#PDF Export Issues

[shawnjordison]

Canva PDFs are not accessible

Explore the challenges of Canva PDFs being inaccessible to those with disabilities, and discover the secret tip to make them accessible. Watch step-by-step video guides on how to tackle common issues, such as reading order and tagging.

This post aims to explore how Canva PDFs are not accessible to people with disabilities. It seems like such a basic need at this point for any modern website to allow for exporting with a structure in place. This simply is not the case for Canva PDFs. Would you rather just have me make your Canva doc exports accessible for you? Get accessible Documents Now Video Overview of the Problem The…

[mrnnki]

gonna post each of these guys' cards separately but here's a pdf version of the entire character card set that I hope to gourd is actually accessible

otherwise, transcription below!

Zen-An, the Ruler

Member of the Order.

"If it's not his, does it deserve to exist?"

[Image: Zen-An, back to the viewer as he stares casually. Background is a wall with a messy Order symbol painted on it.]

Zen-An made his journey to society with Shor-Ef and Sir-Ef. The three were inseparable, until they learned that Sir and Zen had a parent in the Lenetae. When they met this parent, Zen joined the Lenetae. He climbed his way up the ranks until he was beside Vi-Kara the Conquerer, and made a name for himself during the Three-Kiste War. Now, he rules as Lenetae Fashi, determined to keep the Order beneath his paw.

Theme song: Don't Mess with Me - Temposhark

[whosname]

this is the best idea, hope i can maintain this file updated. still need to find the stuff on the tabs and on the likes.

[rontra]

failteacher yuri issue #1 [pdf]

YOU CAN DOWNLOAD IT. TO HAVE AND TO KEEP. ON ITCH.IO.

collects comic #1-9 for your reading pleasure! it also includes a picture of hamburg steak i haven't posted before.

(i don't ever usually export PDFs, so if there's something i could do better in that regard, i'm open to hearing the Tips N Tricks... the file seems ok on my end but i don't really know anything about it so 😤 let me know! we'll figure this out together!)

anyway, if you load it up in a 3D previewer we can pretend together that it's an actual book ^_^

[mel-hath-no-fury]

For my writer mutuals

I was cleaning out some old bookmarks earlier today, and came across the Milanote I used for planning Phantom (one of my longfics). I wanted to share this resource with y'all and show you what it can do, since I found it really useful for planning what turned out to be my longest (and probably most convoluted) story so far.

This isn't an ad and I'm not being paid by Milanote. I just really like it.

Milanote is a mostly free* brainstorming tool that I found very useful as someone who likes to play around with visuals (and make my planning documents aestetically pleasing).

Rather than talk about it, I'm just going to paste a bunch of screenshots from my Phantom board (note: there's a lot of story elements here that were changed during the draftng stage or didn't make it to the final fic, as well as SPOILERS. Images are from Pinterest or DAI concept/game art, and fan artists are linked):

Homepage with links to different planning sections

Old character profile for the title character that ended up getting retconned (lower left image is by Nipuni).

Plot planning

Me trying to figure out what the point of the story is (upper right image is by Nipuni, lower left is theboyofcheese)

A much less aesthetic but more detailed plot outline

* Milanote does have a subscription option, but I was able to get by using the free version no problem. There's a limit on how many items you can have pinned to your board, but if you refer a friend and get them to sign up, you can get more pins (I used a fake email generator to do this). Once I reached the max number of referral pins, I never had any issues running out of pins. Also if you do run out of pins but have some static boards you aren't adding to or changing, there's an option to export them as PDFs so you can then delete those boards to free up space without losing the content.

[thesilversun]

Gdocs alternative - Ellipsus

You might well have see the post about Gdoc locking/deleting all peoples content (it's my last reblog)

If you are looking for an alternative, Ellipsus is an option.

Their website is here https://ellipsus.com if you want to look at it. Basically they are platform for writing and sharing/collaborating on writing. They are anti-AI and based in Germany.

The site is still in beta, so things are being worked on and added quite often. being able to highlight text in different colours is one of the latest additions.

