A little catch up

Well, it’s been more than a year since I started on the book, and I have been given to believe it should print “sometime in January….”

Can you believe it?  I worked my butt off, my name’s on it, but in the end, all I get concerning it’s publication is that it should be out “sometime in January…” And that’s only after sending an email to a strangely silent PE who was supposed to send me the final edits (you know, the ones where the TOC was wrong, indicating about five or six chapters were still formatted incorrectly, with the wrong figures and figure numbers…).  She responded, not with the files I needed to look over, but that she’d decided to simply send the book to the printers.

That’s right.  Despite the fact that I had not approved her edits, she just decided to send it to the printer.  So, be warned, if several of the chapters (almost half of the book, and the first half at that…great impression right?) have figures that are misnumbered, mislabelled, or are the wrong figures, and if the TOC is wrong— well, you’ll know why.  And why didn’t she think to bother to email me to tell me of this momentous thing?  Hah, c’mon, you know why.

Sigh.

This was about a week and a half before christmas.  She had promised me that if I looked over the TOC and handed in my edits in time, the book would publish in December.

She, of course, lied.

And now, after sending it to the printers without mentioning it, she still can only say it’ll print “sometime in January…”  Great.

So, that’s done.  I’m over it. On to the next big thing.

So I was asked if I wanted to fix some MOC courseware.  I was really reluctant, especially when it looked like I’d have to work with yet another indian outsourcing company.  So after a few weeks of calls and emails, I turned it down. 

And then got a call from the broker saying they are desperate and MUST have me and no one else.

Huh– mental note: when people say that, run away.  In most cases it is a lie.  What it really means is they are desperate and can’t keep searching, so they will give you the money you asked (instead of ripping you off) if you’ll please inherit their mismanaged disaster…

I took the job because 1) I’ve lost a year’s income to writing the nightmare book, and 2) there seemed to be a broker in the middle that was going to free me up from dealing with deadline issues, unnecessary conference calls, and a complete disregard of the fact that I should work normal working hours, so calling me at 3am to complete a task that was not due for two more days.

Next mental note:  Do not believe the brokers.  They do no such thing if they don’t feel like it.  And depending on the size of the brokerage firm, you are likely not going to be important enough to focus on until the project has gone dangerously pear-shaped.  Another note:  When projects go pear-shaped enough– you probably won’t get paid.  There’s a clause for that…

I am still doing the job as of now, because it has not gone pear-shaped enough for me to bail.  But I have learned an important lesson.  Agents, brokers, liaisons, are often good at talking to you until you’ve signed a contract.  After that, as is the case with most single project based jobs I’ve taken, they consider you trapped.

I am adding a useful bit to my knowledge about publishing, getting first hand experience with literary agencies (which is who is brokering the gig) and agents (which is who is brokering me).  I am not entirely done with this lesson, but at the end, I’ll tell you what I’ve learned.

Sigh (and why formatting your chapters matters, months later)

This blog was originally created for the sake of my friends and peers, those who would like to know what it’s like to write a technical book.  I thought I could let them know, first hand, what the editing process was like, what deadlines are like, and give them tips and tricks. ‘Maybe give them insights as to the pitfalls and unexpected badness they could avoid. But instead this may turn into a detailed cautionary tale about what can happen when things go so wrong that, in the end, there is no book.

But boy, has this experience been bad.  Wow, where to begin?

I promise to tell that story more thoroughly as soon as I can, for those of you expecting it.

At this point I was supposed to look over the front matter of the book.  This was supposed to be the last thing I did before the book published.  This was supposed to be about me glancing at these documents, maybe changing some wording (because this is the first time I’ve seen the correct version of the introduction in PDF), and otherwise just signing off so we can start.

OMG!  Do you remember the entry to this blog from a few months ago as to why it was important to use consistent heading level formatting in a chapter?  I was having problems with the PE and her staff concerning the fact that they completely did not understand that if text in the original Word document I wrote was formatted for a particular heading level, it should follow the book style guidelines and consistently apply the correct formatting for that level in the printed version of the book. That would help logically lay out the chapters’ content and make it easier for the reader to understand.

