To share with my bookmaking buddies...

[Hitch]

I know that lots of you don't read the Vent & Rant Thread, and thus, won't see this posting--it's so special, I just wanted to share.

From one of my Crew, today:

We have a new champion for the number of spans in one file. This book had 192,633.

I can't decide whether to or

Truly impressive. And yes: it's a FICTION book.

Hitch

[Tex2002ans]

What fantastic program created such finely tuned output?

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

What fantastic program created such finely tuned output?

Good question!

We are advised that it was INDD. However, to be fair, INDD only does this--wraps spans like skin on a salami--when the bookmaker who used it uses what, in "our" language, equates to "inline styling." It is not, in this instance, really INDD's "fault." It's just doing what it was told to do; the odd part seems to be that most of those (nearly one-quarter million! Yowza!) spans seem to be doing NOTHING. I can only infer that the spans had content, and that the book was tweaked over time, to the point where they no longer did...or something like that. Otherwise, it's pretty inexplicable. The file was then, presumably, output to Word.

However--and at this point, I don't know, this is pure speculation--it's not clear if the person in question output the file the way it should be done--export each individual "story" (read; chapter or section) as an RTF, and then assemble them, OR, if they used the dreaded "save as Word" function, which tends to give you dreck similar to what I've described. Adobe and MS Word are not, not, not a happy marriage. {sigh}.

Take that unhappy coupling, and add in a badly-constructed-to-begin-with baby (inline styling) and the resulting manuscript DNA is just not pretty.

Hitch

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by Hitch

and the resulting manuscript DNA is just not pretty.

And some people are still surprised that most of the (real, biological) DNA seems to serve no useful purpose...

[JSWolf]

If these are empty spans, Modify ePub will easily and quickly get rid of all of them. I use Modify ePub on every ePub before I read it. It helps meke the code easier to deal with if I decide to go code diving.

[Toxaris]

Even an unfiltered export from Word should not produce this unless they really did strange things in Word. Some people really don't know how to work wordprocessors... They should be obliged to take a course or stick to a typewriter.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

Even an unfiltered export from Word should not produce this unless they really did strange things in Word. Some people really don't know how to work wordprocessors... They should be obliged to take a course or stick to a typewriter.

Barb-our senior bookmaker--says that there were spans around partial words. Characters, for no reason. I'm starting to think that this was something else, not INDD, and that the client, er...fibbed. He's a repeat client, so I didn't check it that closely, when I quoted it or at intake. My fault, entirely (and, yeah, brudda, I'm hearing about it!).

I'm going to look at the exported HTML a bit closer, see if I can sort out the source...I'd like to know.

Hitch

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Barb-our senior bookmaker--says that there were spans around partial words. Hitch

How terribly terribly unwieldy

If there are empty spans at end of sentences then they've probably come about via someone (like me) wanting 2 spaces between sentences. When I write running writing with my quill I leave more space at the start of a sentence that between words. And I read in small fonts so the double space makes it easier to read.

I can't recall exact steps but you can get an EPUB where the second space is put in a span (from conversion I guess), then something (maybe something in Sigil) trashes the second space but leaves the empty span.

I sometimes do a quick convert of docx2epub with calibre then fire up Sigil to use its spellchecking (e.g. list hyphenated words) & reports (e.g. for oddball characters). I think thats when I see the second space in a span, if I do something unsmart (can't recall what) the spaces are torn down but the spans are left standing. Doesn't matter to me because its a throw away EPUB.

My solution is to use space|non-breaking-space. I don't give a stuff if that's sub-optimal, it works for me, I don't publish the stuff I edit, and I am not markup code fetishist

BR

[Toxaris]

Well, I am not entirely sure, but if you mess a lot with styling in Word, this can happen. If you select a word and change it and then change it back (not via undo), I believe this will put a span around the selection it as it is styling applied to that specific selection. It is not checked if the styling is exactly the same as the parent. So, if they done this a lot (perhaps via S&R), disaster will strike... If it is a Word document originally and you get your hands on it, I would be interested to know what comes out of it after conversion to HTML and ePUB via my tools. In theory it should remove all that crud.

Depending on the styling in the ePUB, you could try importing the ePUB and re-export to ePUB via the tools. As stylenames would be retained, replacing the stylesheet afterwards should give you a head start.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

How terribly terribly unwieldy

If there are empty spans at end of sentences then they've probably come about via someone <snip for brevity>
I can't recall exact steps but you can get an EPUB where the second space is put in a span (from conversion I guess), then something (maybe something in Sigil) trashes the second space but leaves the empty span.

<snippage>

My solution is to use space|non-breaking-space. I don't give a stuff if that's sub-optimal, it works for me, I don't publish the stuff I edit, and I am not markup code fetishist

BR

Fear not, it wasn't you. :-) By that I mean, it wasn't the typical end-of-sentence spans from folks in Sigil hitting the space-bar twice. It has spans in the midst of words, as you typed them, essentially--a boatload of font-sizing instructions, which makes ME think that when my client said, "InDesign," what he really meant ("what the captain meant to say was...") a PDF that HAD been created with INDD, by some third party, that some other person put into something like AbbyyFineReader, or worse, some online "Magic convert your PDF to Word!" converter, and this abortion was the result. That's my $.05, at the moment.

Originally Posted by Toxaris

Well, I am not entirely sure, but if you mess a lot with styling in Word, this can happen. If you select a word and change it and then change it back (not via undo), I believe this will put a span around the selection it as it is styling applied to that specific selection. It is not checked if the styling is exactly the same as the parent. So, if they done this a lot (perhaps via S&R), disaster will strike... If it is a Word document originally and you get your hands on it, I would be interested to know what comes out of it after conversion to HTML and ePUB via my tools. In theory it should remove all that crud.

Depending on the styling in the ePUB, you could try importing the ePUB and re-export to ePUB via the tools. As stylenames would be retained, replacing the stylesheet afterwards should give you a head start.

Tox:

I hadn't used your Tools on this--I'll run it, and let you know what happens. Of course, if it cleans it stem-stern, then I'll hear no END of it from Barb. LOL. It's a no-win on this one, I definitely screwed the pooch. (What's weird is, I don't recall seeing anything that caught my attention with the analysis macro. Usually, something alerts me, or I see broken paras--something, somewhere, tells me it's a mess. I really have to go back and recreate what happened, because honestly, me not catching it is extremely unusual. A few thousand books in, you start seeing this stuff behind your eyelids--hell, you can't NOT see it. That's what's odd.)

Thanks, guys.

Hitch