Font embedding in eBooks

If you compose or read eBooks exclusively in the English language, you will probably never notice a limitation present in the eBook readers like Adobe Digital Editions and Sony eBook Reader. Their built-in fonts are sufficient to display English texts correctly, but they miss some of the glyphs necessary for the display of extended Latin characters, and especially non-Latin characters.

Let's take an example. Here is a Greek text fragment as it displays in Atlantis:


If you save it as eBook in Atlantis, then open the resulting EPUB file in Adobe Digital Editions, you will see something like this:


This might be all Greek to you :) ... but you will have noticed the question marks within the words. Being unable to display some of the Greek characters in this text, ADE simply replaced them with question marks. This is because the ADE built-in fonts do not include the corresponding glyphs. So if your eBooks contain Greek, Polish, Baltic, Cyrillic or Asian characters, most likely they won't display correctly in the currently available eBook readers.

You might say "what if I embedded the appropriate fonts in my EPUB files?" This is OK because the EPUB standard supports font embedding in eBooks. In other words, you can include the necessary font files within the eBooks themselves. In this way, the eBook readers won't miss any character glyph.

Font embedding in EPUB files can be done manually. A number of tutorials are available on the Web. But the procedure is quite tricky and time-consuming, especially to inexperienced users.

This is when Atlantis comes in very handy! Atlantis is now able to embed fonts in eBooks automatically. The "Save as eBook" dialog of Atlantis has a new check box to "Embed fonts":


When this option is enabled, Atlantis automatically embeds all the necessary fonts in the saved EPUB files. You don't have to worry any more. EPUB readers automatically use any embedded fonts to display the eBooks.

Let's take our example again. This time we have saved our Greek document as EPUB from Atlantis with the "Embed fonts" option enabled. Here is the same text fragment viewed in Adobe Digital Editions with embedded fonts:


As you can see, the question marks have disappeared. All the characters are displayed correctly.

Atlantis normally embeds all the fonts used in the original document. But if you click the "Exceptions..." button right below the "Embed fonts" box:


you can instruct Atlantis not to embed specific fonts:



If you embed fonts in your EPUB files, their display in the e-readers will be as faithful as possible to the original document display. This might sound great. But there are a few snags. You should take them into account before deciding to embed fonts in your eBooks:

1) The two major eBook readers – Adobe Digital Editions and Sony Reader – support font embedding in EPUBs. But if your eBooks are meant exclusively for another eBook reader, embedding fonts in them makes no sense since these other eBook readers currently do not support font embedding.

2) Embedded fonts can significantly increase the size of your eBook files. Generating an EPUB file with the "Embed fonts" box checked might add megabytes to the size of the resulting eBook file. So if there are limitations regarding the size of your eBook files, font embedding might not be an option.

3) By embedding fonts in your eBook files, you force the eBook readers to use the embedded fonts rather than their built-in fonts. In this way, the eBook will mimic the original look of your document. But fonts which are good for monitors with big screens, might worsen readability of your eBook on portable devices with small screens. In addition, your eBook with embedded fonts might look quite differently compared to the display of other more "traditional" eBooks with no embedded fonts. This might also inconvenience the readers of your eBooks.

On the whole, it is preferable to avoid font embedding in eBooks whenever possible. This is why the "Embed fonts" option is initially off in Atlantis. We recommend that you use font embedding only when your documents contain non-Latin characters, or when it is impossible to reflect the book style without its original fonts. But as always, it is up to you to decide which move is more appropriate.

You can already try this new font embedding feature. It is included in the latest beta version of Atlantis Word Processor. You can download it from the Betatesting page of the Atlantis site, and install it to your PC.

Merry Christmas

The Atlantis Word Processor team is sending the warmest Christmas wishes to you and your family.

May joy and happiness always be with you!

Beta versions: Easy upgrading

Checking for updates to Atlantis Word Processor and updating it is as simple as 1-2-3. You run the "Help | Check for Updates..." menu command from Atlantis itself and follow simple onscreen instructions.

But things were not that simple and convenient when it came to beta versions of Atlantis. Beta versions of Atlantis could only be updated manually. Interested end-users were supposed to make regular visits to the Atlantis Betatesting page, and download the new beta builds manually.