Instead the heading levels seemed to be suggestions to the PE’s staff to be creative and format it as they wish, varying from section to section of a particular chapter, to varying from chapter to chapter throughout the book.  “Eh, who cares,” I suspect they felt, “it’s not like anyone was really going to read it…”

 …and now, after all this time, I get the table of contents as part of the front matter.  I am supposed to look it over to see if it is okay– approve it, and bang, the book goes to print.

Instead, I see the contents at a glance, and can’t fail to notice, immediately, that the topics that are given page numbers are the wrong ones. Yup– that heading level thing has come back to bite us on the butt, because the layout of the TOC makes no sense due to the fact that the PE’s staff messed up the formatting of the heading levels in each chapter (well, ironically, except for some chapters that are somehow okay).  Now we have hours of work to do to fix the content at a glance part of the TOC…

…But what’s worse is I downloaded the PDFs that comp sent to the PE, the ones that the PE is approving for the book and the ones used to generate the TOC, and I am finding really big, inexcusable problems.  That’s right, right at the very end of the process– weeks and weeks after this should not be an issue– I have chapters with heading levels misformatted (as expected), the wrong figures (no kidding, at this point that should not be an issue, but no, the figures are the wrong ones), and the figures are still misnumbered. 

Wait, wrong figures? Misnumbered?  You thought this was a quick look over of the TOC so the book could print, what’s this about?  You read it right, after all of these months, figures inserted (many of which an earlier editor removed erroneously) into the chapters during edits with a temporary ID, are now going to print with that temporary ID. I have spent months editing chapters and indicating that those tempory IDs for the inserted figures (uniquely identified so the compositors would not get confused if they saw two figures with the same number) MUST be renumbered so they are consecutive with the rest of the figures. I got no emails back, ever, saying that would not be done. But, here were are, six months later, and those figures are still misnumbered.

This, of course, leads me to believe that the PE is intentionally doing this.  C’mon, no professional can spend months no knowing what a heading level is.  They can’t read almost a thousand pages of content and not manage to notice those dozens and dozens of editorial comments saying the figures needed to be renumbered.  They had to have decided not to do it.

And why would someone do that?  Why, to either ruin the book or drag it out until it simply is too late to publish.  On purpose.

Unbelievable?  We’ll see.  Either way, as soon as I have time I’ll start keeping that promise to give my peeps the inside scoop on what it’s like to be an independent, technical author. And why, in this day and age, I must admit that it is critical to have a good literary agent, or lawyer (which ever is cheaper), on your side.

OMG Pandora!

I’ve mentioned my need for a constant stream of internet radio to keep myself working as I write away here on my laptop.  I’ve told you about my adventures with the caveman ipod and my discovery of XMPlay.

But this afternoon, a friend of mine just sent me a link to Pandora (www.pandora.com) Radio.  You can create your own radio station based on the style of songs and artists you choose.

I figured it would be a popup fest, an ad laden piece of music label pushing bubblegum mediocrity.  About as able to figure out what I like as the Tablet PC is likely to learn my handwriting.

WOW, was I wrong.

I got to the site and immediately tried to make a station based on Jane Siberry, Imogen Heap, Kate Bush, and Tori Amos.  And not only did the darn thing recognize all of those artists (even Jane), but it started making suggestions that were really close (well, Minnie Driver is close, I didn’t even know she could sing).  I did another for Leonard Cohen and David Sylvian and it came up with some good stuff there as well.

So I was listening along, clicking the thumbs up button on the thumbnail of the songs I liked, and thumbs down on those I didn’t (there weren’t a lot), when it stopped and told me that I needed to register my stations and continue working on them.

Hmmm, I’d only been there an hour– that was awful impatient of them.  But okay, I was intrigued. So I created an account and kept going.  I had to tell them that I wasn’t younger than 13 yrs. of age (lol), that I lived in the US (with my zip code, oooo, so hard to fake that), and that I had a valid email addy (for my log in, and to probably get emails).  They also asked for my gender, supposedly to target ads for me.  I gladly told them, because I am sick of being told I can increase my manhood and virility with just a daily dose of “Manzite!”

