2 books in one epub (left - right column) help

[mvivar]

Hi.
I don't know if this is for this forum or for recipes. I want to create an epub that contains one book (very old -the original- spelling is beautiful! <3) on the left column, and on the right the new version.



I know how to do it in terms of design so it can work -visually- but, I want to do it properly, so the content won't mixed, etc.

I think maybe there are some of this already done, perhaps in translations, original on the left, translation on the right?

Could you please give me some ideas, etc...

Thank you very much!
(sorry by my English)

[Doitsu]

W3Schools has some examples for doing this. Two Column Layout

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

W3Schools has some examples for doing this. Two Column Layout

Flex probably doesn't work on most physical ereaders, but does float work either?

Certainly in epub2, old mobi and azw3 they were only thinking of single column fiction. You can have two columns using a table, but it can work as badly or worse than you can imagine.

I've not tried doing this yet, but I'd be interested in an epub2 solution that also converts (by Amazon and Calibre) to old mobi and azw3.

Any ebooks I've seen with two columns used a table, but wasn't great.

[colinsky]

Tables may be your best bet if you want specific paragraphs to line up side-by-side, not just the overall text.

[Quoth]

See https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18761
The Circular Study.
Download EPUB (older E-readers)
Open in Calibre Editor
Search all Text Files: First Letter (without Case Sensitive).
Or if reading find Book II, Chapter III in TOC

Spoiler:

<table summary="">
<tbody><tr>
<td>FIRST LETTER.</td>
<td>FIRST ENTRY.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><span class="smcap">Dear Felix</span>:</p>
<p>I am here; I have seen her. She is, as you have said, a pale blonde.
To-morrow I present my credentials to John Poindexter. From what I have
already experienced I anticipate a favorable reception.</p>
<p>Yours aff., <span class="smcap">Thomas</span>.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>I could not write Felix the true story of this day. Why? And why must I
write it here? To turn my mind from dwelling on it? Perhaps. I do not
seem to understand my own feelings, or why I begin to dread my task,
while ardently pressing forward to accomplish it.</p>
<p>I have seen her. This much I wrote to Felix, but I did not say where our
meeting took place or how. How could I? Would he understand how one of
Poindexter's blood could be employed in a gracious act, or how I, filled
with a purpose that has made my heart dark as hell ever since I embraced
it, could find that heart swell and that purpose sink at my first
glimpse of the face whose beauty I have sworn to devote to agony and
tears? Surely, surely Felix would have been stronger, and yet——</p>
<p>I went from the cars to the cemetery. Before entering the town or seeing
to my own comfort, I sought Evelyn's grave, there to renew my oath in
the place where, nineteen years ago, my father held me up, a
four-year-old child, in threat, toward John Poindexter's home. I had
succeeded in finding the old and neglected stone which marked her
resting-place, and was bending in the sunset light to examine it, when
the rustle of a woman's skirts attracted my attention, and I perceived
advancing toward me a young girl in a nimbus of rosy light which seemed
to lift her from the ground and give to her delicate figure and
strangely illumined head an ethereal aspect which her pure features and
tender bearing did not belie. In her arms she carried a huge cluster of
snow-white lilies, and when I observed that her eyes were directed not
on me, but on the grave beside which I stood, I moved aside into the
shadow of some bushes and watched her while she strewed these
flowers—emblems of innocence—over the grave I had just left.</p>
<p>What did it mean, and who was this young girl who honored with such
gracious memorials the grave of my long-buried sister? As she rose from
her task I could no longer restrain either my emotion or the curiosity
with which her act had inspired me. Advancing, I greeted her with all
the respect her appearance called for, and noting that her face was even
more beautiful when lifted in speech than when bent in gravity over her
flowers, I asked her, in the indifferent tone of a stranger, who was
buried in this spot, and why she, a mere girl, dropped flowers upon a
grave the mosses of whose stone proved it to have been dug long before
she was born.</p>
<p>Her answer caused me a shock, full as my life has lately been of
startling experiences. "I strew flowers here," said she, "because the
girl who lies buried under this stone had the same birthday as myself. I
never saw her, it's true, but she died in my father's house when she was
no older than I am to-day, and since I have become a woman and realize
what loss there is in dying young, I have made it a custom to share with
her my birthday flowers. She was a lily, they say, in appearance and
character, and so I bring her lilies."</p>
<p>It was Eva Poindexter, the girl I—And she was strewing flowers on
Evelyn's grave.</p>
</td>
</tr>

Etc for many pages. A new row at each fresh heading.

