Index for My PDF Notes

1. Inserting PDF into iBooks....1. 2. Disk Clean Utility.7. 3. How to Make an ePub e-Book by Hand ... 14.

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Getting it RIGHT!
How to add PDF files to read in iBooks on your iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone

This brief tutorial will show you how to add PDF files to iBooks so that you can read them on your iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone.

1. First up were going to make the assumption that you have iBooks installed on your iPad/iPod Touch/iPhone.

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2. Now open up iTunes. Select File -> Add to Library.

3. Navigate to the PDF file(s) you want to add to iBooks. You can select more than one file, or select an entire folder. Once youve made your selection, click Choose.

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4. Now select Books from your iTunes Library. You should see the PDF file(s) that you just added, now listed.

5. Right-click (ctrl+click for single-button Mac folks) on the newly added PDF and select Get Info.

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6. First select the Options tab. Make sure that the Media Kind: is set to Book.

7. Now select the Info tab. From here you can add any missing info the authors name, the published year etc. When youre done, click

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8. Almost done. Now select your iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone from the Devices list in iTunes. Select the Books tab from the list at the top. Make sure that Sync Books is checked. If you want to sync all of the books youve added to iTunes, select All Books and then click the Sync button. If you want to only sync specific books, choose Selected Books and then place a check next to each of the books you want to sync (and then click the Sync button).

9. Now open iBooks. Youll see a PDFs Button at the top. Tap it.

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10. Youll be presented with a list of all the PDFs you added via iTunes. Tap one of them.

11. and it will open in iBooks. At any point in time you can tap the screen and a menu will appear at the top. From here you can change the displays brightness, search the PDF, bookmark a page etc.

Thats it youre done!

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Disk Cleanup Utility To keep a PC running smoothly, regular maintenance is critical. Many users shy away from maintenance tasks, thinking it is a long, drawn out manual affair, but the Disk Cleanup Utility can easily determine which files on a hard drive may no longer be needed and delete those files. In addition to freeing up potentially significant amounts of hard drive space, using Disk Cleanup on a regular basis can significantly improve system performance. Starting Disk Cleanup Disk Cleanup is available on both Home and Professional versions of XP. The utility can be accessed in any of the methods listed below. x x x Click Start | Programs | Accessories | System Tools | Disk Cleanup Click Start | Run and in the Open box type cleanmgr and click OK In Windows Explorer or My Computer, right-click the disk in which you want to free up space, click Properties, click the General tab, and then click Disk Cleanup.

Use the drop down menu arrow to select the drive you want to clean.

Click [OK] and Disk Cleanup will analyze the selected drive to determine the amount of space that can be freed.

Note: Be patient. Analyzing the drive can be a lengthy process depending on drive size and contents. Once the drive analysis is complete a list of file categories will be presented for your selection.

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Instead of automatically proceeding with cleanup once the drive analysis is complete, Disk Cleanup allows you to review the categories of files that can be deleted. Click on any of the categories to display more information relative to that category in the Description section of the window. If you're unsure if you want to delete the files in a category from the description, use the [View Files] button. A complete list of files scheduled for deletion will be displayed in Windows Explorer. Use drag and drop to move any files you want to save to a safe location and leave the category selected. If all the files are to be saved, close the window and then remove the checkmark from the file category so it will not be included in the disk cleanup. After all the categories have been reviewed, click [OK] to begin the disk cleanup process. File Categories in Disk Cleanup Utility There are a number of different types of file categories that Disk Cleanup targets when it performs the initial disk analysis. Depending on the individual system, you may or may not have all the categories listed below. An excellent example of this would be Backup Files from a Previous Operating System. If a clean install of XP was performed then this category will not exist. It pays to click on each of the categories and note that the [View Files] button can change depending on the category selected. x Downloaded Program Files

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These are ActiveX controls and Java applets downloaded from Web sites that are temporarily stored in the Downloaded Program Files folder. It's not program files or zip files that you have downloaded from other locations. x Temporary Internet Files

