Book production on Mac OS



Welcome, Guest \| Home \| Search \| Login \| Register


Author	Book production on Mac OS (Read 40535 times)
68040 512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !	on: October 29, 2021, 20:15 Hello Bolkonskij, I am fully loaded, so where to start? I use the full MS-Office Suite for MacOS 8.1 - and I won't allow anyone to badmouth that, for its far superior to even many cramped up modern day Office releases. I use spelling, clipboard management and virtual desktop tools a.s.o. to enhance my productivity. But most importantly I am a Quark zealot. I wrote and published some of my best books with QuarkXPress. I also use Adobe's Paintshop Pro, but its really only endurable with large image files once you got them converted to native PS4 format. Ah and yes, the Adobe Distiller is a god send for any self publishing author. Font Utilities and 3D render progs (gosh I had forgotten what it meant to render realistic 3D back in the days: wait, wait and wait some more) complete the picture together with some rather remarkable early MindMapping apps I use for designing my plot lines. I haven't gotten around to do much programming yet (aside from AppleScript, which I looove to no end), but I plan to change that sometime down the line. And I play around with the SoftPC emulator inside my Apple Emulator :-)) I also have tons of games, but until now not enough space to install them. But now I set up an AppleTalk Server on my Linux StickPC and plan to use that to host most of those game data files, together with my MS-Expedia CDs (who needs google then? Just a joke question . PS: I discovered a treasure trove of HyperStack files of all sorts, but I am still looking for a HS application which allows to size those up full screen, for they are way too small for my current screen resolution.
Last Edit: October 29, 2021, 20:21 by 68040
Bolkonskij Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023	Reply #1 on: October 31, 2021, 14:07 Go retro! 1024x768 is enough for everything ;-) Interesting read, thanks! How do you manage sharing the files for printing? Are modern printing houses still compatible with QuarkXPress? So not only are you writing but also layouting your own stuff on Mac OS? And what MS-Office suite would that be? 4.x ? I just wanna know before I start bad mouthing it ... :-D
Last Edit: October 31, 2021, 14:12 by Bolkonskij
68040 512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !	Reply #2 on: October 31, 2021, 20:48 Hello Bolkonskij, so I got my own thread now ;-) I prefer high rez. already did when I was still fighting the good fight with my Amiga box. But alas that baby couldn't give you anything above 320x256 w/o giving you headaches, too. And I'm using the complete MS-Office Suite with Word v6.0.1, including the database and powerpoint apps. But for DB work I actually prefer FileMaker, its just superb in that. I already started designing a plot character DB in FM4. And with my X-Window setup I can ssh-tunnel to my StickPC (was tricky to enable the legacy protocols for that w/o compromising overall security) and run whatever extra software I need from there, and have the app's window appear on my local Mac Desktop. As long as you can produce good PDF output Amazon KDP and most other print houses are happy with that. Almost no one demands native format app files these days anymore, not unless they plan to work on them inhouse themselves. PS: My newsnet reader still functions like its brand new. I can read and post with it all over the place. Amazing isn't it?
Last Edit: November 01, 2021, 22:25 by 68040
68040 512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !	Reply #3 on: October 31, 2021, 20:57 Here are just some of the tools I recently discovered in the archives. Gosh, back then it was individual programmers - people you could talk to - who made all the difference: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/tools-john-v-holder

Syntho 64 MB Posts: 103 System 7 Newcomer!	Reply #4 on: November 01, 2021, 20:58 I'm trying to get into the desktop publishing thing myself. I went and got Quark and Appleworks. Do you use Quark for the actual writing part, or do you import text into it from some other software? I've got to read the manual or learn from a tutorial on how to format and layout a book in Quark, I've never done it before, but I know that Quark was THE software for that back then.

68040 512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !	Reply #5 on: November 01, 2021, 22:35 Hello Syntho, I had to correct myself up there, because the actually MS-Word version I am using is 6.0.1, but I think it was still shipped with the Office Suite 4.x Go figure why they mixed up version numbers like that. I write my texts in MS-Word and then import them into QXP. Quark was never meant to be a Word Processor, but a Layout and DTP program. And its superb in that. Even so nowadays there is kind of a religious war between Adobe's InDesign and QuarkXPress - which is outright viciously fought in certain forums - back in the day QXP was the unquestioned master of the DTP universe and rightfully so. Once you spiced it up with the right plugins, it becomes a one-stop powerhouse for all your desktop publishing needs. In combination with Adobe's PDF Distiller you can produce ready-to-print material right from your vintage Mac. But beware: Quark's GUI design outright sucks, if you are used to intuitive interfaces. Once you learn what is what it all becomes logical, but up until then you want to throw the whole damn' thing in some corner and forget you ever thought about designing your own book. So bring some staying power and a lot of good coffee to your jam session. ;-) In all honesty I cheated a bit here, because I bought myself some old QXP training books on Amazon - and read them all from page one.

Syntho 64 MB Posts: 103 System 7 Newcomer!	Reply #6 on: November 02, 2021, 08:29 What are some must-have plugins for Quark?

68040 512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !	Reply #7 on: November 02, 2021, 09:01 Hi Syntho, that totally depends on your taste, for they vary wildly in functionality. Personally I would always start with the Extensis set of extensions, and then add here and there as I go along (like Word or graphics import filters). For one thing is very important to remember: Those were the early days of extendable software making. There was no watch dog group or licensing scheme that checked and verified those little software helpers. So while some of them worked like a charm, others screwed up your whole application. That is why Quark has its own Extension Manager, with a "disable" option. Just check on the Garden for "QuarkExpress" Extensions and mind the Quark version you are looking for. Many features were later added to QXP that made earlier extensions redundant. And keep your hacker's bible handy, for most of those nifty little helper were very costly back in the day, so they required a registration code to function fully. Luckily enough most of those codes have been leaked by now (oh marvelous wonder after 20-30 years), you just need to know were to look for them.

Bolkonskij Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023	Reply #8 on: November 02, 2021, 17:37 Sort of a "best of" list of plugins for certain popular Mac OS software is I had on my to do list for a long time. I feel this is something where very few research is done. Either you remember the stuff you used back in the day or you spend a lot of time trying out plugins. And don't mention the difficulty to finding stuff via shareware CDs and uploads lacking good description texts. I too would be interested in what plugins you'd recommend for QXP?

68040 512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !	Reply #9 on: November 03, 2021, 01:24 I can send you a list once I won the nasty battle with the "slow X11-ssh tunneling daemon". Finally figured out why my tunneled X11 apps display at a snail's pace - but getting past that proves more difficult than imagined.

	Pages: [1]

© 2021 System7Today.com.
The Apple Logo, Macintosh™, Mac OS™, and others property of Apple Computer, Inc.
This site is in no way affiliated with Apple Computer, Inc.