Book, roman numerals

[pforbes]

I’ve created and am publishing a Genealogy Book of 326 pages (ISBN’d and Copyrighted) and have found the new methodology to be fabulous.
However, I was informed by my Printer that the pages preceding the Contents page should be numbered in Roman lower case. I can’t fix that. Can you?

[Gregg]

Re: The New Book Feature

I can't think of a simple solution to this. When will you submit the final product to the publisher?

[donworth]

Re: The New Book Feature

Couldn't you just export all the book pages from the PDF that are OK to a PDF. Then create the pages before the contents in Word and export that as a PDF, then use Acrobat to combine the two PDFs?

[mjashby]

Re: The New Book Feature

Couldn't you just export all the book pages from the PDF that are OK to a PDF. Then create the pages before the contents in Word and export that as a PDF, then use Acrobat to combine the two PDFs?

If page numbering worked correctly then the above suggestion would also work, providing the pages that need to precede the Contents Page are created externally and that they don't need to appear in the Contents Listing. You could even use Preview to merge the separate PDF documents and so don't need to install an Adobe application. Unfortunately, in my test run, the Book Feature appears set to treat the Cover Page as Page 1, which is clearly 'incorrect', as Page 1 should be the Contents Page and the Book's Cover should not be a numbered page.

Mervyn

[pforbes]

Re: The New Book Feature

Couldn't you just export all the book pages from the PDF that are OK to a PDF. Then create the pages before the contents in Word and export that as a PDF, then use Acrobat to combine the two PDFs?

I'm not that good and I would need Acrobat Pro for that $$$

[pforbes]

Re: The New Book Feature

I can't think of a simple solution to this. When will you submit the final product to the publisher?

It went out two weeks ago and the second edition won't go for a few years as I accumulate additional Auclair Lines.

[colinc]

Re: The New Book Feature

I’ve created and am publishing a Genealogy Book of 326 pages (ISBN’d and Copyrighted) and have found the new methodology to be fabulous.
However, I was informed by my Printer that the pages preceding the Contents page should be numbered in Roman lower case. I can’t fix that. Can you?

I think your printer is right and wrong [and I spent my working life in printing and publishing].

In the UK [and AFAIK the US as our books were produced for both markets] ALL the prelims have roman numbers, sometimes up to lvxii or whatever if things like prefaces or intros are long.

Having said that I think that these days it is quite acceptable to use arabic numerals from the start [and a lot easier!].

Cheers, Colin

[colinc]

Re: The New Book Feature

I’ve created and am publishing a Genealogy Book of 326 pages (ISBN’d and Copyrighted) and have found the new methodology to be fabulous.
However, I was informed by my Printer that the pages preceding the Contents page should be numbered in Roman lower case. I can’t fix that. Can you?

A second thought is that if you are worrying about numbering prelims have you looked at a printer's or publisher's style guide? If in the US probably the best is the Chicago Univ one, but a warning, most style guides run to 100s of pages of how to do it!

Cheers, Colin

[Lawrence E Moore]

Re: The New Book Feature

Couldn't you just export all the book pages from the PDF that are OK to a PDF. Then create the pages before the contents in Word and export that as a PDF, then use Acrobat to combine the two PDFs?

The response by donworth is right on. I would like to mention a couple of additional tools.

PDF files can be merged with Apple’s free Preview application. It’s as simple as opening both documents, VIEWing thumbnails, and dragging thumbnails from one document to the other. Be sure to read the Preview HELP on combining PDFs. Note, HELP is not specific about where to drop a page icon. Each icon should be dropped ON a page icon in the receiving document--NOT BETWEEN the icons; drop near the top of the icon if it goes in front of the page; near the bottom of the icon if it goes after the page. Use file copies to practice. You can do as many pages as you want--one at a time. This works well for a few pages, but can get tedious if many pages must be added. Note that Preview also allows you to insert blank pages if needed to preserve odd-even pagination.

Another tool that is great for manipulating PDFs is Universal Scanner, a simple $3 utility from the App Store that does a few things well. It can handle the merger of large documents. I have used it to merge PDFs with 100s of pages, and it should work well to add prelim pages to the beginning of a book.

