Somewhat New Edition

Back when Wipf & Stock very kindly supported our beloved St Luke’s in Evanston by printing a small book of my sermons as a benefit for the parish, we prepared the manuscript in AppleWorks(!). I sent W&S a PDF of the manuscript with funky margins that they had specified, which they somehow wrought into the handsome published paperback.
 
In the spirit of the e-book era, I thought I’d re-upload the book in a more manageable PDF format. First, I tried manipulating the PDF output with Cheap Impostor, the invaluable booklet-layout software, but the margins were too extreme to wrangle into the space of a sensible layout. Then I opened the AppleWorks file, where I saw a headache-inducing array of mark-up. It’s been years and years since I worked primarily in AppleWorks, so I quickly decided that I would copy-and-paste the innards of the file into a more congenial processor (I used Pages, though I also work happily with Mellel). The last trick involved manipulating margins so as to fit an A5 layout with page content matching, to the extent possible, the pagination of the original edition. This is exactly the kind of project that appeals to someone who’s writing a book that must be done as soon as humanly possible.
 
One final step: I don’t have access to a good original of the cover Wipf & Stock gave the book, so I whipped up a new version based on the colours of Trinity College, Glasgow. Done, and done! So this morning I am uploading the more tablet-friendly PDF version of the ebook; some other procrastination day, I’ll see if I can transmute the copy to a Kindle version, and if I ever upgrade to OS X Lion and download iBooks Author, I’ll see about running the manuscript through that (and I think I remember that there are a couple of lingering typos that I wanted to fix). But for now, here’s what I’ve got.
 

 
Please remember that the whole project was organised as a benefit for St Luke’s, so if you download a copy (of your kindness) please think about sending a donation to them (this isn’t necessarily an on-going commitment; or you can send an old-fashioned ‘check’). The congregation has sailed through some rough waters, and they have very significant repairs to complete on the exquisitely beautiful building (repairs that they are addressing, commendably, only in tandem with outreach to international and neighbourhood missions).
 
[Update: there are other, newer sermons at various points in these pages. If you search for “sermon” or some keyword from the text from which you’re working, perhaps in combination with “in the name of the”, you may turn them up. Plus, there’s the ‘Sermons’ category, which does not actually include all the sermons in my blog, but does pick up a few. When I have time (/hollow chuckle) I’ll try to ensure that all sermons are tagged for that category.] [Now done.]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *