BookPlus

I'm using BookPLus, a feature oif PP11. I have loaded each chapter from separate MSWord docs, as prescribed by the directions. i set my Book Page Number Options, and then Synchroized all chapters, using the first chapter as the Style Source. It appears that I now have to establish headers and footers with each separate chapter. Seems to me I should be able to automate this.

Anyone working with BookPlus? I notice that there's no thread, which is mighty strange.

Randy

On:01/08/2007 00:12:07 - Randy wrote:

Anyone working with BookPlus? I notice that there's no thread, which is mighty strange

How far back did you search? It is not a widely used feature, but there are some threads on it.

On:01/08/2007 00:12:07 - Randy wrote:

It appears that I now have to establish headers and footers with each separate chapter.

That's the way it is.

I wouldn't recommend using BookPlus for individual chapters unless the book is very long. I use it only if I need different page numbering styles for front matter and the book, then I have just two sections.

Find and Replace is not possible across chapters, so it is much easier to work on a single document. Headers, Footers, and page numbers are set up on Master Pages. You may need left and right master pages, plus one for the first page of a chapter.

PagePlus Versions http://homepage.ntlworld.com/pesala/.../pageplus.html • My Fonts http://www.aimwell.org/Fonts/fonts.html

Randy,

First, you do not use Microsoft Word documents with BookPlus. BookPlus was made to organize individual PagePlus documents (chapters) into a finished book. It accomplishes this very well, but, yes, you do have to set the heading and footing for each individual chapter. The best method for this is to do it as you write each chapter. It's unfortunate that there isn't a one click solution, but maybe in later releases there will be.

I neglected to say that the book had already been written in MS Word. I had then built separate MS Word docs so that I could insert the text into PagePlus documents. The PagePlus docs were then individually brought into BookPlus chapters. The reason is that I wanted to see if there was an advantage to making a book in BookPlus, ready to be sent to a printer. There are 36 chapters in the book. Is there an advantage to my staying with BookPlus now? It seems that I could setup the same thing in PagePlus, and be able to affect changes throughout the entire book. I know that I wouldn't have the use of a Table of Contents or an Index such as available with BookPlus, but maybe that can be done in another way. What do you think?

I guess I don't know how to search farther back. How do I do that? My book is 36 chapters long, about 150 pages total. Would you say that's too short to use BookPLus? Do I understand you to say that you use two sections, the first for front pages, and then all the rest of your pages are in the second section? How many pages in the book?

On:02/08/2007 01:41:56 - Randy wrote:

I know that I wouldn't have the use of a Table of Contents or an Index

No reason why you cannot use an index and TOC without BookPlus. They are on the Insert menu.

PagePlus Versions http://homepage.ntlworld.com/pesala/.../pageplus.html • My Fonts http://www.aimwell.org/Fonts/fonts.html

On:02/08/2007 01:46:28 - Randy wrote:

I guess I don't know how to search farther back. How do I do that?

Just select more than 1 day from the drop list on the search page. https://www.serif.com/forum/search.asp

The only book I used BookPlus for has 16 pages of front matter (with roman numerals) including the cover and table of contents. The rest of the book is 124 pages with seventeen chapters and an index.

If a book is 500 or 1,000 pages you might be better off splitting it. Otherwise, I don't think there is much to gain, unless you need different styles of page numbering for different sections. (Page Plus doesn't allow you to mix page numbering styles with one document, though you can work around that by printing the book in sections).

PagePlus Versions http://homepage.ntlworld.com/pesala/.../pageplus.html • My Fonts http://www.aimwell.org/Fonts/fonts.html

There is absolutely no reason that your book can't be one large PP document. BookPlus' main advantage is that reordering chapters and keeping consistent page numbers is a breeze, and also for creating different numbering (Roman numerals) for introductions, acknowledgments, et-cetera. But if that makes no difference to you, then you could easily create one document, just as you would in a word processing program. :-)

[Alantb]

I used Book Plus to set up a book of about 20 chapters. This was going fine. Then I didn't use the pc for abour 6 days. Whwn I came back to use PP (v6) again, the Bookplus file would not load. It has almost totally disappeared; all that's left is an empty file of the name I used to set up. Furthermore if I try to assemble the chapters into a new book, the Bookplus application won't load. I've just downloaded and included all the latest updates - no difference. The chapter files in the book are still OK.. What next?

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

What I would do is forget about BookPlus.

1. Back up all of the chapters to a safe place
2. Open Chapter 1 and save it as a new publication
3. Open Resource Manager and link all large images
4. Add a page at the end and import Chapter 2. Insert menu, PagePlus file.
5. Click on the last frame of Chapter 1 and link it to the first frame of Chapter 2.
6. Make all embedded images linked using Resource Manager
7. Save Publication
8. Add a page at the end, and insert Chapter 3
9. Repeat until finished if all worked so far.

[Alantb]

Thanks for your reply Bhikku Pesala; This is really a shame because it was all going so well, Bookplus was working fine and to link the book all together is going to make a huge file - which is going to produce more chances of corruption, longer load times etc etc....
PS - any idea what actually happened?
Cheers, ATB

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

The one thing that causes long load times is embedded images. A ten page test file I have is 61 Kbytes with linked images, and it saves instantly. With the large images embedded, it is 293 Mbytes on disk and takes 25 seconds to save.

I have yet to come across a book that was too big to work on in PagePlus as a single file. BookPlus always increases the work load. Backups are vital however you work.

It is hard to guess what happened without all of the files. Perhaps you moved the chapters? It should be easy enough to recreate a new BookPlus file and link the chapters, but you say that BookPlus won't load. Its not an application — its just a dialogue in PagePlus that is used to collate the chapters. A BookPlus file is just an index of the linked chapters. This is the contents of a typical BookPlus file with three chapters:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><SerifXML version="1.0"><chapters><_item _class="Chapter" RelativePath="PPX6\Tutorials\Changing Defaults.ppp" ModifiedTime="11/12/2011 11:58:24" SynchronizedTime="01/01/1970"/><_item _class="Chapter" RelativePath="PPX6\Tutorials\Adding Captions to Images PPX6.ppp" ModifiedTime="22/11/2011 10:19:17" SynchronizedTime="01/01/1970"/><_item _class="Chapter" RelativePath="PPX6\Tutorials\Advanced Typography.ppp" ModifiedTime="24/12/2011 18:38:10" SynchronizedTime="01/01/1970"/></chapters></SerifXML>

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with using BookPlus if you want to do things the hard way. Its a legacy feature from the days when we could not mix page numbering styles and page orientation in a single publication. There are no longer any advantages to using it. Indexing is harder, editing is harder, finding your place is harder, and printing selected pages is harder.

Corrupt files are a potential problem with all of your eggs in one basket, but that is much less likely to happen if large images are linked.

To save a file for transfer to another PC, use Save as package... from the file menu — all linked graphics and fonts will be embedded in the package, and can be extracted on the target PC.