This is what the main page looks like once you have a few writing projects running. You can order them by name, created or data last edited. This is folder level - so you can make a folder and have all the different parts inside.

This is how it looks inside a folder showing the documents - this is my Mysterious Lotus Casebook fic idea folder.

This is how a document looks when it is open. You can create different drafts of the same documents. The options are on the right to change format, font type/size, use a spell checker. You can invite people of collaborate or comment on your writing.

Just off the end of that list on the right is the share and export options. You can send people a link to view it, download it as a pdf or as text or as html or mark down. There is also an export to AO3 option.

The background colour theme isn't set, so you aren't stuck with the one I've shown you.

There is quite an active discord server as well if you want to talk to other people using it, find people to collaborate on writing with or raise any technical issues or suggest new functions.

[blissfullyunawares]

5 Days of Helping You Outline Your Next Novel

Day 5: Obsidian for Outlining

Find all 5 installments of the mini series: helping you outline your next novel

*I have added a layer of “static” over my screenshots so they are distinctive enough to stand apart from the surrounding text

did you miss this series? here you can find all posts here: [day 1] [day 2] [day 3] [day 4]

Do you use Obsidian?

What is Obsidian?

A note-taking and knowledge management tool that allows you to create and connect notes seamlessly.

Uses a local-first approach, meaning your data is stored on your computer, not the cloud (unless you choose to sync).

Features bidirectional linking, which helps create a non-linear, networked way of organizing ideas—great for brainstorming and outlining.

Why should you use Obsidian?

Flexible & Customizable – Unlike rigid writing apps, you can design your own workflow.

Distraction-Free Writing – Markdown keeps the focus on text without extra formatting distractions.

Ideal for Outlining & Organization – Connect story ideas, characters, and settings effortlessly.

Obsidian for Writing

Outlining

Creating a One Pager

Create a single markdown note for a high-level novel summary.

Use headings and bullet points for clarity.

Link to related notes (e.g., character pages, theme exploration).

Here’s an example of an outline I’m currently using. This is what my website will have on it (and what goals I hope to achieve w my website)

Using the Native Canvas Tool

Use Obsidian’s native Canvas tool to visually outline your novel. (Best on PC)

Create a board with columns for Acts, Chapters, or Story Beats.

Drag and drop cards as the story evolves.

Writing

Why Write Directly in Obsidian?

Minimalist interface reduces distractions.

Markdown-based formatting keeps the focus on words.

No auto-formatting issues (compared to Word or Google Docs).

Why is Obsidian Great for Writing?

Customizable workspace (plugins for word count, timers, and focus mode).

Easy to link notes (e.g., instantly reference past chapters or research).

Dark mode & themes for an optimal writing environment.

Organization in Obsidian

Outlining, Tags, Links

Each chapter, character, important item, and setting can have its own linked note.

Below, for example, you can see the purple text is a linked page directly in my outline.

Use bidirectional linking to create relationships between (story) elements. Clicking these links will automatically open the next page.

Tags can be used for important characters, items, places, or events that happen in your writing. Especially useful for tracking.

Folders for Efficient Storage

Organize notes into folders for Acts, Characters, Worldbuilding, and Drafts.

Use tags and backlinks for quick navigation.

Creating a separate folder for the actual writing and linking next (chapter) and previous (chapter) at the bottom for smooth navigation.

You can also create and reuse your own internal templates!

Spiderweb Map Feature (Graph View)

Visualize connections between characters, plot points, and themes. Below you’ll see the basic mapping of my website development project.

This view can help you spot disconnected (floating) ideas and create bridges to them.

Exporting

Why Export?

Ready to format in another program (Scrivener, Word, Docs, Vellum, etc).

Need a clean version (removing tags, notes, etc) for beta readers or editors.

Creating a backup copy of your work.

When should you export?

Personally, I like to export every 5 chapters or so and update my live version on Google Docs. This allows my family, friends, and beta readers to access my edited work.

After finishing a draft or major revision.

Before sending to an editor or formatting for publication.

Where should you export?

Personally I copy and paste my content from each chapter into a google doc for editing. You may also want to make note of the following export options:

Markdown to Word (.docx) – For editing or submitting.