This refers to Internet Explorer's cache of Web pages that are stored on the hard drive for quicker viewing. None of your personal web settings are affected by selecting this category, nor does it delete any cookie files. x Recycle Bin

The main thing to be aware of in this category is that it only refers to the Recycle Bin for the selected hard drive or partition. This is important since XP uses an individual Recycle Bin for each drive and partition, not just one as is the case in some Windows versions. x Temporary Remote Desktop Files

These files are the result of using the Remote Desktop utility. If you repeatedly use Remote Desktop with the same computer or group of computers, leaving these files intact will maintain the speed of future connections. Deleting them will necessitate downloading the remote systems icons and wallpaper the next time a connection is established. x Setup Log Files

These are really pretty useless unless you have a specific reason to go back and see what occurred during XP setup. x Backup Files For Previous Operating System

I mentioned this category earlier as one you may not have, but if you did upgrade from a previous Windows version and selected the option to be able to uninstall XP, it may well exist. It takes some major hard drive space to copy all the files necessary to back up a previous system's core files, drivers, etc. This entry can range anywhere from a few hundred megabytes up to a gigabyte, so unless you are still considering dumping XP this is a good category to select. x Offline Files

Users with slower dialup connections and those using laptops frequently make websites they use often available offline. Depending on how many levels deep you save the sites, they can eat up gigabytes of hard drive space very quickly. Worse than taking up space, the sites often contain outdated information. A good candidate for deletion. x Compress Old Files

Unlike the other categories, Compress Old Files doesn't delete any files from the drive. It compresses files that Windows hasn't accessed for a specified period of time. The files are still available, but there will be a slight increase in access times because the files will be decompressed the next time they are accessed. Note that when Compress Old Files is highlighted an Options button appears. Clicking it will allow you to set the number of days to wait before an unaccessed file is compressed.

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There may be other categories that appear in your Disk Cleanup window, but in all cases, highlighting the item will display an explanation of the category in the Description area. More Options Tab In addition to the categories that appear on the Disk Cleanup tab, the More Options tab offers additional opportunities for freeing up hard drive real estate. There is nothing on this tab that isn't available elsewhere within XP in stand alone fashion, but having them grouped here does serve as a convenient reminder.

In Windows XP there are three choices available on the More Options tab: Windows Components, Installed Programs, and System Restore. x Windows Components

The Cleanup button in the Windows Components section launches the Windows Components Wizard. Select a general category of components and drill down using the Details button to locate the desired Windows component. x Installed Programs

The Cleanup button in the Installed Programs section opens the Add/Remove Programs dialog box. Any installed program can be removed by selecting the individual program and clicking the

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Change/Remove button. You cannot batch programs together to be removed. Each removal operation must be treated as a separate entity. x System Restore

Clicking the Cleanup button in the System Restore section opens a dialog box where it asks if you are sure you want to delete all but the most recent restore point. The difference between using this option and going directly to System Restore is that you have no option to selectively delete restore points with this method. It's "all but most recent" or nothing when accessed via Disk Cleanup. Click Yes or No depending on your choice. Post Disk Cleanup Procedures Using Disk Cleanup will almost certainly rid your system of a substantial amount of unneeded files. You could stop here and not suffer any ill consequences, but there are a lot of gaps and empty spaces on the hard drive where the files were removed. This would be an excellent time to run Disk Defragmenter to organize the hard drive into contiguous sections. The hard drive heads will spend less time seeking all the pieces of a file and you'll see another performance boost. Additional Disk Cleanup links x x x Disk Cleanup Tool Stops Responding While Compressing Old Files Disk Cleanup Utility Stops Responding How to Automate the Disk Cleanup Tool in Windows XP

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How to Make an ePub e-Books by Hand

If you're interested, I figured out the information in this guide by a combination of reverse engineering the Sherlock Holmes book from Adobe's site, reading through the specs at the IDPF web site, and trial and error until I got a working eBook to load properly in Digital Editions Since I originally posted this guide, the ePub standard has gone through a few revisions, making the hand made files I first created now throw out a bunch of errors when ran through tools like ePubCheck. Since various websites now offer books in the ePub format, I'm not going to go through and update every singe book I've made, but I am going to re-do this guide from scratch.

Tools Needed:

A text editor. Anything that can edit text files, HTML, and XML. (Example: Notepad) A .zip program. Anything that can create .zip files. (Example: Windows XP's built-in .zip support)

Optional Tools:
You can make ePub files with just the programs that came with your operating system, but here are some suggestions for tools that can make the process easier.

Tools for cleaning up source documents:

Below are some tools for cleaning up the HTML/XHTML files often used for sources for ePub books. Cleaner source code will produce a better looking book. Most of the ePub readers right now only support basic tags and do strange and wonderful things when they see a tag they don't recognize. Whether you make an eBook by hand, or use a program to convert a text or HTML document to an ePub file, the cleaner the HTML looks, the nicer the final book will look. The fewer the tags in the source document, the better.

Tag Soup - cleans up HTML tags

Overview of the process of making an ePub eBook

The Process can be broken down into three parts: 1. Prepare the content 2. Prepare the XML files 3. Put in in the container.

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First, let's go check out the official specs. Yes, it's very boring and hard to follow, but aren't they all? These will come in handy later on though. After getting the basic structure of the file setup, the official specs are handy to reference for tags that aren't used very often, or if you can't remember what exactly goes in a certain tag. Don't let them scare you though, we really only have to fiddle with two XML files, the rest is either straight XHTML, or files that you can copy from the sample file that we'll be looking at later. IDPF Specs:

(Allowed Mark-up reference for included XHTML files) Structure Container

1. Prepare the content

The first thing to do is prepare your content. Content will typically come in a .txt file or an .html file, if you get it from a public source such as Project Gutenberg. If you are turning your own work into an ePub eBook, it's probably in .doc or another word processor format. Content for ePub books needs to be in HTML format. It's out of the scope of this guide to show how to create an HTML file. As a quick overview: If your file is in .doc (MS Word) format, save it as HTML, then use a tool mentioned above to clean it up. If your file is a text document, add the appropriate markup to make it XHTML compliant. Another thing to note: If you are creating these files in a text editor, be sure to save in UTF-8 format, not ANSI. (In notepad, this is an option under the "save as" box.)

2. Prepare the XML files

The XML files are all the other stuff in the ePub book that tells where your content is, and what to do with it. Before we start preparing our own e-Book, lets look inside a sample file.

Download the sample file to your hard drive Rename the .epub extension to .zip Open the Zip file

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The root of the zip file The Meta-inf folder the OEBPS folder A .epub file contains, at a bare minimum, the following files/folders:

mimetype - tells a reader/operating system what's in here META-INF folder - This folder contains, at minimum, the container.xml file, which tells the reader software where in the zip file to find the book. OEBPS folder - Recommended location for the books content. It contains: o images folder - images go here o Content.opf - XML file that lists what's in the zip file o toc.ncx - This is the table of Contents o xhtml files - The book's contents are in these o page-template.xpgt - This file isn't really needed, but it makes it look pretty in Adobe Digital Editions

Feel free to extract these files and use them as a template...

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One thing to note before we get started: the filenames are case sensitive. This means that if you have a file named "Chapter1.xhtml" and you refer to it as "chapter1.xhtml" in the .OPF file or .NCX file, the book will not display properly. mimetype This file is just a plain ASCII text file that contains the line: "application/epub+zip" The operating system can look at this file to figure out what a .epub file is instead of using the file extension. This file must be the first file in the zip file, and must not be compressed. META-INF Folder This contains the container.xml file, which points to the location of the Content.opf file. This folder is the same for every e-book, so you should be able to recycle the whole folder from the sample file without making changes. OEBPS Folder Notes on the OEBPS folder: This is the folder where the book content is stored. According to the IDPF spec, you don't have to put your book content in here, but it is recommended. I've come across at least two readers that won't read the book properly if the content isn't in this folder. (If you do put your book content somewhere else, make sure that you update container.xml to point to the correct location of the content.opf file.) - images Folder If you have any images for your e-Book, they go in here. Note: most reading systems support a variety of images, but according to the OPF spec, only PNG must be supported by reading system - Content.opf This file gives a list of all files in the .epub container, defines the order of files, and stores meta data (author, genre, publisher, etc.) information. Note that this file can be named anything you want to call it, as long as the container.xml file mentioned above points to the correct filename.

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Lots of stuff in this file. I'll go through each required tag here. Check the specs to see more information about optional meta data tags. dc:title - Title of the book dc:language - Identifies the language used in the book content. The content has to comply with RFC 3066. List of language codes. (I'd just copy the language tag from the sample...) dc:identifier - This is the book's unique ID. This has to be a unique identifier for every different e-book. The spec doesn't give any sort of recommendation for what to use, but an ISBN number would be a good bet. I used the name of my web site and the date and time. One thing to note, because of how the file interacts with toc.ncx, just modify what's after the " uuid:" on this line. Next comes the manifest. This is just a listing of the files in the .epub container, and their file type. Each item is also assigned an item ID that's used in the spine section of content.opf. This list does not have to be in any particular order. (But you'll be happier if it is.) The spine section lists the reading order of the contents. The spine doesn't have to list every file in the manifest, just the reading order. For example, if the manifest lists images, they do not have to be listed in the spine, and in fact, can't be. Only content (i.e. the XHTML files) can be listed here. - toc.ncx This is the table of contents. This file controls what shows up in the left Table of Contents pane in Digital Editions

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Things you need to change: - Make sure the uid matches what you have in content.opf - doctitle: The text inside the text tag is what will show up as the books title in the reader software - The navpoint tag. Each nav point is a chapter listing, the text is the chapter name, and the src is the file it links to. If you copy a navpoint tag set to add chapters, make sure to update the id and playorder values. Notes: According to the spec, the ID can be anything you want, but it's easier to keep track of things if you use the same ID you used for that file in the .OPF file. Also, some readers won't properly display the Table of Contents if the ID doesn't match. Also, the playorder values have to be in order. (An item with playorder 1 will be before an item with playorder 2, etc.) They also have to be listed in order, and can't have any gaps. (You'll get an error if you jump from 1 to 20, etc) - page-template.xpgt This file isn't part of the IDPF spec, but Adobe Digital Editions uses it for formatting and setting column settings and whatnot. You don't need this file at all,

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but your book will look nicer in Digital Editions if you include it. Other readers should just ignore it. Note: You can use a .css style sheet file to layout styles for your book as well. Just make sure to list it in the manifest section of Content.opf Also of note here, any styling should be done in a CSS stylesheet, and not in the document. - Content .xhtml files Content files should be XML 1.1 documents If you're not familiar with XML, it's basically HTML with closing tags for every element, and several style tags are not supported. As far as how to put the content, you can have it all in one document with bookmarks at each chapter, or each chapter in a separate .xhtml file. The latter looks nicer in most readers.

3. Put it in the Container

Now we make the .epub container that all these files go in. 1. 2. 3. 4. Create an empty .zip file with whatever name you like Copy the mimetype file into the zip file (don't use compression on this file) Copy the rest of the files and folders mentioned above into the zip file * Re-name the .zip extension to .epub

* The specification recommends that the books files go in an "OEBPS" folder inside the zip file. If you put them in another spot, be sure that container.xml in the META-INF folder points to the correct location of the *.opf file. The zip file layout should look something like this:
- mimetype META-INF - container.xml OEBPS images - content.opf - toc.ncx - stylesheet.css - content.xhtml

You should now be able to open your e-Book in Adobe Digital Editions, or any other reader that supports the .epub format.

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If you want to cheat, download the file below. It's a zip file that has empty chapter pages, and the content and toc files pre filled out, so all you have to do is copy and paste your content into the empty files, and modify the OPF and NCX files. Blank Sample file

Checking your ePub file

So you've made a sample ePub book, and it won't open, or it opens with an error, or looks funky. What now? epubcheck is a program that will scan your ePub file and display any errors it finds in the book. You can download it here or go to threepress's website to have it scanned.

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