<html><head><meta name="color-scheme" content="light dark"></head><body><pre style="word-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;">\title[Book and Journal Production]{Report on `Book and Journal Production'}
\author[Carol Hewlett]{Carol Hewlett\\London School of Economics}

\begin{article}

\def\heading#1#2{\subsection*{#1\\\normalsize\bf#2}}

The first meeting of the UK \TeX\ Users' Group of 1992 was held at the
School of Oriental and African Studies, London, on Tuesday 11 February
1992. The subject for the day was `Book and Journal Production' which
attracted a large audience including overseas visitors from as far away
as Belfast!

\heading{Rod~Mulvey}{Printing House, Cambridge University Press}

Rod~Mulvey assumed that the audience was
familiar with \TeX\ and \LaTeX,
and aimed his talk at publishers, with the following topics:
\begin{enumerate}
\item What type of \TeX\ files should the authors submit
\item How should the \TeX\ files be submitted
\item What agreements should there be with authors
\item Checks to judge if \TeX\ files will work
\item How to convert files to {\it your} design
\item Sub-editing
\item Artwork.
\end{enumerate}
After the receipt of the author's
initial manuscript there needed to be a \TeX\ check and a report and
at the same time the work should be checked by the sub-editor who would
prepare a marked copy. The next step was to determine the final method of
production and the costs. Following that, and assuming \TeX\ was to be
used, the \TeX\ manuscript would be edited and the artwork prepared
separately. The artwork would be pasted in to the pages output
from \TeX\ to make up the pages and this, subject to late corrections,
made up the camera-ready copy.

The journal production cycle was similar, except that before the manuscript
reached the production stage it would have been refereed and passed by the
journal editor. If the journal was using \TeX\ or \LaTeX\ then any
typescripts would have to be re-keyed.

Rod then enumerated the kinds of \TeX\ input that an author might submit:
it could be at the initial stage, before any pre-subediting had been done;
it could be at the stage where only re-design and final corrections were
needed; it could include the publisher's design and just need final
corrections and an index -- or it could be a {\tt dvi} file (CRC on disk),
or even the camera-ready copy itself.

What the author should submit depended partly on which of these stages
of \TeX\ input was involved. If \TeX\ source files were being submitted,
than all author-defined macros must be included. If the author were
submitting {\tt dvi} files then a paper copy must also be sent, as there
could be problems printing from a {\tt dvi} file if non-\TeX\ fonts had been
used. So it was essential for the author to send proper documentation
of what was being submitted, to include a list of all input files and
macros used and full details of any unusual fonts required.

Authors might submit their work on disks or magnetic tapes, or by
electronic mail. Some problems with electronic mail were the possibility
of the files becoming corrupted and the chance of the printing house
mislaying them because the files were not expected or not identified.
Even disks and tapes did not always contain what they were supposed to!

Rod pointed out that a lot of work may be needed to convert author's
\TeX\ to printer's \TeX, and gave some examples.

It was necessary for subeditors to understand \TeX -- he showed an
example of unnecessary subediting for a \TeX\ manuscript. He referred
to an article in {\it Learned Publishing}, volume 4, number 9, 1991
by R~J~Skaer on subediting for \TeX\ manuscripts.

Authors tended to use too wide a measure for their text;
in \LaTeX, this could be changed very easily although an automatic change
could also make problems, particularly with mathematical formulae.

Rod favoured making style files or macros available to intending authors
so that the work was in the right format from the start. This does imply
the existence of suitable style files and macros. It was worth designing
them for journals and standard monographs and for long books --- over
300 pages. For shorter, one-off books designing a style file could cost as
much as conventional typesetting, although if the style file were then used
from the beginning it would be worth it.

One particular problem that Rod had encountered was the use of Times font
for setting maths. CUP had licensed a \TeX\ simulation of Times for
authors to use. The increased use of PostScript fonts will help get round
this kind of problem.

Artwork was often a problem for publishers. Typically, artwork would
be done by a drawing office and pasted in. Now authors could include
some artwork with a \TeX\ file: if this were the case, then it was
again essential that the author provided any macros used.

A major weakness of \TeX\ was that was not an automatic typesetting
program. This was particularly true with respect to floats. There was
no interactive page make up with current \TeX , and this was an area
that he would particularly wish to see improved.

Rod then discussed the question of who does the work with \TeX\ 
manuscripts.  It could be some or all of the author, the typesetter,
the subeditor the academic editor/institution and the publishing
house. It was important to make an agreement with the author covering
these issues and to establish a policy with respect to electronic text
regarding subediting and correction. He recommended setting up
standard designs in \LaTeX\ and \TeX.


\heading{Geeti~Granger}{John~Wiley \&amp; Sons Ltd}

Books produced by Wiley are generally
scientific in subject and that their markets cover UK, Europe,
Middle East, Africa and Japan. They produce about 185 new books each
year and over 600 journal issues, together amounting to some 130,000
pages. Geeti's section was established in 1984 initially to process
disks, but with a set of objectives which included building a
digital archive of the books produced and moving towards true
`demand printing'. A new set of objectives had been established in 1989;
these were:
\begin{enumerate}
\item To develop technical expertise with a view to enhancing John~Wiley's
competitive position in the long term.
\item To assist in the most competitive market of all, that for the best
authors.
\item To offer an increasing level of support to their authors.
\item To prepare for major changes in technology.
\item To open the possibility of genuine on-demand printing.
\end{enumerate}
Geeti's department used Sun systems running Unix, PCs running MS-DOS and
Apple Macintosh machines, linked with LocalTalk and ethernet networks.
Various peripherals were linked in, including a scanner, cassette
tape drive and a number of LaserWriters.

Various items of software were used: all the machines ran \TeX\ of
some flavour and this, together with Ventura Publisher occupied
6 members of staff. \TeX\ was used for the books and journals, with Ventura
Publisher being used for some in-house material.
Other standard software for DTP, drawing and
translation was available and this was covered by another member of
staff and a technical support person. All the output was PostScript.

In a typical year, Geeti's department was responsible for about 25 new books,
six complete journal issues plus several individual papers and
about 1000 pages of large indexes made for `non-disk' books.

The book production cycle at John~Wiley was as follows:
To begin with, the author submitted a test disk and hard copy.
The next stage was a transmittal meeting from the editorial side to the
production side. A standard schedule was used for disk based manuscripts.
Copy editing and artwork preparation were both done by free-lance
people. Then followed page proofs, author's corrections and
camera-ready copy. Geeti said that they imposed no restrictions on the
kind of disks supplied --- provided they were readable and contained what
they were supposed to. As far as \TeX\ was concerned, six standard styles
had been developed, but the macros still needed to be tweaked. Page
balancing in \TeX\ was done by hand at the last stage.

Geeti identified some of the problems with disks: authors still make
mistakes. They did not always take enough care to distinguish between
1 and l, O and 0. The hard copy supplied was not always the same as the
text on the disk. Authors tended to be inconsistent and didn't follow
guidelines. Where complex maths and chemistry and tables were included
the work had sometimes to be re-input to conform to the required
style. Geeti commented that she found that spell checkers were not
particularly useful in scientific work.

To conclude, Geeti commented on the position of her department as an
in-house production unit for John~Wiley \&amp; Sons Ltd. She found that
scheduling could be difficult: the work load had great variation. In
very slack periods, they would need to get ordinary manuscripts typed to disk
(by free-lances) so that they could be treated as disk-based. There was also
a lack of flexibility. Being in-house meant there was not a normal commercial
relationship between her department and the rest of the company.
She felt that decision-making was driven by the technology and that there was
an investment cycle or spiral. She further commented that it was difficult
to find and then to retain trained staff. Colleagues at John~Wiley \&amp; Sons
needed to recognise the change in working practices.

\heading{Peter~Robinson and Stephen~Miller}{Oxford University}

Peter~Robinson is from the Computer and Manuscripts Project and Stephen~Miller
is a member of the Computing Service, both at the University of Oxford.
They used a Macintosh to demonstrate a program and a set of macros that
together can be used to produce critical editions. Stephen illustrated
what a critical edition is by showing some lines of Shakespeare's
{\it Hamlet}. The top part of the page contained the text according to a
particular edition. In the bottom part of the page were notes on
various differences between the chosen edition and other
editions. These can include different use of upper or lower case, different
forms or spellings, and commentary on the text.

