Corduroy Mansions book 2 - starts on Monday

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by Skydog

Thanks, zelda_pinwheel - I didn't know about the plugin and will certainly have a look.

In the meantime, I pasted the first six chapters together and am playing around with the result. I am a complete noob when it comes to creating a book, so this might be a good learning tool.

I plan to use Sigil => epub too.

Thank you!

oh, great ! have fun with it. this is a good project to start with, you can go a little at a time. having taken a look at the code, my personal recommendation is that you paste the text of each chapter into notepad (or something similar, NOT word) and then copy it from there into sigil ; there is a LOT of extraneous code that you can get rid of that way (copying directly from word will give you even more unnecessary code). then when you paste it into sigil, you can apply a heading style to each chapter title and insert pagebreaks, maybe play with the css if you like, and the rest should be pretty easy. save your book in progress as a sigil native file (sgf) which you can add on to as you get the chapters, and then export (save as) as an epub when you're ready.

don't hesitate to ask in the sigil or epub forum if you have any questions !

[zelda_pinwheel]

oh, and if someone finds a working site to get page2pub from, i'm interested. the main one has been under maintenance for a few days now and i've not found it on the mozilla site either.

[CharlieBird]

Folks should be forewarned about what for me is a big negative of Page2Pub, to-wit: my probably favorite extension, CoolPreviews, has to be disabled to use Page2Pub.

This would be only a niggling detail if it were just a matter of toggling CoolPreviews on or off, but once it is enabled FireFox has to be restarted to use Page2Pub again.

Since I reported the problem (I quote from the website) "As this is a 'feature preview' release, it is bound to have limitations. This section identifies the issues and limitations we are aware of; if you encounter these issues, please do not report them – they are already on our TO-DO list. On the other hand, if you encounter an issue that is not listed here, please see the 'Reporting Bugs' section below and let us know!"

I am hoping it gets put on their TO-DO list which is currently fairly long and am especially anticipating the addition of editing features. I interpret "'feature preview' release" to mean beta so there are probably other bugs I've not encountered.

I just left the site and it's up and running; I don't think Mozilla has it yet.
http://opl.rit.edu/projects/page2pub/download

I haven't tried this yet, but what I plan to do w/the first book (in text) is convert it to ePub w/Calibre.
d

[Skydog]

Oh, thanks so much, Zelda. I did, in fact, copy/paste into notepad just to see what it would look like after a conversion. I'm frustrated 'cause I want to add page breaks, TOC, etc. and I'm trying to learn as I go. Up to now, I've been spoiled with Calibre doing the work with conversions. I will have loads of questions.

BTW, I had no trouble with the website you mentioned above. Here's the link I used:

http://opl.rit.edu/projects/page2pub/download

And the wiki:

http://cias-opl.rit.edu/wiki/index.p...review_Release

[CharlieBird]

[QUOTE=I haven't tried this yet, but what I plan to do w/the first book (in text) is convert it to ePub w/Calibre.
d[/QUOTE]

Well, of course, that didn't work! It's ePub but lacks any style, TOC, etc. I should have known if it were that simple zelda_p wouldn't be "stitching" w/sigil!

Will take her advice and start learning sigil...tomorrow.
d

[Panda Rose]

So when you clever people have worked it all out and tweaked and played around with Sigil, calibre and all things technical etc, will somebody put it here at MR so those of us who cannot possibly work all this out can read rather than listen?

[wchris]

You can also save simply as a text file,with a little editing. I have the first volume of the series in this format for my Sony.

[Panda Rose]

Originally Posted by wchris

You can also save simply as a text file,with a little editing. I have the first volume of the series in this format for my Sony.

it's that little phrase that I can't do - with a little editing.
Perhaps this whole forum is too advanced for me. I don't understand most of it, I think I shall stop now.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by Skydog

Oh, thanks so much, Zelda. I did, in fact, copy/paste into notepad just to see what it would look like after a conversion. I'm frustrated 'cause I want to add page breaks, TOC, etc. and I'm trying to learn as I go. Up to now, I've been spoiled with Calibre doing the work with conversions. I will have loads of questions.

calibre and sigil are two very different apps. calibre is excellent for managing your library, and it has a very helpful conversion feature which is useful for easily shifting between formats if the book has already been created. but, as you've discovered, it's not an ebook *editor*, which sigil is. sigil will allow you to easily add page breaks, images, toc and chapter title styles to your book and then export it as epub. since you've got the text in notepad, copy that and paste it into the sigil book view ; then, you can go along and insert page / chapter breaks (red "Ch" button ; it will show a double red line at each break), add chapter styles (select the chapter title, then use the "select heading" drop-down menu to the left in the toolbar ; usually, i use "heading 1" for book titles, 2 for subtitles and author name, and 3 for chapters, but that's my personal system and you don't have to do the same thing. any text formatted using a "heading" style will automatically be added to the TOC ; you can remove entries you don't want with the checkbox in the tools > toc editor dialogue), etc.

