After reading the previous article, you may have the impression that I think collaborative writing is a bad thing. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. When you write with others:

• it’s possible to distribute tasks according to individual strengths, meaning that the finished product will (probably) be more than a sum of the parts
• brainstorming is more effective, more people means more ideas
• not only will you have more ideas, but as you discuss, challenge, and research the topic amongst the group, you will have different ideas than you might develop working on your own
• having many people working on a project gives it energy and focus, which is tremendously helpful upon entering the hinterland of any project commonly known as “middle”

Collaboration is good, but it is also complicated. It takes a great deal of work for a collaborative project to be success. You have to balance competing needs against one another. On the one hand, it is really important to provide an author the freedom and space required to own her ideas. At the same time, though, you need to make sure that everyone is clearly communicating about the project and where it is headed.

Making sure that everyone is on the same page and that efforts are coordinated is a complex challenge. It requires meaningful discussion happens; establishing a system for sharing documents and knowledge; and that goals, scope, audience, and purpose of the project are well defined. In many ways it shares much in common with another complex endeavor, coordinating the care of a medical patient.

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Tags: Subversion,Writing Tools
Categories: Computer, Cool Stuff, Lifehacks, Writing/Literature
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Though they are wonderful tools that have transformed how we live and work, computers also cause about as many problems as they solve. We can see these problems in the way that work has crept into our private time via email; in the ways teenagers choose to socialize with their peers via text messaging and social networks, often to the exclusion of the world around them (and parents); and in the way that we prepare the written drafts of our work.

In each case, these problems aren’t the result of malicious intent. Rather, they were unforeseen consequences of a transformative technology. When it was originally developed, email was a great way to quickly exchange letters with friends and colleagues. Its original designers never intended it to become the way in which a large number of people organize their daily lives. Nor was the introduction of text messaging or social networks meant to cause teenagers (or adults) to socially withdraw into an online world, but to provide an efficient and convenient way to keep people connected. This is also true in the changes that word processors and communications software have brought to the process of writing.

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Tags: Subversion,Writing Tools
Categories: Computer, Cool Stuff, Lifehacks, Writing/Literature
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If you’ve read parts one and two of this series, you should now have a pretty good understanding as to what version control is and how it can benefit you. You’ve seen how it can be used to keep a backup of your files, synchronize your work between computers, and ensure that you will never suffer the panic of losing your work.

But that’s really only the beginning. Hopefully, you’ve taken things to the next level and feel comfortable digging into the revision history to look at past drafts, make comparisons between documents, or to see how your work has evolved.

Mastering the basics of version control, followed by the finer points, is a fantastic way to be more productive as a writer. By relegating the job of backup and synchronization to a tool, you can spend more time actually writing (and who doesn’t want that). Having the ability to look at how you’re writing has evolved can make you more thoughtful. Both are powerful additions to the scrivener’s arsenal. If you can believe, it though, there is yet another level which allows Subversion to be even more helpful: using it to work collaboratively.

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Tags: Subversion,Writing Tools
Categories: Computer, Cool Stuff, Lifehacks, Writing/Literature
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In the last article in this series, we looked at a few of the features that version control (specifically Subversion) offers to a writer, coder, or editor. These benefits include the ability to track all of the changes made to a file in a project, synchronize your work between different computers, and automatically ensure that everything is backed up. But though these are invaluable contributions to a writer’s workflow, they only scratch the surface of what Subversion is capable of doing.

In the next few posts, I would like to dive a bit deeper and take a look at a few of Subversion’s more advanced features, such as:

• How to compare newer changes to older versions of a file
• How to use Subversion’s collaboration features to work with others
• How to revert to previous versions
• How you can resolve errors that might arise from incompatible changes made to the same file

Though Subversion’s basic features are tremendously powerful, it’s the advanced options that make it indispensible. You know, the little things that live in the background most of the time, except when you really need them. This rest of this series is about how to leverage those. The first of those features we will look at is the revision history.

