New tool: BBeB Binder

[cmumford]

Hi there:

I just posted a new program that I wrote to create BBeB files. It's called "BBeB Binder", and it's homepage is at http://code.google.com/p/bbebinder. This version will read in HTML files, and allow you to modify and then convert them to BBeB's. The version that I'm working on now will take in text files as well, and attempt to reconstruct the paragraphs and chapters.

My next plan is to handle images, drawing elements, automatic table-of-contents generation, and to produce more aesthetic books with headers, footers, chapter beginnings, etc.

Sorry it's a .Net 2.0 application that relies on Internet Explorer for the HTML parsing - so this means that it's a Windows only program.

Would you guys mind installing BBeB Binder and giving it a spin?

Thanks!

[AndyQ]

It looks promising.

It loaded the sample html file fine and one other html file I had but it crashes on every other html file I try (including the README.htm file thats included with the program.

[sic]

Is there a set of supported HTML tags?
It crashes for me too on the Readme.htm but I was able to convert a webpage I saved with Firefox.

[cmumford]

Originally Posted by AndyQ

It looks promising.

It loaded the sample html file fine and one other html file I had but it crashes on every other html file I try (including the README.htm file thats included with the program.

Bummer - I thought I had that problem solved. Thanks for giving it a try and hopefully I can find out what's going on here.

[cmumford]

Originally Posted by sic

Is there a set of supported HTML tags?
It crashes for me too on the Readme.htm but I was able to convert a webpage I saved with Firefox.

I will eventually list these in a document somewhere, but until then the best place to look is the source. Even if you aren't a programmer you can probably make some sense if you check out HtmlDocumentReader.cs.

[airlik]

Sounds cool, I'll check it out this evening. Sounds like something I wouldn't mind collaborating on as well - if you need a hand, let me know - we could get it importing all kinds of formats for export to BBeB.

[cmumford]

Originally Posted by AndyQ

It looks promising.

It loaded the sample html file fine and one other html file I had but it crashes on every other html file I try (including the README.htm file thats included with the program.

Can you give this a try? Just overwrite your BBeBinder.exe with this one.

[AndyQ]

Originally Posted by cmumford

Can you give this a try? Just overwrite your BBeBinder.exe with this one.

Thats much better although I did have to update the GutenbergLib.dll - I built it myself - as it couldn't gave a method not found exception (Gutenberg.Document.SerializeToHtml()) when doing File - Open.

Anyway, it handles the Readme.htm and other html files it crashed on before.
I'll try a few more html files to mack sure...

I'm also just going to convert a book to BBeB format and I'll let you know how it goes.

----- Edit ----
OK, conversion was simple - easy to adjust the font size. Looks good on the reader too. In addition, the lrf is a third the size of the html file.

Some things I noticed:
1) The toolbar buttons need better tooltips
2) Add a search/replace function (some of my html files have wrong characters in which it would be nice to change)
3) Should the right/left/centre text justification buttons work yet? If so then they appear to be broken as the didn't seem to do anything.

Apart from that, the interface is nice and intuitive, and easy to use.

Good job - will be converting more books over now !

Andy

[slayda]

Worked fine on a Gutenburg book I had (a-per-fdeath_mys.htm). Looking forward to TOC & images. Good work.

[AndyQ]

Originally Posted by slayda

Worked fine on a Gutenburg book I had (a-per-fdeath_mys.htm). Looking forward to TOC & images. Good work.

TOC is working - change from Normal text to Headering 1/2/3/4/etc.

[cmumford]

Some things I noticed:
1) The toolbar buttons need better tooltips
2) Add a search/replace function (some of my html files have wrong characters in which it would be nice to change)
3) Should the right/left/centre text justification buttons work yet? If so then they appear to be broken as the didn't seem to do anything.

Apart from that, the interface is nice and intuitive, and easy to use.

Good job - will be converting more books over now !

Andy

1. Thanks: that's easy.
2. That doesn't sound too difficult to implement.
3. The toolbar buttons all work. I don't know if the fix I just made got them working or not. There is a current bug where you have to deselect the text that you've just done something to before the browser updates itself. I'm still seeing that when I apply a heading style.

[cmumford]

Originally Posted by AndyQ

TOC is working - change from Normal text to Headering 1/2/3/4/etc.

I think that slayda meant that s/he's looking forward to when BBeB Binder puts an actual working TOC into the BBeB file (which I plan to do). Right now I'm just creating the TOC tree view that allows you to more easily navigate the document, but apart from that I'm not doing anything with it.

[slayda]

Originally Posted by cmumford

I think that slayda meant that s/he's looking forward to when BBeB Binder puts an actual working TOC into the BBeB file (which I plan to do). Right now I'm just creating the TOC tree view that allows you to more easily navigate the document, but apart from that I'm not doing anything with it.

Definitely he. & yes.

[AndyQ]

Originally Posted by cmumford

I think that slayda meant that s/he's looking forward to when BBeB Binder puts an actual working TOC into the BBeB file (which I plan to do). Right now I'm just creating the TOC tree view that allows you to more easily navigate the document, but apart from that I'm not doing anything with it.

Ahhh - Fair enough - I was only looking at the app and saw the TOC was being updated so just assumed....

A couple of others whilst doing some converting:
Can you make the Title default to either the name of the file or blank rather than the first word (or Default)

When you open a new document, it asks you if you want to save the changes and then tries to save as .mht.

Not sure if this is possible but could you have a button that joins all selected lines together?

And finally, any idea when images will be supported? This is more of a nice to have however as it already does 95% of what I want it to do!

[cmumford]

Originally Posted by AndyQ

Ahhh - Fair enough - I was only looking at the app and saw the TOC was being updated so just assumed....

A couple of others whilst doing some converting:
Can you make the Title default to either the name of the file or blank rather than the first word (or Default)

Here's the way it works now:

1. If the HTML document has a <title> element in the header then it is used.
2. Else, it finds the first H1 or H2 element in the document and uses that.
3. Else, it sets it to "Default Title".

I agree with you that it should use the basename of the input document instead of the word "Default Title".

For text files I search for a line like this:

Author: AuthorName

And will set the <title> attribute to this value.

Originally Posted by AndyQ

When you open a new document, it asks you if you want to save the changes and then tries to save as .mht.

Yes, I've filed a defect on this.

Originally Posted by AndyQ

Not sure if this is possible but could you have a button that joins all selected lines together?

I have an algorithm to do this when I read in text files, but I don't do anything like this for HTML files. Is this a common problem that you encounter?

Originally Posted by AndyQ

And finally, any idea when images will be supported? This is more of a nice to have however as it already does 95% of what I want it to do!

I'm working on that feature right now. I'm still learning the LRF format so I can't really predict how long it will take - and I only have four days left on vacation