The traditional process of making a critical edition involves visiting
a great many libraries and using index cards to note all the variations.
Peter has developed a program, {\sc collate}, which will put all this into
computer files. Having sorted the text using {\sc collate}, it is then
possible to include \TeX\ markup commands so that the output can be processed
by Dominik~Wujastyk's {\em edmac} macros to produce a typeset critical edition.

The {\sc collate} program can be obtained from Peter~Robinson, email:
{\tt peterr@uk.ac.ox.vax} and the {\em edmac} macros can be obtained
from Dominik~Wujastyk, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine,
183, Euston Road, London, NW1~2BN; email: {\tt d.wujastyk@uk.ac.ucl}
%
\heading{Christina~Thiele}{Carleton University Press}%
Christina~Thiele
said that her work was virtually all in the humanities --- and that she
used \TeX\ for it all. The Carleton University Press published in various
languages, principally English and French. \TeX\ was used in-house, not by
their authors. There was about 80\% electronic submission of manuscripts.
Authors were given a form to complete. Christina always included a
log of the file's history at the start of each \TeX\ file. The publishers
made any necessary corrections to the text, as they can't fix the errors
that the authors introduce. With this particular work, Christina uses
some 20--30 basic \TeX\ commands and modifies existing macros. She
usually starts by coding the text and writes the macros later. They mainly
use IBMs on which to run \TeX . She does 12--14\% of the University Press's
output; previously all the typesetting was farmed out.

She emphasized how important it was to document your own work and
reminded us that \TeX\ was for humanities as well as maths.
%
\heading{Malcolm Clark}{Polytechnic of Central London}%
The final speaker of the conference was Malcolm Clark of the
Polytechnic of Central London and current President of TUG. His talk
described the problems he had faced when producing the proceedings
of the \TeX88 conference at Exeter, and how he had solved them.

Malcolm started by giving the history of his previous
experience of producing books with \TeX. He then discussed how
he had chosen the papers to appear in the Proceedings. His basic
idea was to print the papers that had actually been given, but
the editor's decision was final and he did include one paper that
had not been given -- and had to omit papers that had been given
but had not achieved any permanent form. He pointed out the choices
facing an editor where not all the authors were writing their
native language: he liked to edit the work enough for the meaning
to be clear but so as to preserve the author's voice. He said that
it is not possible to achieve uniformity of texture over a multi-author work as
styles varied too much.
He told of his difficulties of finding a
publisher, and his determination to do so -- if only for the
warehousing.
He had chosen to use Computer Modern typeface, and pointed that
at 1270 dpi resolution it was excellent.
Malcolm had used a professional indexer to compile the index for the
book but he was not entirely happy with the result.

His conclusions were that this kind of publishing was time consuming.
The book needed `objective'
editing and copy editing was also essential. He had discovered that
publishing is more than just assembling the papers.
He pointed out that it was tempting to keep refining, but that the temptation
should be resisted. He reminded us that other amateurs (his authors) had their
own priorities and so didn't keep to Malcolm's timetable. And finally he said
don't expect thanks, but it is fun.
%
\vskip30pt
The Conference ended with a general forum. Three main points were raised.
The first one was that there was a
need for a common set of tfms for PostScript. (These are the font
metrics that determine how much horizontal space each character occupies.)

The second was the availability of publisher's
style files. Geeti~Granger said that John~Wiley's style files were available
only to intending authors. Rod~Mulvey said that this was for the publishers
to decide;
some of the style files that he uses are in the Aston Archive
and others are on the Cambridge University computer. The question
of out-of-date style files was mentioned, but there is no easy or
complete answer.

The third point was to do with the potential archival nature of the
electronic manuscript. On the whole, the publishers represented by the
speakers did keep the electronic manuscripts, but only Geeti~Granger said
that as a matter of course she made all late corrections to the electronic
manuscript.

Reference was made to the work done by Jane~Dorner on the arrangements
(or the lack of them)
between authors and publishers for dealing with electronic manuscripts.
Her report is called {\it Authors and Information Technology. New
Challenges in Publishing}, BNB Research Fund Report 52, published by The
British Library 1991 and available from Publications Sales Unit, The
British Library, Boston Spa, Wetherby, West~Yorkshire, LS23~7BQ.
This book was reviewed in the Newsletter of the British Computer Society
Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, volume 7, number 1, December 1991,
which contains a further article by Ms~Dorner.

\end{article}

</pre></body></html>