Quote:
Originally Posted by bigpallooka
I have absolutely no practical experience with HTML or any other programming and was wondering if anyone could recommend a source (application, book, forum, tutorial etc.) to learn the fundamentals that will help me to produce properly formatted or re-formatted books, specifically ePub.
I have an extensive collection of PDF and other books that need considerable rehashing to get them into what I consider readable form that can't be accomplished by simple conversion in calibre.
The main problems are books that have been converted multiple times in different formats and books that have been OCR'd to plain text.
I would also like to generate my own original works in clean ePub format.
I guess the questions I need answered are:
1. Is learning certain elements of HTML and CSS what I need to accomplish the tasks I have set myself? (Correcting or setting page and paragraph lay-out, TOC, images, tables)
2. What elements should I concentrate on?
3. Where are good sources for studying these elements?
4. Am I asking the correct questions? 
In my mind I imagine the process as: converting books to ePub using calibre, exploding the book, loading it Notepad++ (or similar), using my newly acquired skills to reformat the book appropriately, re-combining the book and loading it onto my Kobo for hours of frustration free fun
Regards |
People learn differently, so use a technique that works for you.
My technique (for EPUB) was find some books that I found the style and layout pleasant to read.
Reverse engineer it.
By that, I mean find a Paragraph or other section you like , then find the code (source and CSS) involved and figure what does what.
Calibre does really clean, simple code when converting ASCII txt. There are no 'tricks' in use. No italics.... Simple.
For some decent examples, Baen Free Library EPUB for no frills, with basic styling (has a very good chance to work on most devices).
Documents converted from Word seem to have the messiest code and style sheets and should only be used to learn
how not to code things 
Remember this about HTML code,
If it works, it is not done wrong
(in may only be a less elegant solution to the coding problem
)
I use the Standards References from W3.org for syntax guidance.
One other tip.
Don't code to a specific reading device. Test your work on various devices and programs...At different Zoom levels. You may have to make compromises in your code to accommodate the deficiencies of some devices.