Then, about fifteen minutes later, I was told I could no longer skip forward through music.  I had maxed out the number of skips for the free version and would have to upgrade to $36 a year to keep doing that.

Hmmm, I don’t think so.  I guess, if I had to, I could wait.

The power behind the algorithm is the Music Genome Project, which compiles music by style, rhythm, and more.  It’s based, loosely, on the idea that if you like song A, and you like song B, you are probably going to like song C, based on certain similarities.  Now, these similarities can be complex, but Pandora is doing a good job.

I also found another neat thing.  I decided I would use my song list off of my livespaces blog to create an ambient station.  When I named the station, Pandora automatically populated it with ambient music– most of which was on my list anyway.

So give Pandora a try if you are looking for perfect fit music for your style and budget, without having to search for more tunes that work. I know that I’m hooked.

So, I have two new radio stations, specifically for my taste, with my artists, and the option to thumbs down music I don’t like.

ISBN switcheroo

Hey, is it normal, during the course of a book being written, for the ISBN number to change? It sort of is, in 2007.

My story is about my ISBN apparently changing part way through the process of writing my book.  According to the e-mail I got from the editor before the outline was even finished, as well as the contract I signed for the book, my isbn ends with the number 7.

Then, around May of this year, as the production editor started in the process, with proofreaders and compositors,  the files I started getting back were my ISBN number, except that it ends, now, with a 5.

And, the front matter of the book also reflects this new number.

What gives?  Why would my ISBN change, ever?  I thought that was essentially the social security number for books, and it cannot change.

This is why:  in 2007 ISBN numbers had to change from 10 digit, to 13 digit.  My book started in 2006 (nominally) and therefore it got the ISBN then (the publisher had to use them up or lose them).  But in 2007 it also had to have an alternate 13 digit ISBN as well.

How did I learn this?  Well, not from the publisher.  They didn’t mention a thing, probably assuming that it wasn’t my business, I’m just the author.  Nope. I learned it on Amazon.

Amazon has my book listed with both ISBNs, showing me, plainly, that my old ISBN, the one I have been expecting to see, the one I’ve been considering mine, is still there.  But there is an additional one too.

So, that issue solved, I am on to deal with my current problem– the fact that I am, actually getting to do my galley edits. Yes, I am surprised, since there was at least a day or two turnaround on a lot of my emails lately.  I was fully expecting to be refused this option because of time, but the PE was worried about versioning and gave me exactly 24 hours for each chapter to check them over.  She insisted that if I didn’t turn them around in 24 hours, that she would just publish without my input.

I was grateful I’d get to see them, and thought I’d better check a few sentences here and there in particular that I was worried about.  What I didn’t want to see, is what I got.  The chapters were still a mess.  I have to assume they are hazing me.  No one can do that; flatly ignore my edits, by accident. Phew, was she right about versioning…

So I emailed back to everyone about how bad the chapters are and how I can’t possibly RE-edit those chapters in 24 hours per chapter, but I strongly suggested that they really didn’t want to publish the book as is, it would be bad.  The figures were often wrong (my replacements were ignored or misplaced in some instances), the figures were misnumbered, and intermittently, my actual text edits were just, well, overlooked, and not added to the finished text. And, omg, the formatting. The formatting issues I mentioned in this blog months ago are still there– if not worse. Unbelievable.  My requests were not just ignored, they were intentionally made worse. (c’mon either that’s intentional or the compositor doesn’t speak/write english)

So now I am spending time that I desperately need to spend getting back to my real, paying job (yeah, remember that?) and instead I am redoing my edits.  Carefully going over every figure, every figure placement compared to my requests, and every, single edit since May. For the second time (actually for some of these edits, it’s the third time). Sigh.  I spent this weekend on that mammoth 128 page chapter (why didn’t my experienced editors suggest not doing that? Hmm?), and now I am spending probably all night on the next chapter (96 pages, woo hoo).

a little worried

Just between you and I, I am a little worried about what’s going on with the book now and feel I need to record it somewhere…

… so if things go awry I can at least say,”I saw this coming.”

