blog/archive/2015/08/08.rss

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   4                 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from August 2015</title>
   5                 <description>Entries from August 2015</description>
   6                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
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   9         <item>
  10                 <title>In my hand, a pocket book edition of the Norwegian Free Culture book!</title>
  11                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/In_my_hand__a_pocket_book_edition_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_.html</link>
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  13                 <pubDate>Wed, 19 Aug 2015 22:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
  14                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today, finally, my first printed draft edition of the Norwegian
  15 translation of Free Culture I have been working on for the last few
  16 years arrived in the mail.  I had to fake a cover to get the interior
  17 printed, and the exterior of the book look awful, but that is
  18 irrelevant at this point.  I asked for a printed pocket book version
  19 to get an idea about the font sizes and paper format as well as how
  20 good the figures and images look in print, but also to test what the
  21 pocket book version would look like.  After receiving the 500 page
  22 pocket book, it became obvious to me that that pocket book size is too
  23 small for this book.  I believe the book is too thick, and several
  24 tables and figures do not look good in the size they get with that
  25 small page sizes.  I believe I will go with the 5.5x8.5 inch size
  26 instead.  A surprise discovery from the paper version was how bad the
  27 URLs look in print.  They are very hard to read in the colophon page.
  28 The URLs are red in the PDF, but light gray on paper.  I need to
  29 change the color of links somehow to look better.  But there is a
  30 printed book in my hand, and it feels great. :)&lt;/p&gt;
  31
  32 &lt;p&gt;Now I only need to fix the cover, wrap up the postscript with the
  33 store behind the book, and collect the last corrections from the proof
  34 readers before the book is ready for proper printing.  Cover artists
  35 willing to work for free and create a Creative Commons licensed vector
  36 file looking similar to the original is most welcome, as my skills as
  37 a graphics designer are mostly missing.&lt;/p&gt;
  38 </description>
  39         </item>
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  41         <item>
  42                 <title>First paper version of the Norwegian Free Culture book heading my way</title>
  43                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_paper_version_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_heading_my_way.html</link>
  44                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_paper_version_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_heading_my_way.html</guid>
  45                 <pubDate>Sun, 9 Aug 2015 10:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
  46                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Typesetting a book is harder than I hoped.  As the translation is
  47 mostly done, and a volunteer proof reader was going to check the text
  48 on paper, it was time this summer to focus on formatting my translated
  49 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docbook.org/&quot;&gt;docbook&lt;/a&gt; based version of the
  50 &lt;a href=&quot;http://free-culture.cc/&quot;&gt;Free Culture&lt;/a&gt; book by Lawrence
  51 Lessig.  I&#39;ve been trying to get both docboox-xsl+fop and dblatex to
  52 give me a good looking PDF, but in the end I went with dblatex, because
  53 its Debian maintainer and upstream developer were responsive and very
  54 helpful in solving my formatting challenges.&lt;/p&gt;
  55
  56 &lt;p&gt;Last night, I finally managed to create a PDF that no longer made
  57 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lulu.com/&quot;&gt;Lulu.com&lt;/a&gt; complain after uploading,
  58 and I ordered a text version of the book on paper.  It is lacking a
  59 proper book cover and is not tagged with the correct ISBN number, but
  60 should give me an idea what the finished book will look like.&lt;/p&gt;
  61
  62 &lt;p&gt;Instead of using Lulu, I did consider printing the book using
  63 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.createspace.com/&quot;&gt;CreateSpace&lt;/a&gt;, but ended up
  64 using Lulu because it had smaller book size options (CreateSpace seem
  65 to lack pocket book with extended distribution).  I looked for a
  66 similar service in Norway, but have not seen anything so far.  Please
  67 let me know if I am missing out on something here.&lt;/p&gt;
  68
  69 &lt;p&gt;But I still struggle to decide the book size.  Should I go for
  70 pocket book (4.25x6.875 inches / 10.8x17.5 cm) with 556 pages, Digest
  71 (5.5x8.5 inches / 14x21.6 cm) with 323 pages or US Trade (6x8 inches /
  72 15.3x22.9 cm) with 280 pages?  Fewer pager give a cheaper book, and a
  73 smaller book is easier to carry around.  The test book I ordered was
  74 pocket book sized, to give me an idea how well that fit in my hand,
  75 but I suspect I will end up using a digest sized book in the end to
  76 bring the prize down further.&lt;/p&gt;
  77
  78 &lt;p&gt;My biggest challenge at the moment is making nice cover art.  My
  79 inkscape skills are not yet up to the task of replicating the original
  80 cover in SVG format.  I also need to figure out what to write about
  81 the book on the back (will most likely use the same text as the
  82 description on web based book stores).  I would love help with this,
  83 if you are willing to license the art source and final version using
  84 the same CC license as the book.  My artistic skills are not really up
  85 to the task.&lt;/p&gt;
  86
  87 &lt;p&gt;I plan to publish the book in both English and Norwegian and on
  88 paper, in PDF form as well as EPUB and MOBI format.  The current
  89 status can as usual be found on
  90 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;
  91 in the archive/ directory.  So far I have spent all time on making the
  92 PDF version look good.  Someone should probably do the same with the
  93 dbtoepub generated e-book.  Help is definitely needed here, as I
  94 expect to run out of steem before I find time to improve the epub
  95 formatting.&lt;/p&gt;
  96
  97 &lt;p&gt;Please let me know via github if you find typos in the book or
  98 discover translations that should be improved.  The final proof
  99 reading is being done right now, and I expect to publish the finished
 100 result in a few months.&lt;/p&gt;
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