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Problems with Save as Daisy

Submitted by psuhonen on Fri, 2009-11-20 08:05

Save as DAISY Microsoft

Hi, we are producing Daisy books with MS-Save as Daisy in a professional manner. We have freelancers who are using both Word 2003 and 2007. There are some differences between those which cause trouble, in e.g. page numbering. We get from publishers files which contain hard page breaks and we use those in Word by using Daisy Translator Settings "Automatic" for Page Numbers. In Word 2003 this goes fairly well but in 2007 it doubles the pagenumbers. So we get two page breaks in xml when in docx there is only one. This is a bug as I understand. The hard page break vanishes from the xml when there is a poem or a list on the top of the page. You'll always have to remember to add one empty paragraph without any style on the top of the page to keep the page break. If you forget to do this, all the page numbers are wrong in the rest of the book. Also you get always a new paragraph from each page break, even if the page break is in the middle of a paragraph and you would want to keep it that way. There are also some bugs when translating big files. I have had a couple of times very odd features, like I described before under the subject Save as Daisy: in the place of a start tag h1 there is just some text, wich doesn't even belong there, like "fi-FI". Also we have troubles in constituting list of the type "pl", there is no such list in Word. It is not possible to create a list without a dot or a number. And in xml there is always a paragraph inside a list item, which is not needed and causes just trouble. Regards, Päivi

Problems with Save as Daisy

Submitted by psuhonen on Mon, 2009-12-14 08:32.

Hi everybody, no one is going to answer these questions? Is the developing of Save as Daisy over? Regards, Päivi

various Save as DAISY Problems

Submitted by OMittelstaedt on Tue, 2010-01-05 07:55.

Dear Päivi, sorry for the late answer, but I have just come back from some true wilderness... now back to the jungles of DAISY: The page number problem I can't duplicate since I only have Word XP. Will try to get a temporary license, but what you describe sounds like a bad bug. The hard page break and empty para problem is a work around. As far as I have heard, the next release will provide better solutions. "fi-FI" and similar oddities can happen if your PC is keyed to work in more than one language. Mine is English, French, Italian and German (it's a Swiss outlay) and it shows the same tendency to pepper language tags all over. Anything that the Word template doesn't provide I manually edit in the DTBook file (DAISY xml). For samples and description how to do pl tags, have a look here: http://www.daisy.org/z3986/structure/SG-DAISY3/part2-block.html#lists Regards Olaf

Dear Olaf,thank you for the

Submitted by psuhonen on Fri, 2010-01-15 05:56.

Dear Olaf, thank you for the answer. I sincerely hope that you can get the Word 2007 version and test the problem. I'll be glad to send you test material if you wish. The problem which I mentioned with odd "fi-FI" doesn't really connect with languages. It is true that there are language tags peppered all over the file, but they can be easily taken away editing the DTBook xml. This problem is more severe. There is a tag missing, usually a header start tag, and in the place of it there is just some text, like "fi-FI". In this case Save as Daisy isn't able to produce a valid DTBook xml because there is a missing start tag. I'm well aware that it is possible to edit the DTBook file manually and insert anything that Word template doesn't provide. This is what we have to do. But this problem with lists is worth to look a bit deeper. I would suggest to insert a new list style to Save as Daisy because the list styles in Word do not cover most of the lists we have to cope with. MS-Word is too clever to figure out what kind of a list we are trying to create and then edits the list. This doesn't suit us because we are trying to create Daisy books that are similar to the printed books. So we would prefer a list style which doesn't pay any attention to the content of the list items. The bullets, numbers or any visuals are part of the list item, just as described in list type=pl, preformatted list. This is not possible now in Save as Daisy. I'll give you one example of a textbook: Exercises, Fill in: 1. - A table! - _ 2. - Quelle bonne nouvelle! - _ 3. - Prenez du fromage! - _ If you try to make this in Word as an ordered list, it takes away the -'s and gets six list items numbered from 1 to 6. If you try to make it as an unordered list, it takes away the numbers and gets six list items begining with -. In any case you will have to edit the xml. Best solution here would be to use a list type=pl, if there would exist such a style in Save as Daisy. Regards, Päivi

Differences between Save As DAISY for Word 2007 and Word 2003

Submitted by Olav Indergaard on Fri, 2010-01-15 06:03.

