12-06-2021, 04:47 PM | #16 | |||||
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1. Tables are super important to me. 2. All these crappy programs I'm choosing to use don't handle tables... Well, then that's on you! Ask those programs to add proper tables support or change your workflow. - - - Side Note: A similar situation happened with a book I worked on a few years ago. The author was writing a Non-Fiction book, nearly a thousand footnotes + URLs + citations... and someone bamboozled him into trying Scrivener, because they told him: "I hear it's the best at making books!" ... No. He wasted lots of time trying to wrestle with Scrivener, trying to force it to do something it wasn't designed to do. (Luckily, he fell back on Word + someone taught him how to properly use Styles! He became one of the rare 1%!!!) Quote:
1. File > Export as XHTML 2. Clean up XHTML cruft -- (Bring it down to barebones <table>, <td>, <th>, [...]) 3. Copy/Paste HTML into the EPUB. Because LibreOffice carries over a ton of inline fonts/widths/alignment/crap... I usually just do these two regular expressions: Find: style="[^"]+" Replace: ***BLANK NOTHING IN HERE*** Find: class="[^"]+" Replace: ***BLANK NOTHING IN HERE*** Example Table Code:
First Last Joe Brownstone Tex Testerson Spoiler:
but after running those 2 regex, it's much more reasonable: Spoiler:
You can then strip down that HTML further: Spoiler:
(Create a "Saved Search" Group in Sigil or Calibre, and this multi-step Word/LibreOffice <table> cleanup can be a one-button process.) - - - Side Note: You can also use LibreOffice (or Excel) to transpose tables very easily. (Flipping wide tables from "horizontal" to "vertical".) Very important in ebooks, since you have "infinite" vertical space, but very limited horizontal. (You can scroll up/down forever, but it's a pain in the neck to go left/right if something flows off the screen.) Transposing is discussed in the table threads I linked previously + the linked threads below. Quote:
Quote:
It pretty much boils down to these stages:
for example:
Every conversion/stage is going to bring its own unique troubles:
Source (Master) Documents And every person/publisher is going to have a preferred format. They will make all their changes in the master document, then export to the other formats from there. So you can have:
This also complicates the situation. - - - Side Note: Read about the "bifurcation" I discuss in the above threads. Once you split the file into multiple formats, each correction/change will multiply the total amount of labor + potential errors. If the author magically decides to make 100 extra changes since you created the ebook... now you have to correct:
so you want to squash these corrections EARLY and as thoroughly as you can. - - - My Workflow Personally, I go with an "EPUB-first" workflow. I get everything into HTML+EPUB as soon as possible:
then use my EPUB as the master source file for everything else: Step 1. Anything -> EPUB Step 2. Clean with Sigil/Calibre Step 3. EPUB -> Anything But if you work within a team, and require other source formats, you'll have to adjust. Anyway, like Hitch said, Word/LibreOffice/GoogleDocs and tons of other writing tools already support HTML tables... so I don't see the issue. Formulas. Images, sadly, are the only way: MathML isn't well supported, so you have to fallback to images anyway. But long-term thinking is key. You can create formulas in ways where you can easily export to MathML in the future. (I currently use LaTeX as my source for formulas. This allows me to easily automate generation of new/higher-quality images + export to MathML in the future.) Quote:
These let you powerfully edit the HTML... while also making your EPUB-life infinitely easier by taking care of all the EPUB-specific things... like:
along with tons of other super helpful tools/enhancements:
Last edited by Tex2002ans; 12-07-2021 at 06:07 AM. |
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12-06-2021, 05:20 PM | #17 |
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I don't know much about Ulysses, but it appears to be a Markdown editor, and Markdown does support tables. Tables in Markdown are a bit limited, though--for example, I don't think you can run a cell across multiple rows or columns.