Markdown to PDF – For quick sharing

Markdown to Scrivener – For those who format in Scrivener.

To Conclude

Obsidian is an invaluable tool for novelists who want a flexible, organized, and distraction-free writing process.

Try setting up your own Obsidian vault for your next novel! Comment below and let me know if this was helpful for you 🫶🏻

your reblogs help me help more ppl 💕

follow along for writing prompts, vocabulary lists, and helpful content like this! <333

✨ #blissfullyunawaresoriginals ✨

[sunflowersinheaven]

Idk if you managed to solve the word issue but you can try print as pdf? Or export as pdf? Whichever you haven't tried yet. Or else it's good Ole word to pdf converter. Good luck!

I managed to "solve" it, thank you! Its still a mess, and doesnt look the same as the word doc, but good enough ahhah. Exporting as pdf and printing as pdf showed the same, I should have thought about formatting normally and not just copy pasting everything lol

[souptastical]

Small shoutout/promo to the app i now use for writing✨️ ✒️Lite Writer

Monthly: $3 (CAD)

One-time purchase: $15 (CAD)

*most of these features are premium, but you can still use the free version*

((Ignoring the fact you get a rare glimpse of one of my drafts before the x3 editing rounds, there's quite a few features I'm loving here- mainly in premium, but I appreciated the allowance of a time-senstive trial so I could get a sense of what the app offers. This is the only app I've found that is similar to one I used to rely on in my early days of digital writing.)

👏🏼My favourite features so far (in order of photos):

•The ability for a background/theme- what makes it better is every book can have a different one (a godsend)

•The ability to add book covers

•In "side panel" there's a web shortcut which allows you to browse the web without leaving the app- which I find handy & am loving it for using my main thesaurus!! I was surprised at the fact they offered this lol, really going the extra mile it seems

•Web server- havent tweaked it yet, but to my understanding it's for transferring.

•Continuing the point above, I find it cool that it allows for transfer in txt or PDF if you dont wanna use the web server

•It allows backups- I'm not fully versed in how it works and it seems a little finicky, but its there along with the web server. It offers it by Google drive and a couple other accounts.

•Fonts✨️✨️- a BLESSING. Just upload whatever ones you want.

•Quite a basic feature, but the book allows chapter separation.

•It has TTS and is very basic, definitely not ElevenLabs quality, but they offer it + allow you to export the audio file, which is really cool.

There are so many other features I'm yet to learn & this app is definitely a work in progress, but I personally am getting my $15 worth. Their development team seems very involved from what I've seen, which is good. The last update was March of this year, and they offer tutorials in certain aspects. The only thing I can't figure out is fucking markdown lol- i literally can't find it. But that's my only issue, everything else is great & im so glad I found this!!!!

[pookie-mulder]

Converting plain text fics to .epub

Hey guys! As I’ve entered the wonderful world of The X-Files fandom, I’ve encountered many wonderful old-school fics that are hard to read because they’ve been shared in plain text (.txt) format. I’m sure some of you know already how to convert them to easily-readable epubs, but I thought I’d share how I do it just in case anyone has been suffering through terrible formatting.

Basic tutorial under the cut!

The first thing you need to do is download Calibre. It’s a life-changing desktop app that allows you to edit ebooks.

Once you’ve got Calibre all set up, go ahead and download the fic you want to convert. I’ll show you here with the legendary Tempest, found on Gossamer.

Gossamer has a handy download button, but not all of the old-school fanfic sites do. However, you can still download them as txt files using your browser. It’s different for every browser, but generally it’s under “file” and “export as” or “download page” or something.

Anyway, as you can see, once you download it as a .txt file, it messes up the formatting, making it incredibly annoying to read.

To fix this, you’re going to drag and drop the file into Calibre to add it to your library. Select it, then click “Convert books” at the top. There are a lot of settings you can change, but most of the time, you won’t need to mess with any of them. Just choose “epub” as your output format (top right), click OK, and you’re good!

(This process also works for other file formats like pdfs.)

