I have a great deal of experience in ad and publications typography, and a have also done a lot of multi-lingual publishing. My philosophy in using DTP packages is to wield them intelligently by automating as many steps as possible and spending the time up front to set up a project correctly so that files are as clean as possible for others to work on later. I’m not particularly interested in “cut and paste” DTP production, but rather in developing and executing intelligent workflows.
I’m a big believer in owning my own software, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but also because getting support under deadline can be impossible otherwise. After each application, I’ve listed the versions I own. I generally only buy versions when I have immediate reason to use them, and most of my clients tend to be a few versions behind the newest releases. However, I will cheerfully buy anything needed to produce a job quickly and accurately.
My background is actually as a typographer: I’ve been a typesetter since 1978, starting out on “green-screen” machines with 64K of memory, and then moving on to networked systems (I earned a good income in the mid-’80s as an ad typographer). I began working with desktop publishing in 1986 with Ventura Publisher 3.0. In short, I know the issues, and here’s what I can currently offer:
I've done contract work for them since 2014, coming on full-time in 2018, serving as Director of Legal Publication, where I'm both an editor and production worker. Up until 2023 I was responsible for producing an 8-volume, 5000-page document set from Word manuscripts using FrameScript to automate Frame processes. We've stopped printing the documents, but I still hew to the rest of the workflow updating and indexing new and revised articles.
The Electrical Power Research Institute is headquartered in Palo Alto and Charlotte. I started working with them in September 2014 as a DTP contractor. EPRI publishes large books (often 1000+ pages) about the physics and practicalities of power system construction. Their work involves a fair amount of technical illustration and mathematics and is on a tight yearly deadline.
RGB produces hardware and software to drive multi-screen video walls, and are based in Alameda, CA. I started working for them since 2022, as the sole contract Framemaker guy, publishing user and technical reference guides. I also work closely with the engineers to develop content and help files.
Over the years, I've worked for a number of translation bureaus as both a CAT (Computer-Aided Translation) software engineer and multilingual production person. Because of intense acquisitions in that market, their names are only of interest to commerce historians, can supply a complete list if needed. I also spent over a decade with Happenstance Type-O-Rama, doing over a hundred books for Wiley and other text publishers, delivering both print-ready PDFs and ebooks.
I consider myself an expert Frame user. I have done many books in it, I have have used Frame over the years to produce HTML (including localizing ASP templates using WebWorks), often in languages other than English
I understand Frame’s cross-referential and variable intricacies, the advantages of the book architecture, production of PDF and HTML/XML, and have done design implementation in it as well. I am also familiar with Structured Frame, and am quite conversant in using tools for FrameMaker document localization.
I’ve used InDesign heavily, and am very impressed with its brilliance in both typography and multilingual layout. I’ve learned a great deal about automating workflows in it using tagged text, and have typeset nearly 100 books using automated routines. I can work quickly and efficiently in InDesign, and consider it my main publishing tool nowadays.
I have extensive experience with producing usable PDFs from DTP tools, as well as creating and manipulating bookmarks and form fields. I’m also quite familiar with using Acrobat’s commenting features as part of a proofreading/editing workflow.
I use this routinely for everything from writing HTML code to fixing binary files and generating XML through regular expressions. I am quite comfortable with scripting it.
In past I've used this for validation of XML and XHTML files, mainly for ebooks of various sorts.
I’m adept in Illustrator: creating and editing files, technical illustration from libraries, and localization. I have done some scripting of it via AppleScript. I’m not a creative artist, however.
As with Illustrator, I have good basic localization skills, and can do low-level graphic manipulation (palette simplification, sharpening). I also have experience adjusting photos for print (Brightness, grayscale adjustment, and contrast).
Am quite familiar with using Word, and know VBA/Word well. Having said this, I have never seen an instance where Word is an appropriate platform for doing DTP. My usual workflow is to use a tool to convert Word manuscripts to tagged text, and then cleaning that up before importing to a DTP platform. I also frequently reverse the process to deliver an absolutely clean Word manuscript for subsequent editions reflecting all the production edits.
I taught myself enough LaTeX to do production work on several books when I worked for Addison Wesley. I’m in the process of learning about implementing designs in the package. I’ve done a few interesting things in LaTeX, including a large conversion to it from Word.
I am experienced at localizing webpage graphical elements such as buttons and graphical dialogue boxes.
I understand the issues behind helpfile formats, have troubleshot RoboHelp files, and have a very good knowledge of both RTF and HTML. Have customized XSLT files to manipulate XML code, and have solved many problems in web localization. As you can tell from this page, I’m not really a web designer.
I majored in Classical Studies and have spent some time studying Russian. I’m quite comfortable entering edits in Cyrillic languages and Greek, and can do data entry in Pinyin for Simplified Chinese.
I also am skilled at format (not linguistic) proofreading, and have done technical illustration as well as a wide range of English-language text editing.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask!
You might also want to check my Localization Engineering page for a look at past work. Thanks!
Last updated: Thursday, April 15, 2026.