Ok, I've got a real wing dinger for you guys. Right now I use Calibre and Sigil for ebook construction and proofing. (I also use a php script for fast and dirty text to xml conversion on the raw book) However, neither of them is strict enough on their handling of tags to provide a good quality final product. This then leaves me having to plug my ebooks into a nook (which currently is the only thing I have for final syntax and appearance testing of ebooks) to test for bad syntax and formatting that Sigil and Calibre seem so content to completely overlook and ignore.
If it wasn't for the Nook, I'd have a lot of broken stuff in my ebooks. However, I don't want to have to drag out the nook and plug it in everytime I finish an ebook just to test for things the other two should point out to me automatically. (BTW, if you guys hadn't heard, I'm now converting books to epub for others as a service to help out people, since others helped me out when I was first learning how to build them)
The reason I run it through the nook for syntax and format testing is, if I don't, I'm gonna have a lot of people pop the ebooks into their ereaders, the books will go boom, and I'll never hear the end of it. So I double, triple, and quadruple check them before they go out so they're bug free. Well, the Nook just doesn't cut it anymore cause it's slow (I don't know if it's me or not, but that thing seems to keep getting slower the more I use it! WTH!?) and a pain to work with. Plus, I would much rather do all of my syntax and final checking via a software program if possible so I can keep all the work in one place on my laptop and not have to sneaker net it all over the place.
So, my question follows as this. What ebook editing or viewing program out there would be so syntax sensitive that it would flag me on every little syntax issue so I can spot these problems and root them out right away. Maybe also have it be able to point out problems with fonts too, such as the issues I keep seeing with fancy quotes and fancy triple dots (ie, something like this: ... ) As it is now, I have to manually clean up the fancy quotes and dots in a text file before moving on to actually building the book. The thing is, some people use more than those types of fancy elements, which then breaks or screws up the ebook, and I'd like to find those and fix them.
Anywho, that's my need. Suggest away.
