Plain Text to DAISY
Production ProceduresVersion 0.4
Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Overview of the Process
• Chapter-at-a-Time Editing/Preparation
• Stage 1 – Editing and Preparing for DAISY Conversion
• Original Textbooks & Other Hardcopy Materials
• Save as Plain Text
• Edit the Plain Text
• Final Edit and Save
• Alternative 1: Prep for “Using Dolphin Producer with EasePublisher”
• Alternative 2: Prep for “Using Only EasePublisher”
• File Formats from Publishers
• MS Word Formats (*.rtf, *.doc)
• Adobe PDF
• Legacy (Previously Edited) E-Text (*.txt, *.rtf, *.doc)
• Prepare the Legacy Text for DAISY Conversion
• Final Edit and Save
• Alternative 1: Prep for “Using Dolphin Producer with EasePublisher”
• Alternative 2: Prep for “Using Only EasePublisher”
• Stage 2 – Generating a DAISY DTB
• Using Dolphin Producer with EasePublisher
• The Dolphin Producer Toolbar
• Making sure your Producer settings are correct
• Generate the DTB
• Open the DAISY Book in EasePublisher
• Build the Project
• Using Only EasePublisher
• Create new DAISY project in EasePublisher
• Markup the DAISY book in EasePublisher
• TTS Encode
• Build the Project
• Stage 3 – Assembling Chapters into a Complete Book
• Build the Project
• Resolving Errors
Introduction
These procedures are a description of the Plain Text method for creating DAISY e-text books. They include methods for generating these books from:
scans of printed material such as textbooks,
electronic files delivered by book publishers, and
previously edited (legacy) e-text materials.
These procedures are typically used for non-technical books such as history books or other materials which are not equation-heavy. DAISY (Digital Accessible Information SYstem) is a standard for creating “digital talking books,” or DTBs, for use by persons with print disabilities. DAISY is a major leap forward from current e-text readers such as OpenBook. DAISY DTBs can be read by computer software such as EaseReader or downloaded to portable hardware devices for playback.
For the purposes of this document, we will be assuming that the user will be using EaseReader to read their DTBs. The main point to remember with the Plain Text method is that you should be able to do an entire document without inputting anything that’s not directly on the keyboard.
Overview of the Process
Section 1.01 Chapter-at-a-Time Editing/Preparation
This guide assumes that the bulk of your Stage 1 work (“Editing and Preparing for DAISY Conversion”) will be done on a per-chapter basis (as opposed to trying to edit/prepare an entire book in one sitting). This is because:
1. A student may need to start reading chapter material right away in order to keep pace with the class, and you have not been given the lead time to edit the entire book before their class has started. Instead, you will edit, generate, and deliver the material to the student on a per-chapter basis.
2. It is much easier for you and your coworkers to manage the process if you complete all the steps for each chapter, rather than doing each step in turn on the whole book. This allows you and your coworkers to break the work into discrete units that can be completed in a single work session. All you need to do is record which chapter you completed, and someone else can pick up the work starting with the next chapter.
After one or more chapters have been edited and prepared for DAISY conversion, and you want to deliver them to the student, you will perform Stage 2 (“Generating a DAISY DTB”). You will then follow the Delivery procedure for delivering the DAISY DTB to the student.
At a later time, you will want to go back to the individual DAISY DTBs that make up the entire book and reassemble them into a single complete DAISY book and deliver that to the student. Stage 3, “Assembling Chapters into a Complete Book”, describes this process.
Stage 1 – Editing and Preparing for DAISY Conversion
Section 1.02 Original Textbooks & Other Hardcopy Materials
Save as Plain Text
6. Attention to detail in plaintext is crucial, just as in all other formats we work in.
7. Newly scanned documents will be in .rtf format. Our procedure is to separate a scanned book into individual .rtf files for editing by chapter; i.e., a file for front matter, a separate file for each chapter, and a file for back matter.
8. To cut down on editing, remove tables and figures, and to help us recognize the scanning mistakes, follow these steps:
a. Open the document, highlight all of the text (can be done by pressing CTRL + A or by selecting Edit from the main menu bar, then Select All), and copy the text (can be done by pressing CTRL + C or by selecting Edit from the main menu bar, then Copy).
b. Open a Notepad file (Start button, Programs, Accessories, Notepad) and paste the text that you previously copied (can be done by pressing CTRL + V or by selecting Edit from the main menu bar, then Paste).
c. Open a new Microsoft Word file (can be done by pressing CTRL + N or by selecting File from the main menu bar, then New) and copy (CTRL + C) and paste (CTRL + V) the text from the Notepad file.
9. Once you have done this, break the book into chapters, saving the chapter files to your folder using the naming conventions in the Basic Editing Procedures, or according to the Team Leader’s instructions, making sure that the files are in .rtf format.
