I just wanted to take a moment and show off what we've been doing with PrinceXML for our monthly magazine Advanced Aquarist:

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/pdf

All of the articles start their life online in HTML + CSS format. After that, I run them through a simple python conversion script to reformat things a bit so they are more consistent with Prince's requirements (removes some CMS formatting that's not needed) and then I create the PDF with PrinceXML. The cover is created with Inkscape and then merged with the PrinceXML PDF.

We're now looking into having issues (or compilation of issues) printed using Lulu.com or CreateSpace.com.

I just wanted to share! Any thoughts or comments are greatly appreciated!

Shane

Very impressive!

Thanks! The format is slowly evolving as I learn to do more and more things through the CSS/HTML song and dance. Every month I tweak the stylesheet a bit more making things more consistent between articles.

Shane

Your PDF files are impressive and I'm happy to see people using Prince for this kind of publications!

So, you start up inkscape for each new issue? Have you considered using Prince for the cover as well? It seems doable to me.

A few minor comments on the layout:

- I suggest not using initial caps, it doens't quite work in the semi-academic style you have chosen
- the running headers and footers should have the same width as the main content

Yep, I tried it initially but it didn't have the flexibility that I needed in order to do so. With Inkscape I can control how the cover looks a bit more and I can drag and drop text around on the cover until it works with the underlying cover image and I can work with different layers depending on what the underlying image is. If things were positioned the same place on the cover month after month and the underlying image was the same month after month it would be doable though. One thing I did try and fail miserably at was using a SVG from Inkscape in Prince. I could never get the image to display correct no matter what I did so I ended up using exported .png's for graphics instead.



I'll definitely look into it. In the readability studies I've read, they highly suggested that one use initial caps to help with that, but maybe it doesn't fit into the style the articles are made in.

FWIW, I based a fair amount of my layout on technical / achademic papers like PLoS ONE (pdf link).



Good point. I'll correct that!

Keep the ideas flowing!

Shane

Just thought I'd report that PrinceXML PDFs printed very well at both Lulu and CreateSpace.

Lulu complained a bit about requiring flattened PDFs, so we ran the Prince created PDF through Adobe Distiller to flatten them and that seemed to resolve any problems Lulu had with the PDFs during printing.

CreateSpace was able to print Prince PDFs as supplied with no additional fixes through Adobe Distiller. They did complain about non-flattened PDFs but allowed me to request it be printed without flattening and the results were just fine.

We've printed a 40 page magazine example through Lulu and in a week or two will be offering two printed color books through CreateSpace, both of which are +200 pages in length.

Just thought I'd report in!

Shane