Quote:
Originally Posted by theducks
@Liudprand We are here to try and help each other.
MR has different sections that focus on topics for writers or publishers like yourself.
Calibre is a tool originally aimed at storing books and making them compatible with many devices. (It grew way past that  ) It is NOT intended as an authoring tool.
I use the Editor as a touchup tool rather than trying to make Conversion (of the same or different format) do the lifting blind(ish)/trial & Error. I find I can use the Editor to find and debug most visual oddities faster than it took you to log onto MR and post a coherent query on how to get convert to do it.
Most of the code is basic HTML (not the full set used on Web Pages). SIMPLE. There are a few tutorials here on MR.  (FWIW I hardly knew anything about decent HTML and no CSS when I first came here. I thank the many folk that helped me along the way)
 Do as much as possible with the CSS file, avoiding inline STYLE= as much as possible. Did you notice I underlined FILE? That is because you could put that code at the top of each (x)HTML file. But that leads to inconsistencies between chapters  1 (CSS) file to rule ALL of your book make tuneups easy.
MR Writers corner is more aimed at the craft of writing and marketing. Great folk, who have been in the game for a while. And a number of PRO's (both in formatting and Writing) provide input to polite queries. |
Many thanks for this. I'm afraid that, where I suspect it's most useful, it's also completely over my head ("... put that code at the top of each (x)HTML file"?! I have no real idea what that means - though I'm sure I could work it out with the help of Google... ).
I guess I have to spend a couple of days watching really basic youtube videos on HTML etc. But I've generally used Calibre as a basic management (and sometimes conversion) tool, without rolling my sleeves up and tinkering with the code window in the editing panel (if that's the right way to phrase it). I literally don't have the first idea how any of that syntax works.
In case this makes my point a little clearer, here is what my thought process was:
1. As a professional editor and typesetter of printed books, and owner - or at least possessor - of a huge collection of ebooks, I noticed that pretty much every single (professionally published) book with footnotes or endnotes re-starts note numbering at the beginning of each chapter. I now understand that a lot of people on here regard that as unnecessary, or even going against the whole idea of the functionality of ebooks. But, nonetheless, it remains the standard with the overwhelming majority (perhaps all) of the many books with notes that I've acquired, both purchased and side-loaded.
2. I therefore assumed there must be some straightforward way to achieve the organisation and style of notes that I wanted, which I was just too clueless (see my above comments on HTML etc.) to have grasped.
3. So, what I guess I was expecting/hoping for was some instruction/bit of code that I would need to insert into each "section" of the epub (each separate file, I guess - but, in any case, marking the same points as were set up by the Word sections, in this case chapters), which would ensure that the note numbering started again from 1. Something functionally equivalent to this MUST exist, surely(?), given that, as I say, nearly all published nonfiction books achieve this behaviour. For me, that would have been the next-best option, short of something completely automated in the conversion process itself.
4. I now realise this isn't, apparently, available in Calibre or (nearly) anywhere else as an automated function. But - with all due respect and thanks to the people who have advised me that I shouldn't care about within-chapter note numbering - it remains something I need to achieve not only in the book I'm now working on, but probably in any similar job, because it remains the almost-universal standard in actual, published books.
Apologies for the prolixity. But maybe it's a bit clearer what I'm up to... !