10. In the next section you will edit the individual chapter files in preparation for conversion to DAISY.
Edit the Plain Text
1. Open Files: Open each chapter in Word and compare the pages to the pages in the original textbook. The purpose of editing is to clean up any words and sentences that may have been mangled in the scanning and conversion process. Edit for misspelled words, additional characters, and reinsert missing words or page numbers. Other types of edits will also be made to allow the text to be read properly in the DAISY reader. See the following steps.
2. Headings and Page Numbers: The first page of a chapter or document should not have any text page numbering appearing on it. All subsequent pages will have page numbers. The reason for this is that it makes for a cleaner DAISY book later in the process. Make certain that any headings on the pages as well as the page numbers are separated from the text, i.e. with an extra line above and below the page numbers and the headings.
3. Mark Up Heading Styles: The DAISY format conversion tools you will use later can accurately reproduce and index Chapter, Section, Sub-section, etc. headings, if they are properly formatted in Microsoft Word.
To do this, highlight the text of the heading, then select the Style drop-down field on the Word toolbar and choose the proper heading style. This will “tag” that text as an MS-Word style heading. For the top-level heading (i.e. the chapter title), using the style Heading 1. For lower-level subheadings, subsections, etc. choose the appropriate lower-level heading style (e.g. Heading 2, Heading 3, etc.) in the hierarchy. There can be up to 6 levels of headings.
Example:
6 - Chapter Title [this is in Heading 1 style].
6.1 Introduction [this is in Heading 2 style].
Introductory text paragraph, blah, blah, blah.
6.2 Primary Colors [this is in Heading 2 style].
6.2.1 Red [this is in Heading 3 style].
4. Word/Sentence Splits: Most important is that regardless of the typeface or wrapping of text lines, the on-screen page will start and finish on the same word(s) as the hardcopy textbook.
a. Hyphenated words that go from one page to the next must be reunited on either of the two pages.
b. If sentences are split between pages they should remain split.
5. Pictures and Graphics: For the purposes of this training, remove all pictures and graphics - we will be determining how to deal with these later. REPLACE pictures and graphics with the following information in [block] parenthesis:
a. [Picture/graphic titled “place title here” has been removed. Please refer to page #X in the textbook]
b. [Caption “This is a photo of….”]
6. Parenthesis Spacing: By default, EaseReader usually does not verbalize regular parentheses, even if you put spaces between the parentheses and their contents. EaseReader does verbalize parenthesized text distinctively, however. Is this acceptable? If not, we can update the “Lexicon” settings to force verbalization of parentheses. (EaseReader will always verbalize square brackets and curly brackets, whether spaces are added or not).
7. (Foot)note Referencing: We will need to discuss how to handle footnote referencing. We have a few options, shown below – these are verbalized differently in EaseReader. We should determine which is preferable or whether to do something different. Options: square-bracket footnoting [9] or spelled-out footnoting (footnote 9).
8. Symbol Translation: We will stick with the procedure that all symbols should be written in text form. EaseReader does not read symbols in the manner that WinTriangle would.
Examples:
= alpha, = beta, x y = summation_x ^y, = least integer greater than begin
If you have any questions on how to write out any symbols, refer to the Greek symbols and problem symbols documents on the Alt Format server (Alt Format folder > Training Editing Procedures > Plain text stuff). If neither of these documents answers your questions, ask a Team Leader.
9. Superscripts/Subscripts: If you have superscripts or subscripts they should be indicated using a ^ for superscripts and _ for subscripts.
Example:
8a 8^a, 8b 8_b, 8a b 8_a ^b
10. Mathematical Operators: Addition remains the same (+), Subtraction is represented by a small dash (-), Multiplication should be an asterisk (*), and Division should be shown by a slash (/). Unlike Triangle, these symbols should be in Arial font, NOT Symbol. In order for EaseReader to read these properly, there should be no spaces anywhere in the equation. [Note that this is the opposite technique from the pre-DAISY method]
Example:
a b c d e a+b-c*d/e
11. Roman Numerals: If you come across Roman numerals in the text, in most cases they must be changed to their numerical equivalents (i.e. XVI should be changed to 16). These cases include when they appear in front pages, indices, and most places within the text itself. The only cases in which Roman numerals are to be left alone are when they are references, mainly to materials that are not in the text you’re editing.
Examples:
King Henry VIII King Henry 8
World War II World War 2
In Chapter IV of Tergenev,... Don’t change
...Schniever, Vol XIX, page 223 ... Don’t change
12. Quotation/Apostrophe Replacement: Quotation marks (“) and apostrophes (‘) do not need to be changed globally in the document. EaseReader will read these correctly regardless of whether they are straight up and down or not.
13. Block Shortcuts: We follow the same procedures (shortcuts) for inserting footnotes, figures, examples, etc. as we use in Triangle.
