Jump to content

Masamune Book Out Now

Markus
 Share

Recommended Posts

Guido Grand Master

Guido

Posted
Posted

Markus, I already downloaded the e-book – great stuff as usual! I'm also delighted that I was able to be of some help, seeing that a few passages (slightly rephrased) from my Honjō Masamune article found their way into it, even if it wasn't mentioned in the references – it's all about the information, not who originally wrote it, after all!

Markus Mentor

Markus

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Argh Guido, I apologize! There was no intention to not mention your article in the references. I wrote the references a couple of months ago and did not double-check them (what should not be an excuse of course).

I just created a revision of all three versions of the book and added you as a reference. Sorry again and I hope you accept my apology!

Marius Grand Master

Marius

Posted
Posted

Markus,

 

I have bought the book and while I am sure it will be an interesting read, I have one technical remark.

 

The PDF looks like it was made from graphic files. As a consequence, it is impossible to copy and paste from the book and this might have been the reason to choose this form over a PDF generated from a word processor file. I don't complain about this, as understand the author's concerns.

 

But as a reader of your books I feel I bought something sub-standard from the (important) point of view of usability. The reading experience is very bad. The font is blurred and tough on the eyes, unless I blow it up to a size which makes it OK (but try to read a book like this).

 

It will be a pain for me to read the book and I must say I am disappointed, not with its contents, but with its form. 

Guido Grand Master

Guido

Posted
Posted

Marius, I use Nuance Power PDF (which I like better than Adobe Acrobat) to transfer e-books into searchable PDF and to smoothen out the fonts. It also allows me to change page 1 to the original cover which Lulu omits for a stange reason. However, I agree that Lulu should do a better job for those who don't want to invest in a seperate PDF program.

post-12-0-61358700-1427021245_thumb.jpg

Marius Grand Master

Marius

Posted
Posted

Thanks for the advice, Guido. I appreciate your tip for a workaround form this problem  :)

However, spending $99 to improve the inadequate quality of Markus's e-book... Hm... I'd rather have a PDF of adequate quality in the first place. 

 

I am not sure this was done by Lulu. Previous books by Markus were normal PDFs, generated from word processing files. 

 

To put things into the right perspective - this is not a huge problem. But it is very irritating.  :steamed:

Marius Grand Master

Marius

Posted
Posted

Guido,

 

Many thanks, you are very helpful  :)  The Masamune book is 54.7 MB, so this one does not work. 

 

I will read it as is, but I am not exactly happy.

Markus Mentor

Markus

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Thats weird. Didn't do anything different than with my other eBooks... Will re-upload the PDF just in case Lulu messed something up (most likely that this was the case, maybe

they are using another converter or anything?). Mariusz, drop me a mail at markus.sesko@gmail.com and I will send you a search and copyable PDF via a filesharing programm.

Sorry for the trouble!

Marius Grand Master

Marius

Posted
Posted

Gentlemen, could you please check if your copy is a non-serchable PDF, as is mine? Markus has uploaded a new version to Lulu, I have downloaded it and get the same problem...

Darcy Mentor

Darcy

Posted
Posted

I have no problem with the PDF I just downloaded. Part of the problem that anyone might experience may be whatever their PDF viewing software is. I have no problem using Acrobat and Preview on OSX.

 

Test copy/paste from Preview after searching for Kamakura:

 

 


From archaeological finds we know that the area of Kamakura was already settled in the Stone Age but

the sea level was higher than now and it was not before the Yayoi period (300 BC ~ 300 AD) that the coastline was about as it is today. Some temples and shrines were built there in the Nara period (710-794 AD) and several land and marine routes merged in Kamakura, but the area did not gain any significant importance until it was decided that the Kawachi lineage of the Minamoto clan (Kawachi-Genji, 河内源氏)*4 should

move there because the throne was in need of a stronghold in the east.

 

 

Just remember that any particular PDF output is going to be versioned and whatever PDF viewer you are reading it with may be out of date or just not compatible. Upgrade your PDF viewer and/or try Adobe's products before blaming the document.

Marius Grand Master

Marius

Posted
Posted

Darcy, 

Try as I might, my PDF is not searchable. I have downloaded another ebook by Markus again (Legends 2) and it is perfectly OK. I have no idea what the problem is...

 

screen shot attached - as you see "no results found" for "Northern Fujiwara", which is on the page.

post-221-0-62996300-1427206671_thumb.jpg

Guido Grand Master

Guido

Posted
Posted

Interesting. I downloaded the book again, opened it in Adobe Reader (newest version) - and it wasn't searchable! So, what has Markus done to fix it?

 

P.S.: the references weren't amended either ...

Guido Grand Master

Guido

Posted
Posted

O.k., so we're basically back to square one. I used my program to make it searchable, you got a searchable version from Markus. Darcy has no problem at all.

 

I wonder how many potential customers are now scratching their heads.

Markus Mentor

Markus

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Now this is the weirdest thing ever. I don't know how and contacted Lulu about that but it seems as if when you were one of those who downloaded the earliest, initial PDF (the one that misses Guido in the references), they still redirect you to this very file when updating, even if there is a the new one (the one that is for searchable and that has the updated references) assigned to the project.

 

I will see what Lulu says about that but as mentioned, it seems as this only concerns those who downloaded the initial version.

 

Another question that remains is why the heck did they mess up with the initial PDF (i.e. make it non-searchable) first place as I didn't do anything different than with my numerous other PDF eBooks...

