Musing: Big Bangs - Posting, and PDFs

[wilderthan]

In suggestions from people who've done several Big Bangs, someone always seems to mention the idea of a PDF version. I'm definitely pondering this.

I'm also pondering doing a version with a bigger font, a better font, whatever's necessary, so that partially sighted people would be better able to read it. With all the fic I post, it would be hard to provide this for every fic I post, although I am planning to -- when I have chance -- disable viewing posts in the journal layouts, so you get the site scheme. Then there's no problem with faint colours or the wrong font, hopefully.

But with a Big Bang, and providing PDFs, and reaching a wider audience, and especially considering that two of my Big Bangs focus on less-abled characters (Dean is mute in Right Where We Belong, and blind in the SPN/J2 Big Bang fic), it would be appropriate to provide a more accessible option. It wouldn't matter to me how few people needed it, I would like the option to be there. I know my mother, if she read fanfiction, would probably have to copy and paste things into Word and make them bigger/change the fonts.

Now, I haven't tried making my fics into PDFs before, and I suspect I will have to do more wrangling than I'd like, so the PDFs won't necessarily happen this time, or next. But I'd love to do it at some point -- even just as an experiment, to see if anyone needs it. I'm going to consult with Mum about what would help her in terms of font, font size, spacing, italicisation or no italicisation (maybe bold for emphasis instead of italics?), but... if anyone has any advice, I'd love to hear it. If you think this is a terrible idea for some reason, don't be afraid to say that, either. I am putting out feelers!

(I have been steadily growing horrified at how unreadable some of my various LJ layouts might be to anyone with sight problems. I am probably going to be changing those, too. Just in case you are viewing this on the DW version of this journal, and thinking that I could start with actually making my journals more readable.)

Edit: And someone suggested .rtfs so that people can edit it however they want and of course that would be better -- I think? Any reasons why not?

Comments

[amethystfirefly]

I have vision problems on occasion, due to fatigue related crap. If you want me to go through your stuff and give you opinions, I'll happily do so.

[wilderthan]

Thank you for the offer! Someone just suggested providing an .rtf file so people could edit the font easily themselves, which *slaps forehead* I could've thought of, and sounds better than just providing one option.

[amethystfirefly]

That'd work too!!

[briarwood]

If you have a Google/Gmail account, making PDFs is easy: just import your story into Google Docs, mess with the formatting, then export as PDF. If you have Acrobat it's even easier: it sets up a 'virtual printer' so you can convert anything into PDF by printing it and choosing that as the printer.

My own interest is in making PDFs for e-book readers; for that it's the page size and margins you need to think about, but that translates into larger font size for those reading on PC so it's a win-win. The main things to consider are what font you're using: you want something that's easy to read onscreen, preferably a serif font for the main text, but one that's fairly bold onscreen. Georgia is good.

If your concern is mainly for people with sight issues, though, I'd recommend giving them a downloadable .rtf or text file (or very basic html if you know how to code it - use [em] and [strong] rather than [i] and [b]): that allows them to edit the font themselves to whatever they're comfortable with.

[wilderthan]

I've made some PDFs for ereaders before, but the converter I was using made them look like crap. Clearly, using the wrong converter. Or the wrong settings. Setting up my mother's ereader was a fairly sudden learning curve for me and involved a lot of cursing and trying to do a million things at once. (I hated the Sony program, so I got Calibre; I was trying to download her some ebooks; I was trying to convert ones I had; I was trying to fix metadata before I had Calibre... AAHH.)

The .rtf file is a great idea because then it's accessible for not just one person with sight problems, but anyone. I already write in a .txt file, but I code the italics and stuff right into it, and notepad isn't as flexible as an .rtf file... Thank you so much for the suggestion. I was just thinking in terms of "everyone says they provide PDFs", but why not provide .rtfs? Hee.

[jesse_the_k]

Coming in a little late, but I think HTML is the best solution.

Someone with partial sight (like myself) has optimized my browser to work for how I see. I have a one-keystroke command which turns off all styles. That transforms the gnarliest pale purple on dark purple three column page design to one column of black on white with blue links.

(Happy to help you walk your mom through setting up her browser like this.)

[wilderthan]

In terms of the stories I posted, I posted them on LJ as well as creating .rtf files, so that is always an option. Thank you for the input.

(Thank you for the offer -- I think she's worked out something that works for her now, but I'm grateful for the offer.)