How To Use Alt Text Instead of Images?

[EuroScribe]

I am dealing with an epub which is full of junk images (eg. Chapter titles, section breaks etc). Looking at the code using calibre code editor, I can see alt texts have been defined for every image.

For the love of God, how can I get rid of images in an epub and just use the alt texts instead. I prefer to have absolutely plain text in my epub, unless the images are essential or at least high quality (maps, illustration etc). I can not stand superfluous decorative images.

So how do I go about doing it? Any method will do as long as the end result is achieved (epub to epub conversion, epub to docx conversion, modifying epub etc).

Any help please.

[theducks]

A flip side of your request.
Are the Alt= even descriptive ? You may destroy meaning by deleting images.
I've seen so many that when done are LAME to the point of worthless:
eg "image", "line", "text"

Screen readers USE Alt=
so they should be meaningful descriptive:
Map of World
"Letter 'A' " (when dropcap is image of A)
Mugshot of Author
Your device needs to support (do not show images. Use Alt)

Not being a Book setter, I am not sure what they do for a Scene break (image)

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by EuroScribe

I am dealing with an epub which is full of junk images (eg. Chapter titles, section breaks etc). Looking at the code using calibre code editor, I can see alt texts have been defined for every image.

For the love of God, how can I get rid of images in an epub and just use the alt texts instead. I prefer to have absolutely plain text in my epub, unless the images are essential or at least high quality (maps, illustration etc). I can not stand superfluous decorative images.

So how do I go about doing it? Any method will do as long as the end result is achieved (epub to epub conversion, epub to docx conversion, modifying epub etc).

Any help please.

Are the images just showing text? If that's the case, you can do something like this...

HTML code

<h2 class="chapter">Chapter One</h2>

CSS code

h2 {
  font-size; large;
  margin-top: 1em;
  margin-bottom: 1em;
  text-align: center;
  font-weight: bold;
  text-indent: 0;
}

That defines a chapter header of Chapter One that's bold, center,font size is large, and has a 1em space between the top and bottom of the chapter title.

You replace the <img> code (as well as the <p> or <div>) with the code above and just change the text.

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by EuroScribe

I am dealing with an epub which is full of junk images (eg. Chapter titles, section breaks etc). Looking at the code using calibre code editor, I can see alt texts have been defined for every image.

For the love of God, how can I get rid of images in an epub and just use the alt texts instead. I prefer to have absolutely plain text in my epub, unless the images are essential or at least high quality (maps, illustration etc). I can not stand superfluous decorative images.

So how do I go about doing it? Any method will do as long as the end result is achieved (epub to epub conversion, epub to docx conversion, modifying epub etc).

Any help please.

I use the crude approach and edit the epub file and manually delete them, one by one. If the html is consistent you might be able to create a regular expression that matches them and replace them with nothing.

[retiredbiker]

If you are really, really lucky, you can just delete the image files in the file browser and the alt text will take over. But as others have said, it may not work in some e-reader, or it may be ugly, or just not work at all.

I usually find some combination of regex S&R and manual editing to do the job. Like maybe search for <img.*?> and replace with <h1 class="chapter">Chapter </h1>, and then go through and number the chapters manually (using replace all only if chapter heads are the only images).

If you actually like the alt text available, you might get fancy enough to pull the text out of the "alt=" part of the <img... line with a regex expression and then stuff it into a replacement string. Depends on the coding you have how hard that would be.

[EuroScribe]

UPDATE:

Nope, not working guys. Lots of images have the alt text descript " "(literally empty). Nuking the images and reconverting just resulted in blank areas.

The underlying code is pretty hideous too. Lots of <div></div> along with a media.css file to boot, where 50% of the code is probably dedicated just for making those drop caps work. . My epub skills are pretty rudimentary, it's beyond me to wrangle this monstrosity.

I give up. Oh the joys of Vellum. (The book is built with vellum because the template is instantly identifiable).

I am getting quite fed up with how indie authors are circle jerking around vellum. It's becoming abundantly clear that the tech illiteracy of the masses have real life consequences for tech literates too. I mean you can make a reasonably clean epub with vellum too, just turn off all decorations and don't use unnecessary images. The underlying code might still be ugly but at least calibre will be able to handle it pretty well. But nope, authors need to use each and every decorative feature of vellum along with custom image headers and such to make their book look "pretty".

I am now painstakingly manually cleaning the epub using the PageEdit plugin of Sigil. Oh dear.

Lesson learnt - I am never going to use any unnecessary image in my book.

[theducks]

A simple dropcap uses 1 span style.
A fussy (author) dropcap simulates kerning. The padding-right varies with the shape of the letter. (old cold type count would just use 3: i, n, m widths)

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by retiredbiker

If you are really, really lucky, you can just delete the image files in the file browser and the alt text will take over. But as others have said, it may not work in some e-reader, or it may be ugly, or just not work at all.

I usually find some combination of regex S&R and manual editing to do the job. Like maybe search for <img.*?> and replace with <h1 class="chapter">Chapter </h1>, and then go through and number the chapters manually (using replace all only if chapter heads are the only images).

If you actually like the alt text available, you might get fancy enough to pull the text out of the "alt=" part of the <img... line with a regex expression and then stuff it into a replacement string. Depends on the coding you have how hard that would be.

Even if the alt text displays, it won't be styled as a chapter header. So even if it works, it doesn't work.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by EuroScribe

UPDATE:

Nope, not working guys. Lots of images have the alt text descript " "(literally empty). Nuking the images and reconverting just resulted in blank areas.

The underlying code is pretty hideous too. Lots of <div></div> along with a media.css file to boot, where 50% of the code is probably dedicated just for making those drop caps work. . My epub skills are pretty rudimentary, it's beyond me to wrangle this monstrosity.

I give up. Oh the joys of Vellum. (The book is built with vellum because the template is instantly identifiable).

I am getting quite fed up with how indie authors are circle jerking around vellum. It's becoming abundantly clear that the tech illiteracy of the masses have real life consequences for tech literates too. I mean you can make a reasonably clean epub with vellum too, just turn off all decorations and don't use unnecessary images. The underlying code might still be ugly but at least calibre will be able to handle it pretty well. But nope, authors need to use each and every decorative feature of vellum along with custom image headers and such to make their book look "pretty".

I am now painstakingly manually cleaning the epub using the PageEdit plugin of Sigil. Oh dear.

Lesson learnt - I am never going to use any unnecessary image in my book.

Vellum is a piece of garbage (to be nice). The code it comes out with is hideous. Also, using PageEdit is also a really bad idea. There is no WYSIWYG solution that will work. NONE AT ALL! You need to hand edit the code. Learning HTML/CSS is not all that difficult. The average novel does not need any special formatting.

The problem is that for us to give you more help, we need to see the code. Is it OK for you to post the CSS and the first chapter alone with the images?

You can make a copy of the ePub and delete everything but the CSS, the images, the cover HTML, and the first chapter HTML.Then you can attach it to a post in this thread and we can have a look at it.