And now what did you do TODAY?

[blessingx]

A week ago realized I had set aside a sizable amount in FSA due to substantial dental work last dentist (visited once and didn't like) said I needed and I never got around to. So dash to a new dentist who stated I needed almost none of it. Yea! Damn! After confirming I can't roll over a portion or bill through March, just completed today whirlwind three visits to the optometrist in six days and three visits to the dentist in five to bring the balance down to $18 and change. Feels like a victory. 

[crappyjones123]

Figured out that I need to redo the 200+ page lab manual I made for next years neuroanatomy class because fucking ibooks author doesn't fucking allow you to fucking move fucking pages or fucking copy them to another fucking spot in the fucking book you are fucking writing. What a great fucking idea!!! Fucking FUCK FUCK. 

[blessingx]

Never used, but this doesn't work? Or the following (transcription from paid Lynda vid). 
 
 
Moving content between pages, layouts, and books

It's likely that at some point in time, you'll want to move content around in your iBooks Author projects, whether it's a single paragraph or an entire chapter. For the most part, this is an easy task. But it's a topic worth exploring since there are some nice shortcuts you can use, as well as some restrictions to be aware of. In our look at how to rearrange content in iBook's author, let's start small and work our way up to the big stuff. First, we'll look at individual pieces of text and page elements. In addition to being able to copy and paste text, iBooks Author supports drag and drop text editing.

So if you have a paragraph or other range of text that you want to move elsewhere, you simply first select the text, you can click and drag over it, or if you want a whole paragraph, you can triple click. In this case, I'll just select the last sentence of this first paragraph on the page, then just move your cursor over the selected text, and click and drag the text where you want it. So, if I wanted this sentence to be the first sentence in the next paragraph I'll just drag and drop it right there. You can drag to another place in the current text box, to a different text box, or even to a different document, although you'd have to arrange it so you can see both documents at the same time.

You can also make a copy of text as you drag it by holding the Option key when you release. Another thing to remember about moving text is that the text will take on the formatting of the surrounding text where you put it. So for example, I drop this into a paragraph that was blue, bold, and italics, and it took on all that formatting. I'll go to page seven of my document and here I have a table. If I select the table and copy it and go to page 8 and paste, the table comes in at the same position it was on in the original page.

If you want to move pages within a document, the smallest chunk you can move is a section, you can't cut and paste or drag and drop individual pages. This is because iBooks Author is a structured authoring tool, it needs to maintain the underlying structure of books and other projects by keeping sections of content intact. So, for example in this project, in Chapter 3, I'll click the triangle to tip it open, and I can see I have content organized into five sections. It's no problem to select a section and drag it to a different place in the chapter.

So, I could move EROSION in front of TRANSPORTATION if I wanted to. Note how the section numbers automatically update. I could also drag these sections to a different chapter if I wanted to, but I can't select individual pages to move. If I tip open the section and try to grab a single page, see how the yellow highlighting goes around the whole section? That's iBooks author giving me a clue that I don't have just the page, selected I have the whole section. I can also right-click or Ctrl+click on the first page of a section to cut it, or copy it.

I can also delete, duplicate, and paste a section that I'd copied previously. If you really need to be able to move a chunk of content that's smaller than a section, you need to cut and paste it into an existing section or create a new section that you can paste into. To move a chapter within a document, just like with the sections, simply select the chapter, and either the book outline or page thumbnails, and drag and drop it into the position where you want it. I'll close up this section, close up the chapter, and if I wanted to I could move Chapter 3 in front of Chapter 2.

You can make working with chapters easier by clicking on the triangle on the left side to close them up as you move them. Another small tip is to drag to the left of the thumbnail. That way the chapter won't pop open as you're dragging over it. To move a chapter or a section to a new document, select it, right-click or Control+click, and choose copy chapter. I'll press Command+tilde to change to a different document, right- click or Ctrl+click, and choose Paste. Note that if the new document has different paragraph or character style definitions than the source document, the text formatting will not change to match the receiving document's styles.

To make it match, you have to use the paragraph styles panel menu and choose Revert to define style for any mismatched styles. In this movie we saw how to move content both within and between iBooks Author projects. You can drag and drop or cut and paste ranges of text, sections, or whole chapters, but not individual pages. And remember that the formatting of a range of texts will change if you move it to a place where a different style is applied, but the formatting of text in chapters and sections that you move will not change until you take action to change it.

Edited December 23, 2014 by blessingx

[crappyjones123]

Never used, but this doesn't work? Or the following (transcription from paid Lynda vid). 

 

 

Moving content between pages, layouts, and books

If you want to move pages within a document, the smallest chunk you can move is a section, you can't cut and paste or drag and drop individual pages. This is because iBooks Author is a structured authoring tool, it needs to maintain the underlying structure of books and other projects by keeping sections of content intact. So, for example in this project, in Chapter 3, I'll click the triangle to tip it open, and I can see I have content organized into five sections. It's no problem to select a section and drag it to a different place in the chapter.

 

Chapters are divided into sections and sections into pages. I just had chapters split into pages with each page getting pictures of the part of brain being discussed followed by text about the structure. I wrote it as I edited the pictures, not in the order they will be seen during the lab in January. The old manual had hand drawn structures which don't match what we see in the actual lab so the past 7 months of work need to be redone. Sure I can copy paste individual paragraphs but this is fucking ridiculous. The text boxes can be unlinked but they don't stay unlinked when you try to move the page. I don't see what the issue is with allowing users to unlink temporarily to move pages around and then link it all again. OR JUST FUCKING LET PEOPLE MOVE PAGES AROUND. 