Dear Päivi. I have experienced the exact same problems that you described. A list type="pl" style as part of the "DAISY styles" section would indeed be nice. As Word 2010 is just around the corner I guess we can expect to see even more differences between the xml conversions in different Word versions as well. I personally will look more into the odf2dtbook plug-in for Open Office to avoid version-related problems with Word. Regards Olav

Save as Daisy for Word and Open Office

Submitted by psuhonen on Mon, 2010-01-18 03:47.

Dear Olav, nice to know I'm not alone with my problems. I am also a little afraid of what Word 2010 might bring with it. But I hope there has happened something with the Open Office pug-in because last time I tested it I didn't find any handling of hard page breaks in it. And that is a major shortage for us anyway. Regards, Päivi

The OpenOffice plugin will

Submitted by GKearney on Mon, 2010-01-18 19:55.

The OpenOffice plugin will handle page breaks without any trouble. Add a header or footer with the page number to get page navigation.

sample would be lovely

Submitted by OMittelstaedt on Wed, 2010-03-17 05:01.

Dear Päivi, please go ahead and provide me with those samples. I would love to see: - the doc original - the DTBook from it - your corrected DTBook please send to daisymatters.org where you replace the 'a' in matters with the (at) sign. Thanks Olaf

Sample sent

Submitted by psuhonen on Thu, 2010-03-25 04:38.

Dear Olaf, I have sent you the sample files as you requested. I'm happy to tell that I have managed to solve the issue of doubling page breaks in Word 2007 by a combination of settings. But the list issue is still a trouble. Päivi

Dear Päivi, We are doing some

Submitted by PVerma on Sat, 2010-11-20 00:06.

Dear Päivi,
We are doing some testing with Save As DAISY at DAISY Consortium. Can you please send the documents with which you are getting page numbering and other errors to my email ID prashant.rv[at]gmail.com?
Many thanks,
Prashant

Prashant, Do you want other

Submitted by pwood on Thu, 2010-12-02 10:27.

Prashant,
Do you want other 'Save as DAISY' bugs? such as Verses in poem style?
Paul

Yes, please send sample

Submitted by PVerma on Thu, 2010-12-02 19:39.

Yes, please send sample documents with description of errors to prashant.rv[at]gmail.com

Double List Numbering

Submitted by wbielawski on Mon, 2011-02-07 08:33.

I created a list with MS Word 2007 that looks like:
1. Level 1 header
a. Level 2 header
b. Level 2 header
2. Level 1 header.

Then I do a Save as DAISY.

I am reading the DAISY with AMIS and it reads/looks like:
1. 1. Level 1 header
1. a. Level 2 header
2. b. Level 2 header
2. 2. Level 1 header.

What's up with this?

Lists and Page Numbers Mingling

Submitted by wbielawski on Mon, 2011-02-07 08:49.

I hear there is a problem with Page numbers: that the line at the top of page must contain text.
I don't know if someone is trying to fix it, but below is something strange that happened to me.
Referring to my previous post about double list numbering,
I had a list that ran across a page boundary (MS Word 2007).

1. Level 1 header
a. level 2 header
b. level 2 header
--- page break here ---
c. level 2 header
2. Level 1 header

What was displayed and read at the top of the new page was wierd, and it may shed some light on the page numbering problem. It was the top of page 12.

It displayed:

3. 12
c. level 2 header

It first read "3" which is the double list numbering I posted about previously. Then it read "page 12", then it read "c" and the rest of the list line.

sounds like...

Submitted by OMittelstaedt on Mon, 2011-02-07 09:12.

Dear Wbielawski,

your first problem sounds like a conversion error from your original document (pdf?) to Word.

Happens frequently:

a numbered list in pdf is not converted as a Word recognized list, meaning that there is just a "1." (like "one dot" and not "list item one").
Then Save as Daisy kicks in during DTBook conversion, identifies the textual items as lists BUT recognizes the numbering as text and not as list numbering.
That results in double numbered lists, or a mix of numbering and lettering, as in your case.

Only way to get out of that one is to edit the xml manually...

Your second problem should be solved by not splitting lists by page breaks...

Regards
Olaf