We have now simplified matters for our betatesters:

1) Individual beta builds of Atlantis always have a specific code number. That code number is displayed in the right topmost corner of the online Betatesting page:


But up to now that specific beta number was never displayed in the "Help | About..." window. Actually it was not even possible to tell when a given copy of Atlantis was beta.

The "Help | About..." window of Atlantis betas now displays these specific version numbers, and signals a beta version:


The Setup files of Atlantis beta versions now also display this information:


2) The "Help | Check for Updates..." dialog of Atlantis betas will allow you to upgrade to new beta builds of Atlantis:


Clicking "Yes" will allow you to upgrade your beta version of Atlantis without visiting the Betatesting page manually. You only need to follow the onscreen instructions.

3) Previously when the betatesting phase of a particular version of Atlantis was over, that version was released as a public version. But there was no automatic way to replace a beta version of Atlantis with the corresponding public version of Atlantis. Not anymore. The "Help | Check for Updates..." dialog of the beta versions now suggests such a move.

4) Finally, the "Help | Check for Updates..." dialog of public versions of Atlantis now informs you about any new beta versions of Atlantis:



All the changes mentioned in this post apply to builds of Atlantis released after December 18, 2009.

Perfectionism in action

Many will find this trivial. It is a cosmetic improvement indeed which many would not even notice. But this post is meant to show that we do pay attention to details. Minor inconveniences are still inconveniences. Minor glitches are still glitches. No matter how small is a problem, it is always better to fix it than to live with it.

So what is that improvement? As you most probably know, when you place the mouse pointer over a hyperlink in a document of Atlantis, a popup hint is displayed with the hyperlink address. Previously, the popup hint slowly followed the mouse pointer as you moved the mouse pointer over the hyperlink:




Such "walking" hints served no actual purpose. In the next version of Atlantis, starting from Atlantis 1.6.5 currently under betatesting, these popup hints will remain at their initial location. Like this:

Tweaking ePubs (4): Choosing a text editor

We discussed earlier in this blog the tweak_epub utility that you can use to make minor changes to EPUB files. This utility automatically used the standard Windows text editor Notepad to edit the files contained in EPUB packages.

A number of people using this utility said they would like to be able to choose a different text editor. This is now possible in the new version of the tweak_epub utility. Click this link if you want to download it:

http://www.AtlantisWordProcessor.com/download/tweak_epub.exe

When you run the updated utility, you'll see a new button, "Choose Editor...":


Press this button to choose another text editor. Note that you have to select the executable file of the text editor. Executable files have the ".exe" extension. For example, the executable file of the Windows Notepad editor is "notepad.exe".

Release of Atlantis 1.6.5 (beta)

Atlantis Word Processor 1.6.5 is now available for betatesting.

You can download this new version of Atlantis from the Betatesting page.

Keep those hands on the keyboard (4): The Alt+NNN method

As you probably already know, there are many ways to insert symbols in documents in Atlantis.

If you can remember the numbers assigned to specific symbols in the Unicode standard, inserting a symbol in a document in Atlantis is most conveniently done with the Alt+NNN method:

1. First, toggle the keyboard Num Lock key on.
2. Press and hold the Alt key down,
3. Type the Unicode number of the symbol on the numeric pad of the keyboard.
4. Release the Alt key.

Here are a few symbols that you might find useful:


Let's suppose that you want to insert a "numero sign". All you need to do is press and hold the Alt key down, type 8470 on the numeric pad, and release the Alt key. Atlantis will automatically insert the corresponding symbol from the most appropriate font.

Of course, any other Unicode symbol can be inserted with this Alt+NNN method. The Unicode numbers of symbols are shown in the "Insert | Symbol..." dialog of Atlantis.

Document formats: Winter cleaning

Besides support for a new document format ODF, the upcoming version of Atlantis Word Processor 1.6.5 will also include changes to its import/export filters.

Atlantis previously offered two separate formats for MS Word DOC documents through its Open/Save dialogs:


Indeed there is a significant difference between the DOC format used by MS Word 6.0/95 and the DOC format of higher versions of MS Word starting Word 97. But since the DOC format of MS Word 6.0/95 is now 15 year old, and it is hardly ever required by users, we decided to merge the two DOC formats into one in the list of supported document types:


What does this actually mean to Atlantis users?

Atlantis will still be able to open any DOC document of MS Word 6.0 (or higher). But saving DOCs in the old format of MS Word 6.0/95 won’t be possible anymore. If you open a DOC file of older format in Atlantis, and resave it in Atlantis, it will automatically be saved in the newer DOC format of MS Word 97 (and higher).


