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*** DesignGeek (tm) ***
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Tips and techniques for the digital designer
In this issue:
-- InDesign to iPhone via ePub
-- Obama Poster-ize Yourself
-- Clean Up Dupes in Lists Fast
-- Follow Me on Twitter
Issue 73, 2/5/09
Written by Anne-Marie "HerGeekness" Concepcion
... for her clients, colleagues, random contacts and interested subscribers
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InDesign to iPhone via ePub
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Did you know that you can make your InDesign documents appear on an iPhone as though the user was reading your publication on an Amazon Kindle? For free? Today?
Picture it: The user wants to read your publication on their iPhone. On the phone, the user sees its title appear in a list of other books they've downloaded. User taps the title, and there's your book cover. User taps the book cover, there's the table of contents. User taps one of the TOC entries. Text from page 1 flows into the screen, user taps, screen flows to next "page" of text, pictures and all, user taps, and so on. Navigation buttons let them jump to chapters, save bookmarks, go back and re-read something.
How? In InDesign, go to File > File Info and give your document some metadata, even if it's just the title. Then in CS3, choose File > Cross-Media Export > XHTML/Digital Editions; or in InDesign CS4, choose File > Export for Digital Editions. If you want to export an entire book, choose the Export to Digital Editions command from the Book panel menu.
Accept the default choices in the Export dialog box for now and click the Export command. You now have an ePub version of the document. An ePub is a "reflowable" format, sort of like a very long HTML page that rewraps when you resize the window.
To see what it will look like on an iPhone or iPodTouch, download LexCycle's free Stanza desktop application, version 1.0, for Windows or Macs:
http://www.lexcycle.com/stanza
(Stanza is also the name of the free iPhone/iPod Touch application, now in version 2.0, that users download from the App Store and use to read thousands of DRM-free books in ePub and other formats.)
Install Stanza on your computer, run it, and use its File > Open menu to open the ePub you just created. There you go.
Now, it's very likely that the InDesign file—or the ePub file itself—needs some tweaking for the best possible presentation in Stanza/iPhones, but that's another topic. I just want to give you the broad strokes here. [Edit: Most formatting and images are purposely stripped out in the Stanza desktop app preview, so don't freak out—use the Stanza iPhone/iPod Touch app to really see it. More info here. --AMC]
Keep an eye on InDesignSecrets.com (the blog I co-host with David Blatner) and InDesign Magazine at http://indesignmag.com, which I'm sure will cover the topic more thoroughly in the near future, or of course (plug) contact me at Seneca for some training/consulting.
If you go to the Stanza site I linked to above, you'll find tons of helpful content, including FAQs, a forum, and links to thousands of ePubs, many of them free.
Or if not free, then inexpensive, such as David Pogue's "iPhone: The Missing Manual," only $4.99 for the ePub edition, and which I'm betting was originally laid out in InDesign.
ePub version of iPhone: The Missing Manual
http://missingmanuals.com/iphone_app/get
Oh, and here's a tidbit I found buried on the LexCycle site. If you upload an ePub to your web site, you can create a link to it that will automatically download it to Stanza's library on the iPhone or iPod Touch user's device (assuming they were using the device to browse your web site). Just use "stanza://" instead of "http://" as in "stanza://foobar.com/epubs/ new_book.epub". Neat!
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Digital Editions and XML
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Adobe, not surprisingly, also has a lot of content and resources for publishers interested in the Digital Editions format, for people interested in getting their pubs into iPhones and way beyond.
For example, textbook publishers who need to provide their publications in NIMAS format will be especially interested in a new option in InDesign CS4's Digital Edition Export dialog box. Instead of the default XHTML format, you can choose DTBook as the ePub's underlying format.
DTBook uses the same DAISY vocabulary as what NIMAS is based upon, and according to Adobe, "DTBook content in an ePub should have all the elements required for a NIMAS submission."
If I just lost ya, don't worry. ;-) Just know that Adobe, in its efforts with the Digitial Edition feature, has made some strides toward satisfying publisher's XML needs. And that's a very very good thing.
For more information on what you can do with InDesign's Digital Editions, see:
Digital Editions Live Help page
http://tinyurl.com/adobedigedit
Adobe's Digital Editions blog
http://blogs.adobe.com/digitaleditions/
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Obama Poster-ize Yourself
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Shepard Fairey, principal of the Obey Giant design firm, is the designer who created the iconic "Hope" poster for President Barack Obama's campaign.
Obama Poster
http://obeygiant.com/headlines/obama
The Associated Press is claiming that the picture of Obama which Fairey based his poster on is owned by them, and wants credit and compensation.
AP Statement on Shepard Fairey Poster
http://www.ap.org/pages/about/pressreleases/pr_020409a.html
In the meantime, while they're duking it out, why don't you join me and 500,000 other people who've further mashed all over copyright laws by creating a version of the poster starring yourself, or your pet, or your office chair, with your own tagline?
It's tons o' fun!
Go to Paste Magazine's Obamaiconme site:
http://obamiconme.pastemagazine.com/
Click the Create button to get started. You can upload a picture or just take it on the fly with your webcam. Choose a tagline or write your own, fiddle with the color tones a bit to optimize it, and you're done.
I put mine on my home page: http://senecadesign.com
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Clean Up Dupes in Lists Fast
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Do you ever get multiple copies of the same catalog in the mail? Or three or four copies of the same HTML email from the same company? The problem here is a dirty list: Someone forgot to check for duplicate entries.