Note: When you use these shortcuts, the colon (:) is found in Symbol font. Globally replace it once you are done editing the document.
Block Type Shortcut Shortcut
Example Alt + r, x
Problem Alt + r, p
Figure Alt + r, f
Table Alt + r, b
Sidenote Alt + r, s
Footnote Alt + r, o
Source code Alt + r, c
Theorem Alt + r, t
Equation Alt + r, e
14. Block Quotes: A block quote is a section of text that you’ll find indented on both sides. Usually, these blocks of text are references or quotes from other sources. When finding block quotes, one should treat them using the same procedure as with footnotes, sidenotes, equations, etc. There is currently no macro for citing block quotes. When citing block quotes, the following convention is to be used:
Example:
In the book it looks like this:
This is a block quote. It is indented on both sides from the normal page margin. You use this when you insert an extended quotation from another source.
It should look like this in the finished document:
Block quote:
This is a block quote. It is indented on both sides from the normal page margin. You use this when you insert an extended quotation from another source.
End block quote.
Note: Notice that the tab spacing on each side of the block quote has been removed.
15. Unrecognized Symbols: Occasionally, you will run across Copyright (), Registered (), Trademark (), Set Addition (), and Set Multiplication () symbols. These are NOT to be inserted. Rather, put the letters inside parenthesis. For copyright, this would be (C). For registered, this would be (R). For trademark, this would be (TM). For set addition, this would be (). For set multiplication, this would be ().
Final Edit and Save
Alternative 1: Prep for “Using Dolphin Producer with EasePublisher”
1. Page Setup: To allow MS Word automatic page numbering to work properly in conjunction with Dolphin Producer, we need to change the Page Setup parameters to use a much larger paper size, to insure that all the text from each scanned book page will be properly contained within one MS Word page. This will insure that each book page number corresponds exactly with each MS Word page number. To set this, do the following:
a. Select File→Page Setup…
b. Change Paper size to 11” x 17”
c. Click OK.
2. Page Numbering: For Dolphin Producer to be able to properly generate page numbers in the DAISY book, they will have to be defined as Microsoft Word style page numbers. To do this you need to do the following:
a. Turn on Page Numbering in the document by selecting Insert→Page Numbers. This will open a window to set page numbering options; choose Position: Top of Page, and Alignment: Left, and checkmark “Show number on first page.” Then (in this same window) click on the Format… button at the bottom, then under Page numbering select the Start at: radio button and type in the correct page number from the original textbook for this page. Click OK, then OK again. Page numbers will now appear from the beginning to the end of the section, starting at the page number you specified.
b. Now that you have turned on Page Numbers you need to make sure that each page “breaks” in the proper place so that its text corresponds to the same page number as in the original textbook. This means that at each place in the text where a new page starts in the original textbook, a Page Break will need to be inserted. This is done by positioning the cursor at the proper location within the text and pressing CTRL + Enter. Repeat this procedure throughout the entire section.
c. Verify that pages don’t overflow: the full text from each page in the original textbook, including footnotes, should fit within a single MS Word page (e.g. between page breaks). If any pages overflow, they will throw off the page numbering when the final DAISY book. If you see overflow on a page, do the following:
i. Select all the text on the page that overflows, including the overflow.
ii. Reduce the font size to the largest size that allows all the text to fit on a single page.
d. Compare the “in text” page numbers that were scanned in with the MS Word page numbers in the header. These can be used to verify that all page numbering is correct. Once you have confirmed that all the page numbering is correct, you can delete the scanned page numbers. [These could be left in too; there may be no harm in doing that.]
3. Save RTF File: Select File→Save to save the edited document again before conversion to DAISY. You will save it in its current format, RTF.
4. Keep the file open in your MS Word session, and go to the section titled “Using Dolphin Producer with EasePublisher” in Stage 2, Generating a DAISY DTB.
Alternative 2: Prep for “Using Only EasePublisher”
1. Save the File: Select File→Save to save the edited document again before conversion to DAISY. You will save it in its current format, RTF.
2. Re-save as an HTML File: You will want to re-save the file as an HTML file prior to importing it into EasePublisher. Select File→Save As… and save it as Web Page, Filtered (*.htm; *.html) as shown in the following figure:
By default, MS Word will use the first line of the file as the Page title. If the first line is not the main heading title of the chapter, you will want to override Word’s default behavior by clicking the Change Title… button:
Type in the correct title and click OK:
Then click the Save button on the Save As screen. MS Word will display a warning:
Click Yes.
3. Close MS Word and go to the section titled “Using Only EasePublisher” in Stage 2, Generating a DAISY DTB.
Section 1.03 File Formats from Publishers
Increasingly, we will be receiving electronic versions of textbooks from the publishers on CD or DVD. These versions will almost always be files that are either in MS Word format (.rtf or .doc) or in Adobe PDF (.pdf) format.
Unfortunately, these files are delivered to us in varying states of “readiness” for conversion into DAISY – some books will be relatively clean and easy to convert, and others will be quite messed up and require a lot more work to convert. For example, some will be already separated by front matter and chapters with well-organized text that needs relatively few edits, while others will arrive as one large disorganized file with numerous errors.
What will be important in either case (but especially the latter) is that you have the original edition of the textbook (or a perfect copy) to which you can refer as you edit the publisher’s electronic files. This way you can edit them knowing exactly what the printed product looks like, and how to reproduce it effectively in preparation for DAISY conversion.
MS Word Formats (*.rtf, *.doc)
[Insert procedures for MS Word format conversion/editing here].
Adobe PDF
[Insert procedures for PDF format conversion/editing here].
Section 1.04 Legacy (Previously Edited) E-Text (*.txt, *.rtf, *.doc)
Prepare the Legacy Text for DAISY Conversion
1. Open Files: Open each chapter in Word and compare the pages to the pages in the original textbook. You will be reorganizing the documents to more closely match the page numbering and page breaks from the original book.
2. Headings and Page Numbers: The first page of a chapter or document should not have any text page numbering appearing on it. All subsequent pages will have page numbers. The reason for this is that it makes for a cleaner DAISY book later in the process.
3. Mark Up Heading Styles: The DAISY format conversion tools you will use later can accurately reproduce and index Chapter, Section, Sub-section, etc. headings, if they are properly formatted in Microsoft Word.
To do this, highlight the text of the heading, then select the Style drop-down field on the Word toolbar and choose the proper heading style. This will “tag” that text as an MS-Word style heading. For the top-level heading (i.e. the chapter title), using the style Heading 1. For lower-level subheadings, subsections, etc. choose the appropriate lower-level heading style (e.g. Heading 2, Heading 3, etc.) in the hierarchy. There can be up to 6 levels of headings.
Example:
6 - Chapter Title [this is in Heading 1 style].
6.1 Introduction [this is in Heading 2 style].
Introductory text paragraph, blah, blah, blah.
6.2 Primary Colors [this is in Heading 2 style].
6.2.1 Red [this is in Heading 3 style].
4. Word/Sentence Splits: The legacy text will probably be paginated differently than the book due to historical editing procedures. Before converting to DAISY, we will want to restore the pagination to the way it was in the original book.
This means that you will need to split paragraphs in the same places where they are split in the book, and make sure that the page numbers are properly placed between the splits. In other words, the on-screen page must start and finish on the same word(s) as the hardcopy textbook. Special rules:
a. For hyphenated words that go from one page to the next in the original textbook, simply place the entire word on either of the two pages in the file.
b. If sentences are split between pages in the textbook, they should remain split between pages in the file.
Final Edit and Save
Alternative 1: Prep for “Using Dolphin Producer with EasePublisher”
5. Page Setup: To allow MS Word automatic page numbering to work properly in conjunction with Dolphin Producer, we need to change the Page Setup parameters to use a much larger paper size, to insure that all the text from each scanned book page will be properly contained within one MS Word page. This will insure that each book page number corresponds exactly with each MS Word page number. To set this, do the following:
a. Select File→Page Setup…
b. Change Paper size to 11” x 17”
c. Click OK.
6. Page Numbering: For Dolphin Producer to be able to properly generate page numbers in the DAISY book, they will have to be defined as Microsoft Word style page numbers. To do this you need to do the following:
e. Turn on Page Numbering in the document by selecting Insert→Page Numbers. This will open a window to set page numbering options; choose Position: Top of Page, and Alignment: Left, and checkmark “Show number on first page.” Then (in this same window) click on the Format… button at the bottom, then under Page numbering select the Start at: radio button and type in the correct page number from the original textbook for this page. Click OK, then OK again. Page numbers will now appear from the beginning to the end of the section, starting at the page number you specified.
f. Now that you have turned on Page Numbers you need to make sure that each page “breaks” in the proper place so that its text corresponds to the same page number as in the original textbook. This means that at each place in the text where a new page starts in the original textbook, a Page Break will need to be inserted. This is done by positioning the cursor at the proper location within the text and pressing CTRL + Enter. Repeat this procedure throughout the entire section.
g. Verify that pages don’t overflow: the full text from each page in the original textbook, including footnotes, should fit within a single MS Word page (e.g. between page breaks). If any pages overflow, they will throw off the page numbering when the final DAISY book. If you see overflow on a page, do the following:
i. Select all the text on the page that overflows, including the overflow.
ii. Reduce the font size to the largest size that allows all the text to fit on a single page.
h. Compare the “in text” page numbers that were scanned in with the MS Word page numbers in the header. These can be used to verify that all page numbering is correct. Once you have confirmed that all the page numbering is correct, you can delete the scanned page numbers. [These could be left in too; there may be no harm in doing that.]
