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Old 11-16-2010, 08:14 AM   #91
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A full regex search and replace
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Old 06-11-2011, 11:25 AM   #92
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Guys, why u stop posting?

This is such an interesting necro thread!



Valloric somehow manages that my eyes don't glaze over when he explains stuff about xhtml and such...


Anyway, Sigil rules and ID CS5.5 sux

ID5.5 It lets you format away without warning until you've overdone it and then just crashes on epub export :P

No wonder that old prick Jobs is kicking Adobe to the curb.

Sigil should cost $500 and ID be freeware... but everything is upside down on this lost planet in the boondocks of the milkyway...

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Old 04-14-2012, 04:46 AM   #93
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The perfect program for me would not be an automated program, but a manual one.
Since I use so many advanced feats to get 'perfect' formatting, which I think a good manual format, can oft be better than an automatic one.

I ALWAYS format my books from basic HTML code. In HTML I can clearly see what codes/brackets are opened and unclosed etc.
For this purpose my "perfect" program would need to consist of a mix of many advanced programs out there (which I will never find).

First I use Kompozer, to copy and paste HTML text. Its a WYSIWYG editor, so I can see the overall layout.
Then I can remove most hyperlinks with a rightclick.

Then I need notepad++ for it's advanced editing functions and macro's, something Kompozer or NVU does not have.

Once my HTML is cleaned up, and manually edited,I need a program to compress my ePub book with. Since Notepad++ can be used to create all files including toc.ncx, and mimetype and all others, all I'm missing is a compression program that will be intelligent enough to know that mimetype does not need to be compressed, and powerful enough to compress the rest of the files with a high compression ratio.
It also needs to be able to update files within it's archive. Currently I'm still looking for that program, but something like winrar or 7z, but for ebooks.

And lastly it needs to have an internal epub reader, to verify if the epub is displaying correctly.

For all these steps I use separate programs.

Why I DON'T want a program that does it all, is because 7z specializes in compression. Notepad++ specializes in search and replace, and html editing as well as any other text (non binary) document; and Kompozer is a WYSIWYG editor, that also is able to remove certain anchors and links, that will help me clean up my HTML.

A single program would need to be so extensive, that it will take more than 4 years to develop (which is less than 1/4th of what it took to create Kompozer, Winrar/7z, adobe Digital Editions, and Notepad++ combined).
A single program just performing the basics of what I wrote, will most likely be a buggy, and not a very efficient one.
Even if it was, it would probably put a lot of bogus code in a book. If I as a writer decide not to put a title in my book, I should have the freedom to do so.
If I decide that using 'class' and other CSS codes in my htmls, to save time and code, I should be able to use it, however if I find that using CSS takes too much code, and I can write my book simpler and better using no CSS, just basic HTML, I should also be able to do that.

I think large programs have issues with that. That's why I prefer ultimate control over what goes into my epub, and what does not.

Last edited by ProDigit; 04-14-2012 at 04:49 AM.
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Old 07-03-2012, 03:58 PM   #94
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Does anyone have a favorite Word to ePub maker? I use Atlantis and it has most of the features I want except tables. Have tried a few others like Calibre but I'd prefer to have:

tables
chapters from word headings
footnotes

Not sure if there's anything that'll do that.
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Old 07-03-2012, 05:39 PM   #95
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Quote:
Originally Posted by democrite View Post
Does anyone have a favorite Word to ePub maker? I use Atlantis and it has most of the features I want except tables. Have tried a few others like Calibre but I'd prefer to have:

tables
chapters from word headings
footnotes

Not sure if there's anything that'll do that.
Try making your documents in HTML. You'll have most flexibility when converting html to epub, as depending on which word editor you use, you may lose formatting over conversion.
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Old 07-03-2012, 07:16 PM   #96
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ProDigit View Post
Try making your documents in HTML. You'll have most flexibility when converting html to epub, as depending on which word editor you use, you may lose formatting over conversion.
Tried it. Thanks. calibre seems to make footnote numbers superscript without the change in size. Maybe that's part
of Word's HTML but there were other issues. I could copy and paste the tables but something simpler in the future would be nice.
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Old 07-04-2012, 02:08 AM   #97
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I just use Word and export it to HTML via my macro. That will keep your tables. However, only 'simple' tables. No merged cells.
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Old 07-05-2012, 01:55 PM   #98
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I have several tools to make HTML.
If you use MS OFFICE or OOO OpenOffice, they add too much crap to a HTML.

Create your document in MS word (or something). Save it as an HTML, open it in a browser, and select and copy all the information on your screen. Then paste it in VMU or KOMPOZER. You can further trim down with these programs if you wish. Once you finish with that, you'd have about 10-30% of your HTML cleaned up.

What I personally do, is after that, do further downtrimming in Notepad++, because of it's superior 'search and replace' feats. It makes it very easy to trim an HTML between 30 upto 50% of it's size, by only keeping the very basics of the HTML.

I don't really care about font, as one can always change it in the reader.

