Food for Thought

[geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA]

 Back before Christmas, I asked the list for assistance with
 a project to distribute a file for printing via Adobe
 Acrobat. The result is "Food for Thought", a free for the
 downloading cookbook.

 Some 50 editors from the copyediting-l mailing list
 contributed enough recipes to fill an 80-page,
 professionally laid out cookbook that we've donated to
 charity. Any charitable cause can download the cookbook and
 produce it at whatever level of quality their budget
 permits: from 300 dpi laser plus photocopying, right up to
 2400 dpi filmsetter plus offset printing and perfect
 binding. Charities can sell the book and keep the proceeds
 to fund their activities. There are no royalties and no
 strings attached whatsoever, as this is a charitable
 donation by the contributors. Our original goal was to
 support literacy organisations (we _are_ writers and
 editors, after all!), but any worthy charity (children's
 charities, food banks) would be a suitable user of the
 book.

 For a copy of the cookboook, tune your browser to:

 http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/bblinn/

 and download to your heart's (this Hart's?) content. You'll
 find two different sets of files: Adobe Acrobat PDF files,
 which you need the Acrobat reader application (available at
 www.adobe.com) to read and print, and postscript printer
 files that you can copy to or download to any postscript
 printer, including a filmsetter.

 To catch any last-minute gremlins, have a look at the
 output to be sure it's OK; for example, the Acrobat version
 has a few mysteries remaining (e.g., curly quotes randomly
 changed to straight quotes) but otherwise looks fine to us.
 If you encounter a problem, let me know; I can send along
 replacement pages on request.

 One small glitch to fix next year: the book is formatted so
 that it will fit two pages at a time (side by side in
 landscape format) on 8.5 X 11 paper to reduce printing
 costs. (Sadly, there's no obvious way to print both copies
 directly onto the same sheet of paper at this point; you'll
 have to leave that to a commercial printer or service
 bureau, or do it manually.) If you're outside North America
 and use A4 paper, this makes the headers and footers crop a
 bit tightly. It's not a catastrophe, but neither is it the
 optimal solution. You can probably print the files at a 95%
 final size and get good results. If there's significant
 demand for an A4 format version, I can work on this over the
 next few weeks.

 --Geoff Hart     @8^{)}     geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
 Disclaimer: Speaking for myself, not FERIC.

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