7. Save RTF File: Select File→Save to save the edited document again before conversion to DAISY. You will save it in its current format, RTF.
8. Keep the file open in your MS Word session, and go to the section titled “Using Dolphin Producer with EasePublisher” in Stage 2, Generating a DAISY DTB.
Alternative 2: Prep for “Using Only EasePublisher”
4. Save the File: Select File→Save to save the edited document again before conversion to DAISY. You will save it in its current format, RTF.
5. Re-save as an HTML File: You will want to re-save the file as an HTML file prior to importing it into EasePublisher. Select File→Save As… and save it as Web Page, Filtered (*.htm; *.html) as shown in the following figure:
By default, MS Word will use the first line of the file as the Page title. You will want to change this to the main heading title of the chapter you are saving, by clicking the Change Title… button:
Type in the correct title and click OK:
Then click the Save button on the Save As screen. MS Word will display a warning:
Click Yes.
6. Close MS Word and go to the section titled “Using Only EasePublisher” in Stage 2, Generating a DAISY DTB.
Stage 2 – Generating a DAISY DTB
Section 1.05 Using Dolphin Producer with EasePublisher
The next step is to generate the DAISY Digital Talking Book (DTB). To do this, you use the Dolphin Producer toolbar plug-in in Microsoft Word.
The Dolphin Producer Toolbar
This toolbar should be visible as a floating toolbar in your Word session or as a series of icons near the top of your Word window. It should look like the following:
If you do not see these icons anywhere you may need to activate the toolbar. To do this, select View→Toolbars→Dolphin Producer. (If Dolphin Producer does not appear as a toolbar option, then you do not have it installed. See TAP technical support for assistance in installing it).
Making sure your Producer settings are correct
You may only need to do this the first time you use Producer, but you will want to confirm that your DTB creation settings are correct. To do this, click on the Settings button:
Select the Audio tab.
Use the following settings:
• Create audio using: <which voice?>
• Volume: 80%
• Speed: 0
• Audio quality: Low (24 kbps) [this does not noticeably affect quality and it will keep the file sizes small]
• Path to save: <which folder/directory?>
• Display style: None (?)
• Create text-only DTB: UNCHECKED
• Launch EaseReader after conversion: CHECKED (to make sure it is created and opens in EaseReader).
Click on OK to save the settings.
Generate the DTB
Click on the DTB button to create the DAISY DTB:
Producer will ask you if it is ok to save the Word document:
Click Yes.
A progress bar will then display showing the progress of the DAISY book generation. When it is finished, it will launch EaseReader and open your book chapter. You may want to scroll through the book and check any sections that you want to verify are correct.
If there are any errors, close EaseReader, go back to your Word session, and make corrections.
Then press the DTB button again. When you do this, it will ask you if it is ok to save again. This time it will also prompt you:
Click Yes. The DAISY book will then open again in EaseReader. Once it looks ok, you can close both EaseReader and MS Word and finish building the book using EasePublisher.
Open the DAISY Book in EasePublisher
At this point the book should be mostly completed. All you need to do is open it in EasePublisher and check the Table of Contents editor to make sure the Headings and Page Numbering look correct. If they look good (or after you have corrected them), then you will move on to the final step, Build the Project.
1. Start EasePublisher: Ensure that the HASP key is connected. EasePublisher needs the HASP Key in order to work.
2. Open Project: Click on the Open Project menu link. This will open a dialog box:
When you have navigated to a folder with your DAISY book, it will say “Book found!”. Click OK. You will see the following message window:
Click OK.
3. Check Table of Contents editor. The book will be opened in EasePublisher. Look at the Table of Contents editor window and check the headings and page numbers to make sure they look right. If you find anything that needs to be fixed, use the editing techniques described in the section titled Markup the DAISY book in EasePublisher, then return here to move on to the next step.
Build the Project
The final step is to Build project. This will assemble the text synched with the audio and make a fully navigable DAISY talking book. Select Project→Build project… (or press F9) to open the “Build Options” window. This is where you’ll set the Final Recording options, Quality Settings and Project Location for your computer:
1. On the Validation tab, make sure that Before validation, automatically fill empty meta data is checked. The other default settings on this tab should be fine.
2. Click on the Encoding tab. Make sure the Build distribution as: (at the bottom) is set to “Daisy 2.02 (audioFullText)”:
3. While on the Encoding tab, all of the other settings should be set as shown above – especially the MP3 frequencies and the MP3 quality mode. They should be set to 16 kbps and Good (fast encoding) unless otherwise directed.
4. On the Folders tab, make sure that Put distribution books in sub folder of: is set to “the current project.”:
5. Press Start. The project will begin building and you will see the following screens as the work progresses automatically:
a. Validate Project
b. Cleanup
c. Removing audio markers
d. Encode mp3
e. Modify documents
f. Build report
6. At the end, a Build report will display. Check the Build report for errors. If there are any errors, see the Resolving Errors section of this guide, and/or consult a team leader. If there are no errors, click Exit and move on to the next task.
