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Messages - hotmetal

#1
Adobe Acrobat / Re: Update to Acrobat caused problems
January 12, 2024, 04:51:24 PM
I've been bashing my head against my keyboard all week. I only have one client anymore, I've been doing odd jobs with her for years. That said, I get about 3 or 4 jobs a year from her, we work really well together. She's in California, I'm in Minnesota. We've never met, but we text back and forth regularly.

What I seem to be seeing is that sleazy ADOBE's monster is uploading my files and "fixing" them for me. When I build a project for her, I'll use several layers and a couple fonts and downloaded images. Nothing fancy, but a couple times a year she'll give me a nice, interesting, fat book to design. I'm paying $50/month to be insulted like this. Breaking it down by week, that's $12.50, that's a couple beers at my local bar. I can work with that.

Now... NOW... NOW!!! every time I get something working just fine, ADOBE reaches in during the night and jams everything into an impossible pile of crapy PDF junk, which may or may not have layers, and it really seems like ADOBE is doing this because they think people like myself are too stupid to know what they're doing, and likely to STEAL SOMETHING if they don't toss something in line to keep me from getting any work done.

It certainly appears that ADOBE is TERRIFIED that I MIGHT STEAL SOMETHING, so they make it really, really hard for me to get anything done without a lot of yelling and screaming (when my wife isn't home, of course.)

What am I missing?
#2
I think about you folks a lot. Years ago when I was still working 2nd in a huge plant, every now and then one or another of our retired pals would drop by for the evening. No lock on the outside door from the parking lot to the pressroom back then. Now you need a keycard. I've never gone back to that sorry place, though they're still making money. I chat with a couple of Facebook pals that are still working there. Eleven years, man. Sock-in all the overtime you can and get the hell out as soon as you can pull it off. Social Security isn't going anywhere. At least for the next 4 years...

:cane:
#3
Glad I dropped by, hope my December 2022 version works until they've pulled my lifeless fingers from my mouse, or at least have switched to Affinity Publisher, which should be around 2052...

:git off mah lawn:
#4
OK, I rented the converter for a year and so far done 2 large books with many images, originally in Quark 3. They were made as multiple Quark files (because back then if you made too big of a document your system would get very slow and eventually crash, screwing up the file... which is where MarkZware's Quark utility back in the '90s might save your ass) and I ran them through the Markzware converter one by one, then combined them in InDesign. Some reflow, easily fixed but you do have to go page by page looking for it. Helps to have a printed copy of the original to compare to. Problems with master pages being named the same but containing different elements from file to file. Same with style sheets. All fixable.

Other people seem to be using it, there's a lot of "gosh wow oh boy!" postings at Mark Z's webpage. Don't think I even saw any negative ones. Pretty sure I can get my $200 back, but by year's end no longer have that client, since they do have someone who knows how to work in InDesign.

Hmmmm... rock... hard place...
#5
Looking for Work / Re: Work slowing down. A *lot*
May 14, 2019, 08:33:08 PM
Quote from: Possum on May 03, 2019, 11:32:49 AM
We used to print one that had the recycled paper logo on it. Only they didn't want to pay for printing it on recycled paper.  :rotf:

At my last job I was handed a rush brochure with a post-it note from the sales idiot (the biggest idiot of the bunch, of course) "add the Forest Stewardship Council Recycled logo here".

I was suspicious, having never seen the FSC logo on a job before, and went to the person in charge of stuff like this and showed her the note. She was really pissed, he'd asked her for the logo and she told him the owners had decided not to go through with registering with the Forest Stewardship Council, meaning it would be illegal to put the FSC logo on a job. She'd told him we couldn't use it. He left her office and later tried to order me to just do it anyways. I told him to go fuck himself.
#6
Anyone have knowledge or experience with this magical software? I had Mark Z's Quark fixer-upper utility in the 1990s. It saved my butt numerous times.

