Designing the Future tutorial

From Linguistic Team International Wiki

This tutorial will explain to you how to create a complete PDF document from your Designing the Future translations in Pootle.

First of all, you will have received a package that contains all you that you'll need. Inside that package you have HTML files that contain your translations and the images from the book. It is important that you leave the HTML files and the images in the same folder, so that the images can be displayed in your browser later on.

Now, this tutorial explains the process of creating a PDF by using the Open Office software, which is free and has all the options we will need for this. There is even a template document for you (inside the package you've received), which contains the first three pages of the book.

After obtaining Open Office and having a strong determination towards improving the world (yeah, that is an actual prerequisite :D, but if you don't have it, at least take a look at the package to see which is where), we're ready with the preparations. And now we can start with the fun. :)


Open the template document and substitute the English text in the first three pages with a translation in your language. The template uses Times New Roman, but if you'd like to you can change that to whatever font looks good with your language.

  • Note: throughout the entire task of combining your translations to form a completed PDF you should have the English PDF of Designing the Future opened up to serve you as a guide.
  • Tip: Configure Open Office to make regular backups, which will prevent the loss of your work in case something happens. Click here to learn how. From the Save AutoRecovery information option, I have my settings set to make a backup every 5 minutes. Additionally, if you use Dropbox or a similar service and you place the Open Office file in the Dropbox folder on your computer, every time you press Ctrl+S, the latest version of the file will be saved in the cloud, so you will have great security that your work will not be lost.

When you're done with those first three pages, open the "Introduction" HTML file in your internet browser. Copy the entire content and paste it to Open Office. All the formatting should be preserved when performing this operation.

  • Important: your browser has to be set to display the page in Unicode/UTF-8 encoding, otherwise some of your language's special characters may appear incorrectly. If you're using Firefox, you can instruct a page to display in Unicode/UTF-8 by going to Character Encoding in the menu and selecting Unicode there.

Now you have the "Introduction". You can continue in the same way with "Your Challenge", and then with Chapter One. Open in your browser, then Select All (Ctrl+A), then copy, then paste in Open Office.

Now, in Chapter One we notice that there are footnotes which aren't where they're supposed to be. To fix this, click with the mouse on the place where the footnote should be, go to Insert=>Footnote and click OK. Then you have to copy the actual content of the footnote and paste it under the line. For this to be clean, you can make the text to "forget" its size by pasting it for example in your browser's Search bar and then copying it from there. Then you can paste it below the line and it will look as a nice footnote. :) Additionally, hit Enter to make any links active, and delete the new line with backspace.


In going through the next chapters, we see that some of the paragraphs are unfortunately still in English. This is a problem with the conversion from Pootle format to HTML. In these cases the translation can be copied from the respective .po files in Pootle.

In Chapter Four there is a whole section ("Human Nature") that is missing from the English PDF. In this case the correct version is actually in Pootle, while the English PDF is pending an update with the correction.

From Chapter Six onward you begin to have images in the text. Unfortunately, Open Office will not use the global settings we have given it when we are copying from a browser, so we have to make two manual adjustments for every picture. First, select the image, right click on it, go to Anchor and choose "To Paragraph". Then simply drag the picture to its corresponding paragraph, which will anchor (or lock) the two to each other. Second, right click on the image and choose Picture. Go to the Wrap tab and from the Spacing choose how much far away do you want the text to be from the picture. If any picture needs resizing, you can do that, too. The function to center the image on the page can also come in handy. These two videos will give you more details about image manipulation and perhaps make you more confident with how to handle it: video 1, video 2

  • Advice: When you adjust the images so that they look good together with the text, remember to export to PDF from time to time so that you can get an idea of how the end product will look like. You may spend considerable amount of time on small adjustments that can end up looking not exactly as you imagined in the exported PDF. The exporting option can be found on File=>Export as PDF.
  • Note: If any object refuses to go to the next page or something like that, you can cut it and paste it where you want it to be.

In Chapter Seven, in the "Houses" section, the three paragraphs that describe the various images are collected together in one single, longer paragraph. You can split and position them as you see fit. Also, one of the images from the English PDF has been replaced, as it was a duplicate, so don't be alarmed.

Pay special attention to pages 51 and 52 in the PDF, when you get there. There are some subtle differences from what is in Pootle. The structure of the HTML that you've received should be OK, you may just need to translate one or two paragraphs that are not in Pootle, or are in there, but not in their correct places.

In Chapter Nine, in page 65 from the PDF, the description under "CONSTRUCTION OF A FLOATING MEGASTRUCTURE" in Pootle is wrong. The HTML has the correct description.


When you're done with all chapters, go to the table of contents on page three and insert the page numbers for every chapter. You can also make the chapter names clickable, so that they will bring the reader to the proper page when they're clicked. Just highlight the chapter's name (e.g. "Introduction") inside the table of contents, then go to Insert=>Cross-reference. It should take you to the Cross-references tab. In there, from the Type window, select Headings; from the Selection window, select the chapter that you want to point to; and from the Insert page reference to window, select Reference. Then click the Insert button below and it will create the reference.


After you're done with everything, all that is left is to create the PDF through File=>Export as PDF.

Congratulations! It wasn't that easy, but it was worth it, wasn't it? Please share the finished "product" with us. :)

If you've got any questions or difficulties, contact lizardman on the forum.