Section 1.06 Using Only EasePublisher
Create new DAISY project in EasePublisher
4. Start EasePublisher: After the file(s) have been edited and saved as .htm, start EasePublisher. Ensure that the HASP key is connected. EasePublisher needs the HASP Key in order to work.
5. Create a New Project: Under “Create a New Project,” click on “From document(s)”:
a. The Create new project wizard will open:
b. Click the Select folder button. The Select/create a new folder dialog will open, looking similar to the following screenshot:
c. You will want to navigate to the working folder on the server where you will create the new book folder for this project. Then you will click the New folder button. The screen should look similar to the following:
d. For the New folder name, type in “<book_title>_DTB”; for example:
e. Click OK. You will return to the Create new project wizard dialog. Here you can now change the Project title to match the folder name you just created, as follows:
f. Click Next.
6. Add HTML file(s): Now it is time to select the .htm file(s) that will make up your project. Note: in the procedures that follow, the examples will show how you would add multiple chapter files to a new project. If you are only working on the single chapter, the procedures would be identical, except that you only need to select the single chapter file you are working on. After assigning the project title and folder, you will see the screen:
a. Click on the top right button “Add one or more files to the list.” Navigate to the folder where your *.htm file(s) are, and select them by dragging a selection box around them, or by CTRL-clicking each one:
b. Once all of your files are selected, click the Open button. It is possible that you will see a series of screens pop up, one for each file in your project. If you do, they will look similar to the following:
This is nothing to be concerned about – just click OK for each screen until you get back to the Add files screen. It will look like this now:
c. Ensure that all your files are listed and in the correct order. You may have to stretch the Name column and scroll the window to the right to see the file names. If there are any files out of order, select them and use the up/down arrow buttons on the right to move them into the proper order.
a. Once your files are in order, click Next.
7. Configure project creation settings: In the next screen you will make sure your project creation settings are properly specified. Make sure the check-box “Import meta data information from the documents” is check-marked, and the “Import all meta data” radio button is selected. Your screen should look as follows:
8. Generate the project: click Generate, and allow program to run …
Markup the DAISY book in EasePublisher
From this point forward you will be marking up the assembled documents for final conversion into DAISY. The EasePublisher main screen should now be open with the first section of your book in the text screen. A dialog box titled “Table of Contents editor” should also be visible; if it is not showing, you will want to turn it on by pressing F4 or by selecting View→Open Table of Contents view. Note: you will be going back and forth between these two screens, so you will probably want to leave the Table of Contents editor open for the duration of the DAISY markup process. It provides easy access to the various components you will be marking-up and generally makes the whole process easier. At this point your computer screen should look similar to this:
1. Confirm chapters in order: The first thing you want to do is make sure the textbook sections or chapters are in the correct order. If something is out of order, under the Headings tab in the Table of Contents editor, highlight the section that is out of order, then use the up or down arrow buttons at the top of the editor window to move the section into its proper order:
You may also find duplicate headings or other text which is shown incorrectly as a heading in the Table of Contents editor. You can delete these by selecting the erroneous heading in the Table of Contents editor and clicking the red “X” button.
2. Page Number Markup: It may seem odd that we are adding page numbers again, when they are already in the text. What we are actually doing is inserting special page markers in the DAISY book identifying these locations as the start of a new page, so that the user can jump directly to that page number. When the project is complete you will see how these numbers are used for navigation.
a. Select the page number text you want to make into a page marker. It should automatically highlight in yellow. Example:
[If it does not highlight in yellow, it means that EasePublisher has not recognized it as a “sentence.” If this happens, you will need to fix it using the following procedure:
i. First, click on the HTML button on the icon toolbar. This will open up a new window which is a simple text editor.
ii. Click and drag to select the page number text.
iii. Press F4 (“Make sentence”). The program marks it as a sentence.
iv. Select File→Exit (or click the X in the upper right corner of the window) to exit out of HTML editor. Click Yes when prompted to save changes.
v. Now select the page number text you want to make into a page marker. It will highlight in yellow.]
b. Press Ctrl + 1. A window will appear:
c. Enter the page you want. INSERT THE SAME PAGE NUMBER for both Begin page and End page. Under “class attribute,” it should be page-normal.
d. Press Add. The page number will appear again below the page number text, and the page is now properly marked. Example:
e. Repeat the above 4 steps for each normal page number in the entire project.
