Sigil or Calibre?

[exaltedwombat]

Originally Posted by Riqiv23

I'll look for a teacher I can visit in NYC or vice versa as I have to <b>see</b> what they are doing.

Yet you're selling an eBook that aims to teach jazz improvisation :-)

Go for it! New skills are good.

[Riqiv23]

BetterRed - Yeah, I don't think I'll be using Bootcamp or Parallels in the near future, I've managed to work around it so far. Most of the cross-platform people I know are coders and/or gamers. The few coders I know have had jobs doing so or have had some training.
---
DaleDe - I have Word for Mac which online they say is an alternative to AWP but it's only allowing me to view documents, not create a new one. (I believe my 1st ebook was done this way and graphics inserted later.)

But I do have TextWrangler and Bean, two good open source apps. ("Pages" for Mac has been watered down so it could work online whole removing many useful editing features.)

I'm starting to see that not knowing enuff code is like asking someone to use Sibelius or Finale composition apps without being able to write music. Nonetheless, the more I learn, the better off I am in discussing the process with the person doing the work (I learned that from dealing with my tax accountant

Though I love to learn, I had my first book done by a friend (he did a great job) because I know if I'm not using a program frequently enough, you have to re-learn it, and I prefer teaching, performing, arranging and practicing to coding, and the time required to be as proficient as you gentlemen may be more than I can currently give.

I"ve heard the "wiki" mentioned a couple times in this conversation. Is that your Wiki page here?
https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Main_Page
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exalted wombat - Yes, my first book is starting to sell due to Youtube views. The teaching vids have way more views than the performance vids (scratching my head, thinking about this) - but I enjoy learning FCPX and Motion and the filming with the green screen.

I searched for Sigil in Amazon books and got this:
Sigil Magic: for Writers, Artists, & Other Creatives (Practical Magic Book 2)
Sigil Magic walks us through a variety of ways to generate and charge up our sigils, and includes instructions for preparation and cleansing, working with intentional statements, and using magical mantras and a variety of sigils types.

Not a lot to go on there . . . .

[fbrzvnrnd]

Originally Posted by Riqiv23

Not a lot to go on there . . . .

I teach ebook design... but you are too far away from me!

IMHO, if you could read an HTML/XML book, stay away from "form" sections (we can not use it in ebook) and only learn about <p><img><dl><ul><ol><table><em><cite><blockquote>< q><a><span><div> and some other tags, you could easily go forward with your ebook.

[Toxaris]

The tutorial that I mentioned on the wiki is here: https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/EPub_Tutorial

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Riqiv23

I"ve heard the "wiki" mentioned a couple times in this conversation. Is that your Wiki page here?
https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Main_Page

Yes, that is the MobileRead wiki. It is for everybody, I am just the moderator.

Dale

[Riqiv23]

Originally Posted by fbrzvnrnd

I teach ebook design... but you are too far away from me!

IMHO, if you could read an HTML/XML book, stay away from "form" sections (we can not use it in ebook) and only learn about <p><img><dl><ul><ol><table><em><cite><blockquote>< q><a><span><div> and some other tags, you could easily go forward with your ebook.

I could learn to do limited open/close tags pretty easily I believe, but it is also incorporating the knowledge into Sigil, which as I say has no tutoring books on Amazon.com that I can see. Years ago in Dreamweaver I had made tables and tested them online and more recently made my own Wiki page.

Initially, with Final Cut and with Reaper daw (recording app), I bought the Apple Training Course for FC and with Reaper, their own books. Both came with files you could download and work with.

Now . . . online I can have any questions answered, and can do what I need to do. Even Larry Jordan, of FCPX fame has helped me out!

However, even though I see the name of my book in the SVG file in the code window and change the name as instructed in these threads, the basics of Sigil escape me.

When I teach people on Sibelius, they ideally are next to me with a laptop, or I get a headache. I think a couple of Sigil lessons would be cool, but surprisingly I see no group (or one on one) courses for Sigil and/or ebook writing in NYC, only online courses.

