ePubHub, an open-source eBook assembly app for Windows

[awx]

ePubHub stores a few small bits of window position data and last used directory info in appdata and that's not going to change.

[jgray]

I just wanted to add my 2 cents. So far, I very much like what I see and anxiously await the addition of more features. Is it done yet?

[awx]

Thanks for the kind words.

Not done yet but a new version was released tonight.

This is the first version that I was able to use to create a full ePub file. I imported an Xhtml document that was created by OCR from my Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner & Abbyy FineReader of a 400+ page book with nearly 40 chapters. The Parts & Chapters worked perfectly, giving my ePub a nice Table of Contents that worked perfectly on my Sony PRS-600.

New to this version:
* Bug fixes with sorting and some exceptions thrown during scrolling.
* More languages to choose from, courtesy of Toxaris.
* Multi-select drag-and-drop inside the Navigation tree.
* Multi-select delete for everything that supports deletion.
* Some big speedups when drag-and-dropping hundreds of items but still more are needed. It can get ridiculously slow dragging thousands of items.
* Added an "Insert Above" and "Insert Below" context menu.
* Content pane is now broken up into a tab control. The "Items" tab is non-functional at this point but is being planned to help make drag-n-drop easier.

The multi-select works as one would expect. Shift and Control clicking allows you to select multiple items in the Navigation tree. When dragging paragraphs, etc., be sure to only select items from the same parent/level.

[jgray]

Hey, isn't it about time you had your own section, like the other epub authoring programs? (Big hint to moderators).

[awx]

New version with some small changes released today. I believe all slowdowns with drag-n-drop are fixed. I've tested dragging nearly 10000 items and the time is just a couple of seconds.

[Toxaris]

I like it more and more!

[Toxaris]

Tried to import an XML file today and got an error (attached). The problem seems to be the HTML code ©. That code is not accepted, although it is valid.

Something else I noticed. Blockquotes not in paragraphs blocks will be ignored during import.

Will try more today, so perhaps more will follow.

Is it by design that I can add components, but not enter anything in it? If I add a paragraph for instance I cannot put text in it. I would assume that it was possible in the code preview or am I missing something? *nevermind, found this one myself*

Something more I noticed. I made some changes and tried 'Save to epub' once more. I wanted to overwrite the old. I got a message that my changes were lost and the program exited. Strange, I suspected a 'Do you want to overwrite?' popup.

I just keep editing... If I import and xhtml which contains images, an entry is added to the images part. I then can import the image. However, if the xhtml has an CSS entry in it, I do not see an entry in the Stylesheets tree. The link I used was:
<link href="css/standaard.css" type="text/css" charset="UTF-8" rel="stylesheet"/>

[jgray]

Originally Posted by awx

New version with some small changes released today. I believe all slowdowns with drag-n-drop are fixed. I've tested dragging nearly 10000 items and the time is just a couple of seconds.

I have what I assume is the latest version (0.2.3.0). I even uninstalled the program and ran Setup again to download/install epubhub. However, I'm not seeing any way to drag/drop existing XHTML files into the program. In fact, I can't drag/drop any type of file into the program. I'm running Win7 x64.

All I want to do is to take existing XHTML chapters, images and a style sheet and have an epub created. I don't want additional markup added to my files. I can and have created an epub by hand with a text editor, but making the content.opf and toc.ncx is very tedious. This is what computers are for, isn't it?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by awx

ePubHub stores a few small bits of window position data and last used directory info in appdata and that's not going to change.

Why not have it store an ini file with the settings in the same directory as the executable?

[ATimson]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Why not have it store an ini file with the settings in the same directory as the executable?

Because we aren't running Windows Me anymore, and non-admin users don't (or at least shouldn't) have write access to the program directory.

[awx]

Originally Posted by jgray

I have what I assume is the latest version (0.2.3.0). I even uninstalled the program and ran Setup again to download/install epubhub. However, I'm not seeing any way to drag/drop existing XHTML files into the program. In fact, I can't drag/drop any type of file into the program. I'm running Win7 x64.

All I want to do is to take existing XHTML chapters, images and a style sheet and have an epub created. I don't want additional markup added to my files. I can and have created an epub by hand with a text editor, but making the content.opf and toc.ncx is very tedious. This is what computers are for, isn't it?

Go to the file menu and select "Import Xhtml...". A "Generic Page" with your data will hopefully get created. The file must be Xhtml, not html.

Expect an expanded import feature sometime in the next few days. I've already added more tags, including blockquote and pre. The standard attributes now get imported, such as id, class and style.

In order for character entities (&nbsp; and such) to import, you must have the Xhtml 1.1 dtd in your xhtml file:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">

[awx]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

Tried to import an XML file today and got an error (attached). The problem seems to be the HTML code &copy;. That code is not accepted, although it is valid.

You must add the html doctype with the Xhtml dtd for the importer to understand how the translate the character entities.
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">

Originally Posted by Toxaris

Something else I noticed. Blockquotes not in paragraphs blocks will be ignored during import.

I've added these along with several other tags in the version to be released next week.

Originally Posted by Toxaris

Is it by design that I can add components, but not enter anything in it? If I add a paragraph for instance I cannot put text in it. I would assume that it was possible in the code preview or am I missing something? *nevermind, found this one myself*

Inside the paragraph, you need to add a Text object.

Originally Posted by Toxaris

Something more I noticed. I made some changes and tried 'Save to epub' once more. I wanted to overwrite the old. I got a message that my changes were lost and the program exited. Strange, I suspected a 'Do you want to overwrite?' popup.

That's weird, I have no idea what happened. If you can reproduce this then write down the exact steps I need to follow.

Originally Posted by Toxaris

I just keep editing... If I import and xhtml which contains images, an entry is added to the images part. I then can import the image. However, if the xhtml has an CSS entry in it, I do not see an entry in the Stylesheets tree. The link I used was:
<link href="css/standaard.css" type="text/css" charset="UTF-8" rel="stylesheet"/>

I stopped implementing the Css support because people said the import feature was more important. It's only partially complete and I plan to start on it again in two weeks.

[awx]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Why not have it store an ini file with the settings in the same directory as the executable?

I believe the .Net settings class can save to a different file but I'm not going to work on this now as there are too many other things that need completing.

The only settings that are stored are basic stuff about Window positioning and the last filepaths used.

[jgray]

Originally Posted by awx

Go to the file menu and select "Import Xhtml...". A "Generic Page" with your data will hopefully get created. The file must be Xhtml, not html.

I know about importing an XHTML file one-at-a-time. With almost 90 files, this is not useable to me.

Since you mentioned drag-n-drop, my previous question was why can't I drag-n-drop files, since apparently you can.

Also, why do files that I do import only show as "Generic Page"? Why can't I change that to something else? For that matter, why do these imported pages need these labels in the first place?

I just want to import a bunch of prefectly valid XHTML files, a stylesheet and some images. Then, edit some metadata in your program, and it have generate the other necessary files and epub container. I really don't want or need to have my source files changed in any way.

[awx]

Originally Posted by jgray

I really don't want or need to have my source files changed in any way.

I think eCub works that way. You may want to check it out.