Fixed the Wordperfect formatting problem

After mentioning the problem here, went home and instead of trying to move the leftmost margin marker, moved the rightmost marker (which seemed to control indentation of lines after the first one) and set the paragraph format from centered to left justified and problem solved.

The book is now printed and bound it for $6.00 in two volumes and after going through it since seeing it in print is different than editting it on-screen, will send it off for a cousin to do some editting. It has the usual cover and front page stuff, two pages of color and B&W photos including one of Paul Whidden and family, me, Helen Whidden, Elsie Thoresen and David Graham Whidden and his wife, all responsible for Whidden genealogies over the years.

The preface is about fifty pages long, then the body starts off with updated Whyddon genealogy, a few pages on the first Whiddon known in the western hemisphere, a Captain Jacob Whidden who died and is buried in Trinidad but was a colleague of Sir Walter Raliegh. Then starting with Ichabod, on for fourteen generations, bibliography, index of material that will be on the CD-ROM including additional register reports for Newcomb, Hart, Freeman/Jarvinen and Faulkner, sources and index.

Will try to finance it in whole or in part by selling Whidden business directory space and hope to be able to print a thousand copies, hopefully getting a hundred or so in libraries though Canada, US and some in England.

It took about five Canon inkjet cartidges at about $20.00 each to print so is not cheap.

Cheers, Ray

New features being added to the CD-ROM, creating an index, preface

Lots of fun to report this week.

THE GOOD NEWS FIRST:

I'm putting all the photos collected over the past few years on the CD-ROM along with all the resources I can add, such as the electronic version of Miller's "History and Genealogy of the First Settlers of Colchester County....." among others.

Using a CD-ROM allows me to include all the material scanned in Nov 2004 in Seattle which is one researcher's work over 20 or so years photocopying material throughout New England and elsewhere.

Also, I'd several times looked through the several CD-ROM encyclopedias I have for various presidents, prime ministers, kings and queens so decided to make the ultimate list of sovereigns and prime ministers/presidents, so those tables will be on the CD-ROM.

I was going to include several other register reports on Hart, Jarvinen/Freeman, Newcomb, etc. in the book but with it reaching 1,500 pages and going to two volumes, those will be on the CD-ROM. Newcomb ends up being 300 pages. The others are mostly under 50 pages.

THE CHALLENGES:

I don't know what is wrong with my copies of Word97 and Word2000 because drag and drop clearly has a little check mark next to it but I can insert a picture from a file and it goes in ok but the only way to move it across the page is to modify the margins and I cannot put two pictures side by side. Well, I do have Wordperfect 8 which I haven't used in a long time and wouldn't you know it but it makes using pictures a dream. Drag and drop at your pleasure, resize, put captions under them and everything works like I thought Word should. I guess I'll have to get the latest version of Wordperfect after all.

So I now have two nice pages with my picture, Paul David Whidden's families color picture (he is co-author, having provided info on John/NH/1662 descent to the current day) and David Graham Whidden and his wife's B&W picture, Helen Henritzy Whidden's B&W picture taken about 1940-50 and Elsie Thoresen's (she provided 7,000 individuals in the WFNS supplement but asked to be mentioned as a contributor) color picture.

The body of the book has pretty much the same format throughout, though the bibliography is two column format and the index is three column format. However, the preface has many different formats, including tables, bold text, tables, graphics, bulleted lists and other features and every once in a while find the whole preface has gone bold on me or margins changed or the current option I can't seem to fix: the first line extends further to the left than my margin and the remaining body is further to the right than the margin. Doesn't let me fix it no matter what and the stupid tiny icons Wordpert uses don't let me play with tabs/margins/etc. like I've gotten used to Word. However, Word didn't work as I expected in creating table of contents (toc) entries and seems to put in headings without my chosing them merely based on bold and font size settings. Wordperfect reveal codes (I never dreamed I use that feature again but it's proven invaluable here) let me identify and remove the offending codes and set font size/bold/toc entries as I wished and it WORKS!!!!

In the meantime, I have started saving multiple copies of the preface to recover from when something "seems to happen on its own." Also finding hitting undo instead of making more changes is a good idea. One of the hazards of being a touch typist is you've entered a lot of typing before you realize you should have "undo"ed and have gone beyond the level of undo supported. I thing my ideal wordprocessing program would be a combination of the way Word and Wordperfect work. I doubt if such a program exists, though.

I am now half way through printing the first draft of the final copy of the book and manually created the toc entries so contents is three pages. Haven't linked preface and the body of the book yet, thus the need to manually create those entries which gave me another chance to go through the entire 1,500 pages and make minor changes. Of course, will now have to redo the index but hadn't yet printed that. Will in the next few days.

Lots of progress since the last notes.

Cheers, Ray

Book final draft update....

Well, I've finally finished adding the notes and references from the trip to Seattle and have generated the final draft of the book and it ends up only 1,400 pages compared to the earlier draft of 1,300 pages. Still not sure if will do one volume or two (what happens in a two volume set when you lose one of them? Do I put the index in both of them, adding about 300 pages? Questions, we've got questions.) Probably take well into the summer before finished but who knows....

I've done the rough edit and in the process of adding index entries, which I've never done before and is easy enough but more time consuming than I'd imagined. I mistakenly set a "timothy" entry to "index all" and now removing those, where I see them. Will have to see if I can automatically remove them without removing the "timothy whidden/whidden, timothy" entries.

Lots of fun.

The current file is about 15 MB so have broken it into three smaller files to more easily manage the intermediate work and then combine them before creating the final index. I've decided to include several other trees that I have in the appendix, like Eaton, Newcomb, Hart, Freeman/ Jarvinen, maybe Smith if it's not too big, and several others; there won't be much in the way of notes in them, so just descendants lists in modified register format.

I've decided to only include a few photos as the cost of color pages is in the $1.00/page range so will include a CD-ROM with the contents of the Seattle scans and the photos I've collected over the past 10 years.

Have discovered if I register with the Post Office, get a cheaper rate so will definitely do that. Thanks to Eddie Whidden of Kelowna, BC for that tip.

Have just discovered a "dead media" article by John Dvorak of PC Magazine fame and will read that when I get home. It's going to substantiate my fear that electronic media is ok for compiling the data but acid-free paper is the best media for long term data storage. At the same time, have discovered a company offering to emboss data on metal foil:

Preserving information

Babylonian clay tablets, Mayan hieroglyphs and Etruscan tombstones all have survived thousands of years. Yet our own civilization’s records last mere decades, victims of ephemeral formats, "throw-away" media or perishable technology. In contrast, metal foil, embossed with simple, human-readable text, will last forever when stored with minimum care. It will resist:

• Mold, Mildew & Insects
• Moisture
• Heat & Sunlight
• Cold
• Atomic or Electromagnetic Radiation
• Technology obsolescence
• Deterioration of ink or paper

Web page at: http://www.enduringfuture.com/index.html

Interesting idea but their cheapest price is $1.00/page from a top price of $2.50/page so only good for one of a kind. (so why do they shorten this to "one off"?)

Cheers, Ray