But I am in no hurry, the book has to be proofed musically and text-wise and I'm not sure what percentage of sales is due to ebooks. I'll have to check on that, though, I just like the fact that it would be available in ALL formats.

My first book, I'm still finding typos (or others find them, it's difficult to proof your own work), so this new book, I've put all the text into "Pages" (word processing app) and spell-checked it and can read it on the train along with my other proofers for sense and clarity.

The ePub Tutorial is very useful and I'll start there. Attached is the intro to that tutorial in Safari browser. I have 5 more music arrangements to finish and taxes to do, but in between, I'll go thru the tutorial using TextWrangler app as it "lights up" the code.

GREAT suggestions from you all and I'll work thru the ePub tutorial and Wiki page!

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by fbrzvnrnd

I just tried again with 0.8.6, 2015 release. I confirm that Sigil destroy the SVG code when you split a file with SVG inside. Oblivious I work only in code view and oblivious I do not split a file inside a SVG...

Apparently, KevinH has fixed this issue for the next Sigil release. If you have set up a build environment, you can grab the latest files from Github and create a new test build.
Otherwise make sure to re-test your SVG test file with the next Sigil version once it gets released.

[fbrzvnrnd]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

Apparently, KevinH has fixed this issue for the next Sigil release. If you have set up a build environment, you can grab the latest files from Github and create a new test build.
Otherwise make sure to re-test your SVG test file with the next Sigil version once it gets released.

Thank you for the information, I'll download the next release!

Fabrizio

[exaltedwombat]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Never start from the PDF form. It is a destination format, not a source format. Use the source for the PDF form to build an eBook.

Dale

But if you have to...

I've been trimming out the header/footer areas then doing a PDF > EPUB conversion in Calibre. But if you have a recent version of Word, try giving it the PDF to chew on. It often seems to do a rather better job than Calibre, there will still be some spurious paragraph breaks, but more of the layout and chapter structure is retained. Then convert the resulting DOCX to EPUB as before.

This isn't relevant to our particular problem of converting a book with lots of mixed text/music examples though. Any conversion will look for and try to render text AS text. Some will even try to interpret the music fonts. A big mess.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by exaltedwombat

But if you have a recent version of Word, try giving it the PDF to chew on. It often seems to do a rather better job than Calibre, there will still be some spurious paragraph breaks, but more of the layout and chapter structure is retained. Then convert the resulting DOCX to EPUB as before.

For others - 'recent' is 2013 or later. I only recently upgraded to Office 2010, I wanted Onenote 2010 and it was cheap Ψ another thing I can't try.

BR

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by exaltedwombat

But if you have to...

I've been trimming out the header/footer areas then doing a PDF > EPUB conversion in Calibre. But if you have a recent version of Word, try giving it the PDF to chew on. It often seems to do a rather better job than Calibre, there will still be some spurious paragraph breaks, but more of the layout and chapter structure is retained. Then convert the resulting DOCX to EPUB as before.

This isn't relevant to our particular problem of converting a book with lots of mixed text/music examples though. Any conversion will look for and try to render text AS text. Some will even try to interpret the music fonts. A big mess.

If I only have a PDF I will convert it to word and then to the format I want. As you say, word does a fairly good job but there are also PDF to word converters that do a bit better IMHO. Converting to an editor makes sense since you will need to edit the results.

Dale

[exaltedwombat]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

If I only have a PDF I will convert it to word and then to the format I want. As you say, word does a fairly good job but there are also PDF to word converters that do a bit better IMHO.
Dale

Which ones do you recommend?

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by exaltedwombat

Which ones do you recommend?

I use http://www.nuance.com/index.htm PDF Converter. It works pretty well for me. There are others.

Dale

[exaltedwombat]

This has prompted me to more experimentation with turning Sibelius-produced music/text pages into EPUB. Anything that purports to "convert" opens a bag of worms. Either laboriously snip out graphics to intersperse with the text, or go for whole-page graphics. And beware of text that contains musical symbols.

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by exaltedwombat

And beware of text that contains musical symbols.

I would add a font that contains these symbols in that case I think.