 I am worried about the PE, who is getting so busy (and frankly completely sick of my book and your’s truly- and I don’t blame her) that I fear the book has fallen to the wayside. 

And do you remember me mentioning my problems with the compositors?  It gets worse.  I am worried about the fact that the compositors for the book have been the very, very worst I have ever seen.  I have never been faced with such bad figure placement, formatting issues, design issues– I absolutely swear that no one can do that by accident.  It has to be hazing.  I have a chapter where a figure is referenced in a paragraph, and the figure itself shows up in the chapter, no joke, NINE pages later.  Who trained these people?!

I am worried that I am supposed to trust that the proofreaders (I have been reassured of this) will take care of it– when one of them never mentioned once, in the chapter they proofed, that the figures were horribly misplaced. Sigh– yes I didn’t realize that when I wrote the hopeful post from a few weeks ago…

There are some other issues I am worried about; version control, the fact that I just can’t get to see the galleys again (hello, the book must go to print sometime), the fact that I need to get a sampler out for the book before it pubs…. but what I am really worried about is listed above.

Remember how I said that your proofreader is important?  Does it go without saying that a good proofreader is more important?  Well I just said it anyway.  Because a bad proofreader (combined with a bad compositor) can completely ruin what otherwise might have been a good book.

Who knows, maybe now, because I wrote it down, everything will turn out fine.  Rest assured though, that I will be back here to tell you about the outcome, complete with details and explanations, regardless.

This is so weird– I am done, the book is finished, and I don’t know what to do…

Does anyone else ever feel that way?  I have been working on Mastering Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0 for just over nine months now.  I just sent the last email to the production editor telling her I’d uploaded the final edits for the Question\Answer sheets, Acknowledgements and Introduction (which was a bit of a problem– she had the wrong version…).

And now– sitting here, in the sunny, beautiful early autumn of the year 2007– I am lost.  I feel disconnected and unreal, and strangely anxious.

I think I might be done with the book.  Is it safe to even consider the thought?  That I might be done?  That I might not have to spend, literally, ever waking moment of my days and nights working on the book?  That I might safely consider going to the Mall, or getting my hair cut?  I might consider calling a friend to see if they want to do dinner?  Dare I hope?

I have been looking forward to this day for almost a year (actually, if you factor in the fact that I spent 2006 writing for Mark Minasi and then David Pogue, it’s been longer than that).  A day when I was not obligated to write a word, when I owed no one a document of any kind.

And now that the day is here, I can’t seem to wrap my head around it.

What do I do now?? I have spent more than a year dedicating myself to the discipline of sitting still, of concentrating, of writing, writing, writing.  That’s all I did, and consequently, all I was.

And yet, here I am.  I think I am done, so who am I supposed to be now?

Does anyone else ever experience this? Being lost at the end of a book?

Do you ever have that scared feeling of not being able to let go? Of being afraid to log off the publisher’s FTP site, afraid that you forgot something?  It’s kind of freaking me.  I mean, I know that I just did 800 pages of really complicated, practically fractal stuff, and that lends itself to that kind of anxiety, but is this normal?

Why am I not ecstatic or relieved?  This is not turning out the way I expected.  Will it sink in?  Too weird.

Beyond fed up with Media Player– Welcome XMplay

For the last nine months or so, I’ve been listening to radioio, somafm, and other online radio stations to get my fix of wordless music while I write.  I ran through radioio ambient, my old standard within the first few months.  I got sick of the commercials, really sick of them.  And the music has begun to move outside of my interests…sorry Forrest.  So I began to check out Soma FM.  I really love the stations, the music mix, and the quality of the streams, all without commercials.  I’ve already given them about a hundred bucks to keep it up (and got two kickin’ tshirts and bunches of bumper stickers, one of which is on my laptop now…), and have no problem kickin’ in more cash if they don’t drop in quality.

There has been a real fly in the ointment of my entertainment though, the quality of my music player.  I have grown to hate my old favorite– winamp– now that AOL bought it and bloated the heck out of it.  And that combined with frequent computer problems drove me to using the extremely convenient Windows Media Player.

