Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
Allowing direct ePub uploading would be easy. Converting ePubs to mobi, pdf, rtf, LRF palmDOC pdb, plaintext, and its own screen reader would take writing a new batch of code--and more angry authors as they figure out that what looks good in Calibre for ePub doesn't translate to "looks good in .mobi." So it'd take not just coding, but a whole new styleguide. And that would need advice for, potentially, at least two programs (Calibre and Sigil), possibly inDesign, and maybe others. (Presumably, those who hand-build ePubs don't need a tutorial; a short list of supported/not-supported tags would be enough.)
They'd have to explain that it doesn't matter if your ePub has excellent tables; some of the other formats don't support them, and that means the formatting will be lost or scrambled when they convert. That some margin settings translate badly to mobi. And so on.
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Smashwords is using Calibre. So all they have to do is tell the authors to take their ePub and run it through Calibre to convert it to the other formats to see how it looks. Simple really. Another thing that could be done is to allow two ePub. One for distribution and one for conversion so you can have the features that may not convert well and one that's dumbed down for Mobi.