Atlantis 1.6.5 will also show a minor improvement to the Save as eBook feature. Previous versions of Atlantis saved superscripted and subscripted texts to eBooks with vertical offset only, without reducing the font size of these super-/subscripted texts:


Atlantis 1.6.5 will now apply a reduced font size to super-/subscripted texts:


In this way, the resulting EPUB file will mimic the look of super-/subscripted texts from the original document in the best possible manner.

OpenDocument in the pipeline

We are currently working to implement support for the OpenDocument (ODF) format in Atlantis. This document format is supported by a number of word processing applications. But it is mainly linked to the OpenOffice.org office suite.

The ODF format can be used to store not only text documents but also spreadsheets, presentations, etc. Since Atlantis is a word processor, it will obviously only be concerned with text documents in the ODF format. Text documents in the ODF format normally have the ".odt" file extension.

So how comprehensive will ODF support be in Atlantis?

At this point we will not be adding ODF export capability to Atlantis.

What does this mean to Atlantis users?

Atlantis will open and display existing ODF documents, but you won't be able to create or re-save ODF documents as such in Atlantis. In other words, you'll be able to modify the contents of existing ODF documents, but you'll have to re-save the changed documents in any other document format supported by Atlantis, namely the RTF, DOC or DOCX format.

You might wonder why Atlantis won't save documents in the ODF format.

There is a single reason to this: the ODF document model is incompatible with the document model used in Atlantis.

Many word processing features work very differently in OpenOffice.org Writer (the word processor from the OpenOffice.org suite) from the way they do in Atlantis. For example, support for automatic lists, tables of contents, headers & footers, newspaper columns, and especially document sections and fields in Atlantis and OpenOffice Writer has been implemented quite differently.

Will Atlantis be able to open (i.e. import) ODF documents at all? Yes, because there are ways to convert the "incompatible content" of most ODF documents to an Atlantis-friendly format. Quite tricky transformations of the original content will have to be performed in order to convert some ODF features into elements that Atlantis can deal with. Some of the original elements and formatting of the ODF documents will be replaced with similar elements and formatting available in Atlantis so that when opened in Atlantis, ODF documents will look as closely as possible to how they look in OpenOffice Writer. In this way, you'll be able to open any ODF document in Atlantis, copy its contents and insert them into "Atlantis-friendly" documents.

You might say "if there are tricks to convert any ODF document to the Atlantis internal format, why not implement similar tricks to convert Atlantis documents to the ODF format?” From a solely technical point, this would be possible. But from a practical point, this does not make much sense.

Let's imagine that Atlantis is capable of saving documents in the ODF format (i.e. it can export to the ODF format). Each time you save an Atlantis document as ODF, Atlantis internally changes its document elements and structure to make them compatible with the ODF format. Such a transformation entails losing some of the original Atlantis formatting and structure. If you reopen such an "Atlantis-exported" ODF file in Atlantis, a new internal conversion of format has to be performed once more towards an "Atlantis-friendly" format. Such repeated conversions of internal format inevitably entail loss and distortion of information. Consequently, it will be impossible for Atlantis to reproduce the exact state in which original documents were before they were saved as ODF. Atlantis users will ineluctably be surprised at the way the documents they "saved as ODF" actually will look when reopened in Atlantis: with different formatting in many cases!

This is how we currently see things. But we might reconsider our decision if Atlantis users interested in the ODF format still think that ODF export might be useful to them.

A new version of Atlantis Word Processor 1.6.5 with ODF import support (the "Open ODF document" feature) will soon be available for betatesting. Your comments and test documents regarding this feature will be most welcome. Plus we are open to discussing implementation of ODF export capability in Atlantis.

Release of Atlantis 1.6.4.3

Atlantis 1.6.4.3 was under betatesting for a month. And now this version of Atlantis is available as a public release.

You can find the complete list of new features and changes in this version of Atlantis by clicking here.

As always, there are multiple ways to upgrade your copy of Atlantis Word Processor to the latest version.

Keep those hands on the keyboard (3): Fast dialoguing

From time to time Atlantis pops up various windows that will not go away until you "talk" to them. You have to reply to the questions asked in these windows, choose some options, etc. These windows are called modal dialogs, or simply dialogs.

