Atlantis Word Processor - ePub creation tool

[McKGrif]

By image style I mean set as background so text can typed over it on the page. There is an example of this in both the odt and doc files in my original post.

To charleski, I don't have a problem with styling with word, the problem is the styles don't carry over to Atlantis.

Let me be clear, I think what Atlantis has done is great as a wysiwyg ebook editor, but as it stands now, if I cant import styling from word or office I still have to us sigil to polish my epubs, which is what I do now.

[McKGrif]

The images aren't really a big deal, but I think charcter styles like dropcap or raised cap, etc are pretty useful.

[awp]

"Page background" is also on the "to do" list of Atlantis. But it seems that most existing EPUB readers do not support custom page background in EPUBs.

About character styles. I suppose there is some misunderstanding. Or we use different terminology. The present version of Atlantis Word Processor does not support character styles. I mean that you cannot create character styles through the GUI of Atlantis, apply them to fragments of your document, and save them with Atlantis to a document file. But when a MS Word or OpenOffice document contains formatting applied (maintained) through character styles, Atlantis is supposed to load this formatting from a document file correctly. Atlantis does "understand" character styles in document files created with other word processing applications. But when importing a document, Atlantis always converts any character-style-formatting to a direct formatting supported by Atlantis. If you have a document containing text fragments formatted with character styles, and Atlantis does not display it correctly, please email your document to support@AtlantisWordProcessor.com.

[awp]

Originally Posted by McKGrif

charcter styles like dropcap or raised cap, etc are pretty useful.

Now I understand what you mean. In MS Word, "drop cap" is not a character style. It is a direct text formatting type rendered through the mechanism of floating text boxes. Atlantis currently does not support text boxes.

[McKGrif]

I don't know if my current ereader (nook) supports page background in epubs or not. It does for pdfs, so I thought it might.

The only software I'm aware of that does everything anyone might want is Adobe InDesign, which is way too much (complicated) for my personal needs.

Anyway, I have not seen a simpler (or better), wysiwyg document to epub feature anywhere else. As it is now I use, Open Office writer + eScape + Azardi + Calibre + Sigil not nearly as simple (clearly), but it gets the job done. Once you get character styles (text boxes) supported, I am definitely a buyer.

[charleski]

Originally Posted by McKGrif

Once you get character styles (text boxes) supported, I am definitely a buyer.

No current epub designer creates proper dropcaps (don't know why you keep talking about character styles - I think you're just confusing yourself), not even InDesign. If you want dropcaps right now then you need to code the css by hand, there's a thread on this forum that shows how to do it.

I don't know the priorities of the Atlantis team, but automatic dropcap creation would be finicky to do correctly. Word's method is a kludge that can't be translated to reflowable documents, and poorly-done dropcaps look worse than no dropcaps at all. If you want to mark the first character in some way, use bold or increase the font size slightly.

[awp]

If Atlantis had the "drop cap" function, it would be fairly easy to save "drop-capped" letters to EPUB. Atlantis would convert them to graphic files, and format them with the "left" align in EPUB XHTML. Something like this:

<img src="images/img1.png" alt="img1.png" align="left"/>

[McKGrif]

Originally Posted by charleski

No current epub designer creates proper dropcaps (don't know why you keep talking about character styles - I think you're just confusing yourself), not even InDesign. If you want dropcaps right now then you need to code the css by hand, there's a thread on this forum that shows how to do it.

I don't know the priorities of the Atlantis team, but automatic dropcap creation would be finicky to do correctly. Word's method is a kludge that can't be translated to reflowable documents, and poorly-done dropcaps look worse than no dropcaps at all. If you want to mark the first character in some way, use bold or increase the font size slightly.

I am an Open Office writer user, I haven't used word regularly for years. I have been using eScape by IGP, and they refer to Drop/Raised caps etc... as character styles. You are right, though eScape uses the css to produce the dropcap, you cannot see it in writer.

Thanks for the point to that thread.

Truth be told I am probably going to purchase Atlantis, it is the best wysiwyg editor I have come across.

Originally Posted by awp

If Atlantis had the "drop cap" function, it would be fairly easy to save "drop-capped" letters to EPUB. Atlantis would convert them to graphic files, and format them with the "left" align in EPUB XHTML. Something like this:

<img src="images/img1.png" alt="img1.png" align="left"/>

I'll be looking forward to this

[awp]

Text boxes are among our priorities. They will allow to implement support for a few extra document components and new formatting types (including drop caps).

[charleski]

Originally Posted by awp

If Atlantis had the "drop cap" function, it would be fairly easy to save "drop-capped" letters to EPUB. Atlantis would convert them to graphic files, and format them with the "left" align in EPUB XHTML. Something like this:

<img src="images/img1.png" alt="img1.png" align="left"/>

The problem here is that you're likely to run into font mismatches, which would look even worse on ereaders that allow the user to select fonts, especially given the wacky choices available on the iPad.

[awp]

You are right about potential font mismatches. But I personally do not think that this could be a (significant) problem. The drop cap effect itself creates a kind of "font mismatch". Quite often dropped caps display in the source document very differently comparing to the "body text":

[glin]

Hi,
A silly question by a newbie : Does Atlantis convert .odt files (an OpenOffice.org open format) satisfactorily ?
(links to information about this problem are welcome too).
Thanks.

[awp]

Atlantis Word Processor does not support all the features and document elements possible in ODT documents. Atlantis might be unable to load some formatting from an ODT document simply because Atlantis does not support the corresponding formatting type. For instance, Atlantis does not support the overline text formatting. Obviously Atlantis could not load and render (display) overline formatting if you open an ODT document with this formatting in Atlantis. But Atlantis does its best to convert as much "incompatible formatting" from ODTs to its internal format as possible. In some areas Atlantis does a better job than the "Open ODT" filter of MS Word. For instance, Atlantis can convert "outline hyperlinks" (hyperlinks implicitly associated with heading paragraphs; their URLs are terminated with "|outline"; they are normally used in TOCs) from ODTs to the internal (MS Word-compatible) format.

So if a document (no matter its format) displays/functions in Atlantis correctly, Atlantis would convert it to EPUB satisfactorily. But it is still preferable to format a source document according to the recommendations from this page:

Atlantis Word Processor Online Help. eBooks.

[awp]

One more note on ODTs. If you install Atlantis Word Processor to your PC, you could see for yourself how Atlantis loads ODTs and saves them to the EPUB format. This would cost you nothing. The setup file of Atlantis is only 3 MB. You can download it from this page and install to your computer in seconds.

[glin]

Thanks for these information.