It doesn't work very well, so actually I edited it to be sequential without a table.

However in your case you need a table with a new row for each heading / break to keep in sync and two columns in every row.

I know it's poor, but it will sort of work. It may be improved with suitable CSS.

EDIT:
Or maybe even each paragraph in a new row of two columns.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I know it's poor, but it will sort of work. It may be improved with suitable CSS.

FYI: The Gutenberg epub3 version works fine after AZW3/KFX conversion.

[rjwse@aol.com]

I use a snippet:
<style>h1 {clear: both; font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0; padding: 1em 0 2em; text-align: center;}
h2 { font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0; padding: 1em 0 2em; text-align: center;}
p { font-size: 1em; text-align: justify; margin-bottom: 1em;}
.col1, col2 {float: left; width:50%}
div.col1 p, div.col2 p {margin-left:0; margin-right: 0.75em}</style>

<h1></h1>
<div class="col1">
<h2></h2>
<p></p>
<p></p>
</div>
<div class="col2">
<h2></h2>
<p></p>
<p></p>
</div>
Paste text of language one after the first h2. Paste text of language two after second h2. Adjust styles as needed. Can print out very well as pdf. Works well with calibre reader. Probably won't work with Amazon ebooks. To adjust for English being more compact than German, reset widths separately to 45% and 55%. Best regards, Pop

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

FYI: The Gutenberg epub3 version works fine after AZW3/KFX conversion.

Well, epub3 has lots of stuff, but support varies on actual eink. The epub3 is recent on Gutenberg.

We were both reading that book on a Sage and decided in this case since you can only read one thing at a time and it's not a translation, putting the letter then the thought/narration worked better.

But absolutely for parallel translations (Hebrew/Latin/Greek/Arabic in one column and English alongside) or say Chaucer and modern English. Or Beowulf or Old Irish MSS with Modern Irish and/or English (need 3 columns in landscape?).

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by rjwse@aol.com

Probably won't work with Amazon ebooks. To adjust for English being more compact than German, reset widths separately to 45% and 55%. Best regards, Pop

It's got a "float" which makes it fail on many things. But interesting. Thanks.

[RbnJrg]

Maybe the OP can find useful the following solution for epub2:

Two Cols (Improved).epub

Here there are two screenshots:



I think the code employed is easy to understand but if there is any doubt, gladly I will answer about the subject.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by RbnJrg

Maybe the OP can find useful the following solution for epub2:

Attachment 201561

Here there are two screenshots:

Attachment 201562 Attachment 201563

I think the code employed is easy to understand but if there is any doubt, gladly I will answer about the subject.

This example relies on floats, so doesn't work on some ereaders.
As an aside it's full of ­ which are soft hyphens. They are best left out.

Also I can't use no extra margin between paragraphs. The normal convention is to have a first-line-indent except after a heading or centred object and no extra margin between paragraphs.

I only viewed in the Calibre Editor, which of course support the float.

[RbnJrg]

Originally Posted by Quoth

This example relies on floats, so doesn't work on some ereaders.

For example? An ereader that doesn't support float is not a good ereader Why to use an ereader like that when there are lots of them that does support the property. Why to use -for example- CoolReader when one can use -for example- Reasily? Kobo and Kindle support perfectly that property and regarding apps, just a couple don't have "float".

As an aside it's full of * which are soft hyphens. They are best left out.