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12-06-2021, 06:01 PM | #18 | |
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https://www.markdownguide.org/tools/ulysses/ |
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12-06-2021, 06:15 PM | #19 | |
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https://blog.ulysses.app/tables-with...es-and-marked/ |
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12-06-2021, 06:16 PM | #20 | |
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12-06-2021, 06:31 PM | #21 |
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12-06-2021, 06:42 PM | #22 |
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Sorry, I did get that (that’d be wild if a markdown editor didn’t support html export) but I was surprised it doesn’t even support embedded html as you noted. OP, I don’t think you will find a solution to this problem that doesn’t include moving on from Ulysses.
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12-06-2021, 07:31 PM | #23 |
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At some point, one has to wonder why not write markdown directlly in any text editor one likes and directly convert that to EPUB with pandoc.
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12-07-2021, 07:04 AM | #24 |
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Hi all,
My last post has been in hold for review. When I wrote it, I reduced my workflow to only two apps: Ulysses and Calibre. Now I have advanced a little more, and for very basic tables, where the width is extremely precious, I am capable to handle with Ulysses only. I have managed to embed an HTML table into Ulysses, using the Raw block code. It exports to HTML and EPUB. I am capable to view the table in my Kindle Voyage. CSS is not understood, but the content of the table is visible. In both Ulysses and Calibre, CSS works and the preview looks gorgeous. @Tex2002ans*I'm afraid I hate Word or any app that work with styles. I prefer Markdown instead. Thank you. @phillipgessert*@j.p.s*@jmurphy Thank you for understanding that I prefer to work with Markdown. You have shared an interesting resource:*https://www.markdownguide.org/tools/ So I assume my next step now is to select a markdown editor with table support that exports to EPUB. Will take me time... Now, if somebody can point me to a resource for CSS for tables for EPUB, would be great. Each and one of the answers of this thread has helped me to arrive to this conclusion. Maybe I'm a bit slow, but I don't care. I couldn't have arrived to this point without you. Again, many thanks. |
12-07-2021, 08:00 AM | #25 |
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… or simply build it in html in the first place. In Sigil I have a blank table template set as a clip. One click gives me:
Code:
- I prefer working with tables in this compact format - <table> <thead> <tr><th></th><th></th><th></th></tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr> <tr><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr> <tr><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr> </tbody> <tfoot> <tr><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr> </tfoot> </table> - although some people prefer to see it like this - <table> <thead> <tr> <th></th> <th></th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td></td> <td></td> </tr> <tr> <td></td> <td></td> </tr> </tbody> <tfoot> <tr> <td></td> <td></td> </tr> </tfoot> </table> This literally takes a minute to do. Now I just type in the data. Style (as needed) using a css sheet (shame to any who use inline styles - shame!) Result: perfectly legit table in my ePub! |
12-07-2021, 08:33 AM | #26 | |
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You need to spend the very little bit of time it takes to learn the language of ePub (html/css) if you want to produce ePubs. Here is a link to a CSS/HTML resource. Cheers! |
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12-07-2021, 09:02 AM | #27 |
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12-07-2021, 09:10 AM | #28 | |
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Seems bizarrely peculiar to me. I mean..you're happier hand-writing CSS, along with hand-writing HTML, in markdown, rather than simply creating those selfsame styles in Application X, and then exporting them to a stylesheet? Whatever. Not sure how you don't experience the frisson of cognitive dissonance there, but...it's your (manual) workflow. Hitch |
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12-07-2021, 01:52 PM | #29 |
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Any text editor can serve as a markdown editor, but I imagine few will export to epub directly. You will probably wind up either converting the *.md to epub via a tool like pandoc, mentioned upthread; or by using any number of tools to convert to HTML (the intended purpose of markdown) and then importing that HTML file into the epub editor of your choosing.
Last edited by phillipgessert; 12-07-2021 at 01:57 PM. |
12-07-2021, 02:42 PM | #30 | |
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Something like this: https://tenor.com/view/cat-head-bang...d-gif-16831747 Hitch |
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