Compatibility of Sigil coding on different ebook apps

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

A Word doc is an html file. An ebook is an html file (well, usually). An e-reader is in essence just a rudimentary web browser.

It upsets people on the MobiRead forums, but I simply paste my Word doc into Word2CleanHtml dot Com online. Then I paste the clean html between the body tags provided by Sigil when I open a new epub2 file. In the heading, I add a link to my style sheet, and of course I add my style sheet to the Styles folder. Then I split Sigil's file into separate chapters and sections. It works beautifully, and rarely do I have to fix a validation problem. I do use the separately downloaded Flight Crew plug-in every thirty minutes or so, and before I upload the finished epub to Draft2Digital, Google Play (that may no longer be necessary, since D2D has Google in beta), and Amazon's KDP platform, I run it through Epub Check. Passing Epub Check is necessary if you hope to have the book accepted by the Apple store.

I understand that Toxaris's Word plug-in does the same thing, though unfortunately it does not work on my machine.

D:

I have NO idea why on earth you think that anyone here gives two s**ts about how you clean your Word file. It's YOUR book, so...why would anyone here give a rat's?

What most of us probably think--and I can only speak for myself--is that I and my crew would take more care than that for our clients' books. I like to lay my own eyes, on what I'm cleaning, and make sure that it's cleaned the way that I want. You want to use an insta-cleaner, knock yourself out.

It's relatively easy to clean your own files. It's another thing altogether to clean up someone else's pigsty. And lastly, cleaning the file in HTML is fairly pointless if the whole bloody thing is typed in Normal/ad hoc styles, as the icing on the cake.

Hitch