Once it’s done converting, double click on the title to preview the book and make sure it looks good. If it still has issues, you can try converting it again with heuristic processing turned on (it’s located on the left side of the conversion screen). The conversion process isn’t perfect, but it will take care of the most egregious formatting errors.

Next, click on “edit metadata” at the top and locate the original txt file under the list of formats at the top right. Select it, then click the little green recycling icon to delete it. You can also change the title, author, cover, and series info while you’re at it.

Finally, go back to your library, click “save to disk” at the top, and choose “save only epub format to a single folder” to save the epub file to your computer. From there, you can import it into your ebook app of choice. I use iBooks, so all I have to do is open the file on my computer and it automatically adds it to the library on my phone and laptop.

That’s it! Now you have a readable ebook.

Let me know if you want me to add pictures of the process! I can’t guarantee I know the answers to any questions, but I’d be happy to try to help if you need it.

There’s also a Calibre plugin that allows you to combine multiple epubs into a single file. This is super helpful for fics with chapters uploaded separately. If anyone wants to know how to do that, let me know!

[pleucas]

hello! may i ask what device are you using to draw? You mentioned using Procreate, so i think it's an iPad, but i was wondering what model it is and if you'd recommend it for painting

hey there!

thanks for sending in an ask. i’m pretty sure i have the iPad Pro 2020, 12.9in. i use a gen 2 apple pencil with it :)

and abt digital painting etc…

i’d def recommend it for digital painting! since it’s an old model you’d prob be able to get a discount for it, or find a used one in good condition 👍👍 the screen size is sometimes excessive for me, i think the 11in model or anything smaller would work fine. only concern there would be functionality and memory, bc digital painting is very storage taxing

i’ve been using this guy for four years and she’s holding up very well. i’ve noticed that the battery is less effective (draining quicker, charging slower, etc) but it hasn’t severely inebriated my painting practice

i used to have a paper feel screen protector for it, but for the past year i’ve taken it off. i think there was just an adjustment period from traditional to digital and i hated the slippery screen, but i noticed it wore down my pen nib really quickly lol. now i use a nib with a metal tip (kinda looks like a mechanical pencil tip) and the smoothness doesn’t bother me as much. just took some time getting used to

smth abt digital painting on procreate/ipad that i both hate and love is the color display. apple color display is super good, almost too good… laptop/phone screens don’t match up and i find myself editing things for posts or printing lol. important to note, apple specifically functions in their own RGB scale, so exporting files from procreate preserves that color profile. it’s not compatible with printing, sharing, or anything LOL so be careful to convert things to sRGB (learned this the very hard way…)

i do hate procreate sometimes because their DPI is just. SOOOO low. if you transform or rotate anything then it pixelates 😭 i enabled all the hacks and nothing helped. nowadays i set up my canvas to be 3k+ pixels on at least one axis and 600dpi, it’s marginally better but i def do adjust my process to avoid any transformations 😞 maybe its just particularly bad for my style bc i like my details n Things all over the place but yeaaa prolly the biggest pitfall for ipad/procreate

another note (not rlly digital art related), i pretty much just use my ipad for digital painting, gaming sometimes (i had a crazy genshin/hsr phase), note taking on pdfs whtv. it prolly averages to ~2.5 hours per day, which isn’t a lot. so idk if you plan to use an ipad more intensively (ik some pals who deck out their ipad and basically use it as a laptop), then aforementioned problems might be a much larger issue

this got suuuuper long i apologize but all in all, ipad is def good for digital painting! it’s accessible, customizable, transportable (even with my massive 13in screen LOOOOL), and worth :) but at the end of the day, it’s a tool and its utility is what you make of it. hope i could help!

[adragonthatwrites]

Time for a bookbinding update!

Alright strap in everyone I've got quite the tale to tell!

So! I haven't updated much regarding my next bookbinding project because I've been struggling with my Word documents.

So it goes like this; after I've finished formatting a fic into a printable form, I'll need to export it out into a pdf, which allows me to automatically organize the pages into signatures for printing (as opposed to slowly copy-pasting the pages into signatures for printing in Word, which takes an enormous amount of time and effort)

Anyway, I ran into some trouble when trying to export the Word doc into a pdf; that being, for some reason the pdf was sort of shrinking text down, pushing it up pages and overall compressing the fic slightly, which resulted in the formatting getting severely fucked up and occasionally entire pages being lost; which obviously causes huge problems.

