Quote:
Originally Posted by Wyndham
Thanks for the suggestion, but using Sigil only allows tweaking really, and doesn't meet my needs.
In case anyone is interested, this is the process I follow with FanFiction and new writing obtained from the internet (from html pages and not complete eBooks).
This can be quite a long process, made more difficult by the fact that I try not to actually read the story while doing the copy editing, as I want to save the reading until converted by Calibre and copied to my iPhone.
Although I can sometimes spend a few days on a story, I am happy to do so and the end result is a much more enjoyable read than it would be otherwise. One day I hope to find a way to share my results if I can do so without offending the original authors…
The process: - Manually, tediously, slowly, (etc), copy and paste the story chapters one by one into MS Word
- Recently discovered FanFictionDownloader, so this can be used on sites that are supported
- The FanFictionDownloader download is automatically converted from the html source to an ePub
- Convert, using Calibre, to rtf
- Open the rtf file in MS Word and convert to docx
- Run the (doc or docx) story through a batch process to correct common spelling mistakes, and convert from American to British English
- I usually do several stories at a time
- If anyone is interested I’m happy to share the details of how I do this
- Tidy up the story in MS Word
- Apply consistent formatting to text, set headings, scene change breaks, etc. Have macros to assist with this, but much of this is manual
- Copy edit (some call it proofreading) the story in MS Word
- Basically just Grammar and Spell Check, although also use of Search and Replace as appropriate
- Open in LibreOffice and Save As html (because Word creates rubbish html)
- Open in Notepad++ and clean up
- Insert coding in the header to control the formatting, add in Comments text which will later be used by Calibre for the Summary, remove unnecessary formatting coding (e.g. not necessary to have formatting coding for each paragraph individually as this is now managed in the header)
- This can significantly reduce the size of the eBook when converted by Calibre.
- One of the reasons I use Notepad++ is that I can easily apply a Search & Replace to multiple files simultaneously without having to open them
- Open in LibreOffice to check that nothing odd happened during the Notepad++ exercise, and then run Grammar and Spell Check
- Surprising how different MS Word and LibreOffice are in this regard
- Copy html story back into Calibre and convert to ePub
As I mentioned earlier, this does take some work, but the resulting eBook is a much more pleasurable read. |
Instead of Rtf I would recommend using text with textile and using notepad++ for editing textile formatting is very easy to edit. And once you convert to epub html code etc is a lot cleaner