What tool set do you use?

crutledge · 03-21-2009, 04:21 PM

I have been playing with eBooks for a while and have accumulated several tools I have found a use for. While looking at and reading books provided by others on this forum, I think that I could identify the creator by style and format. I have often wondered what tools they use to produce these eBooks.

I'll start with myself. Some of my tools are a carryover from former stints of laying code for money.

Book Designer. I think that this is the finest tool devised so far for editing eBooks. What you see is what you get. WYSIWYG. I believe that the authors have given up on changing and improving BD which is to be regretted. As it now stands, considerable time using and experimenting is needed to become proficient. Perhaps one of the talented writers from the forum will sometime produce a BD manual.

EditPadPro. A holdover from busier days. Very powerful and adjustable but not free. Not expensive. Eases the building and use of HTML tags.

RegExBuddy. Another holdover. Regular expressions were never my forte. Expedites building and testing regular expressions in an isolated environment. Again, not free but not expensive.

Mobipocket Creator. I originally used Creator to convert TXT files to HTML for further editing and then back to Creator to produce the PRC file. Perhaps someday Creator and Reader will implement Left and Right alignment of images and text flow around these images. Some very nice books could be implemented with this capability.

Mobipocket Reader. The final testbed.

GIMP. GNU Image Manipulation Program. Great for creating and editing book covers and editing images from illustrated books. For instance, it is very easy to incorporate the illustration caption as part of the image and eliminate the irritation of having the image on one page and the caption on another.

ABC Amber PDF Converter. Extracts images from PDF files. Not free. BD is better at converting PDF.

GutenText. The Project Gutenberg Prettifier. Converts PG text files to HTML and takes care of things like italics. (Thanks to Particia for this one.)

Calibre. Converts PRC to EPUB and LRF.

Mobi2IMP. Converts PRC to both flavors of IMP.

WordPad. Holds biographical and book data and finally all data for the book upload which becomes a cut and paste operation.

CaptureWiz. A screen capture utility to get those images not available for download on the WEB.

Internet Explorter. The source of all good things.

frabjous · 03-22-2009, 01:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by crutledge

Internet Explorter. The source of all good things.

Isn't microsoft is the source of all evil? (Or is explorter something different from explorer?)

Crutledge, meet Mozilla Firefox. Mozzila Firefox, meet crutledge.

cerement · 03-22-2009, 01:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by frabjous

Crutledge, meet Mozilla Firefox. Mozzila Firefox, meet crutledge.

Firefox went down just as fast as Internet Explorer ...
Chrome only browser left standing after day one of Pwn2Own

pepak · 03-22-2009, 01:49 AM

Calibre commandline tools for conversions nad metadata extraction.

FAR Manager for file manipulation, regexps and just about everything. Also a starting point from which all other tools are called.

SciTE for HTML editing.

H2lrf for mass conversions and format-specific settings.

Colbuild for building collections.

HarryT · 03-22-2009, 04:23 AM

PaintShop Pro - for manipulating and creating images. The best such program out there, IMHO.

Jellby · 03-22-2009, 05:20 AM

Opera: for browsing the web.

Gimp and Inkscape: for editing bitmap pictures and vector graphics, respectively.

Acrobat reader: for viewing PDF scans and testing PDFs.

Vim: for editing all source text (HTML or TeX).

MobiPerl: for creating mobipocket files.

pdfLaTeX: for creating PDFs.

ilovejedd · 03-22-2009, 05:33 PM

Notepad++. text editing

Calibre. conversion to and from various eBook formats

IrfanView & MS Paint. image manipulation and conversion

Mozilla Firefox. preview and testing of source HTML

XAMPP for Windows. execution of custom PHP scripts for retrieval of web content and process automation

rsync. synchronization, backups, etc

Stanza for iPhone. for actual reading of generated eBooks, still undecided on what eBook reader to buy

pilotbob · 03-22-2009, 07:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HarryT

PaintShop Pro - for manipulating and creating images. The best such program out there, IMHO.

