New Epub/Mobipocket creation tool: Jutoh

[kiermel]

I imported a odt file and did it very well. Compiled it, but neither ADE nor any other reader can read it

[Julian Smart]

Originally Posted by kiermel

I imported a odt file and did it very well. Compiled it, but neither ADE nor any other reader can read it

Sorry to hear that. I'd be grateful if you could send me the .jutoh file and I'll investigate.

Thanks,

Julian

[Julian Smart]

Hi,

I haven't posted for a while so I thought I'd mention the new version of Jutoh (1.12):

http://www.jutoh.com/download.htm

I've improved lots of things in recent weeks, including better ODT and HTML import, a Table of Contents wizard, new Epub source viewer which helps you see EpubCheck errors in context, faster performance, and various XHTML generation fixes. Hope you like the enhancements.

Regards,

Julian

[kassiekie]

Is there a walkthrough on how to use the program to create epub files.

I'm trying to create files from scratch but for some reason I have a empty table of contents (which i don't really need) as well as the title page being on the last page.

please help!

I'm so confused right now.

EDIT: Never mind I figured it out

Kudos to you for a great job!

[one_e00]

[QUOTE=kassiekie;1196237]Is there a walkthrough on how to use the program to create epub files.

I'm trying to create files from scratch but for some reason I have a empty table of contents (which i don't really need) as well as the title page being on the last page.

please help!


But i still need a guide how to use this step by step..
Really i'm new starter..

[one_e00]

i think you should add one more format for text alignment. it seems there only 3 alignment which is left, center, and right. it should be justify, so that the book will look well organized when published.

[MacEachaidh]

Julian, I'm just trying out Jutoh (version 1.18), and it seems very nice indeed, so congrats for that. I'm sure it will continue to evolve. Is this a good place for users to post feature requests or comments on current functionality?

If so, I strongly second one_e00's request for the option of full justification. It's by far my preferred formatting for blocks of text.

Now, a question, for Julian or anyone else who can shed light on what I'm doing wrong, please. I've tried importing three different ePub files, and in each case they have opened in Jutoh with the component documents in apparently random order - not in their intended order, which is how they appear when I open the file in ADE. And in the panel on the left, all these documents are displayed with the same name, the title of the book, so I can't even tell them apart or re-order them to their correct positions.

Is this what's supposed to be happening? I can't imagine it would be, but I also can't see why it's happened on all three files I've tried to edit.

[Julian Smart]

[QUOTE=one_e00;1208388]

Originally Posted by kassiekie

Is there a walkthrough on how to use the program to create epub files.

I'm trying to create files from scratch but for some reason I have a empty table of contents (which i don't really need) as well as the title page being on the last page.

please help!


But i still need a guide how to use this step by step..
Really i'm new starter..

Hi,

There's a section called Quick Start in the Jutoh manual, plus the Jutoh User Guide section that goes into more detail; however it's not easy to cover all eventualities. Various options can be set in Configurations (see Project Properties/Configurations) including switching off auto-contents generation. I don't know why the title page appears on the last page and whether it's being generated by Jutoh or it's an explicit section in your project, so I think I'd need more info to diagnose this. If you ask on the Jutoh mailing list (see the support page) or mail me directly I should be able to answer more quickly since emails notifications from this forum get delayed.

Regards,

Julian

[Julian Smart]

Originally Posted by one_e00

i think you should add one more format for text alignment. it seems there only 3 alignment which is left, center, and right. it should be justify, so that the book will look well organized when published.

Answered directly by email but for the benefit of this thread, Jutoh supports justification output to compiled books, it just doesn't show it in the editor. You can set justification in named styles via Project Properties/Styles/select a style, click Indents & Spacing, click Justify.

Best regards,

Julian

[Julian Smart]

Originally Posted by MacEachaidh

Julian, I'm just trying out Jutoh (version 1.18), and it seems very nice indeed, so congrats for that. I'm sure it will continue to evolve. Is this a good place for users to post feature requests or comments on current functionality?

If so, I strongly second one_e00's request for the option of full justification. It's by far my preferred formatting for blocks of text.

Now, a question, for Julian or anyone else who can shed light on what I'm doing wrong, please. I've tried importing three different ePub files, and in each case they have opened in Jutoh with the component documents in apparently random order - not in their intended order, which is how they appear when I open the file in ADE. And in the panel on the left, all these documents are displayed with the same name, the title of the book, so I can't even tell them apart or re-order them to their correct positions.

Is this what's supposed to be happening? I can't imagine it would be, but I also can't see why it's happened on all three files I've tried to edit.

Hello,

Glad you're finding Jutoh useful.

As per my previous message, justification is supported, it's just not visible in the editor, and it's best to specify justification in named styles via project properties/styles.

Best place for questions - if you ask on the Jutoh mailing list (see the support page) or mail me directly (julian at anthemion.co.uk) I should be able to answer more quickly since emails notifications from this forum get delayed. I know mailing lists aren't for everyone but my previous attempts at creating forums drowned in spam, and I'd rather spend the time on improving Jutoh...

The reason why your documents have the same name is probably because the TITLE tag for each HTML page contained the book name instead of the chapter title. This is dependent on the tool that created the original files. You can change the name by clicking on the title above the chapter text in Jutoh. You can then reorder the chapters in the outline. If you still have problems, please let me know and if possible email me a sample showing the problem.

Thanks,

Julian

[MacEachaidh]

Originally Posted by Julian Smart

The reason why your documents have the same name is probably because the TITLE tag for each HTML page contained the book name instead of the chapter title. This is dependent on the tool that created the original files.

