Quote:
Originally Posted by kovidgoyal
Let's apply a bit of reductio ad absurdum to that.
When you edit an epub file you aren't directly editing it either. An EPUB file is really a string of ones and zeros in your computer memory. You really should be editing it with a hex editor. Otherwise you are simply relying on some program, like unzip to convert that string of ones and zeros to a bunch of nice filenames that you can easily edit. Then the zip program compiles all those edited files back into epub's binary database format. Who knows what it's actually doing.
And really, *ones and zeros*. Real men dont use binary. Those ones and zeros are just an abstraction of magnetic particles on your hard disk, you should be using a scanning tunneling microsocope to toggle them individually, otherwise you are using a computer to convert those magnetic particles into ones and zeros for you to edit with a hex editor and then compile those ones and zeros back into magnetic particles.
It's turtles all the way down.
If you want to argue against using calibre's editor to edit azw3 you need to come up with something better than "it's not doing a direct edit". Something like, the editor makes changes to the file that I did not ask it to in the process of converting to/from the azw3 package. Which it does not do.
@Hitch: Why dont you actually try it, first. You will find that when you use the editor to edit an azw3 there will be no "weird flattened css".
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Now, Kovid:
You know I adore Calibre, which we use for book cataloging, and even, from time to time, indicate my support in a less intangible way. So to speak. But I, personally, and my firm, overall, don't have any use for AZW3, because it's not uploadable. I'm just a slave, really. Not a master.
I makes what they takes. I can't use Calibre, for that reason, and my workflows from source are pretty set. I have processes that work for me. They may not, for all I know, be as efficient as what you'd do; but they suit me.
Nor was I making any
value judgments about Calibre, at all. I was pretty much in Diap's court--discussing the whole thing more abstractly. Or pedantically, for that matter. I thought the original discussion, as to what's "intermediate" and what isn't, was a bit off. That was my ENTIRE thought process, and as I said--I didn't want to make it about Calibre, and honestly, didn't give Calibre itself a moment's thought. I was thinking about the idea of "intermediate," from a "how close to the code is it" standpoint.
Period. That's all. I don't want to go down this rabbit's hole. I'm already in some ridiculous pissing contest with some idiot over at the KDP forums who claimed that anyone who says that they are making ebooks with a plain old HTML editor (like NoteTab Pro) is a "liar," and that's gone from bad to worse, so I have ZERO interest in engaging in some pro/anti-Calibre discussion, in which I have
no dog in the race, (because I loathe that old saying about the dog in the fight, for obvious reasons), and no strong feelings in
either direction. Lord,
I thought it was a simple discussion about what constitutes "intermediate," not some landmine waiting to go off. Count me out.
Hitch