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Tags: Subversion,Writing Tools
Categories: Computer, Cool Stuff, Lifehacks, Writing/Literature
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As part of the new year, my wife and I have been organizing our storage room (which we’ve traditionally referred to as the box room). After tidying a bit – which amounted to adding wedding gifts that we’ll be giving to others, organizing the assorted boxes and bags to be used for future gift wrapping, piling up Christmas decorations, shelving the book collections of two rather bookish people, sorting the supplies of someone who is expected to be “crafty” in her spare time,¹ and cataloging a collection of stuffed bears spanning some thirty years– the old name no longer seemed to fit. So … we spent a bit of time brainstorming a new name. Here’s what we came up with:

The beautiful and bountiful boutique of books, boxes, bows, bowls, bags, balls, beads, basil, bears, and other beautiful beasties.

or, “the b¹⁴box room”, for short.

________________________________

1. The modern expectations of women seem rather unfair. Not only are they expected to be intelligent, sophisticated, and ruthlessly competent, but also must excel in all manners of other crafty endeavors. It somehow seems that being a physicist in one’s day job ought to suffice …

Tags: Morning Antics
Categories: Miscellaneum
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One of the most difficult (and, subsequently, rewarding) publications to create is that of a photographic or fine arts book. Unlike a novel, or a book with a sane number of images, fine arts books have a lot of variables. These include a written narrative, photographs and the artwork, and the typography. Additional page decoration add to the complexity. Things can get really sticky because all of the different elements rebound against one another, but it’s essential that they all sing harmony to the melody.

The photography needs to match the timbre of the text, and the typography should cause the whole to resonate. When everything comes together well, a carefully crafted volume will draw readers like famished revelers to a feast. They’ll linger on the artwork, study the captions, dwell on the text, and ponder the message.

About a year ago, I played around with different layouts for such a publication. Initially, I wanted to experiment with a style known as “formalism”, which combines some of the best aspects of Swiss/Modern school with a slightly more relaxed attitude toward using decoration and embellishment. I had planned on developing a template for a side project.

Unfortunately, I never got much further than the layouts that you see here. Life and circumstances prevented me from completing the side project, and the typography didn’t have the right tone for other things I was working on. So, the template I was going to create languished.

Until last week, that is.

A little under six months ago, I got married. As part of the celebrations (which are still ongoing), I created a wedding album for my wife. Instead of working from scratch on the album, I chose to use the “Elegant Book” template. This means, that I’ve finally cleaned it up enough that I feel comfortable releasing it into the wild. I hope that someone is able to enjoy and make use of it! (Merry Christmas, belatedly.)

Downloads

An Elegant Book. This archive includes all of the files and fonts needed to install the template. A PDF example can be found here.

Installation

To install, download the .zip archive. Then, extract it and open up the main document file, which ends in the .sla extension. Once the file finishes loading, select the “Save as Template” option from the “File” menu. Be sure to place a checkmark in the “Include Font” and “Include Color Profile” boxes. Select the directory where you would like to save the template (you will probably want to make a new one). Finally, click on the “Save” button.

When you save a template into the Scribus Templates folder, it will copy the template file, photos, and fonts to the directory you specify. It will also add the template to the template gallery.

Template Use

Once you have downloaded and installed the template, you can create a new document by clicking on the “New From Template” link in the “File” menu. When the template file first loads, it will provide you with several example pages that can be used in your layout. Simply delete the sample text/images and replace them with your own.

To adjust the appearance of a particular block of text, you can apply character and paragraph styles from the “Text” section of the “Properties” dialog. To modify the appearance of a whole page, you can make use of the “Apply Master Page” option under the “Page” menu.

Examples

Below, you can find a few of the page layouts I used in the wedding album. The template contains additional examples.

Tags: Scribus,Templates
Categories: Computer, Design, Typography
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Sometimes it’s important to be extremely fussy about otherwise inconsequential things. There’s a reason why people fight over the proper pronunciation of már ‘habitation in Quenya (the m takes on an mb sound), pirates versus ninjas, and the proper placement of footnotes. It’s not that any of these particularly matter, but when pronounced, understood, or typeset correctly, such miscellanea greatly enrich the world.

For months, I’ve been distressed about how LaTeX handles footnotes. (Which, to be clear, is much better than how Word handles them.) Notes are used for subordinate details, which provide additional information, insight, and wit. In that role, they provide an important supplement to the main text.

