Hefty documents - best editor?

True, but I was referring to the process, not the end result.

Thanks for that pointer about InDesign.

It is expensive but as a registered Pagemaker 6.5 user, I can get an upgrade to InDesign for $199 which seems like a good deal to me.

Again, thanks.

Cheers,

Neil

Neil,

On a personal front I typically use Open Office and MS Word when creating ebook content. They have sufficient lay out capabilities for text based projects. I would stay away from bitmap graphics and use jpgs, png, etc. to cut down on the size of the pdfs, but for decent looking projects both are fine.

Typically I'll outline and then flesh out the outline. I'm the author of several physical books so I pretty much follow the process I learned with them - of setting up and using various styles in a dot file (doc template) to indicate things like figures, tables, notes, call outs etc. The difference is I just embed the images directly in the word document and format the various items too.

Both programs also make peer reviews and feed back easy to gather an implement since its done within the document.

All this content I then convert to PDFs for distribution, just relying on the underlying word processor for layout.

On the more mainstream side, I've worked with several publishers from Que, John Wiley and Sons, and others. They almost always rely on MS Word to create the content with directives to indicate tables, call outs, graphics and screen shots.

Most do no want you to embed or try to format such things in the content. They use the word processor just to create the text and indicate formating. You simply use the document templates they provide and apply the indicated styles to your text.

Later, after the editing process, this material is imported into a layout program - typically Quark Express or Page Maker. For the IM group - these programs are probably overkill for most content packages - but if you're proficient in their use and own them I don't see why folks should not use them.

Its been a very long time since I've used them, and found them great for page layout, but not great word processors, but again - I'm not very proficient in those types of programs.

cheers,
--Jack