Quote:
Originally Posted by abeonis
However it still takes me too long to create an ePub/MOB/KF8 due to the Word to HTML bottleneck. I need to automate this.
It is doable because of the characteristics of my books. I always have the same presentation in Word, same styles etc. (I do not have paying clients with the risk to have to fix an exception and more important, I do what I want). So if one process works with one doc file it will work with all my files. Then it makes sense to include this process in a command file to be run by my AHK_L script.
I build technical eBooks with a lot of lists, notes and warning blocks, tables, images etc. Save as clean HTML is not an option because I need the cleanest possible HTML to edit the files with regex (automated also within my AHK_L script).
Anyway, then using the same script, I zip the epub file and open it in Sigil (I do not open HTML files but the epub directly).
When I validate the epub file, the same script will automatically unzip it, modify some files it and create the mobi file with KindleGen (running the OPF) once more in the same same script.
Now the save clean HTML + Calibre. I already mentioned that save clean HTML is not an option. Regarding Calibre, as far as I look at the different threads here, it is more than a pain it is dolor. This is the reason why I thought JSWolf was kidding. BTW I apologize for the "self esteem problem". It is 2 AM here in Spain and I started my day yesterday at 6AM. I am enough tired to not be able to control myself. Sorry again.
About Toxaris tool, as far as I know I am the only one who posted the results of my test in his thread.
For the moment, I think it is unmature and I should look for something else. I have no time to do the beta testing. It is not only the fact it doesn't support a command file, but the basics are still not there.
So, Hitch, yes, I got the answer I expected, nobody uses DocToHTML.
As a conclusion, I think we are all guilty, I was not able to explain my needs, I don't believe my english is the issue (I can do it in spanish or french if needed). Some of you provided a solution before understanding my needs. In a sales situation, this is a fatal error.
I go to sleep a little bit. |
Well, sorry:
I don't know what to tell you. I would bore you with the whole entertaining (to me, anyway) story as to how the Author's Guild went out on the Grail Quest for an automated solution, just like the one you're discussing, and didn't even have tables, lists, etc., and fell flat on their faces after wasting the time of myriad providers (scanners, OCR'ers, conversion houses, etc.), wanting it to do pretty much what you want--a one-stop button. And all they had was fiction. The really funny part to me was when they contacted one of my competitors and asked him to
create it for them--and I even asked them, in a tweet--don't you think if this existed, he'd be
USING it by now? I mean...honestly, you have to wonder what people are
thinking, sometimes.
What amazes me a little bit is that you seem to think that this tool is just sitting around, as if we're all making this a pain in the ass on purpose. I mean, stop and think about it for a second: if there were such a thing as a one-stop, push-the-button solution to making ebooks from Word, don't you think that any/all of us would be using it???? Don't you think that the guy that made that tool would have sold it for a LOT of money, and retired by now? Or sold it to Amazon, and retired by now? What do you think conversion houses are charging for, waving magic wands over the cauldron in the yard and some eye of newt?
All the automated "magic" conversion tools out there are basically similar. Most of them actually use Calibre's command-line, or the Calibre API. The others do their "own thing," but are equally as limited. You have unique circumstances in that you have a single templated-book, for all intents and purposes, so a smart person would convert ONE book by hand, write down every step, and then create a single macro or set of macros (or clips in NTPro, whatever) to automate as much of it as he could. But we have programs here that we use for fiction titles, and we still spend hours with our hands in the file, because the input is not perfect, the process is not perfect, and the results are not, without "hands-in-file" time, perfect. As you can program, you can likely create clips/macros/whatever that can export your stuff, but I honestly don't know how on earth you expect to do this without converting Word to filtered HTML in the first place. You'll have to write a VBA program first (almost exactly like Toxaris', by the way), and work your way out from there. You'll simply be duplicating his efforts, by and large, and you'll have to find a way to deal with all your tables, lists, and the like. Good luck to you, and I mean it, but...most of us here have been making eBooks for years, including Toxaris. No one works harder to make the process "automated" than he does.
Hitch