Yes, it's full of soft hyphens, but when two columns are employed, the output is very bad without hyphens. Do the try and you'll how looks the text without hyphens. With two columns, the profit (the reading experience) is higher than the cost regarding soft hyphens. With only one column, yes, I agree with you, soft hyphens are a bad idea.

Also I can't use no extra margin between paragraphs. The normal convention is to have a first-line-indent except after a heading or centred object and no extra margin between paragraphs.

The epub I posted is to ilustrate how to get the layout; for that reason I added the space between paragraphs. It's very easy to suppress the indent (or suppres the bottom margin for paragraph); just one change in the stylesheet. By the way, that is an old epub I made about 2013 (the original epub, 10 years ago!) and 2014 (the improved version) as a solution for Kindle You can watch the followings posts where I posted this way of doing the things:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...2&postcount=13

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...21&postcount=5

I only viewed in the Calibre Editor, which of course support the float.

As I said, right now there are very few ereaders that doesn't support "float"; in fact, I can't imagine someone using an ereader without "float" when there are so many with supports for that property.

[Quoth]

It looks identical with or without the soft hyphens. Decent renderers do hyphenation fine without them and some don't use them. In fact I've never seen soft hyphens directly inserted like that in any ebook I've edited.

I have no control over what apps and ereaders other people use or how Amazon converts an uploaded epub (on KDP, we don't used Send to Kindle) to mobi, azw3 and kfx and chooses which to deliver to the customer.

A more serious issue is the need to hand edit the epub. Not practical for 20 to 40 revisions of a 150K word wordprocessor source to docx automatically converted to epub by Calibre. I will look at how MS Word and LO Writer can do two columns in a manner that works automatically with conversion.

as a solution for Kindle

There is no such thing as a single Kindle solution for KDP (or even direct sideloading), unless there are a load of Amazon specific media queries, which break the workflow and don't always work as expected. There are old ones that only do kf7/old mobi. The ones that do azw3 don't all behave the same. Some do azw3 but not KFX. A Fire isn't a Kindle, but runs a slightly different Amazon Kindle App built in to the Kindle App on Android. The Kindle App on iOS behaves differently, though it may soon be better. There are Kindle Apps for Mac and PC . All of these behave a little differently. Also there is no way to insure a user selects Publisher option.

[RbnJrg]

Originally Posted by Quoth

It looks identical with or without the soft hyphens.

Where? In what ereaders? It would also be very convenient if you post screenshots and the respective epub with which you did the test. You didn't do the try in a ereader with a screen of 6 inches or less; there is a world of difference between using and not using hyphens.

Decent renderers do hyphenation fine without them and some don't use them.

You are now speaking about "decent ereaders" and in your previous post you were saying that it wasn't appropiate to use the property "float" because some ereaders didn't support it. If we are speaking about decent ereaders, then the solution based on "float" is a very good one. And when you do a statement, with the statement, please, give examples; otherwise your words are empty. What decent ereaders supports hyphens?

In fact I've never seen soft hyphens directly inserted like that in any ebook I've edited.

Just because something didn't happen to you doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

I will look at how MS Word and LO Writer can do two columns in a manner that works automatically with conversion.

For all ereaders? Even in those ones that doesn't support the property "float"? Or we are speaking about "decent ereaders"? A solution exclusively for epub2 (or epub3 is also considered)? Take into account that, in the present case, the OP is dealing with "parallel columns". Tables can't be used because of the HUGE bug of ADE regarding tables.

It's not very difficult to code an epub like the one I posted, even with a 150K document. The hard part is to alternate paragraphs (to style the paragraphs is a piece of cake); in LibreOffice or Word, is possible to write a macro in OOo Basic (or VBA) to do the job of alternating paragraphs (from two different documents –one document contains the text for the left column and the other contains the text for the right column— into a new one).

There is no such thing as a single Kindle solution for KDP...

Did you watch the screenshots I posted in my post of 2013? They were screenshots of my "old" Kindle. So, my aproximation does work for Kindle.