BTW, I had no trouble with the website you mentioned above. Here's the link I used:

http://opl.rit.edu/projects/page2pub/download

And the wiki:

http://cias-opl.rit.edu/wiki/index.p...review_Release

thanks very much for those links, skydog. apparently my google-fu was not working the other day, as i found a site called "epub2page.com" (or something) which is still not up. maybe they are switching to a new domain and haven't finished.

Originally Posted by CharlieBird

Well, of course, that didn't work! It's ePub but lacks any style, TOC, etc. I should have known if it were that simple zelda_p wouldn't be "stitching" w/sigil!

Will take her advice and start learning sigil...tomorrow.
d

please don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions ! see above for a quick way to get started.

Originally Posted by Panda Rose

So when you clever people have worked it all out and tweaked and played around with Sigil, calibre and all things technical etc, will somebody put it here at MR so those of us who cannot possibly work all this out can read rather than listen?

unfortunately, since this book is copyrighted, we would not be allowed to post it here without the permission of the author. on the other hand, if you hypothetically have all the files yourself, and someone else hypothetically gives you a hand making a nicely formatted version, which they give you personally for your own use, i don't hypothetically see a problem with that.

Originally Posted by wchris

You can also save simply as a text file,with a little editing. I have the first volume of the series in this format for my Sony.

that's true, i always forget you can read .txt files directly on the sony since i never do (i don't like to read unformatted text, myself). that is surely the easiest solution of all. just select all the text of the chapter in the webpage, copy it (ctrl C or else right-click > copy), then paste (ctrl V or right click > paste) into your text file (notepad, word, etc.).

Originally Posted by Panda Rose

it's that little phrase that I can't do - with a little editing.
Perhaps this whole forum is too advanced for me. I don't understand most of it, I think I shall stop now.

panda rose, i know it can all seem quite overwhelming at first ! but don't be discouraged. there are a lot of people here who will be glad to help you. please don't hesitate to ask questions about how to get started ; we were all beginners once ! and i am sure there are plenty of people here who will tell you that anyone can learn about these things. i'm sure soon you'll be quite an expert.

[Skydog]

calibre and sigil are two very different apps. calibre is excellent for managing your library, and it has a very helpful conversion feature which is useful for easily shifting between formats if the book has already been created. but, as you've discovered, it's not an ebook *editor*, which sigil is. sigil will allow you to easily add page breaks, images, toc and chapter title styles to your book and then export it as epub. since you've got the text in notepad, copy that and paste it into the sigil book view ; then, you can go along and insert page / chapter breaks (red "Ch" button ; it will show a double red line at each break), add chapter styles (select the chapter title, then use the "select heading" drop-down menu to the left in the toolbar ; usually, i use "heading 1" for book titles, 2 for subtitles and author name, and 3 for chapters, but that's my personal system and you don't have to do the same thing. any text formatted using a "heading" style will automatically be added to the TOC ; you can remove entries you don't want with the checkbox in the tools > toc editor dialogue), etc.

Oh, yes, I realize they are two entirely different applications, I failed to express my thoughts properly. (Must learn to link keyboard with brain) Up to now I've been rather lazy and allowed Calibre to convert files that are already completed works. I'm anxious to produce results from .txt files myself and the suggestions you gave above are a terrific start.

Thank you for your time to respond and assist - very much appreciated.

-Pat

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by Skydog

Oh, yes, I realize they are two entirely different applications, I failed to express my thoughts properly. (Must learn to link keyboard with brain) Up to now I've been rather lazy and allowed Calibre to convert files that are already completed works. I'm anxious to produce results from .txt files myself and the suggestions you gave above are a terrific start.

Thank you for your time to respond and assist - very much appreciated.

-Pat

tee hee, that frequently happens to me as well (keyboard / brain disconnect). no worries.

i'm glad those tips are helpful to you. another tip i would suggest, is to work in "split view" where you have the book view on the top half, and the code in the bottom half ; that way, when you apply a style in the book view, you can see what the code for that looks like. that will help you understand how html / css works. you'll have to click in the code pane to update it after changes ; it won't change when it's not active (the inverse is true also : if you modify the code, you won't see the changes in the book view until you click in that pane to refresh it).

please don't hesitate to ask if you have any more questions.

[Skydog]

Zelda,

That's good to know. I'm looking forward to learning and becoming proficient.

Thank you again!

-Pat

[Panda Rose]

Well I have managed it. I have copied, pasted into word, made into into a PDF and used Calibre and it's on my Sony. It's a long and clumsy way round, but I did 6 chapters into 1 document so that I didn't have too many bitty documents. If like the last book Nd there Re about 100 "chapters" then i will be kept busy.

[Ea]

Wow... I stay away a week or two and I thought no-one at all had commented on this thread... Wow. As for the book, I am copying into a word doc which will in time be converted into a PDF "fit to size". While copying and pasting is a hassle, it seems the easiest to do over all with this.

Originally Posted by wchris

It is all on the Telegraph website. Find the Culture page from the top menu then Books.

Not the first novel, it's not. Or is it? Apology if I missed it, but I did look around quite a bit.