Quote:
Originally Posted by TheEdlets
I have an opportunity to intern for a blogger who needs his 'best of' book formatting.
So I get Sigil today and wow the learning curve seems big, especially for someone not that tech savvy.
I'm basically after some advice. Time is of the essence (I'm basically on a 'chance') and need to try and format this book ASAP.
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Not to pry, but I wonder how this fell into your lap if you don't know much about ebook formatting? :P
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheEdlets
The book is split into 4 years and each year has around 35 articles in - each about 1 - 2 pages...
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I assume this is HTML articles from a website? I would recommend stripping the code down to its bare bones (basic <h1-6>, <p>, <blockquote>, [...]).
You also have to keep in mind that much of the "fancy" CSS (if any) may not work in ebooks and needs to degrade gracefully.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheEdlets
(Can't even change the colour of the contents on Scriv)
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Color has to be tackled carefully, because many of the ebooks would be read on e-ink (which is only grayscale).
You have to be very careful when doing things like colored boxes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheEdlets
Which resources should I look to online and which general route should I take?
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I agree with eschwartz, those are good places to start (you should at least have a basic grasp of HTML/CSS).
Depending on the specifics of the project, people may use different tools in their workflow.
For any sort of HTML -> EPUB conversions, I
always strip everything down to the bare bones tags. Depending on the quality of the input, I either do that manually using basic Regex, or if the code is particularly spaghetti, a Calibre EPUB -> EPUB convert.
If these are blog posts, there are bound to be many typos and formatting inconsistencies (the writers typically don't have the keenest eye for these sorts of things, or are doing everything via Visual Editors... which make it very easy for hideous code to get introduced).
Once you get a clean base, then you work your way up from there (fix punctuation, look for typos, properly mark headings/blockquotes, fix code, reintroduce basic CSS).