Rebuild ePub after tweaking

[hollowayhouse]

A while back someone shared how to "EXPLODE" your epub file to tweak text.
I tried to do that and, though I opened the HTML file with Text Edit (mac), saved the file, closed the finder window, and selected "Rebuild"... nothing changed.

Am I missing something?
Thanks for any insights.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by hollowayhouse

A while back someone shared how to "EXPLODE" your epub file to tweak text.
I tried to do that and, though I opened the HTML file with Text Edit (mac), saved the file, closed the finder window, and selected "Rebuild"... nothing changed.

Am I missing something?
Thanks for any insights.

That sound like you did it correctly.
If it did not show correctly (work):
1) Your edit was not saved (not saved as a new name that would require additional edits elsewhere)

2)You made an error in your coding of a stylesheet entry that gets ignored by the browser.

3)You are trying to do something that Calibre/Sigils (or brand X) browser does render (most browsers have quirks. All different )

4)A cascaded style is overriding your change.

5)you are viewing a different format than EPUB without converting from EPUB to that format.

6)Something else

[hollowayhouse]

Thanks, Ducks.

I thought I'd done it correctly.
As to your suggested possibilities, I didn't do anything special when creating the ePub. I let Calibre do it with no special CSS or anything.

This was mainly an experiment to see if I could make it work.
I opened one html file, changed one word of text, not changing any code, saved it, closed it, rebuilt. Nada.

Odd, yes?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by hollowayhouse

Thanks, Ducks.

I thought I'd done it correctly.
As to your suggested possibilities, I didn't do anything special when creating the ePub. I let Calibre do it with no special CSS or anything.

This was mainly an experiment to see if I could make it work.
I opened one html file, changed one word of text, not changing any code, saved it, closed it, rebuilt. Nada.

Odd, yes?

Yes

What did you use to 'View' the changed book?
How did you select the book to view?
(Me is thinking you got a 'cached copy' somehow)

I frequently use tweak to substitute covers, but I have replaced a severely mangled (by me) chapter with easy success.

[hollowayhouse]

That sounds like a possibility, I guess, but how do I "clear my cache" in Calibre? Is there such a thing?

I've quit out and re-launched. That didn't do it.

Hmmm.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by hollowayhouse

That sounds like a possibility, I guess, but how do I "clear my cache" in Calibre? Is there such a thing?

I've quit out and re-launched. That didn't do it.

Hmmm.

Calibre does not have a cache like Firefox, IE....
Next time you try:
First open the metadata editor.
Hover over the format. Note the timestamp of the format that shows in the balloon. Cancel the metadata edit
Now do your tweak-rebuild.

check the timestamp

BTW I strongly suggest that the file NOT be open elsewhere.

[JSWolf]

Here is what I do to tweak ePub. I uncompress the ePub using WinRAR but I do not extract META-INF or mimetype. I leave those be.

Then I use Notepad++ to make the edits to the ePub files as needs. I also use Firefox to view the XML files. Notepad++ supports tabs, regex, and search/replace across tabs.

Then when I am done or done enough that I want to check the ePub with ADE, I ZIP the extracted files back to the ePub. But if I've deleted any files, I have to make sure the sames files are deleted in the ePub.

So it works pretty well overall. It's not perfect as Firefox and ADE are not 100% compatible. But compatible enough to do what needs doing.

I know when I put back the files into the ePub, my changes are now there.

[speakingtohe]

I have used tweak epub to change the stylesheet css.
I also use it to get rid of an ugly cover or other odss and ends which aren't removed/modified on conversion.

I use the preview epub function to see if it has worked. Usually it does.

If you are experimenting perhaps modify the stylesheet.css (sometimes stylesheet1.css) and change all of the font-style: settings to bold or italic and look at the preview.

While I am sure it can be done, it may not be the best way to edit the text in a file

Helen

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by hollowayhouse

A while back someone shared how to "EXPLODE" your epub file to tweak text.
I tried to do that and, though I opened the HTML file with Text Edit (mac), saved the file, closed the finder window, and selected "Rebuild"... nothing changed.

As long as you saved it without changing the path or name of the file it should have changed. Does your editor save to some other directory by default?