Depending on which type of note you choose to use – foot, end, or side – there are certain rules which govern how they should be typeset. Robert Bringhurst, author of “The Elements of Typographic Style” and the authority on book typography lays it out pretty well:

Footnotes are the very emblem of fussiness, but they have their uses. If they are short and infrequent, they can be made economical of space, easy to find when wanted, and, when not wanted, easy to ignore …

In the main text, superscript numbers are used to indicate notes because superscript numbers minimize interruption. They are typographic asides: small because that is an expression of relative importance, and raised for two reasons: to keep them out of the flow of the main text, and to make them easier to find. In the note itself, the number is not an aside, but a target. Therefore, the number in the note should be full size.¹

Unfortunately, this isn’t how LaTeX does it. Instead of having a superscript in the text and a full sized numeral in the notes, it uses superscript for both.² Not only is it wrong (as far as anything can be wrong in a war of opinions), but it’s really hard to change. Most of the document classes only give you one or two options for the footnotes, and they’re not generally any better than the default. Nor does the heavy of all footnote packages, footmisc, provide a fix. Which means, if you want to adjust the way that the number appears, you have to hack the class at a lower level. (Sigh.)

Unless, you’re using memoir, that is.

It turns out that memoir provides hooks to customize everything about the footnotes. This includes the style, the size of the font, and … the numerical label. (If you’d like, you can even use symbols.) The code below will give you properly formatted references:

• superscript in the text
• full sized numeral in the note
• numeral out-dented into the margin by 1 em
• note text typeset left flush

\footmarkstyle{#1}
\setlength{\footmarkwidth}{-1.0em}
\setlength{\footmarksep}{1.0em}

The \footmarkstyle macro is used to remove the superscript, \footmarkwidth is the size of the box containing the note label, \footmarksep is how much to offset the numeral from the text.

Notes

1. The footnote is flagged by a superscript in the text, but the note itself is introduced by an outdented figure of the same size for the text of the note. (Taken from “The Elements of Style,” page 69.)

² Which is, frankly, unsightly and distracting.

Tags: Footnotes,LaTeX,LyX
Categories: Computer, Design, Miscellaneum, Typography
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KDE just published their newsletter for Quarter 3 2011. It covered the Desktop Summit, held in Berlin during the summer. Working on this edition was quite a bit of fun due to the joint nature of the summit and the location. Berlin has a wonderful history in design, from the Bauhaus school to the grunge design of the 1990s. It was fun to pay homage to the German School. You can download a PDF copy of the report here.

Tags: KDE Newsletter
Categories: Computer, Design
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Note: The entries in this series are adapted from a lectures I’ve been giving to my Apps101 course. It will also form the basis for a presentation that I plan to give at a conference next month. If you have any thoughts, I would love to hear them.

Every Sunday, my wife and I read stories to small children. It started as one of those strange opportunities that life sometimes presents and has grown to become one of the highlights of my week. There is something wonderful about kids. I’m not sure if it’s the innocence, the wide-eyed wonder, or the capacity for faith; but when a child looks at you, it’s possible to believe that a better world might just be possible.

Not to whitewash the whole thing, though. For all of their wonderful qualities, small children can also be difficult. Those wide-eyed moments of innocence are easily shattered. Small children scream, they cry, they tantrum; they hit, bite, claw, push, and shove.  They’re very good at taunting, alienating, and belittling others.

Which is to say, small children are much like adults, except … smaller. They have many of the same capacities for good and evil, creativity and destruction, kindness and cruelty. The seeds of the men and women they will become are all present, and you can see interests and passions already at work.

Small children are also notoriously distractible. They’ll move between games, toys, playmates [1], and activities. They’ll build, break, and bless. You’ll see moments of heartbreaking tenderness, comic relief, and dangerous volatility. A single play session can hold all of the drama and frivolity of a Shakespearean play.

There is one thing, however, which never fails to hold the children’s attention: story time. When the book is opened and the story announced, the effect is magical. The fussing screams quiet, the rowdy sit still, and the distractible engage. An entire room of two and three year olds will sit in a circle, and raptly listen while read to.

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Tags: PowerPoint,Presentations,Storytelling
Categories: Computer, Design, Miscellaneum
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The shot below was taken at Zion’s National Park in Southern Utah, above the Emerald Pools. In the vernacular of Mormon Pioneers who settled the region, Zion means “Place of Sanctuary.”

Tags: Zion's National Park
Categories: Cool Stuff, Miscellaneum, Photography
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