Headings appearing huge with Indesign stylesheet

[mrmikel]

They have been hanging around on the forums from time to time. Could be worth suggesting it to them.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by mrmikel

They have been hanging around on the forums from time to time. Could be worth suggesting it to them.

If they show up, I shall. I'll ask them to make an option for "map style names." As far as I'm concerned, that would make it pretty damn spiffy.

Hitch

[mrmikel]

I sent them an email and this was their response:


This would be hardly possible. In MS Word documents, text formatting is applied not only through styles, but through direct ("non-style", or "manual") formatting, too. In EPUBs, text formatting is applied through styles exclusively. In most cases, when a MS Word document gets converted to EPUB, it is impossible to stick with the original styles of the source document.

I think that is a way of saying that AWP mostly gets junked up files, so they proceed on that basis. Sigh.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by mrmikel

I sent them an email and this was their response:


This would be hardly possible. In MS Word documents, text formatting is applied not only through styles, but through direct ("non-style", or "manual") formatting, too. In EPUBs, text formatting is applied through styles exclusively. In most cases, when a MS Word document gets converted to EPUB, it is impossible to stick with the original styles of the source document.

I think that is a way of saying that AWP mostly gets junked up files, so they proceed on that basis. Sigh.

With all due respect, anyone reading that reply knows instantly that it's total horsepucky. Both CSS-type styles and inline styles are applied in BOTH word and ePUB. It's an excuse, not a reason.

I'm very appreciative of your effort, mrmikel. It would have been cool if they'd been receptive to it. That's probably why Jutoh is making strides; at least the stylenames don't change, so you can work in CSS when you've exported your ePUB without having to relearn what each stylename is/does.

Thanks!
Hitch

[Toxaris]

It is actually not that hard to keep the Word stylenames and even create a simplistic stylesheet with those names based on the style definitions... I do it to a degree in my add-in and I am no expert programmer.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

It is actually not that hard to keep the Word stylenames and even create a simplistic stylesheet with those names based on the style definitions... I do it to a degree in my add-in and I am no expert programmer.

Hmmm, it was, in fact, your plug-in I was thinking about when I wrote that, Tox. I mean...seriously? Sure, they might get some inlines that need stylenames (not bold, italic, but underscore would...maybe some font-size or font-color changes would need named spans, I understand that), but most of it? Most of it could just be sucked, silly MSoNormal yadda names and all, right into a stylesheet, so a sane person could just regex the whole mess.

I think I understand that AWP evolved separately, so their ePUB-output was originally designed for their own product, but when I tried it, the stylenames from Word seemed to import to AWP, in the word-processing section. If you make your own styles in AWP, do those not import to the ePUB, either? (Anyone know?)

Hitch

[BobC]

If you use LibreOffice with the Writer2XHTML export filter extension when you export to EPUB the CSS style names follow the style names used in the original ODT document. LibreOffice has good Word and similar WP import capabilities making it a good platform for producing EPUBs.

BobC

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by BobC

If you use LibreOffice with the Writer2XHTML export filter extension when you export to EPUB the CSS style names follow the style names used in the original ODT document. LibreOffice has good Word and similar WP import capabilities making it a good platform for producing EPUBs.

BobC

Hi, Bob:

Yes, I've noted that before. Truth be told, I just bloody like SIGIL and don't want to give it up. I haven't found the LO-->WXH export-->EPUB to be that great, really. I'll try it (as I've tried everything else), but one of the unintended consequences of this is that when we've tested LO import of Word files, some of the formatting seems to be lost. Now, that's probably not a big deal for someone doing their own book--they'd instantly know, "oh, hell, my italics formatting disappeared!," or whatever, but for commercial production, that's an issue. We obviously can't afford to be dropping formatting hither and yon.

Again, to be clear, this seems to happen in the initial import; it's not a byproduct of the WXH-->ePUB export, as near as I can tell. Given the vast number of Word files we receive, it's not something I can ignore.

I'll look at it again, though. Thanks for the input!

Hitch

[BobC]

@Hitch,

Originally Posted by Hitch

Hi, Bob:
Yes, I've noted that before. Truth be told, I just bloody like SIGIL and don't want to give it up. I haven't found the LO-->WXH export-->EPUB to be that great, really. I'll try it (as I've tried everything else), but one of the unintended consequences of this is that when we've tested LO import of Word files, some of the formatting seems to be lost. Now, that's probably not a big deal for someone doing their own book--they'd instantly know, "oh, hell, my italics formatting disappeared!," or whatever, but for commercial production, that's an issue. We obviously can't afford to be dropping formatting hither and yon.

We have different needs - in your case you get pretty good original stuff (i.e. all the words are right) with perhaps poor formatting; a lot of mine starts off as really messy OCRd text from Archives.org and I need to do a lot of manual editing and re-formatting to knock it into shape. The extensibilty of LO makes it useful with some great regex based alternative S&R additions - I often use OOOFBTools just for its text-tidying ability (I've stopped using FB2 as my preferred Ebook format). As I use LO as my normal WP it all works seamlessly for me

Anyway, I have noticed that in LO some italics are not true italic - they look like italic but can't be found via the normal italic search; they seem to use a variant of "character posture" it may be ones like this that are getting mis-imported.

Beware also that the standard Writer2XTHML doesn't work with current editions of LO - you need to get a patched version - have a look at this :
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...&postcount=224

BobC

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by BobC

@Hitch,


We have different needs - in your case you get pretty good original stuff (i.e. all the words are right) with perhaps poor formatting; a lot of mine starts off as really messy OCRd text from Archives.org and I need to do a lot of manual editing and re-formatting to knock it into shape. The extensibilty of LO makes it useful with some great regex based alternative S&R additions - I often use OOOFBTools just for its text-tidying ability (I've stopped using FB2 as my preferred Ebook format). As I use LO as my normal WP it all works seamlessly for me

Anyway, I have noticed that in LO some italics are not true italic - they look like italic but can't be found via the normal italic search; they seem to use a variant of "character posture" it may be ones like this that are getting mis-imported.

Beware also that the standard Writer2XTHML doesn't work with current editions of LO - you need to get a patched version - have a look at this :
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...&postcount=224

BobC

BobC,

Thanks for the info. I'll look it over again. However, one small comment:

...in your case you get pretty good original stuff (i.e. all the words are right) with perhaps poor formatting...

Umhmmmm. That would be nice. I wonder who gets that? Probably the companies who have contracts with BPH's. ;-)

We do get a ton of OCR'ed material, too. Not to mention, my fave: the DIY scans. Those are real doozies. Sort of like first-gen PG stuff. And I think I've posted the odd weird thing that crosses my desk (like that one file, with the pilcrows at the beginning of the lines...)

Hitch

[Notjohn]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

I put a review on our wiki for AWP Review.

Thank you; that was a great help (as was indeed the rest of the discussion).

I do have a tendency to avoid RTFM whenever possible!