I'm still getting old book layouts in Quark 3 and 4 from my book publishing clients, usually just needing copyright page updates and minor revisions. Last year I took the really really old Quark 3rd and 4th editions of a tour guide to the opening battles of the Revolutionary War, and combined parts from them into a 5th edition. The book's been around for a while, and the 3rd and 4th editions were quite different. This retrieval was a shitload of work. My result came out fabulous. Still in Quark, though.

I've been using Quark 10 for that kind of stuff for quite a while, but just bought the 2018/2019 update when they were having a $100-off sale. Haven't loaded the newer one yet, just wanted to grab it while it was on sale and I had some spare cash.

Having Quark experience — and a current working copy — landed me several publishing clients. After a few revision jobs, they began giving me fresh books to design and layout. Keeps me busy. I like the work. No one standing behind me yelling hurry up because the fool on 1st shift screwed up a job and the press is down, the client's pissed off, and I'm the only one who can save their useless asses. But I digress...

Mark Z's still in the game, but now he rents his apps for $200/year. I find that annoying, but I'm still about to go ahead and pay the $200 for his Quark --> InDesign converter and twist its tail. One of my clients has a whole lot of back list books in Quark and they'll happily pay me if I can successfully convert them to InDesign. In one respect, that means I might not get to work on those books, they do minor stuff in-house if it's InDesign. On the other hand, I won't have to work on those fucking Quark files!

Interestingly, current Quark works pretty good, little has changed in the interface, it still puts a white background and a runaround on every box you create, and still lets you click on fucking bold and italic "styles" even when the font family doesn't have bold and italic versions. They (ahem) look fine on the screen... but the PDFs it natively outputs are good enough that I've never had a complaint from a printer about them. Knock wood.

Hotmetal

#7
Quote from: Kermy812 on March 22, 2019, 09:08:39 AMI don't know if it helps, but someone has wrote a javascript for indd to build a crossword puzzle here: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/329368
There's a download all the way at the end of the thread. I tried & it "Works", but they didn't put any notations in the script, so customizing & editing might be a ton of "fun".

Great, thanks! I'll go look into that thread.

Wait, that's for crosswords. These are those word search puzzles where you circle the answers hidden in the block of seemingly random letters. The shareware software I used a couple months ago would generate the block of letters from the list of answers.

I don't normally turn down freelance work, but there's 3 or 4 of these books, with 200 puzzles each. That is mind-numbing work, and I've got a steady stream of nice, colorful, fun childrens' books from another client that I'd much rather spend my time designing.
#8
My firm belief is that All Knowledge Resides in b4print, so here's my dilemma:

My best client had me attempting to make some word-search puzzle books a few months ago. They sent me some puzzles they'd made with a shareware software. The typesetting from the software was horrible, no options for point size, leading, font. All columns flush left, different spacing between columns in every file. Etc etc. It took me 20+ minutes to format each one so they looked nice, and had the same column-widths. The books they want me to do have 200 puzzles each.

Luckily (for me) they didn't like my cover designs,  so I politely told them I didn't know enough (if anything) about creating the type for world puzzle books, and that they should find a person or company with experience in these things.

Well... they just tried to drop it in my lap again. I found them a printer in India that claims this is their specialty. Anyone know of any U.S. printers who do large volumes of crossword and word-search puzzle books? I've put an hour into googling this for and didn't find any, other than the one in India.


 :facepalm:
#9
Adobe InDesign / Re: FREE InDesign Scripts
July 04, 2018, 10:10:59 AM
Thanks, Joe!

I'll have to try the Text Cleanup script on my next client book project. The text always comes as a Word doc (the images come in every possible, and some impossible, format. But never, ever, in that mysterious... CMYK.) I create a generic Indy run file to the book's page dimensions and import the doc as-is to get a basic page count, then search/replace/format the text from the manual list engraved on my brain from 40 years of doing this shit. The Word docs are seldom edited before being dropped in my lap, arriving just as the author (badly) typed it. The more I can clean up on my first pass, the fewer rounds of revisions I'll have to eat. Most of my work is flat-rate, negotiated in advance, and extra rounds of revisions can eat a shitload of the profit if I'm not careful.

