Programs used for writing published books

[Brudewollen]

Old Word Perfect versions

"I use Word 2000 and convert to rtf so that I don't have to tailor it to each publisher's preferences. I once worked for a company that INSISTED that I use Wordperfect; great program for formating because you can see all of your codes, but terrible when it comes to stability and reliability."

Older iterations of Word Perfect were much more stable, my favorite remains 6.x - it had some features I still wish were in Word. Even today it's probably a pretty damn near complete word processor. I used 7.x a lot when my old company upgraded and it was very problematic. I heard later versions were likewise.

I also agree that being able to see all of the print codes was really, really nice. Made editing a final project much easier and the end result very clean, codewise. You never had any sudden surprises when some code you thought you'd erased three versions ago suddenly reformats entire paragraphs of your work. I still have problems with Word where certain formatting elements just don't want to get erased and keep reasserting themselves or simply won't go away, even when deleating large blocks of a page.

 

[Scarogoth]

Adobe InDesign

Hi, all. I thought I'd contribute my own little tuppence to the mix here.

I taught myself on and used Quark for years, but managed to get a copy of InDesign 1.0 when it was at a very, very, very special introduction price to tempt users away from Quark's positive stranglehold on the DTP market. Since then, I'm afraid there's been no going back. It's typesetting controls are beyond comparison. The paragraph text setting is flawless, the adoption of OpenType (1024 characters in a font, not just the ASCII set -- so ALL accents, proper small caps, ligatures, exotic, fleurons... the works -- all indispensible to me. The Bookmarks and Acrobat integration -- I don't even have a copy of Acrobat -- don't need it.

The use and ability to work with raw Photoshop and Illustrator files, the Mac OS X compatibility... the stunning use and simplicity of tables... the cost... the crap, money-grabbing and running syndrome, let's leave it buggy for five years, and then charge you a $1000 to upgrade your copy of Quark... all very good reasons to make the move, and to do it now!

All my Asgards, Four Color to Fantasy, Moon Elves, Death: Guardian of the Gate, Elements of Magic, Tournaments, Fairs and Taverns... all created with just Photoshop and InDesign... same controls, same shortcuts, familiar operating space... all the software you could possibly need.

OK. Not cheap... but actually not THAT much more expensive than Office -- and I don't care what anybody says... no version of Word has ever come even CLOSE to being a true typesetting programme. Anyway, very happy talk at greater length if anybody's interested...

 

[Lawrence of Arabica]

If you're curious, you can sometimes determine
how a PDF was produced. In the Acrobat Reader,
select the menu File->Document Properties->
Summary. Then see the 'Creator' field in
the resulting dialog box. (The menu item
might be slightly different in different versions
of the Reader.)

 

[kingpaul]

Re: Access database?

do you have your Access character database available? I always wanted to write something like that for myself for ingame use, but was always a bit too lazy, I guess. Is this useful for ingame searches (like crossreferencing by locale/town, by level, by class, whathave you?)

I suppose I could make it available...no one's asked about it before. Its in Access 2k, and probably isn't useful for in-game searches. Several of the NPCs have multiple levels to them, to reflect growth, and they're all in there. I'm still playing with it, trying to tweak it. I have 4 tables that are linked: (from memory) weapons (not fully functional yet), skills, equipment and everything else.

 

[Dextra]

I use Word 2000 and convert to rtf so that I don't have to tailor it to each publisher's preferences. I once worked for a company that INSISTED that I use Wordperfect; great program for formating because you can see all of your codes, but terrible when it comes to stability and reliability.

I LOVE Word Perfect. Loved it before a friend of the family's company bought it, still love it. Formatting is super easy, and the ability to view the codes helps fix any mistakes.
I HATE Word for its insistence on formatting stuff- like numbered lists aaaarrgh! What I dislike most about it is how every bloody company uses it. We're in Canada. For awhile, WordPerfect was a Canuck product, and superiour to Word. But everywhere I went, companies used Word. Yuck.

