Converting from ePUB to HTMLZ with Calibre

[kovidgoyal]

Oh and specially for BR:
https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibr...b980143504a0ff

And the syntax highlighting (apart from matching tags, for obvious reasons) is not refreshed when you move the cursor around.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

that most of those features aren't life-changing.

@BR -- I'm not sure what you mean regarding the context menu, when I use the context menu in Firefox it certainly doesn't go and avoid highlighted text. I truly have no idea what you mean there.

OPF comments -- the calibre Editor can integrate with a calibre library, but it doesn't have to. Presumably people use it on its own.
I don't find the feature troubling, and it can be useful...

Remember, I use the keyboard not the mouse, where you would right click I tap the menu key - here's three screen shots - the first will probably horrify you

firefox

ebook-editor Note this is a mouse click because the menu key doesn't 'work' - yet

sigil

Hmmm - I just noticed something 'interesting'. The book I just used for the screenshots has a very large Index. In the calibre editor all the page reference numbers are reported as spelling errors-- over 900 of them! But they're not reported in Sigil. I think Sigil must ignore tokens that start with (or contain) digits, I can't see a preference. Maybe calibre should have a preference. FWIW Word has options to ignore words that - contain digits, are all upper case, are internet (including mail) and file addresses.

Other ways to solve my problem with Comments include me editing them out of the file before I spellcheck. Someone adding an option to Modify to exclude Comments (dc:description). I don't need the Comments to be in the epub and I always run Modify before I edit

BR

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Oh and specially for BR:
https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibr...b980143504a0ff

Thanks a lot

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

And the syntax highlighting (apart from matching tags, for obvious reasons) is not refreshed when you move the cursor around.

When I press & hold the ctrl key the tags lose their highlight, they get it back when I release the ctrl key. Most of my texts only have <p blah> and </p> markup. When I move the insertion point with the mouse the tags lose their highlight then get it back again.

I've just changed my colours so the markup is not highlighting in a high contrast colour - it is less irritating. But I also recall I deliberately changed the highlighting colour to a high contrast value - because I couldn't discern the presence of things like ZWSP and SHY

BR

[kovidgoyal]

There you go: https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibr...fe3b20b51b9f50

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

When I press & hold the ctrl key the tags lose their highlight, they get it back when I release the ctrl key. Most of my texts only have <p blah> and </p> markup. When I move the insertion point with the mouse the tags lose their highlight then get it back again.

That is perfectly natural since moving the insertion points means the tags you are inside could have changed. If you dislike the matching tag highlighting simply disable it by changing the color scheme, IIRC the color group for that is called MatchParen.

I've just changed my colours so the markup is not highlighting in a high contrast colour - it is less irritating. But I also recall I deliberately changed the highlighting colour to a high contrast value - because I couldn't discern the presence of things like ZWSP and SHY

They are different groups the highlighting of matching tags and special chars dont have to be the same color.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Happy to help... although I still think you can just do whatever changes you want to do inside the Editor and skip merging files.

The only reason I can think of for merging files is to perform bulk operations from some other editor (like Notepad++) -- but you can probably do whatever it is directly in the Editor. That's why the Editor exists, after all.

Notepad++ supports tabs and search/replace across tabs. so there's still no good reason to merge any of the files.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by JulienDym

I like to work my html and css with Dreamweaver....

It's actually easier to use Notepad++ and your browser to see what you are doing.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Notepad++ supports tabs and search/replace across tabs. so there's still no good reason to merge any of the files.

I suppose that is true... if one doesn't mind opening numerous files by hand from obscure %TEMP% locations, and/or using the comparatively obscure Explode Book feature only available from within a calibre library or via the CLI.

I have better things to do with my time than get all pedantic about which specific awkward route to use for opening an ebook in a generic text editor.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It's actually easier to use Notepad++ and your browser to see what you are doing.

I am not going to argue with a personal preference (although naturally I assume the OP made an informed decision).
Why do you feel it is necessary to tell people what they should and should not find easy?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I suppose that is true... if one doesn't mind opening numerous files by hand from obscure %TEMP% locations, and/or using the comparatively obscure Explode Book feature only available from within a calibre library or via the CLI.

I have better things to do with my time than get all pedantic about which specific awkward route to use for opening an ebook in a generic text editor.

ePub is a ZIP container. All you need do is rename it to .zip and then you can use Windows Explorer to extract the contents. Then you can load all the relevent files into Notepad++ without needing to use some obscure location or one at a time. Select he files and fight click and select Edit with Notepad++. It's that easy.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

ePub is a ZIP container. All you need do is rename it to .zip and then you can use Windows Explorer to extract the contents. Then you can load all the relevent files into Notepad++ without needing to use some obscure location or one at a time. Select he files and fight click and select Edit with Notepad++. It's that easy.

As I said,

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I have better things to do with my time than get all pedantic about which specific awkward route to use for opening an ebook in a generic text editor.

And since you are arguing merely for the sake of arguing, I have no interest in discussing this any further -- feel free to reply, but I certainly won't read it as I am now ignoring this thread.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

That is perfectly natural since moving the insertion points means the tags you are inside could have changed. If you dislike the matching tag highlighting simply disable it by changing the color scheme, IIRC the color group for that is called MatchParen.

They are different groups the highlighting of matching tags and special chars dont have to be the same color.

I set everything to null for MatchParen, that effectively removed the highlighting - for me that's much better. I can easily switch to another theme if I need the highlighting.

I have the Special Character item back to a high contrast setting.

BR

[Divingduck]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

I really should put aside the time someday to write a comparison document, for pretty much every feature that exists in both, the calibre editor has a superior (either more powerful or more robust or both) implementation.

Guess, one of the major problem in this kind of discussions is, that most of peoples do not know about concept and capabilities of calibre's editor. There is no description available what describes and specifies the actual functionalities and benefits. Good idea, to spend some time on it.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Divingduck

Guess, one of the major problem in this kind of discussions is, that most of peoples do not know about concept and capabilities of calibre's editor. There is no description available what describes and specifies the actual functionalities and benefits. Good idea, to spend some time on it.

Writing documentation has always been a thankless task, and given the tl:dr epidemic it's becoming more so. Kovid made a video for the editor ==>> Calibre Editor video

@Kovid - I noticed that the doco on the right of the configure theme dialogue is incomplete - eg 'what's a PreProc?'

BR

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by Divingduck

Guess, one of the major problem in this kind of discussions is, that most of peoples do not know about concept and capabilities of calibre's editor. There is no description available what describes and specifies the actual functionalities and benefits. Good idea, to spend some time on it.

Well, (almost) every feature in the list I posted is actually documented in the calibre user manual. Just not in a compare and contrast form with Sigil. Apart from laziness, I also dont much like the idea of writing feature comparisons like this for a few reasons:

1) They can easily get out of date as both the software involved evolves
2) I really dont mind if people use Sigil instead of the calibre editor, I just got annoyed by the assertion that the two are largely equivalent. To me, they very much are not.
3) I doubt very much I could be objective in such a comparison, since apart from natural bias, I also know the features and functionality of the editor in much greater detail than Sigil -- which I never used because of the crashing/data loss bugs that used to plague it. Before the calibre editor existed, I used to use vim to edit EPUB files.

[Divingduck]

Kovid,
Yes, you can find a lot info in the manual. The problem is, that you need to find them and interesting things for professional user are not in a compact form available. In addition for a lot of things a reader maybe became maybe a hind but no idea why it is usefull.
Check spelling (discussion) is a good example. Program what start as an native "English" development have often problems with hyphen word constructs in foreign languages like in German or even in for technical documentations. You find a really nicely way to get that done with user defined dictionaries. This not only with one additional dictionary, you can define as much as a user need, you can link them to languages and use it with one document. That is an important feature for professionals and an unique point of your editor. You will find these kind of information and usage only somewhere in forum discussions. Point these things from time to time out. Some of these hints I can find sometimes in a thread or as a small update description. A couple days later it is forgotten.

What I am missing (guess it is not only me) are such things like why is an feature so important and for what was it intend to use. Like the colorizing/highlighting of syntax. If I'm right, you mentioned this feature in the manual, but there is no explanation how to setup and use this. But I know, there was a detailed discussion about the feature in a thread long time ago when you start the development for it.

To understand me well, it is not criticizing you or the manual. That's something what came up mostly every week if not experienced people ask for help for calibre's editor in a "day to day" usage. calibre is not alone with this. Sigil have the same issues.

I am completely with you, a document what came with a flavor like "I do it in a better way" comparison is absolutely the wrong way (I forgot to mention that in my last post). But a brief description of features and functionalities and their benefits is needed for everyone who like to use tools in a professional way. Peoples who really spend time with these kind of tools will be capable to make a differential decision about at what point it will be a benefit to use tools for different needs.

As BetterRead points out "Writing documentation has always been a thankless task". Indeed, that's true - especially for tools like calibre what grows up every day. A similar thing to Sigil these days.

Maybe a good idea, to combine calibre tips and tricks and videos a bit closer together. There are also a lot of people who did not know about this resources

Anyway, calibre and Sigil are sophisticated tools and peoples who are not capable to recognize this, have in my view some knowledge deficits.