In addition to adding one document file to the front or back of another document file, a great trick for genealogists is Universal Scanner’s DUPLEX merge function. My scanner has an automatic document feeder, but scans only one side of the page. Suppose I want to scan a 100-page document. I first scan the odd pages 1-99, saving them in file “Document Odd.pdf.” I then flip over the document and scan the even pages 100-2 (reverse order) and save them in file “Document Even.pdf.” I drag the two files into Document Scanner (Odd first, then Even), highlight both file names, and click the Duplex Merge button, and Presto!, a new file is generated, “Document Duplex.pdf.” The document pages and the file pages are in the correct order. This software can also control scanners, but I usually prefer to scan with the software that came with my scanner. Caution, Universal Scanner has little help, and oddly, what there is is found in the Preferences.

[Dennis J. Cunniff]

Re: The New Book Feature

A second thought is that if you are worrying about numbering prelims have you looked at a printer's or publisher's style guide? If in the US probably the best is the Chicago Univ one, but a warning, most style guides run to 100s of pages of how to do it!

In the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS), the first chapter is devoted to the layout of a book, including page numbers, and as Colin says is longer than you'd think, about 60 pages.

The pertinent sections here I think are 1.101, regarding the pagination of front matter in books, and 1.118, regarding the pagination of front matter in electronic publications.

The reason that printed publications, especially in the U.S., paginate the front matter with lowercase Roman numerals is that it makes it possible to add pages to the front matter even after the main text is already in page proofs. In an electronic publication, that doesn't matter, so the rationale for having Roman numbers for the front matter and arabic numerals for the main text is simply that it's what we're used to - it no longer has any practical significance. Chicago doesn't care if you want to place all the front matter on a single enormous page if you want for electronic publications, it's very flexible on the matter, but I agree most people will be comfortable if it's similar to printed works.

(A way to implement this might be to take text in MS Word, with the front matter as the first "section" and the rest as a second "section", with page numbers set separately for each. Then one would drop this into a page layout program that could produce a pdf for either printing or electronic publication.)

[Daryl W. Gordon]

Re: The New Book Feature

The response by donworth is right on. I would like to mention a couple of additional tools.

PDF files can be merged with Apple’s free Preview application. It’s as simple as opening both documents, VIEWing thumbnails, and dragging thumbnails from one document to the other. Be sure to read the Preview HELP on combining PDFs. Note, HELP is not specific about where to drop a page icon. Each icon should be dropped ON a page icon in the receiving document--NOT BETWEEN the icons; drop near the top of the icon if it goes in front of the page; near the bottom of the icon if it goes after the page. Use file copies to practice. You can do as many pages as you want--one at a time. This works well for a few pages, but can get tedious if many pages must be added. Note that Preview also allows you to insert blank pages if needed to preserve odd-even pagination.

This does not have to be this tedious. Simply open the first page of pdf in Preview and select Insert from the Edit menu and go over to Page From File. Select the pages you want to add in the order that you want to add them using Command click and the pages will add all at once. This is like the blank page insertion noted, but it is not necessary to juggle the thumbnails and many pages can be entered at once.

[Lawrence E Moore]

Re: The New Book Feature

This does not have to be this tedious. Simply open the first page of pdf in Preview and select Insert from the Edit menu and go over to Page From File. Select the pages you want to add in the order that you want to add them using Command click and the pages will add all at once. This is like the blank page insertion noted, but it is not necessary to juggle the thumbnails and many pages can be entered at once.

Daryl, thanks. It appears that different versions of Preview work differently (so, what's new?). My current iteration (Version 8.0 (859.21)) does allow me to select multiple page icons (shift-click or cmd-click) and drag them to another document and place them before or after any page in the receiving document. (This has changed since my last big scanning project in February.) However, when I tried the Edit>Insert menu method you suggested, the whole document was inserted after the current page in the receiving document; there was no chance to select which pages to insert. 'Tis interesting that Apple's products change behaviors unannounced in a matter of months and that the HELP doesn't begin to keep up.
Still, I prefer using Preview to using the competition; and it keeps getting better for annotations; and the price is right.

Lawrence