Best Source Files for Epubs?

[HarryT]

You don't need anything more than Notepad, I agree, just as one doesn't need more than a quill pen and a bottle of ink, but using more sophisticated tools I think personally can make the task a lot easier. If you're happy writing books in Notepad, good for you, but it doesn't suit me.

[Katsunami]

What particular features of Word or Writer do you want to have to be able to write books comfortably, if you *don't* use any markup? (IMHO it's much better to do any markup in CSS directly, as you'll know how it'll come out.)

[HarryT]

Spell check and formatting (much easier to highlight a phrase in Word and hit "Ctrl+I" to italicise it than to add the "<I>...</I>" tags in Notepad), but primarily the fact that it's visual - I can see what it looks like instantly. And if you use Styles properly in Word, they convert directly to CSS when you export to "filtered HTML". I just like Word. As I say, if you're happy with Notepad, good for you.

[Katsunami]

A quick glance seems to confirm that Sigil has a spell checker and WYSIWYG in it's later versions if you want that, and I'm sure it has hotkeys too; I'd have to check that. Seems that Sigil is more than capable of being a word processor, at least for what you'd need for ebooks.

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by glebarc

VERY few Smashwords authors have an easy time converting their Word docs through the Smashwords meatgrinder. It should be called the authorgrinder. Then when you try to convert it yourself into an epub, the fun really begins! Epubcheck (any version) doesn't tell you really what's wrong; at least FlightCrew tells you more!

Originally Posted by teh603

Unless they've massively revised their style guide, Smashwords' meatgrinder works fine with OO/LO as long as you get the basic idea:

All formatting is to be done using the style sheet, except possibly inline bold and italic (like the title of a book).

Dunno, I've never had trouble. Everything validates on the first go. Think the worst problem I had was an out-of-proportion cover.

I use MS Word on my Mac, and have no problems whatsoever. Pretty easy to get through to premium catalog if you just follow their directions and setup your template/styles in advance. I am skeptical of the "very few" statement since most of the authors that I have spoken with have no problems making it through.

[teh603]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Spell check and formatting (much easier to highlight a phrase in Word and hit "Ctrl+I" to italicise it than to add the "<I>...</I>" tags in Notepad), but primarily the fact that it's visual - I can see what it looks like instantly. And if you use Styles properly in Word, they convert directly to CSS when you export to "filtered HTML". I just like Word. As I say, if you're happy with Notepad, good for you.

I don't even add tags in Notepad. That's for when I'm compiling the book, whether in Sigil or OO/LO.

[TCSimpson]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I must respectfully disagree. Sigil makes a lousy word processor. By all means transfer to Sigil once the main task of writing is complete, but I can't imagine writing a novel in Sigil. Editing one, yes, but not writing one.

I'd have to agree with this. Also, since almost every editor asks for a word doc. since it's that much easier to include comments and respective indicators for corrections etc. It's a cinch to transfer from Word into the actual formatting software of your choice. Mine is Indesign.

[mncowboy]

For a simple document Notepad would probably work just fine. For a complex book? Not for me. I'm much more productive using Word to automatically generate a Table of Contents, Index, Bibliography, End Notes, etc.
Plus everyone I work with for reading and editing use Word. Turn Track changes on and collaberation is a wonderful thing!
Cleaning up the filtered web page output in Sigil really doesn't take much time.

[teh603]

Originally Posted by mncowboy

For a simple document Notepad would probably work just fine. For a complex book? Not for me. I'm much more productive using Word to automatically generate a Table of Contents, Index, Bibliography, End Notes, etc.
Plus everyone I work with for reading and editing use Word. Turn Track changes on and collaberation is a wonderful thing!
Cleaning up the filtered web page output in Sigil really doesn't take much time.

I guess that's a difference of style?

For me, each short story or chapter is a separate 'simple document.' I don't fire up the big stuff unless I need a word count for the whole project, or its time to compile it for publication. I also don't usually think about the TOC and all that.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by teh603

I guess that's a difference of style?

For me, each short story or chapter is a separate 'simple document.' I don't fire up the big stuff unless I need a word count for the whole project, or its time to compile it for publication. I also don't usually think about the TOC and all that.

Is your editor happy with you sending them text files? Much easier for an editor to make changes in a Word doc.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by mncowboy

For a simple document Notepad would probably work just fine. For a complex book? Not for me. I'm much more productive using Word to automatically generate a Table of Contents, Index, Bibliography, End Notes, etc.
Plus everyone I work with for reading and editing use Word. Turn Track changes on and collaberation is a wonderful thing!
Cleaning up the filtered web page output in Sigil really doesn't take much time.

It's quite funny when you run across those editors/publishers who do NOT clean up their work... You can see the editor's comments in the html coding when you open it up..."Don't talk about this character yet", "You haven't developed this line", "do you really know what the meaning of the word 'is' is?"

It kinda gives insight into the story making process, better than "author's notes"...

[morriss003]

I really don't have that many problems using Word and uploading to Smashwords. The main things to remember are to not have trailing spaces after paragraphs, to using a title style for the title and heading 1 for the chapters, and to use a font less than 18. I use 14 TNR for my text and 16 TNR for my title and chapters. If the epub fails it is usually because of one of these.

[Rizla]

I was going to suggest copy and pasting everything into notepad and then converting the .txt in Calibre to an epub. That would at least produce a clean epub. But then you would lose page breaks. I suppose you could re-insert them with Sigil. What a palaver! Perhaps produce a .rtf file and then convert it with Calibre? I would veer away from .html as it can produce so much weird code in there. If .rft supports page breaks, I think that might be the way to try.

[Lazer]

Well... the easiest way is to write your book using Scrivener and export it as an epub.

L

[barutanseijin]

Notepad is a decent tool. It does its job and stays out of the way. If i had to use Windows & couldn't install cygwin (like at work), i might very well use Notepad to write my TeX & LaTeX docs. I hate writing with word processors.

I haven't tried it yet, but i imagine it would be relatively simple to convert my tiny bits of prose poetry into epub docs via tex4ht & convert from html.