Is there a term for when you redraw a 930×930 black and white image pixel-by-pixel because you couldn’t get a clean enough scan? Aside from crazy, of course.

As part of getting my book writing project back on track, I spent some time over the weekend seeing if there’d be a better way than DTP software to realise the end product. It’s not just text, so some degree of design is required.

The project’s scope is extensive; without even adding the content, it was already around 100 pages, just by adding a two-page chapter for each year, the table of contents based on that, some random front matter, etc. Once done, it’ll probably be double to triple that.

This is one of the things that loomed over me and caused me quite some anxiety. I’d have to adjust the design constantly as content gets added here and there.

So, I finally took the time to look into LaTeX and BibTeX (properly), and I’ve made more progress in about 16 hours altogether than in all the time preceding. It’s partly down to doing preliminary designs in Affinity Publisher to understand how a page should look, how an item will be represented, etc.

At some point during this exploration, I’d even considered using an SSG to manage the Markdown/JSON files I’d already created and then generate the .tex files from them, but luckily I came to my senses. There’d still need to be minor adjustments as the content gets added, which would overly complicate the process. So, instead, I’ll do a once-off conversion from the existing files and then create new LaTeX files going forward.

Suddenly this feels way more achievable, and some preliminary tests with pre-flighting software have indicated that the generated PDFs are more ready for print/press use than I’d thought.

Now it’s just the easy task of getting the writing out of the way. /s