Not free right? Have you tried Paint.Net? I have heard very good things about it. But, I am not really into doing graphic editing so I really have no base to review it from.

BOb

kovidgoyal · 03-23-2009, 12:13 AM

Let's see:

calibre - For all my entertainment needs

Vim - for editing everything
Vimperator - for browsing
Mutt - To handle the huge volume of mail calibre users generate

kspace - For a mouse free desktop environment
python - to get my computers to do what I want them to do with minimal effort
newsbeuter - to read the few RSS feeds that aren't suitable for recipes

And then with my sysadmin hat on:
rsync, ssh, screen, apache2, sshfs, unison

Valloric · 03-23-2009, 08:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Not free right? Have you tried Paint.Net? I have heard very good things about it. But, I am not really into doing graphic editing so I really have no base to review it from.

BOb

I am really into graphic editing and I can tell you that Paint.NET is awesome. I use it on all my computers except the main one (which has CS4).

Oh and Gimp is great, too.

frabjous · 03-23-2009, 11:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cerement

Firefox went down just as fast as Internet Explorer ...
Chrome only browser left standing after day one of Pwn2Own

You like Chrome I take it? I heard mostly bad things about it when it first came out, though that was when it was still in Beta, and I stopped paying much attention after that. The only real positive I heard was about different tabs running on their own process so they could be killed separately, but as Firefox has only frozen on me once in years (and I sure hope the same would be true of Chrome!), this doesn't seem like a big deal to me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jellby

pdfLaTeX: for creating PDFs.

Gotta love that, but have you had any experience trying to convert .tex files into any other mobile book formats? So far the prospects seem bleak...

Jellby · 03-23-2009, 03:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by frabjous

Gotta love that, but have you had any experience trying to convert .tex files into any other mobile book formats? So far the prospects seem bleak...

No, I don't use it as a source format... but it's not too difficult to convert a properly tagged .tex file into HTML. Not automatic, but doable in a rather short time (I've done that). Converting the LaTeX formatting into CSS, now that's a different matter.

tompe · 03-23-2009, 04:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jellby

No, I don't use it as a source format... but it's not too difficult to convert a properly tagged .tex file into HTML. Not automatic, but doable in a rather short time (I've done that). Converting the LaTeX formatting into CSS, now that's a different matter.

Well latex2html does an OK job and there are other methods. It is also not especially hard to throw together e.g. a Perl script that handles the files you have available.

Daithi · 03-23-2009, 05:40 PM

I've just started with creating ebooks, but here's what I'm using --

EditPadPro. I started with Notepad++ but its RegExp features were a little lacking. It was worth the $50 for EditPadPro.

Mobipocket Creator and Reader.

Photoshop. Tried GIMP but since I've used Photoshop for years I found GIMP frustrating (but I'm not knocking the software and the price is nice).

Project Gutenberg for source files. I've been using the text files as a source. Do any of you use the HTML files instead?

JSWolf · 03-23-2009, 06:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by crutledge

Internet Explorter. The source of all good things.

That is not quite true. MSIE is the source of more viruses and trojans then any other software I know of. It's a source of great misery, heartache and financial loss.

Firefox is the browser of good. MSIE is the browser of bad.

