This assumes you’re working off a PDF. If you have a doc or the like your job will be a lot easier. Some publishers have provided PDFs to Mark to get this out there for other publishers we need to hunt down the content.
Getting Started
1. Contact Mark through moc.liamg|mkadeg#moc.liamg|mkadeg to let him know you what to help and what you would like to work on.
2. If he can arrange it he will get a PDF to you to work from.
"Pulling Content"
0. Read the Product Identity and Open Game Content Declaration to know we can and can't use. If you have questions ask Mark. He loves to answer these questions.
1. Open the PDF up in Adobe Reader and use the copy text function to copy about a chapter’s worth of text into a .doc or.rtf file.
2. If you’re lucky, the text will be formatted into paragraphs. In most cases, however, it will have copied across with a paragraph mark after each line of text, for example:
“and eventually leaves, knowing how he may be treated,
but not really comprehending the implications.
Adventuring: Miracle children become restless. They
see father and mother as being quite different from each
other and begin to wonder how the outside world could
be, that they feel they must run away from it. The halforc
will defy his parents’ will and escape, with or without”
3. In this case, go through the text and place a string of nonsense (I prefer “xx”) after every actual paragraph. I do this by having both the PDF and DOC open at the same time, figuring out the last words in the paragraph in the PDF, scanning for those words and copy-pasting xx in. In the above example, xx would go after “implications”.
4. Using Find and Replace, find “^p” (paragraph marks) and replace them with “ ” (a space). In the text above, that would result in:
“and eventually leaves, knowing how he may be treated, but not really comprehending the implications. xx Adventuring: Miracle children become restless. They see father and mother as being quite different from each other and begin to wonder how the outside world could be, that they feel they must run away from it. The halforc will defy his parents’ will and escape, with or without”
5. Then find “xx” and replace with “^p^p”:
“and eventually leaves, knowing how he may be treated, but not really comprehending the implications.
Adventuring: Miracle children become restless. They see father and mother as being quite different from each other and begin to wonder how the outside world could be, that they feel they must run away from it. The halforc will defy his parents’ will and escape, with or without”
6. Then go through the document adding “+ ”, “++ ”, “+++ ” or “++++ ” (plus space) in front of all the headings (the fewer the pluses, the bigger the heading).
7. I then copy “**” (the markers for bold print) and go through the DOC copy-pasting them before and after every phrase that should be bolded. These markers have to be flush with what you want to bold: for example,
“**Prerequisites:** BAB +5” will become: “Prerequisites: BAB +5” but “**Prerequisites: **BAB +5” won’t.
8. I then copy “//” (the markers for italic print) and do the same process. There are two ways to do bold and italics. You can scroll through the document manually (remember pressing control-down or control-up makes you go through a paragraph at a time, and control-across makes you go through a word at a time) or you can open up find and search for text with the formatting bold or italics. Then just click in front of the text and copy-paste and behind the text and copy-paste, then click on find again. This way, you’ll find spells and such that are scattered in the text and you’ll miss with the naked eye.
9. Another time saver is that when a phrase that you want to bold/italicise is in many places in the text, just put it in the find box and put it plus the markers in the replace box. For example, if you’ve got lots of feats, don’t go through and add ** manually, find “Prerequisites:” or “Normal:” or “Benefit:” and replace with “**Prerequisites:**”, “**Normal:**” or “**Benefit:**”
10. The reason I suggest doing it chapter by chapter is because sometimes you’ll mess up and it’s easier to fix one chapter than the entire book. In the end, copy-paste everything in the one DOC with something like: “«new section here»” for when you want a new wiki section.
11. Tables are easy to do. For table headings, type “||~” in front of every entry and then “||” at the end. For regular entries, “||” in front of every entry and then “||” at the end. If you want a long cell, put an extra “||” at the beginning for every extra cell you want it to go across.
For example,
||~ Level ||~ Base Attack ||~ Fort Save ||~ Ref Save ||~ Will Save ||~ Special ||||||||||~ Spells per Day ||
|| 1 || +0 || +0 || +0 || +2 || Minor mastery 3/day, Magic Vortex, Spell List || 3 || - || - || - || - ||
Becomes:
| Level | Base Attack | Fort Save | Ref Save | Will Save | Special | Spells per Day | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | +0 | +0 | +0 | +2 | Minor mastery 3/day, Magic Vortex, Spell List | 3 | - | - | - | - |
12. It might be worth browsing Wiki Syntax (http://www.wikidot.com/doc:wiki-syntax) for some more tricks: for example bullet points are “* ” (asterisk space) and numbered points “# ” (hash space). What if you want to use an asterisk as a note? Some people don’t put a space between the asterisk and the new word (“*This is a footnote”) or they put a space in front and behind the asterisk (“ * This is also a footnote”). I believe you can also tell the wiki to ignore syntax by typing: “* This is a footnote.” To make boxes, put “> ” (greater than space) in front of each paragraph you want included.
13. Enjoy!
Done?!?
1. Save the file and send it to Mark at moc.liamg|mkadeg#moc.liamg|mkadeg. He will get it up live on the wiki as soon as possible.