Edited December 23, 2014 by crappyjones123

[grawk]

itunes author is where you move the book once it's written.  It's not a word processor.

[crappyjones123]

So when you want to update the book for a second edition or just make a simple correction, you start all over again from scratch? Excellent. Thanks for your thoughts, Dan. 

[roadtonowhere08]

Crappy, honest question: is there a reason why you did not use a real publishing program to begin with?  This iBooks program seems a bit, I dunno, Hallmark-ish.  Regardless, if there is no workaround, that sucks.  Is there any way to do a copy and paste of the text at least?  Then you can rebuild the format and not have to type everything all over again?

 

Oh, and Fuckity fuck fuck for empathy's sake.

Edited December 23, 2014 by roadtonowhere08

[grawk]

you make small edits in the program, or you edit the original files, and put them in ibook creator.

[crappyjones123]

I wasn't looking to publish and sell it on Amazon. It was just something simple for the next classes to use with some tricks for identifying stuff on exams where students just have 30 seconds at each station (approved by the instructors). I wanted something simple that would just work. Had good experiences with Apple products in the past and found a template that did exactly what I was looking to do so started using it. If I were actually going to publish it for anyone outside of the next few medical school classes, I would have paid someone to do the layout/publishing for me so I could put it on my resume. The department didn't want to pay for it and I am doing it entirely on a volunteer basis without getting anything in return so I wasn't inclined to spend the $1000 on an editor either. 

Edited December 23, 2014 by crappyjones123

[grawk]

so do it in pdf?

[crappyjones123]

you make small edits in the program, or you edit the original files, and put them in ibook creator.

Dude, you can't add pages in the middle of the book, only at the end. The scope of knowledge does not stay stagnant from edition to edition for any book. New research comes out. Shit changes. Old ideas are phased out. Even if you want to just add a paragraph to an already full page, you would need to change the font of just that one page just to fit the extra info in which would look different from the rest of the book. Do you really have nothing better to do? Why not learn about what the program is (in)capable of before you make nonsensical posts. 

[grawk]

You've said it can't.  It's not a word processor.  Do the editing in the word processor, then transfer to ibook, or pdf creator, or whatever, when you're done.  It's not a word processor, it's for the last step to publish as an ibook.  That's why it's free.

 

You wouldn't want to create a picture in lightroom.  It's for the final step, not the whole process.

[roadtonowhere08]

If you are wanting to keep an evolving piece of work, I do not think this program is what you want.  If there is a way to at least export the text out in any way, you can rebuild your format using a program that will let you make edits.  I think Dan is right, you might want to invest the time now, get what you can, and try doing what you want using another program.  Sucks, but that's the way I see it.

 

And nowhere on your campus has InDesign?  Insanity.

[crappyjones123]

I had no intention of continuing to work on it. I did it because I am part of the photography club and the head instructor asked as a favor and I stupidly said yes without realizing how much work it would be. Next year I am off on rotations at hospital (not on campus anymore) so if they want to edit the final document, they can do it themselves or ask the next photo club member/officer to take on the project. Given the current state, I can't even pass it off to someone else as they wouldn't be able to edit the manual either. They provide functions of a text editor within the app, just lock the moving of things to the section level arbitrarily. Don't think it would have killed them to extend it to the page level. 

 

There are labs on campus that have it and Acrobat Pro but my credentials only work for labs in the medical school buildings which have no need for publishing software like InDesign. Everyone doing research just uses the Word templates available for the Journals they are submitting to. 

 

Trying to see if I can export to pdf and then use an OCR to convert it to a word document. Failing that, I guess I'll have to copy/paste the hundreds of paragraphs individually as the pictures are dispersed amongst the text. 

[skullguise]

CJ, see this link, you can export the text from iBooks and use another program

 

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2809

Edited December 23, 2014 by skullguise

[Grahame]

So you want a workflow that allows edits and changes on your content, with a (low cost) publish step, that would in the limiting case allow you to republish / redeploy the content in its final form, easily, for just a single change.? 

 

Did you identify this as your use case?

Did you pick tools that met your use case?

Across the life cycle of your product?

 

if your current toolset of choice does not allow you to do this, can you easily export ( or re-import) your content into a system that does let you do that?

 

Otherwise have you chosen a write once / write only solution?

[crappyjones123]

CJ, see this link, you can export the text from iBooks and use another program

 

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2809

Export to pdf works for the entire document. Export to txt only exports the first 5 pages. 

[roadtonowhere08]

Could you not select all the text in the PDF and paste into something else?

[grawk]

iBooks Author: Export your book for iBooks or in another format

If you aren't submitting your book to the iBooks Store, ... You can also export only the text from your book. ... Type a name for the book, choose a place to save it, and click Export.

[morphsci]

Dan, why even bother? CJ already knows everything.

[Dusty Chalk]

Irony is gold in this thread.

[grawk]

in case someone else was going to make the same mistake?

[morphsci]

I guess there are some people on Head-Fi that might see this thread.

[Grahame]

Wait for CJ's review of "CJ's adventures in publishing: The Movie". He'd probably have things to say about the protagonist.

[Salt Peanuts]

Due to number of circumstances, I had the pleasure of wrapping up our children's presents.  I'm going to have to tell our daughter that her presents were wrapped by an intern elf.