3. Front Matter Page Number Markup: Some page numbers, such as the lowercase roman numeral page numbers usually found in the “front matter” section of the book (i.e. table of contents, acknowledgements, etc.) must be marked slightly differently. If you have a book with these page numbers, here is the procedure for marking them:
a. Select the page number text you want to make into a page marker. It should automatically highlight in yellow. [If they do not highlight in yellow, use the same fix-up procedures as described in the previous step].
b. Press Ctrl + 1. A window will appear:
c. Enter the page you want. Again, insert the same page number for both both Begin page and End page. This time, under “class attribute,” it should be page-front.
d. Press Add. The page number will appear again below the page number text, and the page is now properly marked. Example:
e. Repeat the above 4 steps for each page in the front matter section. Note that EasePublisher will revert back to page-normal for the next page marked, so you will have to re-select page-front for each front matter page you mark.
4. Heading and Sub-Heading Markup: EasePublisher should have recognized all of the proper headings in the HTML file(s) you imported into this project, and they should appear in the Table of Contents editor window. If so, you will not have to do this step.
However, if a heading was missed in the editing stage, or if for some other reason you want to add more headings, here is the procedure. It is a similar process to page number markup:
a. Make sure you are looking at the “Headings” tab in the “Table of Contents” window.
b. Click on the text in the project you want to make into a heading, as in the example below:
c. After highlighting the desired text, click Ctrl + Shift + S. The following prompt will appear:
d. Click Yes. Then another prompt will appear:
e. Click No.
f. The Table of Contents editor now includes the text you marked as a new heading, and will look similar to the following:
g. By default it will insert it as a Level 1 heading. To make it something other than a Level 1 heading select the item in the Table of Contents editor, and click the right arrow button to change the heading level:
h. You should see a “2” next to your new heading after you press the right arrow button. If you want to change it back to a Level 1, just click the left arrow button.
5. Final HTML Edits: Should you notice any typographical errors or other mistakes that were missed during the plain text editing process, you can fix them in EasePublisher. To do this you will use the “Edit the content in the HTML editor” feature of EasePublisher.
a. First, click on the HTML button on the icon toolbar. This will open up a new window which is a simple text editor.
b. Find the text you want to edit and change it accordingly.
c. If you have added text, you will want to double-check to make sure EasePublisher has recognized it as a “sentence” to be read aloud. Go back and click your mouse cursor on the text you just added. If the text is highlighted in yellow, then everything is ok – EasePublisher recognizes the text. However, if the text does NOT highlight in yellow, then EasePublisher does not recognize it, and you need to tell it to “Make sentence”:
i. Click and drag to select the page number text.
ii. Press F4 (“Make sentence”). The program marks it as a sentence.
d. Once you are finished with edits, select File→Exit (or click the X in the upper right corner of the window) to exit out of HTML editor. Click Yes when prompted to save changes..
TTS Encode
When you have fixed your text and added page numbers and subheadings, you are ready to make a DAISY Talking Book. You must now perform the two final tasks in the product creation. The first is Text-to-Speech (TTS) Encoding. TTS encoding will use computer-generated voices (whichever ones are installed on your computer) to add speech to the DAISY book.
1. Click on Tools→TTS Encode→Whole project [shortcut Ctrl + T]:
2. The TTS Settings window will appear, as shown below. Select the recommended voice and recording settings. Make sure that after you click on a voice, you click both the Use above settings as default button and the Use above settings for heading tags button. The recommended voice and settings are [need to recommend a voice and settings here]:
3. Click OK. This TTS encode will take anywhere from five minutes to a half hour depending on the size of the project. While it is encoding you will see a progress window similar to the following:
Build the Project
The final step is to Build project. This will assemble the text synched with the audio and make a fully navigable DAISY talking book. After the TTS Encode is done, select Project→Build project… (or press F9) to open the “Build Options” window. This is where you’ll set the Final Recording options, Quality Settings and Project Location for your computer:
1. On the Validation tab, make sure that Before validation, automatically fill empty meta data is checked. The other default settings on this tab should be fine.
2. Click on the Encoding tab. Make sure the Build distribution as: (at the bottom) is set to “Daisy 2.02 (audioFullText)”:
3. While on the Encoding tab, all of the other settings should be set as shown above – especially the MP3 frequencies and the MP3 quality mode. They should be set to 16 kbps and Good (fast encoding) unless otherwise directed.
4. On the Folders tab, make sure that Put distribution books in sub folder of: is set to “the current project.”:
5. Press Start. The project will begin building and you will see the following screens as the work progresses automatically:
a. Validate Project
b. Cleanup
c. Removing audio markers
d. Encode mp3
e. Modify documents
f. Build report
6. At the end, a Build report will display. Check the Build report for errors. If there are any errors, see the Resolving Errors section of this guide, and/or consult a team leader. If there are no errors, click Exit and move on to the next task.
Stage 3 – Assembling Chapters into a Complete Book
At some point, after all of the chapters of a book have been developed in DAISY individually, you will want to go back and reassemble all of them into one complete DAISY book. This stage describes the process of how to put individual DAISY chapters together into a single, larger DAISY book.
