Looking at InCopy for our Study Guides

Given the current situation at the University, I want to see how we can continue to improve the process we started with our Study Guides. (earlier posts explain this process, including InDesign and it’s XML features to do various things).

I thought, I might as well look at InCopy.. So.. I’ve looked at it, and I’ve been thinking. It seems like a good tool for starters, I like the whole assignment based workflow idea where multiple authors can work on pieces of a document simultaneously. However. At this time I don’t see the value in adding InCopy to the study guide process and I’m going to abort my testing on it. Unless we significantly change things, it’s not going to impact or improve our workloads in any great beneficial way as far as I can see.

To get big gains on workflow we’d need to use InCopy completely instead of MS Word, and thus we would need to either:

ONE: get our real authors to use InCopy, our lecturers would then be more directly involved in their study material creation, but the downside is I’m sure they wouldn’t have time..? We would then take the designer role and manage the content and assignments – just like a real publishing house. OR;

TWO: get InDesign Server, develop a front end which lets authors edit their content without needing InCopy. This would take time, money, money and I don’t know what else! It’d be great, extensible, but we’d need to be careful and ensure that it met our real needs and improved our processes without getting carried away.

So, where to next? Who knows.

This is what I’d do if I had unlimited skills, time, and money from the University:

Look at MS Word’s XML docx format, investigate how we can effectively (automatically) transport this structured XML content in to InDesign, or generally just a more usable XML format than straight docx.

It’d be great to have a front end where the content could then be checked out for any needed updates – checked out by Authors or Designers – then at a certain date (or manually) the server does all the work.. TOCs, tagging, footers, PDFs for print and online, XML exports, web pages to display the content as well, the whole lot.

Hrm, wouldn’t that be nice.

Thoughts on the 2008 Ascilite conference so far

Introduction:

Okay, the first thing I have probably learned is that it’s probably a good idea to borrow a laptop before coming.  It’d make note taking much easier among other things!

The first day of the conference went well, consisting of a half day workshop on educating the NET generation.  It was a non stop discussion which was really interesting.  Basically it is interesting to hear what people think about the so called NET generation.. I’m not convinced though.

Obviously trends show that social networking and technological tools in general are becoming increasingly ‘natural’ to a lot of people.  I find that these people aren’t narrowed down by an age group or a certain demographic however, as the whole idea of the ‘net generation’ seems to suggest. Millions of things contribute to how one understands and uses technology in every day life.. I always grew up with technology, my parents always gave me access to it and used technology themselves so in one way this would have shaped my natural uptake and use of these tools.

After today I had the feeling that a lot people tend to talk about web2 tools as something for students to use, something to base objectives or actual activities around.. I’d personally like to see more staff USE these technologies to TEACH.. use them to teach and see where that goes.  VoiceThread for example would be an awesome mode of delivery for online lecturers or even tutorials, no matter what discipline.  Students could also co-contribute and everyone would be hunky dorry… however you spell that.

Anyway, before I ramble on too much; the discussion showed some really interesting student trends, based on studies taken in 2006.. something to bring home and have a look at.  Overall the workshop was good, and fun.

Day 1:

So far today has been .. interesting.  From the workshops so far I’ve seen some web2 tools that I’ve never heard of, so I’ll be sure to keep a list of them, and suss them out when I return back to work.  One in particular would be VEX; a tool that combines various web2 features in one spot, blogs and more.  I like the idea of a single tool to do many things, much more than half a dozen tools to do separate things.

The whole notion of students as co-contributors of content and thus their own learning is popping up in most sessions.  Again I think of VoiceThread having great potential but I’m sure there’s so many others that I don’t know of yet.

In talk #2, session 1, we heard from a University that had been trialling a trigger enabled SMS system, this one was also pretty interesting.  Students opt to sign up for the service, and once that’s done they can easily request assessment results, exam times and dates, dates of upcoming assignments, and much more.  It wasn’t a request based system only, students also got personalised reminders close to due dates and so forth.  Overall the feedback generated from student surveys indicated that it was more than moderately successful, I personally think it’s a pretty good idea, perhaps not in terms of ‘learning and teaching’ as such, but for basic student convenience and motivation..

Talk #3 was a very unique presentation; rather than presenting strict evidence or theory it gave us an insight into what students think about using mobile web2 technologies.  Students were supplied with equipment such as iPhones by the University in a course on Product Design (and others); the clips we saw really showed how enjoyable this was for students.. no doubt this contributed to their overall course motivation.  Who wouldn’t be happy being given an iPhone to play with for a semester!!!

Summary of Day 1:

I’m finding that the talks are very short and rushed, which is a shame, because a lot of these presenters have so much more to offer.

From what I’ve seen so far, CD&DU at our University (CQUniversity) are MORE than keeping up with most other Universities in terms of thinking about how to incorporate web2 tools TO enhance learning AND teaching.  We’re doing a good job, we just need more people power!!

Over and out for today.

Style maps behaving strangely in InDesign CS4

How weird, the style mapping for importing word docs to InDesign CS4 seems to be really flaky.  

I’ve done a lot of things; originally I just plonked my old SMP files in to CS4’s word import presets directory – that didn’t work.  It picked up the smp file upon import, but when I viewed the style maps all the mapping info was simply not there.  Needless to say the mapping didn’t work in the slightest after placing the word doc.

So, attempt two; I manually re-created the style maps, saved a new preset file, and placed my word doc in.  No go again – completely ignored what I’d told it to do.

So I’m wondering, ‘maybe there’s some style map conflicts’.. So I go to place the doc in again; and see that there was only minimal conflics, say 3 conflicts, when about 15 styles didn’t map – so that didn’t add up.

I checked the presets that I’d created in attempt 2, and just like attempt one, everything I’d already entered in was gone.  Weird.

So, I re-created again, attempt number 3.  I then looked at the SMP files in dreamweaver, since they’re basically just XML.  The XML had all the info in, but still the maps didn’t work as they hadn’t in attempt 1 and 2.  I decided to replace the XML with my old XML – that didn’t work either.

I dunno what’s going on with it, but it’s got issues.. until I get to the bottom of it I’m very un-impressed.

Cell padding in InDesign

We had a fair few hiccups in our overall Word to InDesign conversion recently (see previous posts regarding study guides and InDesign).  One of the problems involved table and cell styles in InDesign not applying the specified cell padding!

This was really frustrating, because even though you’d applied the table/cell styles to the tables in the document, you still had to manually add the cell padding in.  .. and yes, cell padding is entered in on the cell style specs so there’s no reason I can think of why it’d get ignored.  It is possible that the settings from Word were overriding the cell specs.. That’s probably all it was actually.

Anyway, a solution was found by trawling through the Adobe InDesign Exchange for third party scripts.  I ended up finding ‘TableStyle’, which was fantastic.  It lets you specify a whole range of table formatting, and does a selection or an entire document automatically.  All I had to do was copy the script into InDesign’s script panel directory and voila, double click on the scrip from the automation panel in InDesign and the whole document is done.

The only tweaking I did was to edit out the code which updated table borders and colours, since they interfered with our existing table styles.  That was only a quick 1 min javascript edit though.  Easy!

Overall I’m impressed by the scripting capabilities of InDesign, I’ll be looking in to what else we can do in the future to get around various problems.

Import XML into InDesign CS3

The scenario:

We have 100 odd study guides, each require the creation of an overprint PDF containing course and faculty information, as well as a barcode and item number. The overprints are printed onto an already produced cover. It saves time, money and makes sense for us really.

The problem associated with that is, no one really has time to manually create 100 pages in InDesign, and copy and paste course information and barcode information from a number of sources, yuk! Even if we did have time, I don’t like the changes or stuffing up one of the barcodes, since you can’t even read what you’ve typed or pasted in.

The solution:

Pull the course, faculty and barcode information from a Database; create a simple XML file, and import into InDesign!

How the process went:

From what I’d read on the net, I assumed that when one imports XML into InDesign, all your pages are automatically created.  Maybe I missed something but I found that I had to actually create the pages manually, which isn’t really a problem as it’s only a few mouse clicks.

The next subtle thing I found which seemed to be missing from all of the instructions and tips I read on the net, was that the pages didn’t actually take on the tagged structure of their master page!  Okay, that was easy, all I had to do was tell the pages to Over-ride their master; and once I’d done that, DELETE the content of the master page (or else the imported xml goes in to the master page as well as your normal pages).

Despite everything looking perfect the XML wouldn’t import correctly; I ended up having some data missing on a page, then it’d be on the next page; basically stuff was all over the place.  

I found out, after going around in circles for ages; that when I’d told my pages to over-ride the master page – they didn’t take on the XML structure exactly as it was on the master!!!!  They all had their tags in the wrong bloody order!

So then all I did was just adjust the order of tags in my XML source, it still made sense so that was fine with me. 

Once I’d done that.. it worked perfectly!  XML in to InDesign does work, it’s just a little bit annoying sometimes!

R

Problems with Second Life recording

We’re nearly finished the Machinima we’re doing in Second Life – today we were supposed to record the final scenes, but we had a handful of problems.

The first problem, was that our recordings played back at around twice the speed that they should have! So you can imagine what that looked like, absurd!! We tried a number of things, nothing of which seemed to help:

• Tried several different recording codecs
• Tried varying all of the recording options; Key frames etc
• Tried adjusting the visual settings (reduce the graphics quality incase the frames weren’t synching properly)
• Tried restarting the client; then tried restarting the computer

The scene involved several people having afternoon drinks, each avatar had a wine glass with a drinking animation. We thought perhaps all of the avatar animation was playing a part so we took the wine glasses away and that seemed to fix the problem. To compromise we’ve left 2 of the 7 avatars with glasses, and we’ve put in some little tables to sit static glasses on.

So it seems that all of the avatar animation was causing the client to loose frames when recording (it couldn’t keep up).. so when we played back the video it was way too fast.

The second problem, which we haven’t managed to solve completely; is that we’re finding the light on the avatars is flicking between brighter and darker when the camera moves in and away from the avatars. While not major this is really annoying and it looks very dodgy at certain times of day/night. We’ve experimented putting some lights closer to all the avatars, and making sure the fall off distance isn’t less than the camera distance – this seemed to help a little when coupled with fiddling with the environment time. The flicker still happens but it’s not as noticeable now.

So, after a dismal day we will continue in the morning and hopefully these problems will be all ironed out.

Shortcuts for the Word template styles not working

Word has been doing some crazy things with the keyboard shortcuts for the styles. I’ve set the keyboard shortcuts up at least 3 times now, and it keeps clearing them in a seemingly random way. One day the style shortcuts are there, then the next they’re all GONE! So.. you reset them… save the template.. and it’s good for another day or two but then they just vanish again!

It’s quite frustrating and so far I haven’t found out why it’s happening.. I’ll have to look in to it more but time is scarce.

So at this point, we’ll have to do without the keyboard shortcuts.. which is a real shame because it makes the workflow … flow! I’ll post a solution if I ever find one!

Problems with importing to InDesign

Until yesterday the importing from Word to InDesign was going fairly well. One new problem is possibly related to MathType; the other, problems associated with trying to work between Word 2004 on the MAC, Word 2007 on the PC, docx and doc.

The equations from MathType transfer fine, it’s just the layout that goes crazy. Some equations seem to be layed out inside tables (so there’s some spots that have nested tables) – these seem to be completely ignored when I import to InDesign, and a nicely positioned equation comes out as a list of things half a page long!

So far I haven’t figured out what the best approach will be here. I’ve seen that a lot of people actually export EPS files from MathType and then separately place them in InDesign. While that would probably give better quality it seems like a huge stuff around.

