eBook Formatting in Sigil
 

Good Morning Y’all,

I am using Sigil as my application for formatting manuscripts into eBook type files. I have some how-to questions specific to Sigil. Is there a specific area, in these forums, for these types of questions, or is there a better place to learn about what all Sigil can do and how to do things? :cool:

Yes, to your question.

Here is the Sigil forum:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/fo...play.php?f=203

And here is the main list of all forums:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/

You're in the right place. Shoot?

TOC Creation
 

I am using Sigil on an iMac.


My current quest is to figure out how to make the TOC in my ePUB file. Specifically, the TOC reached by the drop-down menu. Not the one like at the front of the book.


Can you tell I am also fighting terminology?


Next questions will have to do with:

• Setting up my Clips
• Making the Cover
• Metadata
• etc... :cool:

Sigil is an EPUB editing (code) tool. By that, I mean it maintains the required structure and other attribute that are common to EPUB.

OTOH (general) Formatting is usually done with a WYSIWYG Creation tool.

Sigil is great for CSS touchup, inserting Images, Spell checking and TOC creation (from headings).
It includes a synchronized Preview (no longer has the ability to type into that view), with a code inspector (what the heck code is making that section look like a :toilet: ? :p ) if you need to unravel a cascaded style blooper.

Cool. Where might I find a good "How-To" for TOC creation within Sigil? :cool:

There is a users-guide which is a bit out of date but does cover the basics quite well.
It can be found on our github site here:

https://github.com/Sigil-Ebook/Sigil...019.09.03.epub

Alternatively, you can create a Table of Contents from the current headings tags (h1-h6) that you may have set in your xhtml using the TableOfContents tools (see menus or icons).

Thanx. With a quick Google search I figured out what I was missing. The TOC creator will not do anything if you do not have any Header tags. (I believe that's what they are called. <H1> - <H7>)


Once I stuck some of those in, everything else started to click.


Thank you. :cool:

Yes. I didn't have any heading tags, so the TOC creator was not finding anything to work with. :cool:

Using proper tags for headings is important for Accessibility users and for defining structure.
So your first task will be to add in those tags using either the GUI or Find & Replace if you can determine how the equivalent to the headings are being done.

What was the original source of the xhtml? If Word, you may be better off using a conversion program from Word to epub as a better starting point.

This is not an issue in my work-flow. I have very specific code that I use in order for my files usable in the most arcane eBooks, so the conversion programs really make more work for me than necessary. :cool:

If your source is a Word document, consistent use of text styles and layout features - e.g. centring an item with the correct function, not by padding with spaces - will result in a DOCX file that translates seamlessly into EPUB. (Consider using Calibre rather that Sigil for the initial conversion. Tool for the job.)

It's exactly like music production. People like to play sloppy then 'fix it in the mix'. Much better to play it right in the first place!

I'm intrigued by your 'very specific code that I use in order for my files [to be] usable in the most arcane eBooks'. What techniques can you share with us?

It is probably something that has been discussed here before, but it is the way I have decided to go, unless / until I learn better. Being new to the formatting community, I have no idea how concerned people are with forgoing color and flashy for making their books usable on most eReaders regardless of how old they are. I know there are varying views on how to do things, so I am following this guy's method to start. I am using Sigil, rather than TextMate, strictly because of Sigil's preview window. I like the immediate feedback as I do stuff. :cool:

https://www.amazon.com/Zen-eBook-Formatting-Step-step-ebook/dp/B00KJAH4HS/ref=sr_1_1?crid=279OB5VHCN745&dchild=1&keywords=ze n+of+ebook+formatting&qid=1600874262&sprefix=zen+o f+ebook%2Caps%2C177&sr=8-1

I've just looked at the beginning of Guido Henkel's book, and at his blog:
http://guidohenkel.com/2010/12/take-...ok-formatting/

Can't say I'm very impressed. He's purporting to 'solve' a lot of problems that would never arise in a document properly laid out in a word processor. And if you can't cope with paragraph and header styles in a WP, how are you suddenly going to grasp CSS and HTML styling in Sigil?

"However, I have never seen a book where the font size
suddenly jumped, where the font face suddenly changed,
where indentations were all over the place or where
paragraph adjustments switched from justified to right ragged
halfway through a page.
Since the dawn of eBooks, however, these things have
become prevalent What's even more worrisome is the fact
that to many authors this seems to be completely acceptable."

Oh look....Drama.


I have only been asking very specific questions, not asking for opinions. Since I was posting in the section for Sigil, it seemed to reason that the choice of using Sigil was to be accepted and a non-issue. I'll be more careful from now on.


Anyway, attached is a cute kitty for your effort.

'How do I do this in Sigil' is perfectly legitimately answered by 'Well, Sigil' might not be the best tool.'

Next question?

Or simply use Find & Replace (Sigil has regular expression support) and clips to change to using the proper header tags. Then creating the ToC will be very easy and as an added bonus, reading software will better be able to follow the structure for those with Accessibility concerns. That is why good xhtml tries to identify structure with tags, and reserves css for styles.

Hope something here helps,

KevinH

BTW, Calibre does have a way to extract info for headings using regular expressions built right into it. I do not like it because it allows ebook devs to not use headings to indicate structure at all (and thus hurts Accessibility) but it could be useful if you do not feel confident enough with Find and Replace using Regular Expressions to add in the actual headings.

Oh, yes,you're right. It would be unforgivably presumptuous for people who've done thousands of eBooks to have the ummitigated nerve to comment that something you're doing, or following, might be woefully out of date, or cause you more work than is needed--like incorrectly not using heading classes for your headings.

Bad Wombat! :-)

Hitch

Read to me more as a criticism of Guido's book than your choice to use Sigil. It's been a while since I've looked at it, but I think I recall the guide calling for e.g. paragraph classes for headings. That'll cause the TOC issues you're having, on top of just being semantically wrong.

Still going off memory, but I think he recommends that roundtripping thing of copying your entire MSS into a separate text file to rip out all the styling. That's actually sorta disastrous if you DID set up your Word file with proper styles. So, just kinda take guidance from that source with a grain of salt.

Again, acknowledging I may be misremembering, and also it's possible the book has different info compared to the blog guide. I never looked at the book, but I did poke around on the blog some years ago.

Philip:

Firstly, it's from 2014 and even if it was brilliant then, we've all moved light years beyond that in the last 6 years. I'm not going to get into whether Guido's Guide was great or not; I do remember, with some...asperity...his blithe assertion that as far back as 2010, you could use ems to size images for Kindle, a claim he made on his website and NEVER backed up when challenged. (And, in case anyone is confused, most certainly did not work then and didn't for years. And is still dicey for images for Kindle today, too, but...)

Given the significant, nay, sea-changes in eBook formatting since 2014, personally, I'd be seeking more up-to-date info, but, hey, that's just me.


Hitch

The problem is that a lot of eBooks do not use the best practices. So if you learn from commercial eBooks, you will not learn all the proper ways to do things.

Oh, it was never brilliant, for sure. For example here's what I was talking about above:

LOL, OMG, I'd forgotten that! MWAHAHAHAHAHAH. Priceless.

Yeah. I wonder if he's going to rewrite The Zen...to address accessibility, now?

Hitch

To that end, I was amused that his example implied that h1=“large”.

Yeah. And that book has been selling well for years.

Hitch

By the way, I think epub file in Sigil git repo is not a good idea. At least I think it should be in a independent git repo. Small change in epub means to save the file totally to git again.

The guide IS in its own independent repository. And yes... that's how version tracking works. Every commit--regardless if it's big or small--needs to be pushed to github if it is to be made available for others to use and/or contribute to.

Whether you think it is good idea or not is irrelevant. That's how just how it is it is. Major props to those who have made an effort to contribute to the guide, but it just doesn't really matter how we ultimately make it available. Easy or hard, people (except the handful I previously praised) won't contribute. They'd much rather complain about it being out of date (or hard to contribute to) than actually knuckling down and helping bring it up to date. *shrug*

But it HAS to be in a git repository. Otherwise we'd have to read the whole guide each and every time someone made a small change just to make sure they didn't inadvertently break something somewhere else. The github repo allows us to see exactly the change that's being proposed (at the code-level) at a glance before signing off on it.

The alternative is to have multiple people making multiple changes to multiple copies of the same epub that we then have to figure out how to integrate without losing anything (and without wasting hours of time that could be better spent actually working on Sigil). No thanks.

@DiapDealer. Relax, just @The_book might not have noticed the correct repository: https://github.com/Sigil-Ebook/sigil-user-guide

Even if that's case, the gist of their complaint will still be true: every little change will require updating the repo. ;)

In this case, you can make the decompressed ePub file in git repo. Easier to change, smaller to git clone.

Did you even look at the link that BeckyEbook posted? Sigil's user guide is stored in uncompressed form (as a folder in the src directory in a git repo). She pointed you right to it.

I pointed the OP to an epub version stored in Sigil's docs folder, not the git repo we use for updating the epub

You're looking at the wrong git repo. The one that BeckyEbook linked to contains the ePub source files.

Yes I don't because I DO know there is the epub file in Sigil git repo at https://github.com/Sigil-Ebook/Sigil...019.09.03.epub .And it do cost me more time to clone Sigil. So I remember this when the user guide epub is mentioned.

Even if you wanted to download the guide from the Sigil source, you don't need to clone the entire Sigil repo to get it.

Yes, notice the link I posted for the OP shows a Download button. No need to use a local git client or repo checkout at all. That is why I posted it for him/her.

Yep. The only reason one needs to clone anything (RE the User Guide) is if someone wants to contribute something to it. The OP was looking for guidance only, and you rightfully gave them one of two links to be able to download the latest version. I'm not exactly sure what prompted the whole "epubs shouldn't be stored in a github repo" sidetrack to be honest. I guess @The_book was truly under the impression that cloning a github repo (or pulling the changes) was the only way to get the latest User Guide. That wasn't true even if they knew nothing about the Guide's own dedicated repository with its releases. *shrug*

Apologies
 

My Apologies. My response was fueled by short shortsightedness and post surgery medications. I'm here to learn and build relationships. I'll do better.

I am still happy I chose the Zen book to begin my education about formatting. As it is, so far, Zen is the only resource I have found that starts at the very beginning and walks through the entire process. I did realize it is six plus years old and I had an idea that some of its 'rules' may no longer be relevant.

So, as I read through the rest of the comments, I believe I am picking up a trend of getting the Word doc properly formatted and then 'exporting' out to an EPUB format. Correct? :cool: