. Chapter 4 of the Draw Guide had a helluva lot
of frame figures, though. However, the manual process is fairly
mechanical and fast once one gets into the rhythm: (1) Optional: If
using a table, make a simple 2 by 1 or 3 by 1 table via the toolbar. (2)
Copy (or cut) the picture inside the frame and paste the picture into
the first row of the table or by itself. (3) Repeat step 2 for the
figure caption for the new table or bare picture. (4) Poof the frame.
The entire process takes about a minute--sometimes faster, sometimes a
bit slower--per framed figure, depending on how fast I work. Chapter 4
had quite a number of figures without captions (possibly also within
frames, but I forget). So, I made up captions for those captionless
figures. Because the figures with captions had cross-references, I
copy-and-pasted the cross-reference part of any caption, and after it
was pasted, the automatic numbering took care of itself.
Gary
--
Gary Schnabl
2775 Honorah
Detroit MI 48209
(734) 245-3324