 

Sorry for all that mess!

Darcy Mentor

Darcy

Posted
Posted

 

Markus, one thing I did in my own book was to make sure I put a little version string in the front matter. If anyone ever saw this and wondered:

 

 

 

 

 
 
Technical: [6.31.08.v29] [working:AdobeRGB/iGen3] [CMS:off/off] [TF:CMYK/high] [PDF:1.3/noconvert/

preserve/no-include (Lulu)] [PSD: sgray] [intent: perceptual/perceptual]

 

 

It was there so I could trace back problems in print or PDF, has all my InDesign settings I used to generate the PDF and the version number of the file and date it was created. Probably is useful in your situation Markus as it would seem that some people are getting older cached versions somehow. For me I wanted to know exactly what was being printed on any individual copy if there were problems so I did the above. 

 

Other possibilities are corrupted downloads, or as mentioned software related issues but if multiple people are having the same issue it's probably related to something like an older version of the file being accessed. Tag it and see how it propagates. 

 

The revision I have does cite Guido:

 

 

  

Schiller Guido C.U., The Honjō Masamune , October 2014

 

 

Older versions being cached can be anywhere along the line as well. Uploading a version to Lulu may not propagate around all of its servers immediately and so people accessing the file at the same time could be directed to various different servers (esp. in different countries) and so getting different versions of the file.

 

It's been a while since I uploaded anything to Lulu but another thing I made sure to do was to put my revision number in the filename. Always uploading the same filename after updating the contents (speaking as a software guy) again makes it difficult to verify at a glance who has what version and if indeed Lulu is dishing out an old version to some people. That is if you keep the same filename you have no way of knowing if your new upload has properly overwritten your old one as you're assuming it has. 

 

The solution then is to tag each PDF with the revision number in the filename, and also put that in the text so you can verify print versions.

 

Delete old copies off of Lulu before uploading a new copy. 

 

This will insulate you against any internal bugs that Lulu may have. If the filename is identical between two servers depending on how good the backend programmer is they may not realize one is out of date (though it should be)... in these cases there are a million ways that a programmer may be thinking to do things like improve performance, like synchronizing once per hour or per day over the servers. If this is cached via a high performance intermediate server as well then as much as you update Lulu that may not get up to the higher level caches very quickly. Versioning the filename will defeat all of that and force caches to refresh because the requests from outside will be for a resource that is not in the cache yet.  

 

(Edited for formatting. This new board software is a #$&!@^!^ for copy/paste.)

Markus Mentor

Markus

Posted
  • Author
Posted

 

Older versions being cached can be anywhere along the line as well. Uploading a version to Lulu may not propagate around all of its servers immediately and so people accessing the file at the same time could be directed to various different servers (esp. in different countries) and so getting different versions of the file.

 

It's been a while since I uploaded anything to Lulu but another thing I made sure to do was to put my revision number in the filename. Always uploading the same filename after updating the contents (speaking as a software guy) again makes it difficult to verify at a glance who has what version and if indeed Lulu is dishing out an old version to some people. That is if you keep the same filename you have no way of knowing if your new upload has properly overwritten your old one as you're assuming it has. 

 

The solution then is to tag each PDF with the revision number in the filename, and also put that in the text so you can verify print versions.

 

Delete old copies off of Lulu before uploading a new copy. 

 

Thanks very much Darcy for your input. I actually did upload the revision under a new file name and deleted the initial one but I guess it is as you say, it might still hang around on some servers.

 

So as Darcy and the later purchased copies work, I think it is safe to assume that this only concerns those who bought the initial version and I am very sorry for that this one was - for whatever reason - not searchable.

If anyone who did buy this version who is constantly "redirected" to the old file wants the latest one, please get in touch with me and I will forward it to you via a filesharer.

Brian

Brian

Posted
Posted

 

(Edited for formatting. This new board software is a #$&!@^!^ for copy/paste.)

 

Darcy,

Not sure why you say that. Copy anything as you usually do, and then you have 3 boxes to choose from in the formatting section. Paste, paste as plain text or paste from word.

Use one of those..easy. Otherwise, do as i do and just ctrl+v to paste it in. Not too difficult.

The one thing to remember is that it will copy formatting, so paste will act like word does...copy any formatting/background etc unless you use the "plain text" option.

Regular right click and paste is deliberately excluded from most forum software nowdays due to some security issues it can present.

 

Brian

Guido Grand Master

Guido

Posted
Posted

Why did it have to be this project to be so cursed ...

 

The wrath of Masamune - you failed to mention that his real signature was 清光!!! :rofl:

Jim P Proficient

Jim P

Posted
Posted

Darcy, I am with you,, I also miss the 1 step cut and paste. Brian now I understand why the ( Regular right click and paste is deliberately excluded from most forum software now-days due to some security issues it can present.) :)

pcfarrar Veteran

pcfarrar

Posted
Posted

Markus, just wanted to ask if its possible in the future to have a title page or cover on page 1 of your eBooks? When using your books on an iPad or Mac on the Apple Books App you just see a blank square on your bookshelf. This makes it a bit of a pain to navigate between all of your titles as you can't tell which is which until you open it. It's not a problem on all of your books, just some.

This thread is quite old. Please consider starting a new thread rather than reviving this one, unless your post is really relevant and adds to the topic..

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
 Share
Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...