Getting started, but how?

[misskennedy]

Okay ! This makes snese ! Still learning me ! ;-)

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by misskennedy

There are no blank pages on the Ipad view now, but the font problem hasn't been solved. I added a font face tag. It does display the correct font in the Sigil Window, but not on the Ipad.

Sigil probably displays the correct font, because it's installed on your machine. Try clicking the green checkmark button to check for stylesheet related issues.
Also for iPad epubs, you'll need create a com.apple.ibooks.display-options.xml file that contains the following text:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<display_options>
<platform name="*">
<option name="specified-fonts">true</option>
</platform>
</display_options>

Save it as a UTF-8 file and copy it to the ePub META-INF folder.

[meme]

I assume this means the epub has to be unzipped, then the file has to be copied, and the epub re-zipped - unless I've missed an option in Sigil to get to META-INF?

Seems like another FAQ item...

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by meme

I assume this means the epub has to be unzipped, then the file has to be copied, and the epub re-zipped - unless I've missed an option in Sigil to get to META-INF?

You are of course right, this cannot be done in Sigil. The OP would need to use epubzip (Mac) or epubpack (Windows).
(Winzip/7Zip and other archive programs generally don't create valid epub zip files.)

[DiapDealer]

On Windows you can simply rename the epub to *.zip, copy the "com.apple.ibooks.display-options.xml" file, browse to the META-INF folder using the standard file explorer and paste it in. Then rename the file back to epub.

[theducks]

Or if you use Calibre, Use the TweakEPUB feature and drop the file, make the Manifest edit and rebuild.

Have the current developers considered adding a 'extension' to the EPUB spec support to do these kind of things even though it is not official EPUB 2?

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by meme

Seems like another FAQ item...

Well, actually that is the question. This is an adaptation specifically for iBooks and falls outside the normal ePUB specs. Sigil produces generic ePUB files, so it is not designed to make this kind of changes from the start.

Then again, it is across this site in several posts.

[misskennedy]

Thank you very much, DiapDealer - I will try this out.
Right now I managed to get the Ebook together by using only image files, compiled in Epubizator and refined in Sigil. Looks good in Ibooks, hope it would so so in other readers.

@all: I learned a lot from your help and support, big thanks !

[SkookumPete]

I'm a newbie as well and I'm stymied from the get-go. According to the manual, when you open an HTML File, "The file and and linked files, images or stylesheets are imported if possible and placed into the appropriate folders."

To me this means if I load a file that has one or more hrefs to another file (in the same directory, using relative path), that other file will be loaded as well.

But it isn't. The stylesheet and images are loaded, but not the linked HTML files.

What am I missing?

[meme]

The guide is imprecise - only images and styles are imported automatically when you open an HTML file.

It might be possible to import linked HTML files as well, but that would be a new feature. I'll add it to the list for consideration.

Note that the online guide is for 0.6.0 since the beta is out, so it will be slightly different than 0.5.3.

[SkookumPete]

I must say I'm baffled by the way Sigil deals with multiple files. After adding several existing files I found that Sigil had stripped the (relative) paths from all the hrefs, so that the links were broken. Having fixed those with S&R, I now find that links to pathless #anchors in the same file don't work.

Re importing linked files: the way I'm used to doing this in Calibre is to create a book file that contains nothing but links to the various source files. It's very easy to re-create the book by simply opening this file.

[meme]

Stripping the paths from the hrefs appears to be intentional. There is an open issue about it that has a fix, but more time has to be spent looking at it to make sure it doesn't cause more problems than it fixes. Correcting links after splitting/merging should be fixed in the new beta.

But a simple link to a fileless anchor in the same file should work fine. What do you mean by "doesn't work"? What does the code for the link look like? What does the code for the anchor look like?

[SkookumPete]

Reference:

<a href="#noteP1C11_1">[note 1]</a>

Target:

<a class="ref" href="../Text/vtext.htm#refP1C11_1" id="noteP1C11_1">1</a>

"Doesn't work" = link does not jump to target in book or preview view in Sigil.

Update: I installed the 64-bit version and it seems to have cleared up that problem. However, now the links work within Sigil, but not when the epub is loaded into a reader! Also, the stylesheet is ignored outside Sigil. This program does bewilder me.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by SkookumPete

Reference:

<a href="#noteP1C11_1">[note 1]</a>

Target:

<a class="ref" href="../Text/vtext.htm#refP1C11_1" id="noteP1C11_1">1</a>

"Doesn't work" = link does not jump to target in book or preview view in Sigil.

Update: I installed the 64-bit version and it seems to have cleared up that problem. However, now the links work within Sigil, but not when the epub is loaded into a reader! Also, the stylesheet is ignored outside Sigil. This program does bewilder me.

CSS ignored outside Sigil generally means there is a syntax or other error in the CSS file. Adobe Digital Edition products will throw out the entire CSS if they find errors in it. I would suggest you validate the CSS. Our wiki has links to a validator and a new entry called CSS Toolbox which is a free Windows program to help with CSS.

Links outside Sigil work exactly like they work in any HTML file. They use standard unix style linking where the ePub itself is the top of the tree but most people code relative links.

Dale

[SkookumPete]

Thanks for the tip about the CSS.

The endnote thing is very strange. I finally put all my HTML files into one huge file and brought that into Sigil. Notes worked fine. Then I had Sigil split it into chapters. Notes still work in Sigil and in the browser when I unzip the epub, but not in Azardi or a couple of readers I've tried on Android.

Worse, if I try different things like stripping the "../Text/" from the URLs, Sigil helpfully reverts all my changes when I reload the epub.

Epubcheck detects no problems.