BTW, the next product I put out that involves tables, I want to use CorelDraw to make beautiful images with art and beautiful formatting, and tell everyone we just discovered a hidden feature in Quark...

 

[EarthsShadow]

Re: Adobe InDesign

Hi, all. I thought I'd contribute my own little tuppence to the mix here.

It's typesetting controls are beyond comparison. The paragraph text setting is flawless, the adoption of OpenType (1024 characters in a font, not just the ASCII set -- so ALL accents, proper small caps, ligatures, exotic, fleurons... the works -- all indispensible to me. The Bookmarks and Acrobat integration -- I don't even have a copy of Acrobat -- don't need it.

The use and ability to work with raw Photoshop and Illustrator files, the Mac OS X compatibility... the stunning use and simplicity of tables... the cost... the crap, money-grabbing and running syndrome, let's leave it buggy for five years, and then charge you a $1000 to upgrade your copy of Quark... all very good reasons to make the move, and to do it now!

All my Asgards, Four Color to Fantasy, Moon Elves, Death: Guardian of the Gate, Elements of Magic, Tournaments, Fairs and Taverns... all created with just Photoshop and InDesign... same controls, same shortcuts, familiar operating space... all the software you could possibly need.

OK. Not cheap... but actually not THAT much more expensive than Office -- and I don't care what anybody says... no version of Word has ever come even CLOSE to being a true typesetting programme. Anyway, very happy talk at greater length if anybody's interested...

Thanks for the information sounds really awesome. Now I just need to save the money (which will take a while) and someday purchase these items.

 

[DDK]

From an amatuer's point of view, I'd recommend Adobe InDesign over Quark for many of the reasons already given above. I was given a copy of Quark 4 for free when I worked in a magazine (it was legal and all!) and found it to be convoluted and unintuitive. Since I lost the CD in a move and had my HD crash, I decided to give InDesign a go. I found it MUCH easier to learn (I wouldn't say I had the advantage of knowing Quark since I only had Q for a shortwhile and never produced anything with it) as it was far more intuitive (ie. things work more like you expect them to and so there's less 'figuring out') and much less complex and yet seemed to have just as much power.

The fact that it's a third of the price is also a major factor. The only reason Quark gets away with selling their product at, IIRC, around $3k (in Australia) is because they CAN. It's certainly not because it's worth it (IMO, and from a purely features perspective). It's also Mac friendly and we all know that Mac's rule, right?

 

[Wanderer]

What about the other aspect to software for designing publishable content?

What programs are best to calculate statblocks and ELs and all that stuff, for putting into InDesign, or whatever?

Generators for things like skills, feats and spell lists - that can be tweaked - seems important. I've seen a lot of published content that didn't really have "finish" in this area. Not too good for "boss" encounters.

I'm a player, not a publisher, but when I DM major NPC encounters, I like to have a fully rounded, correct statblock for the important encounters.

As a (hopefully non-diverting) aside, there's often waaay too much book cross-referencing to double-check the encountered's full capabilities. I understand that is is a personal perspective.

 

[jmucchiello]

Generators for things like skills, feats and spell lists - that can be tweaked - seems important. I've seen a lot of published content that didn't really have "finish" in this area. Not too good for "boss" encounters.

For really important boss, I make a real character sheet by hand as if it was a character I was going to play. I think the sheet is on my old website: Look at page 2 (That is so old, my normal character sheet is 7 revisions after that but page 2 has not changed to much since then.)

For less important foes I use my paper stat block. After you fill in the blanks it's easy to turn it back into a stat block.

And the real reason I do this by hand is because I playtest the characters in a real game usually long before I start writing the "book" version.

Joe Mucchiello
Throwing Dice Games
http://www.throwingdice.com

 

[Steve Conan Trustrum]

I HATE Word for its insistence on formatting stuff- like numbered lists aaaarrgh!

You can turn that off, though.