Lay Out Programs

[Marilynx]

Finally tracked you folks down from the Old Country, as it were.

I'm not a DTP person generally, but I could make WordStar (yes, I actually go back to CP/M days!) sit up and beg, and I was pretty good at getting Word 6 to act like a DTP layout program. Word XP is another story. (Horror, I think.)

I had asked, back in the Old Country, about layout programs for two specialized reference books that will probably be self-published. Unfortunately, all my information on this has gone the way of the Dodo in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans. My computer may be intact, having escaped with us at 2:30 in the morning the morning the storm hit, but I think my brain was either blown away or drowned, because I cannot, for the life of me, find the recommendations.

To recap, I'm going to be doing a reference book, something on the order of the Dummies books, for the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. It will have a number of tables in it, most of which have already been assembled in Word XP before I discovered what a cumbersome bear it was. It will also have a cartoon at the start of each chapter.

I'm also endeavoring to turn my collection of 200+ recipes that I've created for the SCD into a cook book. We won't discuss how many times I've sworn at Word XP for its inability to do something I could have done in either Word 6 or WordStar.

I doubt I'll make any money off this project; it's primarily to help people with Crohn's Disease, Ulcerative Colitis, and other IBD/IBS issues. So cost of software is an issue for me.

Another issue is that I'm still operating under WinMe because, thanks to Katrina, I don't have the money for the computer upgrade I planned.

In any case, any assistance will be deeply appreciated. I really wanted to have this out over a year ago, but family illnesses and Katrina got in the way.