LibreOffice to Compose, Calibre to Convert

[arjaybe]

I don't mind doing a little CSS cleaning, but I'd like to minimize it. Are there any suggestions to produce the cleanest ePub in the first place?

eg, I find silly classes in the CSS where I've made corrections in the ODT, and I can't find a setting in LO that might be producing them.

I use a good template with simple styles.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by arjaybe

I don't mind doing a little CSS cleaning, but I'd like to minimize it. Are there any suggestions to produce the cleanest ePub in the first place?

eg, I find silly classes in the CSS where I've made corrections in the ODT, and I can't find a setting in LO that might be producing them.

I use a good template with simple styles.

Have you tried the Writer to EPUB PI?
It seems to do good, at least for standard Fiction (little or no illustrations)

[D.F.Rodri.]

I personally do this and don't find any problems with it. As soon as you understand how to setup everything properly at LibreOffice, it ends being easy to convert any docx to epub with Calibre.

In mines, with LibreOffice+Calibre, all I need to do is to change the default CSS of the epub generated by Calibre for the one I previously made, add a cover and an index and it's ready to roll.

[arjaybe]

Originally Posted by theducks

Have you tried the Writer to EPUB PI?
It seems to do good, at least for standard Fiction (little or no illustrations)

I have used W2E. That's how I originally did things, before I knew anything about ePubs, much less CSS. I tried it since posting this question and found that it made a pretty good ePub that was quite easy to work with in Calibre, especially after using the "Remove unused CSS rules" tool. All told, I found it easier to work with than a direct Calibre conversion. It does seem to leave out the "silly classes" I mentioned in the first post.

I would still like to know if there is a LO setting that causes those "silly classes."

[arjaybe]

Originally Posted by D.F.Rodri.

I personally do this and don't find any problems with it. As soon as you understand how to setup everything properly at LibreOffice, it ends being easy to convert any docx to epub with Calibre.

In mines, with LibreOffice+Calibre, all I need to do is to change the default CSS of the epub generated by Calibre for the one I previously made, add a cover and an index and it's ready to roll.

I would love to set up everything properly in LO. Can you think of what setting might be causing the Calibre conversion to create the "silly classes?"

When you change the CSS, how do you get the code to match? For instance, what if your CSS has <p class="p-p1"> where the Calibre generated CSS has <p class="p-p2">? I would like to have a standard CSS, but this problem has always stopped me from doing it.

[Gregg Bell]

RJB, I'm a big fan of Sigil. I do the Text Body "style" in LO. I then turn the .odt into .html in LO. Then plop the .html into a text editor (I use Kate). There I clean up the little bit of cruft in it. (It takes less than a half hour for a 60K words .odt.) From there I plop the clean .html into Sigil. (And there I use a CSS style sheet for the whole epub.) The epub produced in Sigil has almost always needed no tweaks and passes epub check the first time around. (My 2 cents.)

[arjaybe]

Thanks Gregg. Your two cents always appreciated.-)

[BobC]

I use LibreOffice for creating EPUBs, but I use the "Export to Epub" that gets installed with the writer2xhtml extension.

This has the advantage that when it writes the epub the names of the LO Styles maps to the classes used in the css. So if I have a LO style called "noindent" then it generates a <p class="noindent"> paragraph and the appropriate css style. Being able to use meaningful style names without having to examine them to work out what say "calibre27" was used for is very useful.

I also use a couple of other add-ons to LO that help in fixing and tidying up the odt file - there are some excellent macros in the OOOFBTools add-in even if you don't want FB2 output - the stuff that generates footnotes from simple [1] etc type references for instance is excellent once you get the hang of how to use it. The Alternative Search add-on also gives me a "library" of transformations based on regex - easy to do the things like changing "markdown" italics based on underscores to proper italics and making Chapter headings into proper headings that then get processed by the export routine as separate files within the epub.

BobC

[MarjaE]

I'm considering converting some game-reference notes to epub. Right now I'm writing the chapters as separate files, and some reference data as separate spreadsheets. Is it possible to merge spreadsheets into Epub?

[gmw]

Originally Posted by BobC

I use LibreOffice for creating EPUBs, but I use the "Export to Epub" that gets installed with the writer2xhtml extension.

This has the advantage that when it writes the epub the names of the LO Styles maps to the classes used in the css. So if I have a LO style called "noindent" then it generates a <p class="noindent"> paragraph and the appropriate css style. Being able to use meaningful style names without having to examine them to work out what say "calibre27" was used for is very useful. [...]

Ditto. This lets you take the additional step replacing the CSS with one prepared earlier - already primed with the same names. So now every conversion I do ends up using the same, already tested, CSS.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by MarjaE

I'm considering converting some game-reference notes to epub. Right now I'm writing the chapters as separate files, and some reference data as separate spreadsheets. Is it possible to merge spreadsheets into Epub?

I think you will need to convert the spreadsheets into tables in LO Writer and use them in your EPUB conversion.

BobC

[arjaybe]

I've done one this way recently and I find that the CSS produced by W2E is smaller and cleaner than the CSS produced by Calibre. Then I do a little more editing with Calibre. I'll have to see about saving a good CSS and then importing it into subsequent W2E exports. It would be nice to know that all output is formatted identically.

[crich70]

Not a free program but Scrivener can export your text as an epub among other formats. They have a 30 day free trial as well. You can even import text from LO into the program and using hashmarks break the text up into scenes or chapters automatically when it imports.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by crich70

Not a free program but Scrivener can export your text as an epub among other formats. They have a 30 day free trial as well. You can even import text from LO into the program and using hashmarks break the text up into scenes or chapters automatically when it imports.

This is what I own and use. It's a wonderful program for writing.

[arjaybe]

I respect everyone's right to use whatever software they choose, and I have my reasons for using Free Software.