WholeIssuePDF

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Creating the Whole-Issue PDF

D. Walden, 8/25/06

Note from Dave: this procedure doesn't do the most useful things in many circumstances
and anyone trying to follow it should try other things to accomplish the purpose. 

1. Finish the rest of the issue and stage it on the staging website. Include some dummy file in your local copy of pracjourn/nnnn-i/wholeissue/wholeissue.pdf which will also be staged. It will later be replaced. Look everything over, make sure all the links work, and then update the site live. Check over everything at the live website. (Previously you will have created the directory wholeissue, created its _abstract.html page, etc. In _abstract.html include whatever disclaimers are needed to keep readers' expectations for how well the wholeissue PDF works from getting higher than can be reliably delivered.)
2. Print a copy of the issue TOC you can use as a checklist for the various steps below.
3. Put copies of the PDFs for all articles with PDFs in pracjourn/nnnn-i/wholeissue in you local copy of the repository, keeping their original names.
4. Start Acrobat 6 (at least that is what I have been using). Under the file menu click Create a PDF and select From web page on the submenu. Put the URL of a paper at the live website in the URL window, create the PDF, and save it to pracjourn/nnnn-i/wholeissue of your local copy. Repeat the above steps for every piece in the issue. Save all the HTML page PDFs under their natural names (e.g., readers.pdf, walden.pdf, distract.pdf) except those for which the article itself is a PDF -- save those with a slightly different name, e.g., waldenh.pdf where the h is for HTML. Creating the PDFs of the HTML pages from the live website seems to do a better job of creating links that work on the live website.
5. Now open the file pracjourn/nnnn-i/wholeissue/wholeissue.pdf in Acrobat. Delete what is there, e.g., Document > Pages > Delete. Now insert the pages pieces in the correct order from the top to the bottom of your TOC checklist (Document > Pages > Insert > After), remembering to use the slightly different file names for the PDFs of the HTML pages for articles with PDF. Appropriately interleave the PDFs of the actual articles with the PDFs of the HTML pages for the articles with PDFs for the articles themselves. Finally, save the resulting file, making sure its name is still wholeissue.pdf.
6. Take a look at wholeissue.pdf you just created in your local copy of pracjourn/nnnn-i/wholeissue, and then commit it and update it to the staging web site. (You might as well also commit everything else in the directory wholeissue). Look over everything at the staging website, and then update the live website. Then check over everything there. (Note, svn-updating to the live website depends on not having created anything in the responsitory you don't want on the live website; after you have begun staging new following issue, any changes to the live website for previously published issues have to be done more manually and without creating inconsistencies between the repository and the live website.)

• Note: The first time we produced a wholeissue PDF, we tried to put sequential page numbers on all the pages of wholeissue.pdf using a program Hans provided. This succeeded in inserting page numbers but possibly resulted in problems with font embedding; in any case, after the first issue we didn't bother trying to make sequential page numbers work. During that first effort, we also discovered that some embed-fonts capability has to be turned on in Acrobat, but I can't remember which command I gave to Acrobat to accomplish whatever was needed.