So for almost a year I have been tolerating WMP’s crappy output, crappy performance, lagging, buffering, and resource hogging.  But finally, as my laptop begins to have problems with its wireless connection (I need it to work for two more weeks, then I promise to take it back to Apple), I just could not take the lags and drops in music anymore.

I was so desperate that I considered downloading and installing winamp.  I even went to their site but I just couldn’t do it.  Then I, and I don’t know why, typed in the search bar “winamp bloated” and hit enter.  OMG, just as I suspected, hundreds of comments, articles, and posts about how it’s become bloated.  And amongst all that, as I expected, a few suggestions for alternatives came up.  The one that people seemed to like the most was XMplay.

So I checked it out and was impressed. It’s got a really small footprint, both on the desktop and in terms of resources. I have had it running for hours, after adding multiple streaming playlists, installing almost a dozen skins (and trying them out) as well as messing with most of the settings, and it is taking up, with the busiest skin, 3,336K of RAM and 1% of the CPU every few seconds.  So, so much better than WMP it’s unbelievable.  WMP, just open and not playing takes 26,136K of RAM and keeps climbing as long as it’s on, although, to be fair, just playing music only takes about 2% of CPU usage.

I didn’t need to run an installer for XMplay, I just extracted the zip to a folder and double clicked the executeable.  The default skin was easy to use and I was up and running with my favorite radio stations in the queue.  And, frankly, I feel the quality of the streams are just ever so slightly better, clearer, crisper, without just jacking the volume.

But probably most importantly– for hours now the streams have not faltered.  No abrupt silences, no buffering.  Same flaky wireless, and yet no problems. So I think I’ve found a new home for my tunes.  Not to mention the fact that I like a lot of the skins, they are nice and minimal… I prefer that.

I think I like XMplay. More on it if anything comes up.  If you hear no complaints, that is because I have none.

So easy a caveman can do it.

So often, when I am working downstairs in my home, I leave the TV on for background sounds while writing.  And today I happened to notice a sort of rider commercial after a geico commercial.  It was a kind of a glimpse of cavemen gone wild/trendy uptown party/youtube behind the scenes video.  It lasted about ten seconds and then flashed a URL: www.cavemanscrib.com.

 So, curious, I checked it out.  The site itself is a wee bit lame, very captive “click here to see some activity” pointlessness– except for the iPod and the laptops (pretty cool blog posts).  If you go into the pre-party part of the site, directly ahead of the front door is the living room couch, TV, stereo iPod, etc.  Click on the iPod.  There is some really good music, most of it I’ve never heard.

I turned off Soma FM and listened to the caveman’s ipod for a while. Good stuff.  Love Arthur Loves Plastic.

Only on the internet man.  Mooching toons off a stranger’s iPod to add ambiance while I work.

Okay, a little help here? (or how I might avoid disaster in the future)

While writing the WSS book, all kinds of bad things happened.  Actually a surprising number of bad things.  While dealing with bad things, I got to thinking.

Is there any way, because I am contracted to do another book, to defend myself from being taken advantage of again?

• I could hire a lawyer to negotiate with the publisher about my contract.  Lawyers are expensive.
• I could hire an Agent to manage me and my interactions with the publisher. “You’ll have to speak to my agent.”  Agents are expensive, and not always useful.
• Or, and this is new information to me, I could join a Union.

Now as someone who has lived in Pittsburgh, the idea of joining a union brings unsavory pictures to mind.  I am not sure that I want to be associated with a Union.

But hear me out.  This union (called National Writers Union http://www.nwu.org) seems to simply be an organization that allows individual writers to band together to give them more clout.  I pay dues and the union is (according to their literature) supposed to help me settle grievances, like contract disputes and other issues; help assess my contracts and offer me advice, and help me with contract problems and questions if they arise.  And essentially do what I need an agent to do, without my giving them %15 or more of my profits.

So, what do you think?  Should I join the National Writers Union?  Are you a member?  Any stories?  Is there a different writers group that you prefer?  Let me know.

Why your Proofreader matters

As many of you know, I am struggling to edit my eight hundred page, very technical book.  It has had no editorial passes, none, and had to be stopped in production so I could salvage it.

The problem with that, well, there are a host of problems.  It would be more appropriate to ask where to start when trying to explain why that’s a problem.  But one of the biggest problems is I am editing eight hundred pages of what were originally Word 2003 documents in PDF, with Adobe Reader.

Ever try it?  No?  Good.  That explains why your eyes point in the same direction enough to read this post.

 Suffice it to say that it is a bad format to rewrite entire chapter sections, insert pictures, change the format of words, paragraphs, heading levels, and lists.  It’s okay for making comments.  It’s okay for highlighting some words, or making little callout boxes to make more pointed comments.  It is not good for real, first time through editing.

Sigh.

In addition, and I doubt this is true for books outside of the technical field, there are strict guidelines as far as styles, where to apply them, and why. As an author of a book with those guidelines, I have to spend time carefully formatting every aspect of the chapter, with inlinecode character formats, inlineURLs, uservariables, run-in headers, titles, and manually numbered number lists (yes, we cannot use automatic numbering for eight hundred pages of step by step lists because Quark can’t handle autonumbered lists– and that means, for those of you keeping score, that you have to number all of your figure references and figure labels manually).

—And it’s all this formatting that makes the proofreader so critical.  Yeah, people might think the proofreader is superfluous.  But they are the ones that ensure that the other editors and compositors don’t ruin the logical design and flow of the book.  So follow along and you’ll see that, after all of this, why my proofreader (if they actually do their job and stick to their guns) will be my knight in shining armor.—

So all data in the book is formatted and strictly organized by the style guidelines for the book line.  These are technical books, teaching linearly something that may well not be linear.  But, nonetheless, it has to be attempted because the reader needs to be have some sort of landmarks to indicate where descriptions are in relation to each other.  A header indicates the start of a section.  That section contains tables, lists, steps, etc.  Lists can contain sublists, with sections all their own.  It’s a nightmare.

For example, if you are describing a configuration page that is broken into task sections, and in each section are several settings– some of which are dynamic, and trigger the propagation of more settings if enabled,–you need to lay out the information in a way that indicates, at a glance, what content contains other content (if that makes sense).

When describing the page, you first explain what the page is for, why use it, and how to get to it.  Then to linearly, without pictures, describe the page’s content, you first need to layout the different sections, then within the sections go into detail about the settings.  Therefore you need to format the information so that the configuration page title is a Title heading, that indicates that what follows is important, and falls under that heading.  Then for the sections on the page, is another, subordinate heading that would be indented, indicating that it is contained, or below the Title heading’s information.  Then, for the settings in each section, they could be indicated with a bulleted list, again indented a level further, indicating that that list is contained, or beneath the subordinate heading.

In the case of my book (supposedly following a preexisting style guideline), that subordinate heading would be called a Run-in header.  So an example would be (this data is actually accurate but you don’t need to read it in detail to get the point–please ignore the Quote graphic– the book won’t have that):

Configuring Incoming E-Mail  (consider this a Title Heading)

 Incoming email is a feature new to this version of the product.  At its simplest configuration, it allows lists and libraries to receive incoming email and process them as list or library items.  In addition, Directory Management Service (DMS) can be enabled, allowing site groups to have distribution lists and individuals in those groups to receive emails sent to the distribution list.  In addition, it creates contact objects for all e-mail enabled lists and libraries, giving them a contact record in the Exchange Global Address List.  To get to the Incoming E-Mail settings, open Central Administration, go to the Operations page, and click Incoming E-Mail Settings.

In the configuration page for Incoming E-Mail there are several sections; Enable Incoming E-Mail, Directory Management Services,  Incoming E-Mail Server Display Address, and Safe E-Mail Servers.  In each section are settings you can configure to further customize Incoming e-mail.  Below is a summary of what each section is, and what settings it contains:

Enable Incoming E-Mail (consider this a run-in header)

This section contains settings to enable Incoming E-Mail, as well as specify the SMTP service’s e-mail drop folder.

