Quote:
Originally Posted by Liudprand
I'm very unfamiliar with HTML and CSS, so Word (or InDesign) are the only tools I can use to edit a epub file at all.
An example of my enduring confusion on this: Do you mean that the link to the paragraph with the note text has to be two-way, as it will eventually be in the ebook? That's not possible in Word, afaik. But does Calibre fix that in the conversion process?
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It's simple in word!
In Word (same in LO Writer) you can add (insert) a bookmark at the start of a paragraph (actually anywhere, but a paragraph start is best). Do not highlight/select text. Just click where you want it.
Then anywhere else you can select a block of text (
last word and[7] for instance) and Add Hyperlink/URL. Select target is document and you'll get a list of bookmarks. I'd use a naming scheme for the footnote bookmarks like fc6n3 for 3rd footnote in chapter 3. You can even type the bookmark directly, I forget how in Word but in LO Writer the url would be #fc6n3 instead of starting with http:// or https://
So you can create Chapter 6: Notes as a heading (then that gets a separate file in the epub) and a paragraph for each note, each ending with the word [back]
So each note starts with an invisible inserted bookmark (anchor) and ends with a visible link called [back], which uses an invisible bookmark (anchor such as url #c6n3) at the start of the paragraph that ends with a link to #fc6n3. That would be the word and [3] (no superscript).
It's simpler than it sounds.
The ONLY editing of epub I do after creation by adding a docx to calibre is some images need to fit width or height and the image properties in Wordprocessor can't seem to do that. That's two lines changed for the maybe 4 images needing it.
MS Word has been able to do this for decades.
I used MS Word almost exclusively 1997 to 2014 when I 100% switched to LO Writer on Windows.
So I make the wordprocessor file for epub first (no headings, footers all same page type and smaller than A5, no registration, no line spacings). That's proofed on an ereader.
Then for paper version you do page styles on a copy for title, front matter, contents, start of chapter, left page, right page, index, notes, appendix, end matter etc, with appropriate headers & footers, inner & outer margins. You might change fonts and sizes. You might use specialist spaces between numbers and units. Other print stuff that's risky in ebooks.
Then you can delete all the hyperlinks (if the print company objects). The bookmarks are OK. The footnote references can be found and changed to superscript.
InDesign is fudged for ebooks, it should only be used for paper and really books don't need it now, only magazines & papers. Maybe some textbooks might. MS Word (2007 or later) or LO Writer (nearly any version) can perfectly produce docx for Calibre to make an ebook, and a proofed and differently formatted copy can export directly (Earlier MS Word needs a plugin) to PDF. LO Writer has exported PDF perfectly at least a decade.
Note only odt should be edited with LO Writer, an extra Save As is used to make the docx.
Anyway for perfect epubs you only need to know how to use MS Word with styles, outlining and internal hyperlinks to bookmarks (=HTML anchors), all of which Word has done for over 20 years, though before Word 2007 you had to retrofit a plugin for docx and on 2002/XP and 2003 it only let you import docx.
This isn't a Calibre problem!