Oxygen Author

[Macsurfcat]

Hi all,

I’ve searched through the forum, and can’t quite find the thread I’m looking for . . .

I’ve been using an InDesign to Sigil workflow to do my epubs for several reasons:

I can rename files output by InDesign and have their references automatically updated within all xhtml and other files;
I can generate a Navigation TOC and create a Table of Contents xhtml file from style names;
Navigation generation will update the navMap entries in the TOC file;

I am being introduced to Oxygen Author and am unable to locate, or ascertain, if any of these features are available, and how they work.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

[mrmikel]

I hope you are aware that Sigil will have no more updates nor bug fixes.

Since you are pondering workflow, you might think of the Calibre epub editor, which performs many, but not yet all of the same functions. It does not and will not allow book view editing, however.

Hopefully someone will come along with answer to your Oxygen question. But both Sigil and Calibre editor will do what you want to know about for Oxygen, if I understand the question correctly. The TOCs can be generated in both not from styles, but headings in the document, headings not being a stylistic, but structural element. Calibre editor will generate TOC from links, files or x-path.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Macsurfcat

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

I went looking through their site and found this reference to EPUB in their manual: http://oxygenxml.com/doc/ug-author/#...with-epub.html

And this video showing off some EPUB instructions: http://oxygenxml.com/demo/Epub.html

I assume all of their XHTML information would carry over to EPUB as well: http://oxygenxml.com/xml_author/xhtml_editor.html

And things such as Code Comparison: http://oxygenxml.com/xml_author/xml_diff_and_merge.html

Originally Posted by Macsurfcat

I am being introduced to Oxygen Author and am unable to locate, or ascertain, if any of these features are available, and how they work.

Who exactly is introducing you to this (your employer)???

Oxygen Author seems to be a proprietary solution based from their Editor... and if your employer already paid that fee ("starting from $349"), you should be able to get support from the company selling the product.

I personally am fine with InDesign -> Sigil workflow (as long as the styles in InDesign are done consistently using an "in-house stylesheet", you should have a series of clips that can do a nearly "one-click" conversion for you).

If the styles are NOT done consistently, it just takes a little bit of elbow grease to reverse engineer the hideous code, and clean it up using Sigil (or whatever editor you want to use, many people here do their editing in just plaintext editors).

Oxygen Author MIGHT be more of an advantage if you had a collaboration of people working on creating a single book (so you can take advantage of all of the commenting and more powerful SVN controls).... although that is up to you to weigh whether those are worth the "from $349" fee.

[Macsurfcat]

Thank you for your reply. I would note that the structural elements are the consequence of "styles" in InDesign, which have both structural and stylistic qualities. When InDesign exports to epub, styling and structure are separated (elements and CSS). Does that make sense?

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Macsurfcat

I would note that the structural elements are the consequence of "styles" in InDesign, which have both structural and stylistic qualities. When InDesign exports to epub, styling and structure are separated (elements and CSS). Does that make sense?

Actually, I just converted a book exported from InDesign today. For people who have never seen the code from InDesign, here is a sample from the EPUB output:

<p class="Article-Copy para-style-override-7"><span class="char-style-override-8">Declare an end to any and all “entitlements” to corporate welfare.</span> President Clinton signed a bill that ended individuals’ legal entitlement to federal subsidies. We should put businesses on notice that they are not owed anything, either.</p>

Of course, the code gets MUCH more hairy when there is all of this kerning tweaks/other stuff going on. InDesign creates so many spans and "para-style-override" and "char-style-override" classes. A bunch of redundant/irrelevant CSS:

p.Article-Copy {
	-epub-ruby-position:over;
	color:#000000;
	font-family:"Myriad Pro", sans-serif;
	font-size:1em;
	font-style:normal;
	font-variant:normal;
	font-weight:normal;
	line-height:1.2;
	margin-bottom:0px;
	margin-left:0px;
	margin-right:0px;
	text-align:justify;
	text-decoration:none;
	text-indent:14px;
}

[...]

span.char-style-override-7 {
	font-size:0.444em;
}
span.char-style-override-8 {
	font-family:"Myriad Pro";
	font-style:normal;
	font-weight:bold;
}

First Recommendation: When using InDesign in any step of the ebook workflow, the best advice is to make sure the typesetter USES STYLES. Using them properly would really cut down on nearly all of those "style-override" classes.

This makes figuring out/cleaning the actual code a thousand times easier.

Second Recommendation: On top of this, having a consistent in-house stylesheet which is used across a SERIES of books... would make this code cleanup MUCH quicker/easier. (For example, I work on a quarterly journal. Every issue follows the same exact InDesign styles. So when I get the EPUB, I can just "click a button" to run the regex, that cleans up InDesign cruft).

Sigil Recommendation: I then use Tools - Reports - Style Classes in HTML Files, to catch any more leftover InDesign cruft.

Back to Oxygen: I don't really see a real advantage of Oxygen Author over a tool like Sigil in these cases where you just have to do some code cleanup from InDesign export.

Much better/cheaper to convince the publisher to work on creating clean/consistent InDesign files in the first place. Which will make the ebook conversion step MUCH easier/faster.

As I said, I have a journal down to nearly a "one-button" press.