idrahil
Level 6 Magician
The Lighter The Rules, The Better The Game!
Posts: 398
|
Post by idrahil on Oct 11, 2012 19:52:54 GMT -6
Will word files be made available at some point to edit in our house changes?
|
|
|
|
Post by waysoftheearth on Oct 11, 2012 20:39:29 GMT -6
As far as the free reference rules go, the short term answer is: no, not yet.
The more elaborate answer is: Microsoft Word is a commercial product that uses its own, platform specific, proprietary format. I personally don't have Word on my home computer, and I have no plans to purchase it in the foreseeable future so I don't see myself doing a Word version of the DD reference rules.
I am planning to do an HTML version of the reference rules, however, and it might be possible to import HTML into Word (I'm not certain of that).
Once I have fixed the font issues in the PDFs and released the free rules, then I can have a more serious think about alternate formats if it turns out there is a demand for this kind of thing. My initial thought is to go straight to plain text, because plain text works for everyone...
|
|
|
|
Post by Finarvyn on Oct 11, 2012 21:11:10 GMT -6
I have Word on my computer. If I get the time I might take a stab at a layout of this...
|
|
idrahil
Level 6 Magician
The Lighter The Rules, The Better The Game!
Posts: 398
|
Post by idrahil on Oct 11, 2012 21:22:49 GMT -6
I could maybe help too. This might sound stupid but if you went text or HTML would the art remain? My hope would be to insert a few classes and possibly change the words for how much xp gold is worth (I might go 10 or 100 xp per gp to try and keep the players less rich) and add a few other small things for my kids but have the originals for when me and my friends play.
|
|
|
|
Post by waysoftheearth on Oct 11, 2012 21:51:27 GMT -6
Thanks for the offers of assistance guys -- I will look into it some more once the free reference rules are in the wild.
Idrahil -- FYI, the free reference rules PDFs are unillustrated. The illustrations are included in the hard copy boxed set version only.
|
|
|
|
Post by Sean Michael Kelly on Oct 12, 2012 3:29:19 GMT -6
Simon, you are using Libre/Open Office? There's an easy "Save As Word" ability.
|
|
|
|
Post by waysoftheearth on Oct 12, 2012 6:10:36 GMT -6
I think the original drafts might have been Word files, but as I didn't have Word I opened them with WordPad (or something similar) to get the raw content, and then did all the subsequent editing in plain text editors (mostly TextPad). Those text files eventually made their way into PagePlus layout files, and were proofed and corrected in situ there.
Once the dust has begun to settle we (as in the membership of this forum) can think about other formats.
|
|
|
|
Post by funkaoshi on Oct 12, 2012 7:31:23 GMT -6
I think using HTML or Plaintext is a much more open solution than using Word, for what it's worth. Textfiles are way more future proof at the very least.
|
|
idrahil
Level 6 Magician
The Lighter The Rules, The Better The Game!
Posts: 398
|
Post by idrahil on Oct 12, 2012 12:11:38 GMT -6
Once the dust has begun to settle we (as in the membership of this forum) can think about other formats. Thanks! And great job at any rate with what I can see by you and everyone involved in bringing this to light. I'm really excited for this game. |
|
|
|
Post by talysman on Oct 12, 2012 15:00:34 GMT -6
The xpdf tools include pdftohtml, which can automate the conversion process. I haven't used that specifically, but I've used another xpdf tool, pdftotext; it converted the LBB PDFs to plain text and maintained the formatting in tables pretty well, so the HTML converted should work pretty well. You'd still want to do a read-through to catch small errors, of course.
Once you have the HTML file, Pandoc can be used to convert it to RTF, which any version of MS Word or Open/Libre Office will open just fine, although this is really just a convenience, since those programs will also open HTML fine as well. Pandoc can also do other conversions, including direct conversion to some MS Word formats, OpenOffice format, EPUB, or even LaTeX.
|
|