For that reason, what makes less of an importance on e-ink devices is fonts and classes; thus it's one of the first to go on an html.
Get rid of classes, and font changes (size/type) and advanced commands and stick to basic commands. Just keep basic Headings (H1, H2,H3), Perhaps define font type once in the body, text formatting (Bold, Italic, Underlined), and that's it.
text that is Heading automatically will be centered on some e-readers, and you can also get rid of strange numbers, or font colors.

keep pagebreaks (HR; any heading will automatically have a page break before it, so no need to insert it after a chapter), in your case tables (TR), etc.

There are many codes. Keep a list like this close to you:
http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/quicklist.html

There are also sites out there that allow you to test your code in a browser, but even if it works on a computer, there's no guarantee how well, or even if, it displays on the e-ink device.


Not all HTML codes can be converted to epub, and some auto-converters, like calibre, might substitute codes for other (or similar) codes that may not have the effect you wished to achieve.
It's with trial and error that you'll figure out which codes are transported into Epub and which are not; and which programs transport the most codes. For that reason I prefer a tool I found somewhere on this site, that basically zips the HTML into an epub zip file, after you manually created all other docs (like TOC and so forth).

To have the best (perfect) results, best is to do it manually.
Create a good and clean HTML, trimmed down to the basic necessities of displaying the info, then convert it to Epub. You'd often find that apart from some specific font, or text alignment, applying this principle could save you lots of book space, and reduces auto-conversion errors (which are not solvable).
Doing things manually takes up a lot more time, but gives you control of even the smallest details. In automatic conversion, you basically rely on the convertor to understand or interpret your creation correctly (and you'll not have that annoying BookDesigner/Calibre sticker pasted at the end of your book).

Last edited by ProDigit; 07-05-2012 at 02:07 PM.
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Old 07-06-2012, 01:20 AM   #99
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Quote:
Originally Posted by democrite View Post
Does anyone have a favorite Word to ePub maker? I use Atlantis and it has most of the features I want except tables. Have tried a few others like Calibre but I'd prefer to have:

tables
chapters from word headings
footnotes

Not sure if there's anything that'll do that.
I've tried all kinds of tools recommended here or found with google searches...

The first one I'm really happy with is Adobe InDesign CS 5.5...

I am normally not fond of Adobe, their user interfaces have been all backwards and unintuitive to me (except GoLive) and InDesign has some of that too, where you really need to study the manual first, cause the software UI doesn't make it obvious... but the capabilities are great, I can't think of anything you can't do in it. It has a great, integrated plain text editor too. I mean really integrated, with all the spell checking and search/replace functions you could want. And you have your choice to publish to print, ePub, PDF or html pages. ePubs can be optimized for multiple specific resolutions, so your book will display nice on small screens or big screens with embedded pictures, tables or videos staying where they're supposed to be.

Since Adobe apparently wants print publishers to switch from Quark Xpress to InDesign, they had to make things work in a very precise and predictable manner for print output, and the ePub creation benefits from all those features.

Blablabla, I never thought I'd shill for any expensive, bloated Adobe product, but I like this one. And last time I checked, there was a free 30 day trial to try if it does what you want first, but be ready to use Youtube extensively to figure out how...

Last edited by N13L5; 07-06-2012 at 01:23 AM.
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Old 08-28-2012, 04:52 PM   #100
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ProDigit said

I'm missing is a compression program that will be intelligent enough to know that mimetype does not need to be compressed, and powerful enough to compress the rest of the files with a high compression ratio.

Funny you should say that. I am currently working on just a program. It takes the name of the epub you want to create, the name of the directory holding all the files and creates the zip. the mimetype is added first (stored) and then all the files it finds are added. It searches all found subdirectories as well. It only creates the zip, it will not add or replace files in an existing zip (epub). The code is rough at the moment but I tried it on few unzipped epubs and it appeared to work. It's written in FreePascal and I have w32 and Linux executables. It might be useful to someone else. It will be useful to me.
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Old 02-07-2013, 10:06 AM   #101
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I'm missing a programme that can take an existing EPUB file and create a short sample - basically, something that will automatically cut everything but the first "chapter" and make the corresponding changes in the TOC and .opf files. Does anyone know if there's anything out there like that?
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Old 02-07-2013, 03:14 PM   #102
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Sigil

Open ePub...delete everything after first chapter...click the "TOC" button to regenerate...save (I recommend saving as a different filename otherwise you will lose everything....ask me how I know!)
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Old 02-07-2013, 07:21 PM   #103
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Sigil

Open ePub...delete everything after first chapter...click the "TOC" button to regenerate...save (I recommend saving as a different filename otherwise you will lose everything....ask me how I know!)
Open ePub...save as (to a different filename)...delete everything after first chapter...click the "TOC" button to regenerate...save.
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Old 02-08-2013, 04:36 AM   #104
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Thanks!
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Old 09-23-2022, 09:04 PM   #105
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Wow, almost ten years since the last message. And it's still a very interesting topic, because we still don't have the "perfect" tool. However, I don't think such a tool exists because what we need to focus on (in my opinion) is the workflow that was there before. What material are we receiving (a dcx? an indd? what format are the images in? do they already have alt text in place?). Anyway, I think what is needed is that the input material is as clean as possible. If we have a well-styled docx, Word2Epub will give us a good result.
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