When you're doing any sort of mail merging or database publishing, it's important to start with a clean, "de-duped" list before you import the data, because they're often impossible to find and delete in the finished product. In the case of HTML e-mails, you never even see the finished product. But you might just aggravate a recipient enough to get tagged as a spammer.
If the data is still in its native database format (Access, Filemaker, etc.) getting rid of dupes is seldom an issue. You just look for the program's "Delete Duplicate Records" command. But sometimes, you don't have a database, just a list of thousands of something or others that you've combined from various sources, like web sites and Word files.
And, when you're doing a job for a client, you're normally given a tab- or comma-delimited text file that was *exported* from their database, which may have been in an atrocious state to begin with. Or worse, they call their Saved-As-bazillion-times Word document that Marge started in 1994 their "database" and give you that.
So ... confronted with a text file containing thousands of records, one record per paragraph, how can you quickly get rid of duplicate entries?
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De-dupe in Excel
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If you have Microsoft Excel, you can open the tab- or comma-delimited text file in it and either use a formula operation or download and purchase an Excel add-on that adds the ability to find and delete duplicates.
If you feel like strapping on your Excel Geek gear and trying the formula method, follow the steps outlined here:
http://www.mailchimp.com/blog/de-dupe-lists-with-an-excel-formula/
Or, you can purchase an inexpensive Excel (Windows only) add-on, like DeDupe4excel:
http://www.dqglobal.com/deduplication_software_excel.html
DeDupe4excel is more powerful than the formula method, because you can configure it to delete "close" duplicates, like "Mike" and "Michael." The formula method only works on exact matches.
Actually, if you do an online search for the term "delete duplicate +excel" you'll end up with dozens of Excel add-ons that you might want to investigate.
After you've removed the duplicates, just save he cleaned-up data back out in tab-delimited text or CSV format to use as your source file.
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De-dupe in a Text Editor
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Mac users can take care of the de-duping in a few seconds with the help of one of my favorite programs in the world, BareBones software's free TextWrangler:
http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/
Open the file in TextWrangler (their commercial BBEdit program, $125, has this too) and choose Text > Process Duplicate Lines. In the resulting dialog box, turn on the checkbox for Delete Duplicate Lines, and click the Process button. Done!
This powerful little dialog box also lets you specify pattern matching (aka GREP) and offers the option to move the deleted lines to a new file so you can see what it removed.
Windows users can use the slick UltraEdit ($50) program from IDM:
http://www.ultraedit.com/products/ultraedit.html
Open the text file in UltraEdit and choose File > Sort > Advanced Sort Options. Choose a sort order, turn on the Remove Duplicates checkbox, and click the Sort button. Voila!
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De-dupe on the Web for Free
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What could be simpler than copying and pasting onto a web site?
Check out http://SortMyList.com. In one simple -- and a little primitive, design-wise -- window, it can do all sorts of manipulations to the text you paste in.
Not only can it de-dupe (look under the Clean menu for the Remove Duplicates command), but it can transpose, clean white space, reverse items (change "firstname lastname" to "lastname firstname"), and delete special characters. And more. For free!
In fact, you don't even have to copy/paste. The first menu on the web page, File, lets you upload .txt files to the window. When you're done, choose File > Save to Hard Drive.
Very slick.
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Follow Me on Twitter
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Yes, I'm a twittering fool. If you'd like to follow my occasional tweets, follow me:
http://twitter.com/amarie
If you're an InDesign user, I also contribute to the InDesignSecrets.com Twitter feed. I and my fellow blog contributors post InDesign tips that we can fit into Twitter's 140 character limit, including our initials in brackets at the end.
http://twitter.com/indesignsecrets
You can expect to see more tips and techniques on Twitter, Facebook and the like in upcoming DesignGeek issues. It's one of the best ways to encourage viral marketing of your creative business, and I've been exploring their possibilities quite heavily lately. You have to be very careful, though, not to violate their Terms of Service, otherwise you'll be tagged as a dreaded spammer. And I get enough spam already.
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To learn more, or hear what other clients have to say, contact us or fill out the no-obligation "Request a Training Quote' form on Seneca's site:
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DesignGeek (tm) is a free monthly publication written by Anne-Marie "HerGeekness" Concepcion, a cross-media designer and authorized Adobe and Quark training provider. She owns Seneca Design & Training, Inc. in Chicago, Illinois (http://www.senecadesign.com).
To subscribe to DesignGeek or read archived issues, go to its home on Seneca's site:
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Can't wait for the next issue of DesignGeek?
Read Anne-Marie's monthly "HerGeekness Says" column at CreativePro.com:
http://tinyurl.com/cpro-amc
And check out the tips she posts about Adobe InDesign and the InDesign/InCopy workflow:
http://indesignsecrets.com (blog and podcast co-hosted with David Blatner)
http://incopysecrets.com (with its own free e-zine, InCopyFlow)
Contact Seneca by phone at 312-946-1100 or e-mail at info@senecadesign.com
Copyright 2009 by Seneca Design & Training, Inc.
Please forward without cutting. Please contact Seneca for reprint permissions. We don't guarantee accuracy of articles. Company or product names mentioned in DesignGeek may be registered trademarks, we use the names in an editorial fashion with no intention of infringement.
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