Here's a quick example of what that looks like, with the Word doc seen in dark mode and pdf in regular (taken from Beast With Two Backs by VampireFuan, if anyone wants to check out the fic!)

As you can see, the text is up much father in the pdf than it is in Word; this can be a huge problem when it happens all throughout a large multi-chaptered fic binding and causes chapter titles to float in the middle of a page and shortens the page amount; which needs to stay consistent for organization into signatures.

I tried, I kid you not, for months to try and figure out what was causing this. I (and others from multiple Discord servers) tried so many things to fix this; changing text font size, line spacing, paragraph spacing, looking for hidden text or formatting, changing the margins, adjusting page size, uninstalling and reinstalling Adobe and then adding a different PDF reader to try viewing it, and about twenty other things I can't even remember over the months.

One temporary fix we found was putting in a bunch of page breaks wherever the problem occurred; though this is obviously unsustainable as the problem would just crop up again a few pages down from the page break, and I can't have like fifty different page breaks and sections in the Word Doc; that's not realistic, and is frankly likely to break in a whole new way.

It was only recently that I discovered what was apparently causing this problem; apparently, Word and the PDF viewers did not like that was using size 6 font for the page numbers up in the header of the pages. Upping the font size to 9 fixed the issue; this is the lowest it can go, size 8 and the problem starts up again.

Why does Word throw a fit when I use a smaller font size in the fic? Fuck if I know and at this point I'm too tired to try and figure it out (nor am I teck-savvy enough for this) so at this point I'm just going to shrug my shoulders, make the numbers size 9, and get on with my binding.

So yeah I'll be announcing my next binding project either later tonight or tomorrow, now that I can finally make pdfs for binding again lol!

[rontra]

failteacher yuri issue #2 [pdf]

ITS ON ITCH.IO THE SECOND ISSUE NR 2

collects comic #10-16 for your enjoyment. the School Festival Issue, if you will...

(like before, i don't really know much about exporting pdfs, so if there's anything about that aspect that could be improved do let me know...!)

[kradeelav]

so one of the technical bits i challenged myself with this gunter/corrin doujin was to:

(a) figure out an efficient process for professional multi-page artistic works in linux/true OSS programs - from ideation all the way to printer hand-off.

and

(b) a process that fit well with my brain and kept me from spinning my wheels endlessly redoing pages. it's a common problem with longer projects (aka why you see reboots of webcomics all the time, and also why i haven't been able to get "what greater sin" out for three years cuz i sucked at this lol).

why the focus on process though?

after mastering a certian degree of technical proficiency. it's what separates the hobbyist artists from the pros. not to toot my horn, but i'm quite good at project management process at work, and about two years ago it dawned on me to take some of that learned knowledge and actually apply it here if only to save eyestrain/wrist-strain time.

work lazier smarter, not harder etc.

before i get into the process outline, there's two programs that are doing the heavy lifting since i gave them a trial run with the last anthology and they worked great in tandem. (both cost no money and are available on all major OS's btw)

krita, my main drawing program. sketching/inking/speech bubbles/coloring/vector stuff can all be done here.

libreoffice writer - basically microsoft word for linux. i use it for arranging multiple pages, reordering, and exporting as .pdf to give to the printer (while amazing at rendering, krita can't export as pdf or show multi-pages)

so!

process wise, it occurred to me not too long ago that i needed to consolidate my multi-page creative projects into 3 major gates.

thumbnail sketches

proof of concept layout

"last 10" final

thumbnail sketches

thumbnails are a common concept in comics, but they're great for print front/back matter too. thumbnails ain't here to look pretty, their sole purpose to get the idea from your noggin to on the page.

here's a completely unaltered spread from my journal with a ton of thumbs and notes for this doujin.

so what's the kind of stuff i think about with thumbs?

how panels in a comic fit together with the major emotional beats + line of action. does the eye follow the pages naturally? do you "feel" the emotional impact?

does the compositions work with each other? negative/positive space, weight on top or bottom or diagonally, etc. do the pages feel claustrophobic or too empty? do they breathe?

decorative framing elements that reflect the tone you want + how they generally lead the eye across the page

random notes about overall tone or potential future pages

etcetc

at this point i import that digitally, and start drawing a proper sketch off of it.

fast forward from that sketch to:

"proof of concept" layout

i'm calling this proof of concept instead of a draft as they serve different purposes. a draft is a half-finished work you can just screenshot and show to anyone for feedback (like comms). proof of concept here is showing a certian level of completeness across draft pages to measure consistency.

lack of consistency is the mind killer killer of comics.

proof of concept is specifically meant to nip the 'fizzled out halfway' issues in the bud. it's to show you how cool it looks altogether already, but also shed a light on problem areas that are potentially popping up on the earlier side, so there's less time wasted.

this is a little premature in the process for a proof of concept screenshot, but you get the idea here in a later strip, shown here as screenshots imported into libreoffice writer:

another reason that made libreoffice writer essential is the accurate 2-page spread view. between that, being able to resize the page to whatever you need, and the very easy pdf exporter (with customizable compression), i don't know if i could do this kind of project here.

now, backing up - what kinds of consistency are we checking for here?

does the inking/coloring style change noticeably in a jarring way?

is there one comic strip that the pacing/paneling sucks in comparison to the others? or feels awkwardly added in tone and perhaps better saved for a different project?

is there one panel within a sequential series that's torturing you? what's the best way to throw it out and redo it even faster?

do the front/back matter support the meat of the inside in a clever, on-tone way?

did you accidentally change the font halfway through after you liked your new shiny toy? which one works better?

etc

keep in mind we're not just checking the consistency in one strip, it's for the book as a whole.

and then lastly,

"the last ten" final

"the last ten" is a mental concept i've used for the last ten years for single comic pages. it's especially tempting to noodle over endlessly making one comic page perfect, when you could have done ten reasonably good ones in the same time, and so i made this my last step making IC pages.

once when you approach a level of reasonably done, but kinda hate the page and are procrastinating on getting it out, stop, rest your eyes overnight, and list the last ten minor things you'd change.

once when you've changed those? out the door it goes.

i'm gonna switch to a different project but here's a good example of a "last ten" stage applied to illustrations when i did fallen!gunter's FEH mockups.

looks pretty complete, right? WRONG :D

i can't remember the exact last ten i used, but it was something like:

too much of one specific glowy purple on both, i wanted more contrast with the red glow + "water" texture

needed more effects on the first image to better match FEH's aesthetic

change Leigh's credits after they got a chance to see it and give the thumbs up

knee/shin on left looks unfinished painting wise, clean up

missing chest plate silver decorations on left, clean up

etc

this is the last hail mary check to hack your brain into being satisfied with the page. you've had your say, onwards to the next one.

now, you can also have an additional 'last ten' for the project as a whole. but it's especially critical for comic pages to help keep the momentum/tempo/pace going.

anyway!

we'll see how all of this actually works in practice depending on how fast i can get this doujin out. :)

[fus-mar-hoz]

Do you know if the International Communist Review issues are available in pdf form anywhere? The browser form is usable ofc, but I want to be able to put it on my e-reader and ride the bus

They aren't officially, no, which is a shame because their physical prints are beautifully designed ↓

I think there are two ways for you to get these. One, literally just copy the text into a text editor and export to pdf. Two, go to a website like this one and get whatever it spits out, downside is you can't get the entire issue at once. For that one I linked, I found these settings to work well:

[sisselkalle]

i'll be reuploading the enterbrain my life as a king guide tomorrow after work

the PDF exporter i've been using has been having issues specifically with trying to export the guide at high quality (resulting in a 2GB PDF file with nothing but blank pages), so the current upload is of lesser quality. i don't know why the program's doing this, or why it's having an issue with this specific guide, because i've been able to export high quality pdf's of the other guides without issue (and they're all around the same page count)

the reupload will unfortunately be in 2 parts, at least until i can get to the bottom of whatever's causing this weird issue