Fourth Time a Charm

After three rip errors, I received notice today that the fourth PDF file was able to process correctly and print. It has shipped. Although I am now two weeks behind where I wanted to be, there is hope to have The Disappearance of Ichabod Crane ready for distribution by September, which gives me time to have it available by October, which would be the best season for it.

Here's what I've learned:

The information I received from the printer was that there was some sort of corruption within the footnotes of the file. I had used the font TeX Gyre Termes for the footnote references. TeX Gyre Termes is an eminently readable font which had lead me to pick it for my main font for Raceboy and Super Qwok Adventures. However, in the test copy, I found that the ligatures would print as a whole word and create unnatural divisions within words ("fly," for example, might look like "fl y"). Given this strange result with ligatures, I decided to remove TeX Gyre Termes from the Ichabod Crane file altogether. In fact, I went one step further and tried to find and replace every instance of formatting a font as Times New Roman also. Doing so led me to a couple lines that I had managed to miss which is frustrating, because I hate being imperfect (despite the nature of the universe, whose main function is to remind me of my imperfections). Somehow, mysteriously, Times New Roman is sort of like a virus. I never could totally eliminate the font from being embedded when the file was converted to a PDF. I guess Times New Roman is sort of in Word's DNA.

Anyway, I replaced TeX Gyre Termes with Linux Libertine, which is another eminently readable font. I had to do this because for some mysterious reason, Word will not use the Advanced Font options in relation to the Footnote Reference style. What I mean is that if you open a Word file on the Mac in Word 2011 and type the characters 1234567890, you may see the bottoms of the digits staggered almost like lower and upper case letters. If you do, it's because the font face you've chosen uses "old-style" numbers. To modify this with the newer Open Type fonts, you can select Format>Font>Advanced Tab. From the Number Forms combo box, pick Lining to modify the style of the characters to line up on the baseline. This formatting trick would not work in the Styles for Footnote Reference. It simply ignored lining the digits, so I had to pick a font that lines the numbers by default.

When all was said and done, I re-created the PDF, re-uploaded it, re-ordered it, and finally, it's on its way.