What tool set do you use?

[cerement]

Originally Posted by frabjous

You like Chrome I take it? I heard mostly bad things about it when it first came out, though that was when it was still in Beta, and I stopped paying much attention after that.

Still very much in beta (and probably will stay branded that way awhile like most of Google's efforts). It is fast, clean, easy to use - and proved itself security-wise at the hacker event above. There are very definitely privacy issues involved (especially in EU where customers have stronger rights than US) - and SRWare Iron has attempted to solve most of those. And no AdblockPlus

BUT there is not a native Mac version of Chrome yet (Google promises "soon" ). So in the meantime, sticking with Safari + Webkit Nightly + SafariBlock ... only thing I really miss from Chrome is the omnibox - being able to type searches and addresses into one box without shortcuts or keywords.

[Sweetpea]

TextPad for editing my HTML files (and CSS for that matter)

PaintShop Pro for my graphics needs (and pilotbob, I do have Paint.NET too, but I like PSP better)

mobidedrm.exe for my DRM'd books (I just can't stand typo's and must fix them!)

mobi2oeb to create HTML files from my mobi books

ereader2html.exe to create HTML files from my ereader books (I have 1! atm, thanks to that overdrive debacle at FictionWise )

Info-ZIP to create an epub book

epubcheck-1.0.3.jar to check my epub book

mobigen to create the final mobi book

I made a batch file to 1. create an epub book, 2. check the epub, 3. repeat steps 1 and 2, until the HTML is correct, and 4 create the mobi book.

[frabjous]

Originally Posted by Jellby

No, I don't use it as a source format... but it's not too difficult to convert a properly tagged .tex file into HTML. Not automatic, but doable in a rather short time (I've done that). Converting the LaTeX formatting into CSS, now that's a different matter.

Unfortunately, I do use it as a source format--for reasons having nothing to do with portable readers; it's just a part of my job--and it would be nice to have a way of converting to other formats.

Very simple things, yeah, you can do with find and replace actions or scripts, e.g., changing \textit{*} to <i>*</i> is simple enough... but there are just so many things that I don't even know how to do with HTML (and MathML doesn't seem to be supported anywhere).... e.g., something as simple as a fraction x/y, with the x written vertically over the y with a bar in between. How do you do that in HTML? Is it even possible? Maybe with CSS... but even that is beyond my knowledge...

Originally Posted by tompe

Well latex2html does an OK job and there are other methods.

I've been meaning to play around with Latex2html, but haven't found the time.

It is also not especially hard to throw together e.g. a Perl script that handles the files you have available.

It's not, huh? Maybe if I even knew what the corresponding HTML is for half the LaTeX tags I use, I could write such a script, but usually, I don't... and I suspect HTML doesn't even have anything comparable.

[astra]

Book Designer only.

[mjh215]

Originally Posted by Daithi

Project Gutenberg for source files. I've been using the text files as a source. Do any of you use the HTML files instead?

I copy/paste from a localized copy of the HTML (with page numbers blanked) from IE to Word. That is about the only thing I use IE for, it just copies better to Word.

Right now I'm exclusively using a Vista box to do my ebooks so this is the toolset I'm using on it.

Book Creator Tool macro by =X= with Word 2007
For the conversions it uses;
Calibre
Mobipocket Creator
eBook Publisher (IMP)

GIMP for image manipulation/covers. It has come along way in recent years.
Opera for browsing (Which wasn't included in Pwn2Own BTW)
Notepad++ for text editing

-MJ