Does anybody have experience with Vibosoft ePub Editor Master?

[ps67]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I realize that in this day and age, every task more complicated than doing the dishes "has an app for that," but maybe if you really want to modify eBooks to suit your own tastes, you might want to learn how to make them. (And I'd point out, typing in the code and seeing what happens in Preview is a great way to start learning that....)
Hitch

I agree with her: learning a bit of css and html is not so difficult. I did it because I was not satisfied with the formatting of the books I was reading and now I try to modify them as little as possible so as not to be bothered by them.

Obviously those who do it for work know a lot more about it. Sometimes css is too complex and I am not able to do exactly what I would (why that indentation doesn't increase? Why the margin remains at zero and I have to give them a <br> under the image?) But now it is not so frequent.

I think I did not waste my time.

And I noticed something else: most publishers use horrible css, perhaps made with some program that is used for printing (Hitch correct me if I'm wrong) and somehow they pull out directly from it the epub, which sucks.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Iskariot

I have not mastered handling the raw code. As opposed to you I feel quite powerless when I look at it .
That is why a good straight forward WYSIWYG epub editor is of great interest to me. I want the program to do the things in the background I do not understand myself. I only want to have to pay attention to things like the lay out of a document, book structure, appearance etc.

Originally Posted by Hitch

Well...with all due respect, that's pretty much what everyone wants, who doesn't know HTML or CSS. Every author. Every publisher. They want some magic eBook-making software that makes a perfect ebook, that allows them to NOT know what the hell they're doing.

Personally, I agree with Hitch. It's worth taking the time to learn at least the basics of HTML/CSS. If nothing else, working at that level makes it much easier to understand what you need to make your ebook look good on multiple platforms. Admittedly, a good chunk of the authors I've done some work for are more than willing to have someone else do that cleanup.

As for that magic WYSIWYG software? It doesn't exist and likely never will—there are just too many ebook renderers that have quirks that don't match the quirks of your WYSIWYG software. You may have a book that looks great on your computer but looks like crap when sent to an ereader or app whether Amazon Kindle, Kobo, Nook or any other supplier. OTOH, that is what keeps Hitch and her colleagues in business.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by ps67

I agree with her: learning a bit of css and html is not so difficult. I did it because I was not satisfied with the formatting of the books I was reading and now I try to modify them as little as possible so as not to be bothered by them.

Obviously those who do it for work know a lot more about it. Sometimes css is too complex and I am not able to do exactly what I would (why that indentation doesn't increase? Why the margin remains at zero and I have to give them a <br> under the image?) But now it is not so frequent.

I think I did not waste my time.

And I noticed something else: most publishers use horrible css, perhaps made with some program that is used for printing (Hitch correct me if I'm wrong) and somehow they pull out directly from it the epub, which sucks.

Yeah, we're LOOKING AT YOU, InDesign! :-) That's usually the culprit. You can export an ePUB directly from INDD, and a lot, a LOT of print designers do just that. Don't get me wrong--we do that, too. But then we take that sucker apart, clean it, remove the cruft, etc. And of course, we have CSS mapped to pre-existing INDD named styles, to mitigate how much cleanup we have to do. These inexperienced designers don't do that--they just hand it to their victim, er, client and tell them to upload it.

And in this day and age of el cheap-o INDD rental/subscriptions, you get a lot of so-called "print layout designers" that don't even USE styles. (I s**t thee not, it's horrifying). They use adhoc styling for every paragraph...and the resulting ePUB is simply right out of a Roger Corman film.

So, yes--generally, that's the guilty party right there.

Hitch

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Iskariot

That is what I feared. A lot of these programs can not load an existing epub.
I would only use such a program to repair/improve/beautify existing ebooks.
I do not need to create ebooks myself.

To do what you are doing, I use Calibre's eBook editor. It works well and is easy to use.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Well...with all due respect, that's pretty much what everyone wants, who doesn't know HTML or CSS. Every author. Every publisher. They want some magic eBook-making software that makes a perfect ebook, that allows them to NOT know what the hell they're doing.

I realize that in this day and age, every task more complicated than doing the dishes "has an app for that," but maybe if you really want to modify eBooks to suit your own tastes, you might want to learn how to make them. (And I'd point out, typing in the code and seeing what happens in Preview is a great way to start learning that....)

