MZ3 Tool

The MZ3 Tools are a set of Windows batch command files. Actually only a Windows version is available. MAC users can use the megazine.mz3 templates that are created by the tools. Those are offered for download in this tutorial.

What is it and how does it work?

The MZ3 Tool is a set of Windows batch command files. You only will work with the configurator file _config_xxx. All other files are helper routines and hidden.

History: All started with a little wrapper skript for the pdf2swf tool, i.e. we created a Windows batch command file that called the swftools utility pdf2swf and helped to convert more than one page at a time; with a simple double click on the name of the script.

Over time more and more features had been added to the first rudimentary, little script to make it faster, easier and more comfortable to build complete MZ3 titles out of PDF files. Then the option to create titles also using images was added. 

The MZ3 tool helps to build working online and offline MZ3 titles within minutes. This chapter explains briefly how to use the MZ3 tool. More details are discussed in the tutorials that explain the PDF to MegaZine3 conversion and the automatic creation of a photo book.

How to use the tool

Download the MZ3 tool first. A download link is provided at the end of this page.

The general "workflow" then is like this:

• Copy your PDF file into the folder _custom_files/c_book/ and name the PDF file book_version_xx.pdf.
  Where book is the name of your title, and version is the version of the title; like a specifier of that title. Followed by a 2-letter language code (like en for English or de for German instead of the xx).
  Example: _custom_file/c_mag/mag_1_en.pdf  (book: mag, version: 1, language: en) 
• Open the _config_en_2.x.x.x.bat file with notepad++ or another editor and save it under a different name. We suggust as name: _config_book_version.bat, like
  Example: __config_mag_1_en.bat.
• Adjust the parameters to your needs, like set the number and size of the pages.
• Run the batch file, i.e. your __config_mag_1_en.bat

This wil convert your PDF file into a MegaZine3 title. You must have installed swftools before running the _config batch file!

The details on how to convert PDF files is explained in a dedicated tutorial: PDF conversion (MZ3 tool)
The video on the right walks you through the creation of a small MZ3 title out of a PDF file. The PDF file used is a summary of what is shown in the video and can be downloaded here.

The MZ3 Tool also supports crating the megazine.mz3 configuration file for individual books like a simple photo book.
For that copy your images  (jpg or png format) into a folder named _custom_files/c_book/version/jpgpng/
And then set the parameters in the  __config_*.bat file to create a photo book.

How that is done is shown in detail in the tutorial photo book (MZ3 tool).

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