Many menu commands of Atlantis display dialogs when they are activated. You can easily tell when a menu command will open a dialog: its menu caption ends with an ellipsis (3 dots). For example, this is the case with most commands in the "Insert" menu:



A typical dialog has "OK" and "Cancel" buttons in the right bottom corner, plus a cross button on the title bar:



Clicking the "OK" button registers the changes that you have made in the dialog. The "Cancel" button obviously discards any changes. Clicking the cross button is equivalent to pressing the "Cancel" button.

Of course, any of these three buttons can be clicked with the mouse. But you can also "click" them from the keyboard.

Let's start with the "OK" button. It initially displays with a thicker border:



This means that the "OK" button is the "default button" of this dialog. A "default button" can be "clicked" by pressing the Enter key. So when you need to click the "OK" button in a dialog, you can simply press Enter. Note that this works only when the "OK" button has a special thicker border around it.

"Clicking" the "Cancel" button from the keyboard is also extremely easy. You only have to press the Esc key to close the dialog and cancel all the changes made in it.

Now here are more ways you can communicate with dialogs through the keyboard. Let's take the "Tools | Options..." dialog as an example:



* When a dialog has multiple tabs, as the "Tools | Options..." dialog:



switching over to the next tab is done by pressing Ctrl+Tab. And again repeatedly until you reach the appropriate tab.


* In most cases, one of the controls (GUI elements) of a dialog is focused (ie has the input focus). This means that you can interact with the focused element through the keyboard.

How do you find out which of the dialog elements is focused?

Focused buttons have a dotted rectangle around them:



And so have check or "tick" boxes:



When a button is focused, you can press the Space bar or the Enter key to run the corresponding command.

When a checkbox is focused, pressing the Space bar checks or unchecks the box, and hence activates or inactivates the corresponding option.

Text edit boxes can also be focused. In the absence of a selection, focused edit boxes display a blinking caret:



and any selection with a special color:



So whenever an edit box is focused, the text in it behaves pretty much like any editable text in the document window.

You can use the arrow keys to select its text or just move the blinking caret within the box.
You can press Ctrl+C to copy the edit box selection to the clipboard, or Ctrl+V to paste the clipboard text into the edit box.
You can press Del or the Backspace key to remove any selection within the edit box.
In the absence of a selection, the Backspace key allows you to erase one character at a time, going backwards.
And obviously, you can also type text directly into the focused edit box.


Focused boxes with attached drop-down lists display with a special background color:



or with a dotted rectangle:



When such a drop-down box is focused, you can use the arrow keys to cycle through the list items. You can also press Alt+Down Arrow to display the whole drop down list, and again cycle through the list items with the arrow keys:



When focused, ordinary list boxes display a dotted rectangle around the selected item:



When such a list box is focused, you can also use the arrow keys to cycle through the list items.


* Dialog elements become focused when you click them with the mouse. But you can also press the Tab key to switch focus from one dialog element to another. Pressing the Tab key repeatedly takes you from one element to the next until the desired element becomes focused.


* Most dialog elements have associated keyboard accelerators. If you press the Alt key in any dialog of Atlantis, you will notice underlined letters within most captions:



If you maintain the Alt key down and press the corresponding letter keys, you will "click" the corresponding element of a dialog. In other words, you will either

• focus the related list,
  
• check or uncheck the associated option,
  
• or actually press the target button.
  

For example, pressing Alt+Z when the above dialog is showing is the same as clicking its "Font Sizes..." button.

Keep those hands on the keyboard (2): Zoom, spellcheck, and switch back

Using keyboard instead of mouse can be a productivity booster for any writer. Here are more keyboard tips concerning Atlantis.

* Predefined zooming types and factors have dedicated hot keys:

• Ctrl+Shift+K,P activates the "Page width" display.
  
• Ctrl+Shift+K,T triggers the "Text width" zoom.
  
• Ctrl+Shift+K,1 and Ctrl+Shift+K,2 respectively enable the "Whole pages" and "Two pages" zoom types.
  
• The standard 100% zooming factor also has a dedicated hot key: Ctrl+Shift+K,0.
  

The zooming factor can be modified incrementally by 10%.

Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Up Arrow increases the zooming factor by 10%.
Zooming in is also achieved by pressing the Ctrl key in combination with the Plus key (on the numeric pad).

Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Down Arrow decreases the zooming factor by 10%.
Zooming out is also achieved by pressing the Ctrl key in combination with the Minus key (on the numeric pad).


* When we encounter a misspelt red-underlined word in a document, most of us usually grab the mouse and right-click the word for a list of suggestions from the spellchecker:



If one of the suggestions is appropriate, a click on it fixes the misspelling.

However, you might find it quite inconvenient to have to turn to the mouse each time you want to have a look at the list of spelling suggestions. No problem! You can display the spellchecker suggestions from the keyboard. Just place the insertion cursor within the misspelt word (or immediately after its last letter), and press the Menu key on your keyboard to display the spellchecker suggestions for the currently red-underlined word.

The Menu key looks like this:



* When we are working on a document, we quite often need to navigate from one location to another, and back within the same document. This happens for example when we want to paste a copy of a text fragment located further down in the document. In such cases we usually scroll the document window down till we reach our target, select the text to copy, send it to the Windows clipboard with Ctrl+C, and finally scroll back up to the original location, where we can paste the copied text with Ctrl+V.

Undoubtedly, the whole rigmarole is quite tedious and cumbersome, especially when the document is very long. This is why Atlantis has the F5 hot key to take you back to the place where you last made a change to the current document. So after you’ve placed the selection of text on the Windows clipboard, all you need to do to go back to your starting point is to press the F5 key. Voilà!

More keyboard tips still to follow soon...

Keep those hands on the keyboard: You're not old hat, – you're smart!

In the MS-DOS era, not every PC was equipped with a mouse, and users interacted with applications mainly through the keyboard. But nowadays it is hard to imagine a modern PC without mouse input. Most operations can be done through the mouse, and some – exclusively through the mouse.

So why bother memorizing keyboard shortcuts if the mouse is so convenient? Simply because every time you take your hands off the keyboard, you slow yourself down! Keep those hands on the keyboard and off of your mouse. It is faster that way!

Plenty can be done in Atlantis from the keyboard only, including the press of a button or the selection of a menu item.

You can assign shortcuts

• to nearly any Atlantis command using the "Tools | Hot Keys..." dialog,
  
• to paragraph styles from the "Format | Style..." window,
  
• to special symbols in the "Insert | Symbol..." panel
  

so that you can launch actions, apply style to paragraphs, insert special symbols directly from the keyboard.

Now here are less obvious ways to perform familiar actions through the keyboard.


* Of course, you can click a button on the Atlantis document bar to switch to another document. But the same can be achieved by pressing any Alt+N combination, N being the number assigned to the document on the bar. Alt+1 switches to the first open document (leftmost button), Alt+2 switches to the second open document (next button), and so on. Pressing Alt+0 (zero on the main keyboard) shows the complete list of all open documents. The arrow keys select the target document, the Enter key brings the document up.

Cycling through the open documents can also be done by pressing Ctrl+Tab.


* The Atlantis toolbars include 3 boxes to apply Style, Font, and Font size to text:



Each of these boxes can be accessed from the keyboard.

Ctrl+Shift+F brings up the Font box:



You can type the required font name in, then press Enter. Or use the arrow keys to select a font name in the list, then press Enter. The font will immediately be applied to the current text in the document window.

Similarly, the Font size box opens with Ctrl+Shift+P. You can type the required font size in, then press Enter. Or use the arrow keys to select a font size from the list, then press Enter. The font size will immediately be applied to the current text in the document window.

Same thing with the Styles box. Ctrl+Shift+S opens the drop-down. You can type the required style name in, then press Enter. Or use the arrow keys to select a style from the list, then press Enter. The style will immediately be applied to the current text in the document window.


* To access any menu command of Atlantis, you only need to remember the simplest of shortcuts: the Alt key.

Normally the main menu of Atlantis looks in this way:



But if you press the Alt key (or its counterpart from the MS DOS age – F10), some of the menu caption letters will be underlined:



When these underlined letters are displayed, Atlantis is in the menu mode: you can use the keyboard to navigate among menu commands, and invoke them.

Actually, there are two ways to navigate among the menu commands with the keyboard.

First, you can use the arrows keys.

Second, you can type any one of the underlined letters to activate the associated menu item. For example, a press on the F key opens the File menu:



Pressing any letter underlined in one of the File menu items invokes the corresponding dialog. For example, the Print... command is executed by typing the letter P.

This is why these underlined letters are sometimes called "accelerator keys".

Atlantis allows you to customize which character should be underlined in its menu captions and act as its accelerator keys. This is done in the Tools | Menus... dialog with a press of the Rename... button:



You will notice that most menu names display an additional ampersand character:



This ampersand character is not actually displayed in the Atlantis GUI. It simply means that the letter next to it will be underlined in the corresponding menu caption, and will act as its accelerator key. In the above example, the ampersand only indicates that the "N" letter will be underlined and will act as the accelerator key to the New command of the File menu.

So you can assign any suitable accelerator key to a menu item in this way: simply rename the menu item and place an ampersand character before the letter that you want to act as its accelerator key.

... More "keyboard vs mouse" tips to follow soon.

Open dashes vs Closed dashes

It is hard to find another punctuation mark in English language that has so many different uses and fuels so many debates among writers and philologists as dashes. So we are not going to start a discussion on the use of dashes. So much has already been said it would be hard to add anything new. If you are interested, Wikipedia has plenty of detailed information on the use of dashes.

But we still have information relevant to Atlantis. The new minor version of Atlantis Word Processor (– 1.6.4.3 –) currently under betatesting introduces a change in the way Atlantis handles dashes.

As you most probably know, Atlantis has two special symbols called "Short dash" (or "En dash") and "Long dash" (or "Em Dash"). They can be inserted using the "Insert | Symbol..." dialog:



or by pressing the associated hot keys: Ctrl+Alt+– and Ctrl+-.

These dashes can also be inserted in your documents by AutoCorrect. For example, AutoCorrect will by default replace two hyphens (--) with an En dash on-the-fly, – as you type them.

As you know, Atlantis systematically adds missing spaces, or removes spare spaces before/after most punctuation signs according to the standard rules. But Atlantis also allows you to change these rules to suit your own preferences. When you press the "Rules..." button in the "Tools | AutoCorrect Options..." dialog:



the "Smart Space Management" window is displayed where you can customize which punctuation signs require space before or after:



Now about dashes. They can be either "open" or "closed".

"Open" dashes have space characters around them, like this:

He was quick to declare victory — maybe too quick.

"Closed" dashes do not have spaces before and after them:

He was quick to declare victory—maybe too quick.

"Open" dashes was always the default option in Atlantis. By this we mean that Atlantis systematically added space characters around dashes if it found them missing. And the "Smart Space Management" dialog did not allow end-users to change this behavior and control spacing around dashes. In other words, "closed" dashes were not accepted by Atlantis. This has been corrected in the upcoming version. In Atlantis 1.6.4.3, you will be able to specify "closed" dashes as an accepted behavior by Atlantis. "Open" dashes will still be the default option on install. But you'll be able to remove dashes from the list of punctuation signs requiring space before and after if it suits you better. Simply select the dashes in the "Smart Space Management" window:



and press Del. After that, Atlantis won't attempt to add spaces around dashes if you don't type them in yourself.

As always, this latest beta version of Atlantis Word Processor is available from the Betatesting page.

Optimizing PNG images

You might say "Who cares about file size nowadays? Modern PCs have hard disks with zillions of bytes of capacity. Why bother with file size optimization?"

It is true that modern hard disks have a much larger capacity than, let's say, 15 years ago when a 1 GB hard disk was considered a luxury. Today even USB flash drives have a larger capacity. But there are cases when file size really matters.

It might be the case if you run a Web site. In most cases, you've subscribed to only a limited monthly bandwidth. Now if your site has only a few visitors a day, probably your bandwidth limit is irrelevant. It will hardly be ever exceeded. But if your site has hundreds or thousands of visitors a day, the weight of your files might be critical. Let's suppose that your site harbors a 1 MB picture. If it gets viewed 100 times, this will add 100 MB to the traffic of your site. 1,000 views will generate an extra gigabyte of traffic. What if it gets viewed 10,000 or even more times? It isn't hard to imagine how many gigabytes of your allowed bandwidth will be eaten up. This is why optimizing graphic files saves site traffic. This in turn might allow you to switch to a cheaper Web hosting plan and save you money. Optimized pictures will also load faster in your visitors' Web browsers, and browsing your site will be all the more pleasant.

Having optimized graphic files in the eBooks or documents you create might also be important to spare download time to readers.

Now how can you optimize picture size?

