Gregg's Nearly Interminable Adventures in Linux Land

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Also, you can save as HTML in LibreOffice, but writer2Epub will give you an actual epub which will be cleaner than the HTML save. But, like with Toxaris' addon, I believe it then requires you to define what each style should look like. (or go with the defaults.) Both addons focus on cleanly exporting the actual words of the book, and the styles you applied to sections, while tossing the junk that invariably creeps in when using a pure WYSIWYG editor.

Experiment a little and find what works best for you!

This one of yours has been wearing on my mind a bit. The way I've often done ebooks is to start in Word, save as html (in Word still),then put the html in a text editor and clean it up there before putting it in Sigil. Now you're saying that I'll get a cleaner save with Writer2Epub. But what am I "losing" if I save (now it would be in LibreOffice and an odt-->html) as an html? Writer2Epub focus on cleanly exporting "the actual words." Well, what is the odt-->html focusing on? Thanks.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

This one of yours has been wearing on my mind a bit. The way I've often done ebooks is to start in Word, save as html (in Word still),then put the html in a text editor and clean it up there before putting it in Sigil. Now you're saying that I'll get a cleaner save with Writer2Epub. But what am I "losing" if I save (now it would be in LibreOffice and an odt-->html) as an html? Writer2Epub focus on cleanly exporting "the actual words." Well, what is the odt-->html focusing on? Thanks.

preserving all the code. Every time you fiddle with the font size/type, margins, or anything else whatsoever, and I do mean anything, it creates a set of tags to change the meaning of just that little chunk. Then backspacing a word, adding in new words, cutting/pasting stuff around, divides it up even more till you have an absolute soup of a mess, which you don't see till you try editing in an epub editor. Ideally, writers should use nothing but styles, and then a straightforward conversion would be nice and neat. writer2epub is designed to filter out most of that junk, whereas odt-->EPUB conversion will try to duplicate the look and feel exactly.

By cracking open a book in Sigil/calibre, you can often see a horrible mess of span tags containing font sizes/families and margins, bold/italics turned into yet more span tags, and worse stuff. Oftentimes each word/phrase in a paragraph will have the same styles individually applied to that word.

Obviously, your mileage will vary depending on the book. And MS Word (used without styles) is the worst offender. But writer2epub for LibreOffice and Toxaris' addon for Word are supposed to occupy a sane middle ground between leaving in the cruft and going the Smashwords Nuclear Method then going in and reapplying the formatting.

Really, it all depends on how clean your editing process is, I suppose.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

preserving all the code. Every time you fiddle with the font size/type, margins, or anything else whatsoever, and I do mean anything, it creates a set of tags to change the meaning of just that little chunk. Then backspacing a word, adding in new words, cutting/pasting stuff around, divides it up even more till you have an absolute soup of a mess, which you don't see till you try editing in an epub editor. Ideally, writers should use nothing but styles, and then a straightforward conversion would be nice and neat. writer2epub is designed to filter out most of that junk, whereas odt-->EPUB conversion will try to duplicate the look and feel exactly.

By cracking open a book in Sigil/calibre, you can often see a horrible mess of span tags containing font sizes/families and margins, bold/italics turned into yet more span tags, and worse stuff. Oftentimes each word/phrase in a paragraph will have the same styles individually applied to that word.

Obviously, your mileage will vary depending on the book. And MS Word (used without styles) is the worst offender. But writer2epub for LibreOffice and Toxaris' addon for Word are supposed to occupy a sane middle ground between leaving in the cruft and going the Smashwords Nuclear Method then going in and reapplying the formatting.

Really, it all depends on how clean your editing process is, I suppose.

That's a great explanation. I saw what you were talking about when I converted my early .doc novels (the cruft). Lately though I have been using Styles and the conversions have been remarkably clean.

Since I have become Mr. Linux and have been using Libreoffice I haven't noticed any styles there per se, but I just format the paragraph to .1 inches (would that be considered using a Style?) and then hit the enter key for a new paragraph (never the tab key). Again the .odt-turned-html seems to be very clean when I enter it in a text editor or Sigil. And I'm sure that has a lot to do with the fact that I'm writing very simple books too.

I think I was wondering too with the window that comes up when you want to save from odt to html in LO. It's like 'you may lose data if you save in html.'

But I never seem to lose anything.

[eschwartz]

but I just format the paragraph to .1 inches (would that be considered using a Style?)

I assume you mean the default paragraph indent, and you are changing the default style, right? In Sigil/calibre that becomes the css for p {text-indent:some_value}

I think I was wondering too with the window that comes up when you want to save from odt to html in LO. It's like 'you may lose data if you save in html.'

But I never seem to lose anything.

If you are keeping it simple, then you won't lose all the complicated stuff some people pile in there.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I assume you mean the default paragraph indent, and you are changing the default style, right? In Sigil/calibre that becomes the css for p {text-indent:some_value}



If you are keeping it simple, then you won't lose all the complicated stuff some people pile in there.

Thanks eschwartz. Yes, I did mean the default paragraph indent. Interesting that that becomes the css for P in Sigil. I'll have to pay attention to that next time. That of course gets wiped out when I apply my external style sheet. (But it's good, and cool, to know.)

And yes, keeping it uber simple. Thanks.

[Gregg Bell]

Only a Linux maven would even read this problem. Only a Linux god would attempt to solve it. Only... (okay, that's enough, here's the problem already):

I've been trying to figure out this problem of glaring neon-like colors when I watch videos (see screenshot). I've tried uninstalling and then reinstalling the Adobe Flash player. I've tried upping the screen size by hitting F11 and then right clicking on the video, choosing "settings" and then hoping to uncheck "enable hardware acceleration" but it would not let me uncheck it. Someone helped me go into the nano editor and add

EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=0

to the Adobe file. That didn't work either. My latest thought was to try to force install the latest Adobe Flash Player in the Synaptic Manager but then I got warnings that I might damage dependencies.