However, if you're going to insist on not understanding the code--even though, honestly, it's truly not hard or complicated, mostly just a few hours to start learning--you can always take an ePUB or MOBI, put it in Calibre, export it to Word and then put the Word file into Atlantis.

Problem solved.

Hitch

Code I've seen from WYSIWYG editors can be pretty bad. Pages is really bad. Word can be really bad. In Design can be pretty bad. There isn't one that's not pretty bad.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Yeah, we're LOOKING AT YOU, InDesign! :-) That's usually the culprit. You can export an ePUB directly from INDD, and a lot, a LOT of print designers do just that. Don't get me wrong--we do that, too. But then we take that sucker apart, clean it, remove the cruft, etc. And of course, we have CSS mapped to pre-existing INDD named styles, to mitigate how much cleanup we have to do. These inexperienced designers don't do that--they just hand it to their victim, er, client and tell them to upload it.

And in this day and age of el cheap-o INDD rental/subscriptions, you get a lot of so-called "print layout designers" that don't even USE styles. (I s**t thee not, it's horrifying). They use adhoc styling for every paragraph...and the resulting ePUB is simply right out of a Roger Corman film.

So, yes--generally, that's the guilty party right there.

Hitch

The default style names from IDD are atrocious. Then there are the decimalized font sizes like 1.02em. And all that excess code like font-weight: normal and text-transform: none and other crap that's not needed. If I was getting paid to make an a book and using IDD, I would make it so it looks good for print and then when the ePub is made, spend the time to clean it up so it looks good as an eBook even if I had to change some of the layout so it doesn't match the pBook.

eBooks and pBooks are not the same and the layout doesn't always have to match.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Code I've seen from WYSIWYG editors can be pretty bad. Pages is really bad. Word can be really bad. In Design can be pretty bad. There isn't one that's not pretty bad.

Yes, WYSIWYG is only applicable to viewing or printing from a word processor. But word documents can also be pretty good as a database. Like anything else the author has control of, not only the looks, but also the database. The doc, docx formats are sufficiently complete that a knowledgeable user can create a database that can convert to a good ePub or Mobi. But this requires that the user know how to use styles and not abuse them.

Dale

[DiapDealer]

If you need WYSIWYG, you don't get to be picky about how the code looks. As long as it's valid, the tool has done its job. I always get a chuckle when folks want WYSIWYG to create meticulous, "clean" code (not that anyone in this thread is guilty of that). As if it's possible for a wysiwyg editor to produce pretty, unbloated markup/css AND support complex--nearly unlimited--formatting opinions.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

If you need WYSIWYG, you don't get to be picky about how the code looks. As long as it's valid, the tool has done its job. I always get a chuckle when folks want WYSIWYG to create meticulous, "clean" code (not that anyone in this thread is guilty of that). As if it's possible for a wysiwyg editor to produce pretty, unbloated markup/css AND support complex--nearly unlimited--formatting opinions.

Indeed, you are exactly right. You ever see any of those folks that use the iAuthor tool kvetching about the absolute CRAP underneath, so that they can push a few buttons, drag here, drop there? Nope. It's the rest of us poor bastards that they come to, thinking that you can push another magic button and make a MOBI from that that scream like little girls.

(I had a client, for whom we did a massive non-ficiton print layout, with a crapload of tables, illos, you-name-it, and he didn't like something we did...this is in INDD, right--and he told us to "run it through your program again and get a different output." URGGGGGHHHHH.)

Idiot.

Hitch

[Vroni]

Originally Posted by DNSB

You may have a book that looks great on your computer but looks like crap when sent to an ereader or app whether

In addition, these PC WYSIWIG Editors for ePubs are not using RMSDK oder XHTML1.1 or CSS2.1 subset, they are using a renderer with html5, nearly fully working CSS2.1 and CSS3. All will render fine on the PC, but will look completely different on an eReader.

And having the need to convert it mobi, azw or KF8 oder whatever makes it more worth.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Vroni

In addition, these PC WYSIWIG Editors for ePubs are not using RMSDK oder XHTML1.1 or CSS2.1 subset, they are using a renderer with html5, nearly fully working CSS2.1 and CSS3. All will render fine on the PC, but will look completely different on an eReader.

And having the need to convert it mobi, azw or KF8 oder whatever makes it more worth.

Both Calibre and Sigil have an open-with feature so you can open your ePub with ADE and you'll get a good idea how it will look on a lot of Readers.