Yes, you were right. That was the problem. Though I couldn't correct it in Jutoh - the chapter names in the body text didn't tell me what order they should be in, so I had to take the file back into Sigil (which opened the files in the correct order) and edit the "Title" tag. Even then, bringing them back into Jutoh did a couple of strange things: the first file, the book cover, had "Cover" in the "title" tag, but Jutoh for some reason renamed that to "Start" - no idea why.

Julian, why does Jutoh re-order the files on import? It seems to sort them alphabetically by the contents of the "title" tag, but why do that? Wouldn't it be better to simply use the order in the existing ePub? I know the files can be manually re-ordered, but unless I missed something the re-ordering process is quite laborious, being click-and-drag, one file at a time - and if there are more files in the document than can fit in the dialogue at one time, moving even one file is click-and-drag, scroll the dialogue, click-and-drag ... it does go on a bit.

If I sound like I'm slagging the software, I apologise - that's not my intention. I'm trying to evaluate the workflow of formatting an ePub using Jutoh, as compared to other options. I don't have CSS skills, so Sigil isn't a solution on its own; but it looks like a combination of Jutoh and Sigil will be required. I use Adobe InDesign professionally, but that's not so slick as one might assume it would be, and also requires Sigil afterwards to clean up its output as well. I really appreciate the ability to modify an ePub file in an (almost-)WYSIWYG environment.

I found one glitch, Julian: when exporting to ePub, the software defaults to the name of the book for the name of the ePub, but lets you modify the name chosen. Well and good. Then it tries to ePubCheck the saved ePub, but doesn't remember any modification you've made to the file's name. It still looks for an ePub named after the book's original title, and gives an error message if it doesn't find it, and doesn't let you modify the name of the ePub it should be searching for.

Again, thanks for your efforts in this software. It certainly fills a niche.

[Julian Smart]

Originally Posted by MacEachaidh

Yes, you were right. That was the problem. Though I couldn't correct it in Jutoh - the chapter names in the body text didn't tell me what order they should be in, so I had to take the file back into Sigil (which opened the files in the correct order) and edit the "Title" tag. Even then, bringing them back into Jutoh did a couple of strange things: the first file, the book cover, had "Cover" in the "title" tag, but Jutoh for some reason renamed that to "Start" - no idea why.

Julian, why does Jutoh re-order the files on import? It seems to sort them alphabetically by the contents of the "title" tag, but why do that? Wouldn't it be better to simply use the order in the existing ePub? I know the files can be manually re-ordered, but unless I missed something the re-ordering process is quite laborious, being click-and-drag, one file at a time - and if there are more files in the document than can fit in the dialogue at one time, moving even one file is click-and-drag, scroll the dialogue, click-and-drag ... it does go on a bit.

If I sound like I'm slagging the software, I apologise - that's not my intention. I'm trying to evaluate the workflow of formatting an ePub using Jutoh, as compared to other options. I don't have CSS skills, so Sigil isn't a solution on its own; but it looks like a combination of Jutoh and Sigil will be required. I use Adobe InDesign professionally, but that's not so slick as one might assume it would be, and also requires Sigil afterwards to clean up its output as well. I really appreciate the ability to modify an ePub file in an (almost-)WYSIWYG environment.

I found one glitch, Julian: when exporting to ePub, the software defaults to the name of the book for the name of the ePub, but lets you modify the name chosen. Well and good. Then it tries to ePubCheck the saved ePub, but doesn't remember any modification you've made to the file's name. It still looks for an ePub named after the book's original title, and gives an error message if it doesn't find it, and doesn't let you modify the name of the ePub it should be searching for.

Again, thanks for your efforts in this software. It certainly fills a niche.

Hello,

I'm a bit mystified why it imported sections in the wrong order. Jutoh does use the ordering in the .opf file when parsing the Epub. I wonder if you could send me a sample that demonstrates the problem so I can see what's happening.

The 'Start' section title is also a mystery, it must be there in the Epub as I don't think this is something Jutoh would insert automatically.

Hopefully if we can find out what's going on with your file, we can reduce or eliminate the need to use Sigil on Jutoh's output.

Title naming - perhaps Jutoh should have an option to use the first-found section title instead of using the title tag.

Checking - I see what you mean, but when you use Export you're kind of circumventing the normal Jutoh work flow; you could instead change the Epub filename in the configuration to allow Jutoh to know which file to check. I'm not sure if Jutoh should do anything different because you could be exporting to umpteen different .epub files and Jutoh can't know which one you want to check (the file specified in Export doesn't have any permanent significance as far as Jutoh is concerned). Something for me to think about anyway.

Thanks,

Julian

[Oldpilot]

Originally Posted by Julian Smart

Answered directly by email but for the benefit of this thread, Jutoh supports justification output to compiled books, it just doesn't show it in the editor. You can set justification in named styles via Project Properties/Styles/select a style, click Indents & Spacing, click Justify.

When I edit the style for indented paragraphs and save it as Justified, should the visible text change to justified? (It doesn't, alas!)

Is there any way to get this thread into book-authoring software so I can more easily find it again?

[Julian Smart]

Originally Posted by Oldpilot

When I edit the style for indented paragraphs and save it as Justified, should the visible text change to justified? (It doesn't, alas!)

Is there any way to get this thread into book-authoring software so I can more easily find it again?

Hi,

Text won't appeared justified in the editor, I'm afraid, but it should appear justified in the ebook if supported by the ebook reader.

Sorry about the late reply, I was only just notified automatically. You can also ask questions on the Jutoh mailing list (see http://www.jutoh.com/support.htm).

[Montyp535]

not bad program - but how can I import a rtf/doc-file to a new project ad, more important, why is there no possibility to format text "justified" - not left, not right, not centered?
The mark-and-right-click-way doesn't work in existing text, also the change of a style shows only left oriented text, when justified is chosen... - it shows also not correct in the ADE