Basic editing tool

[Evil Overlord]

I downloaded several hundred free e-books. Many of them have less than perfect formatting or OCR (it seems) conversion. I'd like to fix these.

Sigil seems to be a great program for building ePUBs, but I'm finding it awkward for basic editing. For example, finding typos, spotting incorrect paragraph breaks, etc. The manual doesn't seem to answer my questions.

I'm not expert enough on CSS (yet) to take full advantage of that tool. I've tried pasting text into Word to edit, then pasting back, but that seems to mess with the formatting.

1. Is there a better way to fix errors and ensure consistent formatting? e.g., a more user-friendly editor.

2. The drop-down style menu seems to offer only a few built-in styles. Is there a way to get it to reflect all the styles in the CSS?

3. How can I learn what the built-in Sigil CSS definitions are?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Evil Overlord

I downloaded several hundred free e-books. Many of them have less than perfect formatting or OCR (it seems) conversion. I'd like to fix these.

Sigil seems to be a great program for building ePUBs, but I'm finding it awkward for basic editing. For example, finding typos, spotting incorrect paragraph breaks, etc. The manual doesn't seem to answer my questions.

I'm not expert enough on CSS (yet) to take full advantage of that tool. I've tried pasting text into Word to edit, then pasting back, but that seems to mess with the formatting.

1. Is there a better way to fix errors and ensure consistent formatting? e.g., a more user-friendly editor.

IMHO No!
GIGO
Arnold from Webwrites (older Baen Webscriptsions), used a simple Stylesheet with ~50 lines that covered most simple cases nicely.

2. The drop-down style menu seems to offer only a few built-in styles. Is there a way to get it to reflect all the styles in the CSS?

They already are All the default styles in the stylesheet are shown here:
( there are no defaults)

3. How can I learn what the built-in Sigil CSS definitions are?

There are None built in.
Sigil constructs SGC-# styles in line as used. the same code does not apply to all pages (unless you perform exactly the same styling operations in exactly the same order )
All SGC-4 means is: that it was the 4th combination of styling used upon that page.

[Evil Overlord]

Thanks. Still a bit confused, though.

GIGO

So, paste into Word, spell check and edit, paste back into Sigil, apply headings by hand is a best case? Or paste in LibreOffice, export as EPUB, refine with Sigil?

Arnold from Webwrites (older Baen Webscriptsions), used a simple Stylesheet with ~50 lines that covered most simple cases nicely.

I'll see if I can dig it up rather than make my own (though I've learned something about CSS, anyway).

They already are All the default styles in the stylesheet are shown here:
( there are no defaults)

For me, Sigil offers Normal, and Heading 1-6, even in new documents. However, the headings don't seem to actually do anything until defined. I assume "normal" just applies the "body" format?

There are None built in.
Sigil constructs SGC-# styles in line as used. the same code does not apply to all pages (unless you perform exactly the same styling operations in exactly the same order )
All SGC-4 means is: that it was the 4th combination of styling used upon that page.

I stole the "built-in Sigil CSS definitions" language from an older forum response. Thanks for explaining the SGC #, though. Very informative.

The Sigil buttons seem to be the only way of applying italic, correct? I've tried including it in the style definitions, but it didn't work (though other things did). I seem to recall seeing a note on this in passing, but haven't tracked it down yet.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Evil Overlord

Thanks. Still a bit confused, though.


So, paste into Word, spell check and edit, paste back into Sigil, apply headings by hand is a best case? Or paste in LibreOffice, export as EPUB, refine with Sigil?




I'll see if I can dig it up rather than make my own (though I've learned something about CSS, anyway).



For me, Sigil offers Normal, and Heading 1-6, even in new documents. However, the headings don't seem to actually do anything until defined. I assume "normal" just applies the "body" format?




I stole the "built-in Sigil CSS definitions" language from an older forum response. Thanks for explaining the SGC #, though. Very informative.

The Sigil buttons seem to be the only way of applying italic, correct? I've tried including it in the style definitions, but it didn't work (though other things did). I seem to recall seeing a note on this in passing, but haven't tracked it down yet.

If it did not work, you made a typo or left out/wrong punctuation (semi-colon vs colon. invalid unit)

There is always CodeView

<i> is the standard markup for italics </i>

The cleaner way is to create a class in the stylesheet with all the attributes you will use on the word or phrase.

.title {
    display: block;
    font-size: 1.22222em;
    font-style: italic;
    font-weight: bolder;
    padding-bottom: 1px;
    padding-left: 1px;
    padding-right: 1px;
    padding-top: 1px;
    text-align: center;
        }