Bob, what program did you use for your ebook ?

Bob, seeing a lot of publicity lately about the book you wrote about modx, I stumbled upon a few questions that I might as well ask the pro behind the book. It made me wondering what program did you use to write the text and after that what program did you use to convert it into pdf. And why pdf and not epub or mobi. As you can gues I am planning to write some ebooks myself about basic computer repair/maintenance for none techies. So far I know one could write in word and use some pdf printer driver to convert it to pdf. But would that be the best way ? Thanks in advance, Brian.

I don't necessarily recommend my method, but here's the scoop as I understand it. The Book was written in MS Word. At the publisher, I'm not positive, but I think the book was imported into InDesign and then exported to a series of separate .PDF files for the printer.

Good luck with your books.


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PLEASE, PLEASE specify the version of MODX you are using.
MODX info for everyone: http://bobsguides.com/modx.html

Thanks for the reply. Indesign is very good but very pricy, around 1000 $. You can even use Indesign to mockup a website. Right now I'm testing Open Office that allows you to export in pdf and also bullzip which is freeware and has very good pdf publishing features http://www.bullzip.com/products/pdf/info.php. Publishing and exporting docs and info to pdf becomes more and more part of designing websites and documenting for clients so you simply have to know something about it.
Greetings Brian.

There are also several add-ons that will let you export Word docs to .pdf. Newer versions of Word have this built in (Word 2010 has that feature).

I've resisted switching to Open Office because I have a number of fairly complex Word Macros I wrote myself that can't be imported to Open Office. I don't know if Open Office even has a Macro language to use yet.


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PLEASE, PLEASE specify the version of MODX you are using.
MODX info for everyone: http://bobsguides.com/modx.html

http://help.libreoffice.org/Common/Scripting

LibreOffice Basic
JavaScript
BeanShell
Python

Thanks Susan for that link. Makes me going to look again at Open Office. Sun has also made a plugin available that allows you to import and modify PDF inside Open Office. http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/pdfimport/. By the way, I have noticed that not all pdf printer drivers produce the same quality pdf. Some produce pdf's where the text even looks a bit blurry and others produce pdf's with sharper text. Something to consider.
Greetings Brian. [ed. note: sitecms last edited this post 14 years, 2 months ago.]

Susan, that's very cool. That should give MS Office a run for it's money.

I wonder if InDesign parses Open Office docs yet (and does it well).


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PLEASE, PLEASE specify the version of MODX you are using.
MODX info for everyone: http://bobsguides.com/modx.html