Certainly worth a try!
#10
Quote from: Joe on August 17, 2017, 07:59:54 AMI'd be glad to if I had any. Sorry.

You're still my hero, Joe!
#11
Adobe InDesign / scripting for importing Word files
August 16, 2017, 11:59:23 PM
I'm designing a 400+ page textbook with footnotes. Each chapter is a single Word .docx

I checked the preference in InDesign's File --> Place to import footnotes and it worked pretty well, bringing the footnotes in, more or less in position, as what appears to be a stand-alone cell. But there are formatting issues, like preserving italics, and thinking I've applied a style sheet only to find that it didn't actually change anything.

My web search took me to several discussions on writing scripts to deal with Indy formatting issues, and some posters offered to send scripts they had written. I don't belong to any of those groups, so I thought I'd ask here.

Anyone around here savvy with writing scripts like this? I was writing unix shell scripts 30 years ago, so I'm not totally in the dark. Can anyone help me out with a script or two they've written for this sort of thing that I could use as a model for building my own? That would be great!

HM
#12
Adobe InDesign / Re: CC2017 image link glitches
May 18, 2017, 04:13:54 PM
thanks, Joe, I'll look into that, though I thought I did that already... could be one of them senior moments...
#13
Adobe InDesign / CC2017 image link glitches
May 18, 2017, 12:49:35 PM
I finally got myself a newer Mac Pro (moving from 2006 to 2009 — one of my pals back at my old job found a 2009 on the IT guy's junk pile and grabbed it for me, upgraded it to 20GBs of ram and a new hardrive with Yosemite, works fine) and decided it was time to bit the bullet and move from good ol' Indy CS6 to the latest Indy, CC2017.

Now I'm finding that, when re-opening a file, the images all show OK links, but they appear on the screen as low-res. I have to manually re-link them to get the hi-res previews back. I've got all my InDesign application prefs set to hi-res previews, every place you can set that. They look good right after placing, but upon re-opening the file, they're shit. But since they show as "OK" in the link panel, I can't just say "relink all", I have to do each one individually...

I ran permissions repair, did a restart, still doing it. Arrrgh!
#14
CTP - CTF / Re: Platemaker pay?
December 05, 2016, 06:44:15 PM
Back in the day... they installed a big Creo digital plate machine around 2001, for 2-64" sheet fed presses, a 4C and a 6C. A lot of short runs. About that same time they cut the early '80s Great Big Scanner up for scrap, and one of the scanner techs became my Mac protege and the other took on 2nd shift plate making. I asked to be trained on the plate machine and was told there was no need. About 5 years later they all of sudden decided I was going to be the 2nd shift fill-in plate maker — and responsible for chemistry and calibration when I was filling in. That bugged me, I wasn't given any training in any of that stuff, and didn't go to trade school like the rest of them. I'm a typesetter, damnit... be happy that I can strip as good as anyone in the shop.

The 2 full-timers were secretive about their calibration charts and settings — I think they took them home with them. So... I lied to the boss. "Yeah, sure, I checked the scales."

No, I didn't. What was the question again? Oh, right. Union shop. You'll hate me if I tell you what we were all making back then.


hm                        :cane:
#15
Quote from: Possum on September 26, 2016, 01:02:04 PMThat wax machine is probably the low-melt toner kind. Some output from that on coated stock looks like crayon wax, but if they like it....

Why would the Red River paper be inkjet only? That seems a tad strange to me. Maybe you could call them up and ask them for their recommendations if you can find a toll-free number for them. They prolly have other kinds you could use and can tell you the nearest vendor.

Actually... Red River states: "Our products are specifically coated for use with an inkjet printer. We do not recommend them for laser use because the coating might damage the fuser drum."

however, I eventually found a source that has what I was looking for, coated paper that will work in both color lasers and the Xerox solid ink (wax) printers:  www.graytex.com