• Enable sites on this server to receive e-mail?  This setting is simply two radio buttons, Yes and No.  No is selected by default.  To be able to configure incoming e-mail you must first enable it.  When Yes is chosen the next setting in this section becomes available.
• Settings Mode. This setting has two options:  Automatic and Advanced.  Automatic will use the default IIS SMTP service drop folder for all incoming e-mail.  Advanced will display a field in which to specify the custom path for storing incoming e-mail.

Directory Management Service

This section allows you to enable DMS, which integrates with Active Directory and allows all lists, libraries, and site groups to have contact or distribution group objects in AD and Exchange. This section has three radio button options: Yes, No, Use Remote.  No, which is the default, causes all other settings for DMS to be hidden.  Yes enables DMS and triggers the display of the settings necessary for configuring the feature.  Use Remote enables DMS and triggers the display of the fields necessary for indicating what other server is actually supporting DMS.

• No.  Disables DMS, clears the section of settings.  If you disable DMS, it does not delete the entries for the lists, libraries, or site groups that might already be in AD.
• Yes.  Enables DMS.  Triggers the following settings:
  • Active Directory Container.  Enter the OU in AD that will contain the contact or distribution group objects for DMS.  The  OU=X,DC=X, DC=X format must be used.
  • SMTP Mail Server.  This field must contain the server address of this server, the one hosting DMS.
  • Accept messages from Authenticated Users only.  This is a Yes/No setting.
  • Allow distribution groups.  A Yes/No setting, this can be used to block the use of distribution groups if they are being abused without having to disable DMS entirely.
• Use Remote.  Enables DMS, but offloads the service by redirecting requests to a different server. Triggers the following settings:
  •  Directory Management URL.  Enter the URL for the server hosting DMS.  Point that the asmx page containing the DMS settings, which is typically SharePointEmailWS.asmx.
  • SMTP Mail server address.  The address for this server.
  • Accept messages from Authenticated Users only.  Yes or No setting.
  • Allow distribution groups.  Yes/No setting.  Again, just allows you to block distribution group creating while still allowing contact creation for lists and libraries.

Incoming E-Mail Server Display Address

This setting allows you to specify the domain address that will be displayed and used for the lists, libraries, and site groups.  Each of these items, once this feature is enabled, will have the option of specifying an e-mail address using an alias@serverdisplay.address.

• Email Server Display Address: This setting is a field to contain the display e-mail address for the lists, libraries, and site groups to use.  The data in this field will have the alias of the incoming e-mail lists, libraries, and groups tacked onto it.

 ————————————————————————————————————–

…And so on from section to section, setting to setting.  You can see that the organization of the data is pretty important in order to keep that data logical.

Here is that same data, without formatting.  See if it makes a difference to you:

Configuring Incoming E-Mail

 Incoming email is a feature new to this version of the product.  At its simplest configuration, it allows lists and libraries to receive incoming email and process them as list or library items.  In addition, Directory Management Service (DMS) can be enabled, allowing site groups to have distribution lists and individuals in those groups to receive emails sent to the distribution list.  In addition, it creates contact objects for all e-mail enabled lists and libraries, giving them a contact record in the Exchange Global Address List.  To get to the Incoming E-Mail settings, open Central Administration, go to the Operations page, and click Incoming E-Mail Settings.

In the configuration page for Incoming E-Mail there are several sections; Enable Incoming E-Mail, Directory Management Services,  Incoming E-Mail Server Display Address, and Safe E-Mail Servers.  In each section are settings you can configure to further customize Incoming e-mail.  Below is a summary of what each section is, and what settings it contains:

Enable Incoming E-Mail

This section contains settings to enable Incoming E-Mail, as well as specify the SMTP service’s e-mail drop folder.

Enable sites on this server to receive e-mail?  This setting is simply two radio buttons, Yes and No.  No is selected by default.  To be able to configure incoming e-mail you must first enable it.  When Yes is chosen the next setting in this section becomes available.

Settings Mode. This setting has two options:  Automatic and Advanced.  Automatic will use the default IIS SMTP service drop folder for all incoming e-mail.  Advanced will display a field in which to specify the custom path for storing incoming e-mail.

Directory Management Service

This section allows you to enable DMS, which integrates with Active Directory and allows all lists, libraries, and site groups to have contact or distribution group objects in AD and Exchange. This section has three radio button options: Yes, No, Use Remote.  No, which is the default, causes all other settings for DMS to be hidden.  Yes enables DMS and triggers the display of the settings necessary for configuring the feature.  Use Remote enables DMS and triggers the display of the fields necessary for indicating what other server is actually supporting DMS.

No.  Disables DMS, clears the section of settings.  If you disable DMS, it does not delete the entries for the lists, libraries, or site groups that might already be in AD.

Yes.  Enables DMS.  Triggers the following settings:

• Active Directory Container.  Enter the OU in AD that will contain the contact or distribution group objects for DMS.  The  OU=X,DC=X, DC=X format must be used.

• SMTP Mail Server.  This field must contain the server address of this server, the one hosting DMS.

• Accept message from Authentication Users only.  This is a Yes/No setting.

• Allow distribution groups.  A Yes/No setting, this can be used to block the use of distribution groups if they are being abused without having to disable DMS entirely.

Incoming E-Mail Server Display Address

This setting allows you to specify the domain address that will be displayed and used for the lists, libraries, and site groups.  Each of these items, once this feature is enabled, will have the option of specifying an e-mail address using an alias@serverdisplay.address.

Email Server Display Address: This setting is a field to contain the display e-mail address for the lists, libraries, and site groups to use.  The data in this field will have the alias of the incoming e-mail lists, libraries, and groups tacked onto it.

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…. Can you see the difference?  Can you see why using some formatting makes it easier at a glance for a reader to distinguish the jist of what’s going on?

Well, guess what?  I wrote with formatting like the first example, and what I got back in galleys from the compositor was much, much closer to the second example.  Seriously, and what comes back from the compositor is exactly as it will be when printed (remember galleys are print proofs). In some cases there was still remnants of larger fonts or bolding, but none of the indents.

Why?  Because of a tragicomedy of errors (email me for more information– I can’t safely speak my mind until the book is published, but the story is both grim and juicy) the book is three months late and the compositor is under pressure to conserve page count and that means that they are pushed to eliminate indents.

Yes, eliminate indents.  Seriously.  You might think that’s ridiculous, but in order to save space, they want everything to go margin to margin.  That also means that paragraphs and word spacing is literally kerned as well.  They have eliminated the spaces between the pararaphs, even the ones that are numbered and the paragraphs that follow as well.

I’ll try to show an example, but wordpress will not allow me to have a numbered list without a following space:

1. this is the first step.
2. this is the second step.
3. this is the third step.
4. Make Believe that this sentence is actually a different paragraph moving on in the teaching of a concept and is not numbered.  This is a different paragraph altogether, but to conserve space, the compositor is not going to put a space in to indicate the transition.  There are no spaces between bulleted or numbered lists and the paragraphs around it.  Everything is completely crowded together.  Meanwhile, there is too much space before and after figures in order for the figures to fit an archaic rule of being a third of a page by default.

 And these are only the first few intentional “mistakes” the compositor did.  Others were to kern the sentences in paragraphs (particularly sidebars for some reason) so that the words all run together with no spaces between them (so if you double click to select a word, it selects the whole sentence, or worse, the whole paragraph). Figures were also moved so that up to seven at a time were stack near or at the end of chapters, pages and pages away from their text references.  In addition, all sidebars were formatted incorrectly, with a neat space saving trick– every paragraph is missing a space after it, and there is no indent to indicate the paragraph is there, saving space all around.

 So why is a proofreader so important?

Well, my editor informed me that formatting changes, especially spacing, were not allowed. (can you believe it?!)  Of course, the production editor, following her job description, had given my chapters to the proofreader.  And, apparently unbeknownst to my editor, that proofreader had even complained about these formatting issues.

And guess what?  Because the proofreader said it was a problem, the problem may well get fixed.

And if it doesn’t?  Well, you now know that maybe, just maybe, the author didn’t write it that way.  That maybe, just maybe, the author is not to blame for something that the publisher chose to do to save money.  And if the proofreader gets her/his way, well I, for one, am grateful.  Really, really grateful.

So now you know.