Pictures already included in documents can be optimized in Atlantis by reducing their quality. But graphic files can also be optimized directly on your hard disk using OptiPNG by Cosmin Truţa. This free utility shrinks PNG image files (PNG being one of the most popular image formats among Web site designers). OptiPNG performs lossless optimization of PNG files, plus it can convert images in other formats (BMP, GIF, etc) to optimized PNG.

OptiPNG is a command-line (console) application for Windows. You can download it directly from its home site:

http://optipng.sourceforge.net/

But there is a more convenient way to use this utility. A special setup file of OptiPNG created by Dmitry Vlasko not only installs OptiPNG on your system, but also integrates it into the Windows shell. Pictures can then be optimized directly in Windows Explorer by right-clicking their filenames. You'll find this setup file at the OptiPNG Windows shell integration home page.

Here are full instructions on how to install and use this utility:

Click the following link to download the SetupOptiPNG.rar compressed file:

http://dms-journal.ho.ua/storage/software/OptiPNG/SetupOptiPNG.rar

Then extract SetupOptiPNG.msi from SetupOptiPNG.rar, run it, and follow the onscreen instructions.

To adjust the OptiPNG settings, use the "Start > Programs > OptiPNG Settings" shortcut.

To optimize any PNG image on your hard disk, right-click it in Windows Explorer, and choose the "OptiPNG: default profile" menu command:



What could be more convenient?

What's under the hood: Supercompact RTFs

Have you ever wondered what are those "supercompact RTFs" enabled by default in the "Tools | Options..." window of Atlantis?



Are there two flavors of the RTF format?

Not actually. There is a single Rich Text Format standard from Microsoft. But RTF files can be generated differently.

To begin with, any RTF document generated by Atlantis, is a valid RTF file compliant with the RTF specification. But this specification allows some document elements to be saved in multiple different but still valid ways. Atlantis simply exploits the possibilities offered by the RTF specification to generate smaller RTF files.

You might wonder why then offer to save "non-supercompact" RTFs if "supercompact" RTFs are always smaller than their "traditional" counterparts? The answer is very simple: not every word processing application supports all the features of the RTF specification. Consequently not every software can display supercompact RTFs correctly. Luckily, this mainly applies to older word processors. All major modern word processors (including MS Word and OpenOffice) display the supercompact RTFs of Atlantis as intended. So you might need to uncheck the "Save supercompact RTF documents" option in Atlantis only if you are going to send your RTF documents to someone whose word processor cannot display supercompact RTFs correctly.

OK, then what's exactly the difference between "supercompact RTFs" and "non-supercompact RTFs"? If you need technical details, here they are:

1) A paragraph in traditional RTFs is normally terminated by a sequence of 6 characters (bytes):

\par<carriage_return><line_feed>

"<carriage_return><line_feed>" (or CR/LF - two bytes with codes 13 and 10) is a standard combination terminating any line in most plain text files in Windows.

A paragraph in supercompact RTFs is terminated by 2 characters (bytes) only:

\<carriage_return>

You save 4 bytes per paragraph if you save the document as supercompact.

2) Most non-English characters in traditional RTFs are stored in a 4-byte format:

\'<NN>

<NN> is a two-byte character code in hexadecimal format.

In supercompact RTFs, such characters are normally saved as a single byte containing the ANSI code of a character.

For example, the "é" letter (e-acute) is saved to traditional RTFs as

\'e9

This "é" letter is stored within supercompact RTFs as a single byte with code 233.

So, you save 3 bytes per a non-English character if you save as supercompact.

3) Finally, a difference which makes supercompact files really a useful option.

Pictures are always stored in traditional RTFs as Windows metafiles.

In supercompact RTFs, pictures are stored as PNGs or JPEGs.

In most cases, metafiles are much bigger than their counterparts in the PNG or JPEG format. Have I said "much bigger"? I actually wanted to say "MUCH-MUCH bigger". A tenfold difference in size between the metafile and PNG versions of the same picture is a completely normal thing.

So if your RTF document contains pictures, you can DRAMATICALLY shrink its file size by saving as supercompact RTF.

Tweaking ePubs (3): Page margins

More tips on what you might need to adjust in your EPUB files generated by Atlantis.

Any Atlantis EPUB contains a CSS file with the book formatting. You can view/edit this CSS file with the tweak_epub utility:



The first line of this style.css normally contains this text:



By modifying numbers in this line, you can control page margins of your book: