How do I Create Page Breaks?

[jdanniel]

Hello. I'm brand new to Sigil. I'm familiar with Calibre, but Sigil appears to be precisely what I want to use for the actual editing of an e-book.

This is probably a routine question, and I have read the documentation, but I'm having trouble finding the answer to it.

My ultimate goal is to create ebooks that can be read on a tablet. I just bought a Google Nexus 7 and want my test ebook to be displayed on the tablet. I want people to be able to swipe their finger to turn a page.

So…this question pertains to creating page breaks with Sigil, or enabling it to treat .xhtml files within the project as separate pages. I haven't figured out how to do that yet. I'm requesting assistance, please.

I've created a simple, text-only test ebook with Sigil. Right now, the text book has three .xhtml files. The first is the Title Page. The other two are just two other sections.

(I'd normally call them Chapters, but Sigil apparently can create chapters within .xmtl files, so I have to be careful with the nomenclature.)

Anyway…when I view the ebook in various viewers, including Calibre, all of the sections seem to be merged into one, and to read it all, you have to scroll down. In other words, you can't click the Next Page or Previous Page options to turn pages. It's all one page.

I haven't figured out yet how to edit the text book with Sigil in order to have page breaks, or to create separate pages. Am I doing something wrong?

What has to be done to get separate pages?

Thank you for your assistance. Sigil appears to be precisely what I want to create ebooks with. J. Danniel

[DiapDealer]

You're talking about a function of the reading app. You don't need to create "separate pages" in Sigil (or most ePubs). That's what reflowable text is all about. Depending on font, font-size, margins, etc..., a "page" will be different on all devices/apps. But you don't have to do anything to make it work. The "Next" & "Previous" buttons will automatically present your text to the reader in "pages" on almost every single piece of hardware out there.

Don't rely on calibre's viewer as an indicator of what your ebook will look like (or how it will function) on most devices. Use the ADE desktop software to preview if you don't have an ePub device.

If you're wanting to make a "fixed-layout" ePub (where you decide exactly what's on each and every "page"), that mirrors the pagination of a print book (or PDF), then that's a different story.

[jdanniel]

I'm sorry, but I'm using ADE and the Next and Previous buttons aren't working.

Even in ADE, the entire contents of the e-book appears as though it's just one page, and you have to scroll through to read it.

So what am I doing wrong?

Jd

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by jdanniel

So what am I doing wrong?

No clue. I've never had the Next and Previous buttons just plain NOT work. I can't even make ADE "scroll" when I try.

Can you, perhaps, provide a small sample of an ePub that exhibits this scrolling-only, page-turn-buttons-not-working behavior in ADE?

[jdanniel]

Then I'm obviously doing something wrong.

If you will bear with me, I'll tell you precisely what I'm doing. I will try not to bore anyone with excessive details.

1. I rename Section0001.xhtml to Title Page and set the Add Semantics option to Title Page. I then type in THIS IS MY TITLE PAGE. I set it to Heading 1.

2. I have some Microsoft Word documents in docx format. I re-save them as HTML files.

3. In the Book Browser, I right-click on Text, and select Add Existing Files. I select four HTML files that I re-saved. They appear under the Text heading in the Book Browser. There are now a total of five items listed under Text, including the Title Page.

4. Each of the four files I imported has a heading. I highlight each heading, and choose Heading 2 for them.

5. I don't bother creating a TOC just yet.

6. I save the project, naming it MY TEST EBOOK.


That's it! That's all I do. And I'll be damned...when I open it in ADE, it's all one long section you have to scroll through. No NEXT button, no PREVIOUS button.

Did I do anything wrong? Did I leave out a step?

If you want, I'll put the four .html files and the .epub file in a .ZIP archive, upload it to my web site, and place a link here for anyone to download an examine.

Very frustrating, indeed. Thanks for helping out. Jd

[jdanniel]

Here is a link to a .zip archive that contains all of the material involved in my test project. The epub file is included as well.

http://www.jdanniel.net/sigilprojectfiles.zip

[jdanniel]

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[theducks]

Originally Posted by jdanniel

Then I'm obviously doing something wrong.

If you will bear with me, I'll tell you precisely what I'm doing. I will try not to bore anyone with excessive details.

1. I rename Section0001.xhtml to Title Page and set the Add Semantics option to Title Page. I then type in THIS IS MY TITLE PAGE. I set it to Heading 1.

2. I have some Microsoft Word documents in docx format. I re-save them as HTML files.

3. In the Book Browser, I right-click on Text, and select Add Existing Files. I select four HTML files that I re-saved. They appear under the Text heading in the Book Browser. There are now a total of five items listed under Text, including the Title Page.

4. Each of the four files I imported has a heading. I highlight each heading, and choose Heading 2 for them.

5. I don't bother creating a TOC just yet.

6. I save the project, naming it MY TEST EBOOK.


That's it! That's all I do. And I'll be damned...when I open it in ADE, it's all one long section you have to scroll through. No NEXT button, no PREVIOUS button.

Did I do anything wrong? Did I leave out a step?

If you want, I'll put the four .html files and the .epub file in a .ZIP archive, upload it to my web site, and place a link here for anyone to download an examine.

Very frustrating, indeed. Thanks for helping out. Jd

Where are you expecting to see the button?
My PEz (ADE MR) the only next/Previous is to show the Next/previous Screen of text at the current Zoom.
The Section is just one long text block, Chapter markers and the TOC (generated) make them int navigation points. Try Generating the TOC (you can do as many times as you want).

[jdanniel]

Where are you expecting to see the button?

I expect to see the Next and Previous buttons at all times. I expect to be able to click the NEXT button anytime at all, and go to the next page. Or, click the PREVIOUS button, and go to the previous page, if there is one.

My problem is this: I have no idea where a page ENDS. I am assuming there will be a new page when I start a new chapter or a new section. But guess what...I created chapters, and all I see in ADE is a lightly colored line where I put the chapter mark.

But I ALSO assume I'll be able to turn a page when a page ENDS. If I have a lengthy section of text, I do NOT expect to have to scroll through it. I expect to be able to go to a new page at some point in time. I don't know when that point in time is.

Now...let's talk about viewing these ebooks on a tablet, just for a second. If I open my ebook in an ebook reader on my Nexus 7, there should be only a limited amount of text visible on the screen.

Right? Now...what happens when you read all of that text? The answer is: You place your finger on the touch screen and flick it, and that turns to a new page.

THAT is what I am seeking. In ADE, I do not know what the equivalent to that is. But I don't think it should be one long block of scrolling text. Am I right? I should be able to click the NEXT button to see the next block of text.

That isn't happening.

I don't know if I'm explaining myself or articulating the problem well.

I'll create another test ebook, this time with chapter markers and a TOC. But I already DID try to create chapters, and I said what happens.

Something tells me I'm just not understanding the concept. Jd

[jdanniel]

One more comment:

The version of Sigil I was using was 0.5.3. I got it from here:

http://code.google.com/p/sigil/

However, I found a version 0.5.9 elsewhere on the web. I uninstalled the older version and just installed 0.5.9. It looks significantly different from 0.5.3.

Is it possible the problems I was having was due to using an older version?

Is version 0.5.9 the most current version, or is there an even newer one than that?

I'm going to keep working on this, but as of this writing, I'm having no success whatsoever creating an ebook that lets you turn pages.

Jd

[ghostyjack]

0.5.9 is the beta version of 0.6.

I'm not fully understanding what you are seeing, but when I get home from work, I'll load it up and see if I can understand the issue.

I will point out though, you have an awful lot of additional code that is unneccesary in the xhtml files. You could move the styles into a css file, and what looks like metadata is not needed in there, you could add it with the metadata editor or add it directly to the opf.

[jdanniel]

I think I figured it out. I think I found out what I was doing wrong. A silly misunderstanding.

Okay...in ADE, in the upper right corner, there are two arrows next to the FIND box.

I thought they were the NEXT and PREVIOUS buttons. They were greyed out and I couldn't use them.

Then, I realized they were not the NEXT and PREVIOUS buttons! They were the FIND NEXT and FIND PREVIOUS buttons.

I was using the wrong buttons. In ADE's Reading drop-down menu, there are options for NEXT and PREVIOUS.

Those are the ones I should have been using. They turn the pages in my test ebook properly.

But I was still confused about the entire ebook being in the window. So, I downloaded a few sample books, and sure enough, they were displayed in their entirety as well! I scrolled through The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which is almost 300 pages long!

It appears as though I was doing absolutely NOTHING wrong. But I'm not 100% sure yet. I'm going to convert my test ebook into MOBI format and try it out on the Kindle for PC program. Then, I'll try it out on my Nexus 7 and see what happens.

I'll follow up later with my results. Sorry to be a pest but this is how you learn! Thanks!

Jd

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by jdanniel

But I was still confused about the entire ebook being in the window. So, I downloaded a few sample books, and sure enough, they were displayed in their entirety as well! I scrolled through The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which is almost 300 pages long!

I still don't understand this part. Let's clarify some things:

Scrolling to me is one line at a time—which means you always have some of the same text on the screen. One line moves off the top of the screen, and a new one shows up on the bottom—everything else is still there, just shifted up (or down) one line. That's scrolling. Never in my life has ADE (Adobe Digital Editions) Desktop software "scrolled." Even if I grab the slider with the mouse, it changes the whole screen with all new text each time—it pages. By the way, you don't have to use Next and Previous from the Reading menu ... the arrows in the bottom right-hand corner (under the slider) do the same thing.

Perhaps you're hung up on how things appear to move "up" or "down"? You still should get a whole new "page" of text each time you click Next or Previous. That's paging, not scrolling. Up, down, left, right ... you're still presented with a brand new page full of words each click.

If your only concern is wanting to start a new page at each chapter break, that's accomplished in one of two ways: 1) Using Sigil to physically "split" the (x)html at each new chapter (inserting a Chapter Marker is not enough, you must split the files at the Chapter Markers). Or 2) using CSS to assign "page-break-before: always;" to the (x)html elements that represent your new chapter points.

And by the way, the sample ePub you provided the link for "pages" by clicking the next and previous buttons in ADE just like every other ePub does for me in ADE. You either have a very different version of ADE than I do, or I just flat-out don't get what you're trying to say.

[theducks]

There are more than 1 kind of page when talking about Ebooks (and web pages)
There is the (Meta-) Physical page, which is all between <body and </body> (basically, the (section) file

and there is the Logical Screen page.

This last one is controlled by the render engine and what you see is dependent on a number of factors, Screen size, font size and Style commands like page-break-....
Paging here, is by screen (like clicking in the open area of a the scroll bars)

[DiapDealer]

Scrolling... is how you read this thread from top to bottom.