User:Rubycon/PP

This will be used for notes and bits of stuff relating to PPing, when I get around to adding anything ;)

For now, additional links to archives of my PPed projects so far:

2006 ~ 2007 ~ 2008 ~ 2009 ~ 2010

The following are draft notes on my "process" for PP. Don't take them as gospel, this is still a work in progress!

1. Download the project files and unpack them.

2. Check the project page and project thread. Make a note of anything important from the PM or proofers/foofers.

3. Do a quick run through the png files and make sure there are no missing pages. If there is a list of illustrations, make sure all the illustrations are present and correct in both the proofing and high res copies.

4. Open up the text file and take a quick scroll through to get a feel for the book.

5. Do a more careful page by page scan for the following: a. Inline markup - italics, smallcaps, bold. b. Block markup - Front matter, blockquotes, poetry, tables. c. Presence of footnotes. d. Presence of illustrations. e. Anything else - Greek (or any other non-Latin languages), [oe] ligatures, index, TOC, LOI, adverts, dropcaps (plain or ornamental), spaced longdashes, other wonky formatting.

6. Go through proofer notes, end of line hyphen flags and deal with appropriately.

7. Go through the block markup and make sure it's all the right variety.

8. Check for orphaned brackets and markup.

9. Run Fixup, and remove end of line spaces.

10. Move footnotes and illustrations as necessary.

11. Fix page separators.

12. Check page labels are in the right place (i.e. at the beginning of correct paragraph, not the end of the previous paragraph; not in the middle of a word).

13. Word frequency checks: a. In frequency order: i. Single words. ii. Character counts (remember to check for tab characters and remove them if present). b. In alpha order i. Number of Footnotes. ii. Emdashes. iii. Hyphens. iv. Alphanumeric. v. ALL CAPS. vi. Mixed Case. vii. Accents. viii. , Upper. ix. . lower.

14. Run Jeebies.

15. Run other scanno checks.

16. Run spellcheck.

17. Check abbreviations - these will vary from book to book, but the basic list is Mr Mrs Dr St etc and so on.

18. Check ellipses and emdashes/longdashes.

19. Check balanced quotes.

20. Check balanced markup. I tend to use \<([iIbBsScC]+)>\n?[^<]+<(?!/\1>) as it ignores thoughtbreaks, but you could also use \<(\w+)>\n?[^<]+<(?!/\1>) which doesn't.

21. Check chapter spacing using regex \n\n\n\n\n for four blank lines and \n\n\n for two blank lines.

22. Run initial stage of Footnote Fixup (everything short of turning [Footnote 1: blah] into [1] blah).

23. Run Gutcheck, ignoring short and long lines at this point.

24. Write the Transcriber's Note as appropriate and add to end of file (or beginning for markup related item explanations).

25. Split files to .txt and .htm.

TEXT VERSION

26. Convert markup. </?i> to _ for italics, </?b> to = for bold (unless there's a lot of = in the text, in which case use something else. Either way up, add a TN about bold markup). For smallcaps, use <sc>(\n?[^<]+)</sc> to U$1\E to turn it all into uppercase. If for some reason some should stay Mixed Case, use <sc>(\n?[^<]+)</sc> to $1 to remove the markers.

27. Convert <tb> to the pretty line of asterisks.

28. Convert [oe] ligatures to oe, if there aren't that many. If there are tons, a UTF-8 version may be happening.

29. Remove [Blank Page] markers.

30. Do final bit of Footnote Fixup (the bit I didn't do in 22).

31. Rewrap the text. I usually use 1, 70, 4, 60, 4, but it may differ according to the text. Take a quick scroll through and make sure everything is OK.

32. Clear rewrap markers, remove end of line spaces again.

33. Tidy up the Title Page, Table of Contents and List of Illustrations if necessary.

34. Run Gutcheck again with everything on.

35. Do a final scroll through to make sure everything looks OK.

36. Upload for smoothreading.

HTM VERSION

37. Convert all upper case <sc>. I used to use the <lowercase> method, but then I found out it doesn't work in IE. Now I just change it to <small>blah</small>. GG will handle the mixed case stuff in the autogenerate.

38. Use the html dialog to work out the Page Labelling. Once happy, hit Recalculate and doublecheck before hitting Use These Values.

39. Autogenerate html.

40. Open it up in a browser, and check the "Project Gutenberg e-text of ..." is filled in properly with title and author.

41. Tidy up the Title Page, Table of Contents and List of Illustrations.

42. Scroll through and check the page numbering. Sometimes the closing </p> gets lost around <hr>s, page numbers at the start of paragraphs need the spare closing and opening p markup between page number code and text removing.

43. Scroll through and check the heading levels are all OK. Fix if needed.

44. Scroll through and check all poetry and blockquotes have the right markup and look the way they should.

45. Tidy any other formatting. Don't forget things like oe ligatures.

46. Format the TN, and add or remove bits as dictated by the file type (eg, added TOC to htm version included, oe ligatures not retained in this version removed).

47. Make sure all links are present and correct. Don't overlook internal text references.

48. Curl those quotes! For all the following, remove the space between the & and the ldquo; or rdquo; One of these days I'll work out this dang Wiki stuff.... Use ([^\w=])"([\w\s\d\-&,\.:;\?\n!\*'#\(\)\[\]<>/]+?)"([\s<:;&\),]) to $1& ldquo;$2& rdquo;$3 for double quotes. DO NOT HIT REPLACE ALL! EVER! Then <p>" to <p>& ldquo; then "</p> to & rdquo;</p> then to catch the stuff in poems use class="i(\d+)">" to class="i$1">& ldquo; and "<br /> to & rdquo;<br /> then (deep breath) do a quick find in the browser to catch the last few. Then do the whole thing again using single quotes....

49. Change italic or bold to em or strong where needed.

50. Do the monster that is illustration preparation, then go through and add all of them to the htm. Don't forget the alts!

BOTH VERSIONS

51. Start on another book while this one is finishing smoothreading.

52. Once any smoothreading files are back and the book is finished in SR, go through the returns and incorporate changes as needed.

53. Do a final check through both files. a. Text - run Gutcheck again, just to be sure. Check other bits and pieces from above if particularly paranoid that day. Take a final scroll through just to make sure there's nothing glaring. b. HTM - run Tidy and Linkchecker from within GG. Run the online validator. Run the online CSS checker. Run the online link checker. Run them all again just to be sure. Then test it in as many browsers as possible (I use IE, Firefox, Opera and Netscape).

54. If everything is shiny and happy, and there's no hint of lurking gremlins about to bite you on the bum later, upload the file already!

55. Pause for a cup of tea, then go back to whatever you were working while this one was paddling around in SR.

56. Wash, rinse, repeat....