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I've been joking for the past several months that I'm 2 weeks from finishing my latest book, Writing for Science Journals, but it's definitely been gallows humor. Every time I think I'm nearly finished, I find something else to do. Some of this is just the fact that I have a day job, and it doesn't leave much time to really master the tools. If you only publish a book every 2 or 3 years, you have to relearn the subtle details each time you return to the software.
But much of this is also related to stupid software design. For example, InDesign CS6 helpfully updates the page numbers in all book chapters if you add a page, but ignores the "start each chapter on a new right-hand page setting" (i.e., add blank pages if necessary) when it does so. The result is that chapters that formerly started on the right side of the spread (as I intended) suddenly appeared on the left page of the spread. InDesign does not warn of this problem, even with the preflight tools. How does that make sense? I only noticed this because I had this nagging sense that I really ought to take one last look at the layout, and sure enough, the pagination was all wrong. This meant redoing the index... again.
I've already ranted about the poorly implemented indexing function, but there's also apparently a bug in which duplicate see/see also index references aren't cleaned up automatically. So I have to manually find and remove the duplicates. Worst of all, the indexing function creates static page references, so if you add a page to the book, you have to regenerate the formatted index instead of just updating the page numbers (as InDesign helpfully does for the table of contents) -- but the page numbers don't update, the whole index does, thereby losing any formatting or information that you've applied manually. This wouldn't be so bad if there were an option to automatically add "(continued)" and "(concluded)" when a main index entry is split so that the sub-entries fall on 2 pages or in 2 columns. This addition isn't strictly essential, but it's such a useful aid to the reader in long indexes that I consider it essential.
Last but not least, three of the graphs that I slaved to correct finally looked great in the graphics software (Illustrator) and in PDF form, but when I imported them into InDesign... the graph lines were gone. Arrgghh! Now I have to figure out where they've gone and how to get them back.
On the plus side, the layout and index issues are now fixed, and I'm only waiting on a reply from the stock photo agency to confirm certain minutiae of the licensing agreement so I can complete the cover. There's light at the end of the tunnel. I'm now *1 week* from finishing the damnèd book. Then *shudder* it's time to start updating Effective Onscreen Editing, since the 3rd edition is now badly overdue. My desktop publishing software runneth over.
Sigh. The self-publisher's lament is that "of the making of books there is no end" -- but for self-publishers, this refers to the design and production process, not the reader's traditional "so many books, so little time to read them all" interpretation.
But much of this is also related to stupid software design. For example, InDesign CS6 helpfully updates the page numbers in all book chapters if you add a page, but ignores the "start each chapter on a new right-hand page setting" (i.e., add blank pages if necessary) when it does so. The result is that chapters that formerly started on the right side of the spread (as I intended) suddenly appeared on the left page of the spread. InDesign does not warn of this problem, even with the preflight tools. How does that make sense? I only noticed this because I had this nagging sense that I really ought to take one last look at the layout, and sure enough, the pagination was all wrong. This meant redoing the index... again.
I've already ranted about the poorly implemented indexing function, but there's also apparently a bug in which duplicate see/see also index references aren't cleaned up automatically. So I have to manually find and remove the duplicates. Worst of all, the indexing function creates static page references, so if you add a page to the book, you have to regenerate the formatted index instead of just updating the page numbers (as InDesign helpfully does for the table of contents) -- but the page numbers don't update, the whole index does, thereby losing any formatting or information that you've applied manually. This wouldn't be so bad if there were an option to automatically add "(continued)" and "(concluded)" when a main index entry is split so that the sub-entries fall on 2 pages or in 2 columns. This addition isn't strictly essential, but it's such a useful aid to the reader in long indexes that I consider it essential.
Last but not least, three of the graphs that I slaved to correct finally looked great in the graphics software (Illustrator) and in PDF form, but when I imported them into InDesign... the graph lines were gone. Arrgghh! Now I have to figure out where they've gone and how to get them back.
On the plus side, the layout and index issues are now fixed, and I'm only waiting on a reply from the stock photo agency to confirm certain minutiae of the licensing agreement so I can complete the cover. There's light at the end of the tunnel. I'm now *1 week* from finishing the damnèd book. Then *shudder* it's time to start updating Effective Onscreen Editing, since the 3rd edition is now badly overdue. My desktop publishing software runneth over.
Sigh. The self-publisher's lament is that "of the making of books there is no end" -- but for self-publishers, this refers to the design and production process, not the reader's traditional "so many books, so little time to read them all" interpretation.