Hi! I have been looking at various ePub authoring software for ePub (3) for commercial use in the workplace. I prefer the ones various publishers (aka the big six) use. I am familiar with both Sigil and Calibre, as I have been using these editors in my workplace to convert various PDF textbooks to ePubs.
I also wish to incorporate various multimedia content (A/V, js, among others), and using the latest standards (HTML5/CSS3) which is only supported on ePub 3.
The question at hand should state the following:
To users who work in publishing companies (more importantly, the big six - Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Penguin, Macmillan, Hachette), what software do you use in order to convert the books that your company publishes? Is this software a personal preference or is an industry standard?
Sadly, Sigil has a lot of downsides to make ePub authoring easier. Some of its disadvantages include the following:
- Lack of ePub 3 support
- Cannot drag and drop assets
- Conversion of internal and inline html into comments - that are not being read onto the device
- All assets - including web pages, styles are segregated in their own folder instead of being in the OEBPS folder directly [are folders necessary for web pages and styles?]
- Sigil adds "junk code" that would treat internal CSS stylesheets as a comment, and treating inline styles as sigil-named ("sgc-x") styles making it difficult to distinguish one style from another.
I personally don't like the Calibre software for the following reasons:
- Lack of ePub 3 support
- Calibre-generated code - Addition of calibre-added styles on top of existing ones in the CSS files, and a "calibre" tag in the opf file, which is not present in publisher company ePubs.
- Terrible conversion from pdf/mobi to ePub - lack of a nav toc
- Cover images get stretched to the size of the viewport (which is OK for tablets, but not for monitors). - undesirable
- Naming convention: *-split-xxx.html - difficulty in organization - may create too much chapters
I have included various images from publisher-made ePubs that are clean and that comply with the standards.
Thanks for your help.