> The number of times I have changed stuff like gutters, margins, chapter headings, caption fonts and layouts would make that an absolute nightmare.
The big publishers don't give you control over that. They give you a template and you have to stick to it. As an author your first and only job is to provide the content (typically).
Not everyone knows this but MS Word lets you create formatting blocks that essential behave like CSS classes. Most people have used MS Word Heading, Sub Heading, etc not realizing that as long as you never touch the font formatting options the classes can be changed globally just by applying a different template.
The final typesetting of the document is completely up to the publisher. I always assume they simply have a script that pulls out the raw text with formatting indicators and compiles it all together.
> I always assume they simply have a script that pulls out the raw text with formatting indicators and compiles it all together.
Not sure how it works for titles that are really 100 % text, but if any layouting has to be done for images etc. a typical workflow is to import all the files into a DTP/layout application like Adobe InDesign and do the final steps there. InDesign can import the format labels from Word and map them to its own.
> Not everyone knows this but MS Word lets you create formatting blocks that essential behave like CSS classes. Most people have used MS Word Heading, Sub Heading, etc not realizing that as long as you never touch the font formatting options the classes can be changed globally just by applying a different template.
Absolutely, but it's going to be a nightmare when all of my 40 chapters are in a different word doc...
The big publishers don't give you control over that. They give you a template and you have to stick to it. As an author your first and only job is to provide the content (typically).
Not everyone knows this but MS Word lets you create formatting blocks that essential behave like CSS classes. Most people have used MS Word Heading, Sub Heading, etc not realizing that as long as you never touch the font formatting options the classes can be changed globally just by applying a different template.
The final typesetting of the document is completely up to the publisher. I always assume they simply have a script that pulls out the raw text with formatting indicators and compiles it all together.