http://www.megaupload.com/?d=FNWB4LAA
If anyone spots any errors, please post them here. I will happily include your names in the next version that I put out, as proofers.
I hope that it comes in handy! It is a CORE book for my home Modern groups. If I leave home without my printed copy... I have many unhappy players.... ;)
I didn't number the index OR contents because at the time, I was still shifting images and text around, so I didn't want to put page numbers in that would end up being moot a revision later.
It is my goal to also include the equipment from both Call of Cthulhu and Sidewinder: Recoiled in the final version.
The indexing and bookmarking problems would be really easy to solve in Open Office. It can automatically output both of those using templates, so it's basically a few commands, and all the page numbers populate themselves. It's really sweet.
The tables are more of a pain. They have to be done manually, but they're basically necessary to make a usable manual.
The tables are more of a pain. They have to be done manually, but they're basically necessary to make a usable manual.
Tables are actually fairly easy as long as the source material is decently formatted (tabs or some consistent separation character) with Text to Tables and a Decent Autoformat. Even if it's not tabbed and just maybe multiple spaces to separate it's still not to difficult to Tableize things properly. Hmm after perusing the file it looks like the content that would need to be made into a table is Tab separated so it should be fairly easy. And taking a look at the actual equipment listings I think it would be fairly easy for me to make a simple perl script to output tab delimited Equipment lists for each section to make a nice equipment table. If you want, after TheRealOrion is done with it I could take a swing at the tables, getting whats already in there to tables should be a breeze, I'm already set up for that from my work on a custom game book for my group that uses a fair amount of OGL material. Getting the equipment lists would take a bit longer but I don't think it will be too bad.
Though you may have to massage my tables back into good formatting in Microsoft Office since I use OpenOffice.org and the two seem to have a fair bit of disagreement when tables are involved, more so with frames, which would be necessary to get a page spanning table with the columns. Or you could just switch to OpenOffice.org since it's so much better than Microsoft Office (in my not-so-humble opinion :D ).
The one request I'd make, though, is to have free reign to reformat the page layout. The way the pictures are embedded right now means they take up a lot more space than they need to. Also, making them black and white would shrink the file size by a lot. The illustrations are half the value of that book, of course, but I feel on principle that it doesn't need to be 9MB.
The one request I'd make, though, is to have free reign to reformat the page layout. The way the pictures are embedded right now means they take up a lot more space than they need to. Also, making them black and white would shrink the file size by a lot. The illustrations are half the value of that book, of course, but I feel on principle that it doesn't need to be 9MB.
Only if you make a color version of it for me to have. Since this was created to be a pdf, more often than not it's viewed on a color screen. I spent plenty of hours looking for decent color photos with white backgrounds to keep the theme.
My print copy I made by taking the file to Officemax and having it printed and bound in greyscale.
Going into this project my goal was to supply the user with a ton of gear, from as many Modern sources as possible. Each entry, would have a clear image of what the item is, and a full description of what the item is.
Eventually I added weapons to it as well-- everything that WOULDN'T be included in the official Weapons Locker.
It's called the WISHBOOK because of the ages long tradition of SEARS to publish it's "gear catalogue".
Because of my ADD nature, I've been working on this book for over a couple of years on and off. I just want this to be the best Gear source for GMs and players alike.
I totally respect the "have been working on it for years" thing, too. I started working on Phoenix in 2004.
Hmm I know theres not a simple switch on Export to PDF in OO.o to make it grayscale. However, I seem to recall that before OO.o included Export to PDF, I used a "PDF Printer" basically a driver that responded as a printer an just made a pdf instead... that may have an option to "print" in grayscale... Unfortunately I'm not on windows any more so I can't use that driver, if you want I can see if I can find it and link it so one of you can try it. Though I think that may make it all images (as in the text is technically an image of text) which may be undesired for screen usage, but I'm not sure on that point. I know I can also print it to a postscript file that can be converted to PDF, but that's also going to be page images instead of text.
Hmm can't seem to think of anything else off hand... I'll play around with some ideas, it'll take a few days, and I think I'll probably drop a note by the OOo forums see if any of the gurus can assist with a solution...
Microsoft Word 07 has an oppitional download that allows you to save your work as a PDF without the table of contents link page that most have...
Does it allow you to create the PDF as black and white even if the document is colored?