1. Start EasePublisher: Ensure that the HASP key is connected. EasePublisher needs the HASP Key in order to work.
2. Create new Simple project: Under Create a new project, click Simple project. The Create new project wizard will open:
3. First click the Select folder button. The Select/create a new folder dialog will open, looking similar to the following screenshot:
You will want to navigate to the working folder on the server where you will create the new book folder for this project. Then you will click the New folder button. The screen should look similar to the following:
For the New folder name, type in “<book_title>_DTB”; for example:
Click OK. You will return to the Create new project wizard dialog. Here you can now change the Project title to match the folder name you just created, as follows:
Click Generate.
EasePublisher will open in a new, blank project with the Project title you entered at the top of the page. Later you will clean things up a bit by removing this on-screen project title, after you have added chapters, in sequential order, to the book.
4. Import chapters: You will repeat this step for each chapter in the book, in order, until all the chapters have been added. Select Project-Import-Import NCC from other folder… as shown below:
“NCC” stands for Navigation Control Center and is the main index file of a DAISY book (in this case, the chapter “books”). A dialog window will open allowing you to navigate to the folder where your chapter ncc.html file is located:
Navigate to the chapter folder (example above) and double-click to open it (example below):
You do not want to select the ncc.html file located here – this is just a temporary file created during an earlier step. You always want to go one folder deeper and open the Daisy_202_audioFullText subfolder. This subfolder contains the finished (validated) DAISY ncc.html file:
Select this ncc.html file and click Open. A “Convert to UTF-8” window will appear:
Press No. The book is actually already in UTF-8 format and EasePublisher has not recognized this, so you need to overcome this bug by pressing No and changing the code page yourself. Once you press No, the following screen will appear:
As shown in the above screenshot, click on the drop-down menu for Source document’s code page: and choose 65001 (Unicode (UTF-8)). After doing this, click OK. EasePublisher will scan the file and identify all the headings within it. Then it will ask you which headings to import:
Click the Select All button to checkmark all of the headings. Important: after this, in the Insert at: drop-down menu, you should select Last NCC item. This will make sure your next chapter added will properly appear at the end of the book.
Click Import. The chapter will be fully imported, along with all the headings and page numbers within it.
You will want to repeat this step (Step 4) again for every chapter to be added to the book. As you do so, your Table of Contents editor window in EasePublisher should be showing the Headings list growing for each new set of headings added. When all of the chapters have been added, you will move on to Step 5 to do a bit of housecleaning.
5. Remove original title heading: During the import process, EasePublisher adds some extraneous material under the original title heading. We don’t need this heading, so we will remove it, which will also get rid of the extraneous material.
Unfortunately EasePublisher will not let you remove the first heading in a book, but there is a simple workaround for this. As shown in the next screen, select the first heading in the Table of Contents editor window:
After selecting it, click the down arrow button at the top of the window:
This will move the heading down one spot in the list, as you can see in the next screen below:
After you have moved it down, it is no longer the first heading in the book, and you can delete it. To do so, just click the red “X” button circled in the screen above. You will see the warning message:
Click Yes. This removes the heading and all the extraneous stuff underneath it, making for a cleaner DAISY book.
6. After you have imported all the chapters into EasePublisher and cleaned up the first heading, you will want to give the Table of Contents editor close examination to make sure all the chapters, headings, subheadings and page numbers are in the correct order. Look at the Table of Contents editor window and check the headings and page numbers to make sure they look right. If you find anything that needs to be fixed, use the editing techniques described in the section titled Markup the DAISY book in EasePublisher.
Build the Project
The final step to completing the entire book is to Build project. This will assemble the text synched with the audio and make a fully navigable DAISY talking book. Select Project→Build project… (or press F9) to open the “Build Options” window. This is where you’ll set the Final Recording options, Quality Settings and Project Location for your computer:
2. On the Validation tab, make sure that Before validation, automatically fill empty meta data is checked. The other default settings on this tab should be fine.
3. Click on the Encoding tab. Make sure the Build distribution as: (at the bottom) is set to “Daisy 2.02 (audioFullText)”:
4. While on the Encoding tab, all of the other settings should be set as shown above – especially the MP3 frequencies and the MP3 quality mode. They should be set to 16 kbps and Good (fast encoding) unless otherwise directed.
5. On the Folders tab, make sure that Put distribution books in sub folder of: is set to “the current project.”:
6. Press Start. The project will begin building and you will see the following screens as the work progresses automatically:
g. Validate Project
h. Cleanup
i. Removing audio markers
j. Encode mp3
k. Modify documents
l. Build report
7. At the end, a Build report will display. Check the Build report for errors. If there are any errors, see the Resolving Errors section of this guide, and/or consult a team leader. If there are no errors, click Exit and move on to the next task.
Resolving Errors
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