The other issue I’m having is WORD! When I take a DOC file (created in Word 2007 in compatibility mode), edit it on my MAC with office 2004, then try and open it again on the PC (Word 07 again), word completely crashes!

This could be bad news, unless it’s just a glitch with my setup. We’ll have some authors using the MAC version of word, and our copy editors will be using the PC version of 2007. I will have to do some more testing to find out what is happening. I’m also wondering how everything will go when we get Office 2008 on the MAC..

Another small problem I have is that InDesign on the MAC crashes when I try to import a docx file; I’ve read that InDesign (CS3) will take docx files but perhaps not on the MAC, I’ll have to test on the PC.

Update on the Second Life Island

Machinima 1 is now complete and we’re working on Machinima 2 already!  We’ll soon be making the Machinima 1 viewable in-world at Hird and Co’s office meeting room, and I’m sure we’ll follow through and do that for Machinima 2 when it’s complete.

The next step for the island will be to make it more of an interactive environment.  We’ll be picking up the books on Second Life scripting and getting stuck in to it.  Currently it’s just an island with a few buildings and things around, there’s no information what-so-ever about what we’re doing or what’s what!

The first task on the list will be to present visitors with a clickable teleport system, which takes the users to various points of interest on the island.  For example, if someone wants to see what we’re doing with the auditing machinima, they can click the sign, teleport to a viewing platform overlooking the entire set.  On this platform they’ll find various bits of information (like where to find the Machinima video in Hird & Co’s office) and so on.  I’ll also work on doing up some graphical icons to use as in-world identifiers for help or information (icons which of course will match all of our current work with the In-Design based study guides (last post)).

We’ll post info on the progress of the teleporting system, as well as any other cool things we’re doing as we go along!

From Word to InDesign – CQU Study Guides

Semester 1 this year will showcase a new trail for learning material at CQU. By using a combination of MS Word and Adobe InDesign, we’ve created a process which allows us to greatly improve the look and feel of the study a in a semi-automated and timely manner.

The new process continues to allow authoring of course materials in Word, which seems to be the most familiar and user-friendly application for academic authors. It also means less change at the authoring level, which is a good thing.

InDesign was chosen for a few reasons. It’s an industry standard for creating magazine and book layouts and much more. It encompasses too many features to name, some of the most handy are: the extensive use of styles (not just paragraph and character styles, but also table styles, cell styles and object styles). It has great functionality with the Adobe PDF format; automatic TOC creation; easy to create and use templates for ‘official layouts’; … the list goes on

The key in the new process are the styles. When the styles are used correctly in Word (authors simply download our Word template which has the correct styles in it), (incorrect use is usually picked up in a routine copy edit), the styles in the word document are “mapped” to the styles in the InDesign template. So upon a simple and quick import, almost all of the InDesign formatting is automated.

All that remains are some manual table formatting, which is quite quick and easy thanks to the table styles (just select the table and apply the style!); as well as the object styles for inserting any icons (simply place the icon, apply the style and all the placement is done!).

We’re still learning as we go, but so far the process looks really promising. It will be interesting to see how the new version of word will change this process, if at all.Some of the simple problems we’ve encountered so far include:

• Can’t export a tagged PDF from an InDesign book file. There seems to be a huge glitch and InDesign crashes every time. We will have to try and find a work-around for this at some point, because the tagging allows the PDF to be more accessible for screen-readers etc. At the same time, we want to still export the entire book rather than the individual document files because this way we can retain the auto-generated hyperlinks in the TOC..
• Change any part of the main document and you have to do an update to the TOC.. if you don’t the hyperlinks can get completely ruined.

For the future, some of the things we may want to look at:

• Adobe InDesign Server – perhaps this could help us; hosting our templates in a central location; and it may even help us further automate the process in ways we haven’t thought of yet.. not sure
• XML – InDesign imports and exports XML; the new version of word also produced XML based file formats. Could this allow us to work the two formats together in an even more automated way? It’d be worth looking at in more detail when time allows. At the least, this may mean some cool things for web-based study guide creation.. variable data printing and who knows what else.