MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Sigil plug-in idea

martyger · 09-29-2015, 08:12 PM

Many of us do epub conversions from old pulp magazines -- mysteries from the 20s and 30s, SF from the 30s and 40s -- tens of thousands of stories that have never been republished and don't deserve to die. Even with the best software, the the OCR generates many errors that need to be corrected manually. (Yellowed pages, ink bleeding, old typefaces are the main causes.)

This can be done (laboriously) in Sigil with spellcheck...but it could be streamlined to a few seconds with a simple Sigil plug-in. Most of the errors recur with frightening regularity -- things like weU (well) presendy (presently) '/ (,") iie (he) Td ("I'd) bom (born) bum (burn) hps (lips) gendy (gently) and so on.

I, literally, can supply a list of many hundreds of these non-words that recur in nearly every pulp conversion. It we could run a plug-in that would automatically correct *all* of these errors *before* we spellcheck, we could cut proofing time by a huge margin. The plug-in would access a database that provides a list of error-words and the corresponding fix.

I'm sure that we could come up with an initial list of many hundreds of errors...and if the plug-in could access a text file that the user can modify, they can add words for specialized conversions (medical, scientific, etc).

I hope someone thinks this is a good idea -- it sure as heck would help me.

Thanks.

09-29-2015, 08:12 PM	#1
martyger Member Posts: 11 Karma: 10 Join Date: Dec 2013 Device: none	Sigil plug-in idea Many of us do epub conversions from old pulp magazines -- mysteries from the 20s and 30s, SF from the 30s and 40s -- tens of thousands of stories that have never been republished and don't deserve to die. Even with the best software, the the OCR generates many errors that need to be corrected manually. (Yellowed pages, ink bleeding, old typefaces are the main causes.) This can be done (laboriously) in Sigil with spellcheck...but it could be streamlined to a few seconds with a simple Sigil plug-in. Most of the errors recur with frightening regularity -- things like weU (well) presendy (presently) '/ (,") iie (he) Td ("I'd) bom (born) bum (burn) hps (lips) gendy (gently) and so on. I, literally, can supply a list of many hundreds of these non-words that recur in nearly every pulp conversion. It we could run a plug-in that would automatically correct all of these errors before we spellcheck, we could cut proofing time by a huge margin. The plug-in would access a database that provides a list of error-words and the corresponding fix. I'm sure that we could come up with an initial list of many hundreds of errors...and if the plug-in could access a text file that the user can modify, they can add words for specialized conversions (medical, scientific, etc). I hope someone thinks this is a good idea -- it sure as heck would help me. Thanks.