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RSSHow to format text files (eg. essays, books, etc.) so they look great on iPhone iBooks…
Jun 24
Mac, Software, iPhone/iPod touch No Comments
The iBooks app is something I feel the iPhone has needed for a long time, and in this how-to post, I’ll be showing you how to make your own PDF iBook’s for the iPhone.
Ok, the first thing you’ll want to do is create your TEXT (.txt) file. For the purposes of this tutorial, I’m going to start off by using a pre-made eBook (To Kill A Mockingbird) that can be downloaded from this website.
Open the file in Pages.
Once the document has opened, the first thing you want to do is open the Inspector panel. If you don’t have it open, use shortcut: Option + Command + I
We need to change a few things here. Observe the BEFORE and AFTER stages here:
The highlighted areas are those that need changing. Firstly, press the Page Setup button. This will bring up the dialog box below:
Select the Paper Size drop-down, and choose 3 1/2 x 5 (it’s near the top of the long list)
Hit OK and that’s that.
Going back to the Inspector window, change all the values of 2.54cm in the four margins boxes, to 0.5cm.
Lastly, uncheck the two tick-boxes next to Headers and Footers.
Now that is done, go to the main document and use these two shortcuts: Command + A, which will select all the text in the document, and then Command + T to bring up the Font dialog box.
The default font for .txt files is Helvetica, which is okay, but I prefer changing it to something more readable, something like Georgia. Also note that I have bumped down the font size to 10:
That’s the formatting done!
Your document should look something like this…
All that remains now is to export it, and sync it to your iPod touch / iPhone. To export, go to the File menu, and select Export…. This will bring up this dialog box. Select PDF, best image quality, and Next…
Save it to somewhere (it doesn’t matter where!) on your Mac, and then go ahead and drag the PDF file into iTunes. If you have the iBook’s app, next time you plug in your iOS device, the PDF will automatically sync. Done!
This is what it the book will look like on your iPhone:
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