03-21-2009, 04:21 PM	#1
crutledge eBook FANatic Posts: 18,301 Karma: 16071131 Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Alabama, USA Device: HP ipac RX5915 Wife's Kindle	What tool set do you use? I have been playing with eBooks for a while and have accumulated several tools I have found a use for. While looking at and reading books provided by others on this forum, I think that I could identify the creator by style and format. I have often wondered what tools they use to produce these eBooks. I'll start with myself. Some of my tools are a carryover from former stints of laying code for money. Book Designer. I think that this is the finest tool devised so far for editing eBooks. What you see is what you get. WYSIWYG. I believe that the authors have given up on changing and improving BD which is to be regretted. As it now stands, considerable time using and experimenting is needed to become proficient. Perhaps one of the talented writers from the forum will sometime produce a BD manual. EditPadPro. A holdover from busier days. Very powerful and adjustable but not free. Not expensive. Eases the building and use of HTML tags. RegExBuddy. Another holdover. Regular expressions were never my forte. Expedites building and testing regular expressions in an isolated environment. Again, not free but not expensive. Mobipocket Creator. I originally used Creator to convert TXT files to HTML for further editing and then back to Creator to produce the PRC file. Perhaps someday Creator and Reader will implement Left and Right alignment of images and text flow around these images. Some very nice books could be implemented with this capability. Mobipocket Reader. The final testbed. GIMP. GNU Image Manipulation Program. Great for creating and editing book covers and editing images from illustrated books. For instance, it is very easy to incorporate the illustration caption as part of the image and eliminate the irritation of having the image on one page and the caption on another. ABC Amber PDF Converter. Extracts images from PDF files. Not free. BD is better at converting PDF. GutenText. The Project Gutenberg Prettifier. Converts PG text files to HTML and takes care of things like italics. (Thanks to Particia for this one.) Calibre. Converts PRC to EPUB and LRF. Mobi2IMP. Converts PRC to both flavors of IMP. WordPad. Holds biographical and book data and finally all data for the book upload which becomes a cut and paste operation. CaptureWiz. A screen capture utility to get those images not available for download on the WEB. Internet Explorter. The source of all good things.

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03-22-2009, 01:49 AM	#4
pepak Guru Posts: 610 Karma: 4150 Join Date: Mar 2008 Device: Sony Reader PRS-T3, Kobo Libra H2O	Calibre commandline tools for conversions nad metadata extraction. FAR Manager for file manipulation, regexps and just about everything. Also a starting point from which all other tools are called. SciTE for HTML editing. H2lrf for mass conversions and format-specific settings. Colbuild for building collections.

03-22-2009, 04:23 AM	#5
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383043 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	PaintShop Pro - for manipulating and creating images. The best such program out there, IMHO.

03-22-2009, 05:20 AM	#6
Jellby frumious Bandersnatch Posts: 7,516 Karma: 18512745 Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Spaniard in Sweden Device: Cybook Orizon, Kobo Aura	Opera: for browsing the web. Gimp and Inkscape: for editing bitmap pictures and vector graphics, respectively. Acrobat reader: for viewing PDF scans and testing PDFs. Vim: for editing all source text (HTML or TeX). MobiPerl: for creating mobipocket files. pdfLaTeX: for creating PDFs.

03-22-2009, 05:33 PM	#7
ilovejedd hopeless n00b Posts: 5,111 Karma: 19597086 Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: in the middle of nowhere Device: PW4, PW3, Libra H2O, iPad 10.5, iPad 11, iPad 12.9	Notepad++. text editing Calibre. conversion to and from various eBook formats IrfanView & MS Paint. image manipulation and conversion Mozilla Firefox. preview and testing of source HTML XAMPP for Windows. execution of custom PHP scripts for retrieval of web content and process automation rsync. synchronization, backups, etc Stanza for iPhone. for actual reading of generated eBooks, still undecided on what eBook reader to buy

03-23-2009, 12:13 AM	#9
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,850 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Let's see: calibre - For all my entertainment needs Vim - for editing everything Vimperator - for browsing Mutt - To handle the huge volume of mail calibre users generate kspace - For a mouse free desktop environment python - to get my computers to do what I want them to do with minimal effort newsbeuter - to read the few RSS feeds that aren't suitable for recipes And then with my sysadmin hat on: rsync, ssh, screen, apache2, sshfs, unison

03-23-2009, 05:40 PM	#14
Daithi Publishers are evil! Posts: 2,418 Karma: 36205264 Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: Rhode Island Device: Various Kindles	I've just started with creating ebooks, but here's what I'm using -- EditPadPro. I started with Notepad++ but its RegExp features were a little lacking. It was worth the $50 for EditPadPro. Mobipocket Creator and Reader. Photoshop. Tried GIMP but since I've used Photoshop for years I found GIMP frustrating (but I'm not knocking the software and the price is nice). Project Gutenberg for source files. I've been using the text files as a source. Do any of you use the HTML files instead?

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