Anybody have any suggestions on how I could overcome this issue? Thanks. Gregg (still on the nearly interminable adventure)

p.s. Computer is Dell Optiplex 170L (32 bit)
processor is Intel Pentium (R) 4CPU 2.80 GHz
distro is Xubuntu 13.10

[eschwartz]

The real problem may be that Adobe Flash is notoriously buggy, and they basically handed off linux development to Google. You can install Google Chrome for linux, which has better support than Firefox, or just follow this link: http://www.youtube.com/html5

HTML5 is in the process of replacing Adobe Flash on the web anyway, and about time too.

Not sure what to do about fixing Flash Player (although I may see something once I put effort into it), but this is a potential good workaround.

[cromag]

My first thought was that it would be your video drivers. A quick search in Google turned up this, which "looks" a lot like your problem. If, and only if, you have an Intel graphics card, you might try this. Bear i mind that updating drivers can be risky and do a complete back-up before you try.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/33512...hed-and-broken

[eschwartz]

Or video drivers are a definite probability too.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by cromag

My first thought was that it would be your video drivers. A quick search in Google turned up this, which "looks" a lot like your problem. If, and only if, you have an Intel graphics card, you might try this. Bear i mind that updating drivers can be risky and do a complete back-up before you try.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/33512...hed-and-broken

Thanks cromag. Already saw that and tried it. (And did the uninstall and install too.) Thanks. And how do I do a complete backup? I think that's a good idea with all the terminal stuff I've been doing.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

The real problem may be that Adobe Flash is notoriously buggy, and they basically handed off linux development to Google. You can install Google Chrome for linux, which has better support than Firefox, or just follow this link: http://www.youtube.com/html5

HTML5 is in the process of replacing Adobe Flash on the web anyway, and about time too.

Not sure what to do about fixing Flash Player (although I may see something once I put effort into it), but this is a potential good workaround.

thanks eschwartz. I've avoided installing Chrome because it gets so confusing using two different browsers. It's like, Which browser was I in when I favorited that site etc etc. . And anyway in the Synaptic Package Manager and the Ubuntu Software Center there is only Chromium (see screenshot from USC). Is installing Chromium the thing to do, or is there some way to install Chrome? And this is the first I've heard of the HTML 5 Video Player. And it was incredibly tempting to just click on the blue button (Request the HTML 5 Player). But I was reading a little about that and it seems to be a converter as well as a player and might be more than I need. Bottom line: I'm just not sure what to do. I've been trying to figure this one out for weeks. I think if Chromium will work, I'll just have to install that, but would welcome some more feedback on this before I do anything. Thanks.

[eschwartz]

Chromium does not include Google's (Pepper) Flash Player, but there is a google-chrome.deb installer for Ubuntu, at https://www.google.com/chrome. It should automatically add Google's package archive to your Software Sources for updating.

"seems to be a converter as well as a player"? Never heard of that, as far as I'm aware it is just the beta for the next-generation Youtube look.

You may want to take a look at this Firefox plugin: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...ube-all-html5/ which seems to offer a better way to enable Youtube HTML5 than merely opting in.

And here's a link to get you started on backups: Howto: Backup and restore your system!

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Chromium does not include Google's (Pepper) Flash Player, but there is a google-chrome.deb installer for Ubuntu, at https://www.google.com/chrome. It should automatically add Google's package archive to your Software Sources for updating.

"seems to be a converter as well as a player"? Never heard of that, as far as I'm aware it is just the beta for the next-generation Youtube look.

You may want to take a look at this Firefox plugin: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...ube-all-html5/ which seems to offer a better way to enable Youtube HTML5 than merely opting in.

And here's a link to get you started on backups: Howto: Backup and restore your system!

Thanks eschwartz. I tried the html 5 add-on. It didn't work.

Ha ha. I typed the above line about twenty minutes ago. I had added the html5 player and tried the video. Same problem. So I Googled how to GET RID OF the add-on. In the process of getting rid of it (and I was baffled why it would not work) I decided to look at the "preferences." Well, (see screenshot) I saw this (it was unchecked) and thought, Why would I want to keep the malfunctioning Adobe Flash? And so I checked it. Voila! Video.

I didn't know this html 5 player existed (no one suggested it in any of the forums I asked about this problem: Ubuntu Forum, Superuser Forum, Linux Questions Forum, Ubuntu One Forum), so obviously you must be some sort of genius. LOL

The html 5 player says it only works on Youtube but hell, what videos are not through Youtube. If I have problems with watching certain videos with this I can always have Chrome as my backup. (But I don't anticipate problems--I've already checked out Youtube and a Linux Terminal tutorial video,which is going to be the first thing I watch!

Thanks a lot for the links. Will definitely get started backing stuff up.

Thanks so much!

[eschwartz]

That's good to hear it worked! So it must not have been a problem with your drivers, just Adobe Flash acting up, huh?

Enjoy the tutorials!

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

That's good to hear it worked! So it must not have been a problem with your drivers, just Adobe Flash acting up, huh?

Enjoy the tutorials!

I don't know what's up with this video crap (and I'm tired of trying to figure it out). None of the videos work properly in Firefox unless they're Youtube (and then the HTML 5 player plays them great). I thought all of the videos would work in Chrome and most do, but there are some that do not work at all (and that work in Firefox, but with the oranges and greens and blues etc in them). Right now I'm giving up. (I may try again later.)

The tutorials are awesome. The videos really help. It's so much easiser to see what somebody's doing, rather than read about it. I like to have the written stuff as a base though and for referring to.