epub creation software list

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Some tools are designed by Marketing Departments - and I'm not thinking of the usual suspects.

BR

So that explains Word.

[BetterRed]

Predictably one of the usual suspects cannot resist posting an irrelevancy - Jon, I was thinking of a product that is supported within the MR forums - no names, no packdrill.

BR

[Quoth]

Word is actually one of MS best products originally, though the ribbon degraded it. Also Excel. Both far better than any other for Windows / Mac originally. Both first released for the Mac as Windows was very good / not quite sensible then. Nearly OK on 3.0, and only sensible on 3.1 though NT 3.1 in 1993 was far superior, being a real OS and not just a GUI on cobbled together SW.

Word 2003 and Word 2007 may be the best two versions.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Word is actually one of MS best products originally, though the ribbon degraded it. Also Excel. Both far better than any other for Windows / Mac originally. Both first released for the Mac as Windows was very good / not quite sensible then. Nearly OK on 3.0, and only sensible on 3.1 though NT 3.1 in 1993 was far superior, being a real OS and not just a GUI on cobbled together SW.

Word 2003 and Word 2007 may be the best two versions.

I disagree. Wordperfect is better then Word. I have never really liked Word. I used to use Wordperfect for DOS. It worked rally well. Word got popular because of the office bundle.

[Quoth]

I used to TEACH Wordperfect for DOS. I'd guess it was printer support that made WP a success on DOS, but WP for Windows was rubbish. MicroPro/Wordstar blew it 1984 with the creation of incompatible and clunky Wordstar 2000.
MS Word for DOS is unrelated to MS Word GUI on Windows/Mac.
MS Office didn't exist when Word was already the most popular on Mac/Windows. They added Access later. Also the awful Powerpoint was bought in later. As was Visio.
Loads of people bought standalone Word even in days of Office 4.3 and Office 95 (the next version).

CP/M and DOS wordprocessing was a big step forward, but it was true WYSIWYG and NAMED STYLES, not inline formatting that was a change. A nightmare to reformat ANY document with inline formatting, as almost all DOS & CP/M was.

[Notjohn]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I'd guess it was printer support that made WP a success on DOS.

In the case of my family, it was WordPerfect's support for footnotes, which college students couldn't do without. I tried it at my daughter's urging but found the editing commands quite useless compared to WordStar's.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I used to TEACH Wordperfect for DOS. I'd guess it was printer support that made WP a success on DOS, but WP for Windows was rubbish. MicroPro/Wordstar blew it 1984 with the creation of incompatible and clunky Wordstar 2000.
MS Word for DOS is unrelated to MS Word GUI on Windows/Mac.
MS Office didn't exist when Word was already the most popular on Mac/Windows. They added Access later. Also the awful Powerpoint was bought in later. As was Visio.
Loads of people bought standalone Word even in days of Office 4.3 and Office 95 (the next version).

CP/M and DOS wordprocessing was a big step forward, but it was true WYSIWYG and NAMED STYLES, not inline formatting that was a change. A nightmare to reformat ANY document with inline formatting, as almost all DOS & CP/M was.

I have used and am quite expert with both. Yes, I loved Wordperfect originally; it did many things brilliantly. Hell, to this day, if you want to have a single line that encapsulates two different text alignments (like the top of a manuscript, one left-aligned, one right), it's the bee's knees.

When I was forced to switch to Word, because legal offices, banks, etc. were switching to it--ages ago, OMG, I kicked and scratched all the way. I hated it. Loathed it! thought it was dreck, believed all that idiotic nonsense about how bad it was and all that.

Then I had to write a new set of CC&R's for a major development that we were doing; a master set that was going to be 300+ pages, by the time it was done. I needed internal x-references, foot/endnoting and the whole schmear.

So, shockingly, I actually BOTHERED to learn Styles and Headings, and the clouds parted, the sun shone, I discovered the Nav Pane, outline mode, x-referencing, index tools and rrealized how incredibly powerful it is. Even the image placement tools, etc., IF SOMEONE LEARNS HOW TO USE THEM, are pretty amazing.

Given my personal druthers, I'd rather use WP. sure--but the world doesn't. So I use Word and I simply use it as it's meant to be used. That drivel about how it outputs CRUFT, wah-wah-wah--it's just that, drivel. The HTML it outputs isn't one iota worse than OO, LO, etc. That's utter bollox, and yes, I'd know. We do this ALL DAY long here.

With regard to the OP's request, the magical one-tool-fits-all...well, come on. That's not going to happen. I mean, Blue Griffon ePUB editor, anyone? Yuck, not to mention, ridiculously priced.

And honestly, that described workflow is bonkers. No offense, but...sheesh.

I've never found a good mindmap app enclosed with a writing tool, so when I use one, which is VERY rare (I'm not visual; I'm a person who thinks in words and outlines, not pretty pictures), I use FreePlane, which is FreeMind on steroids.

For timelining, the simply BEST one there is is in YWriter. That's the only app I know that tracks the movements of individual characters in individual scenes and builds the timeline for you. I mean, talk about excellent! You no longer have to worry about having Joe in two places at once (or leaving a car parked at Walgreen's while simultaneously driving it across town...).

for notetaking...well, there are dozens, of course, the biggies being OneNote and Evernote, both of which are simply excellent. You can build a linked outline, in OneNote and Evernote, both. Or other apps, whatever. (YWriter has project notes, which are also drag-droppable, and scene notes, too, FWIW.) (I guess some people like to work in markdown, but I've been stuck using two different versions of markdown for the last 9 years, and I find it extremely annoying to use, compared to being able to use a simple keyboard command to do what you can do in markdown with all those extra keystrokes, myself.)

Honestly, switching all these apps, to write different steps...that feels like make-work to me, but if it works for you, great. I cannot imagine that your students will take to that. I mean, why on earth would ANYONE use 2 different word processing programs, plus an ePUBmaking-program?

If I had to choose a "one app to rule them all," I'd say YWriter. I've tried ALLL of them, trust me. I buy and try everything, because it's my line of work. I've got Dramatica Pro, LSB XE, Novel Factory, Power Structure, the much-vaunted (yawn) Scrivener, Ywriter, and at least 5 other "writing" programs, including Truby's studio and so forth. YWriter, to me, is the BEST of them, if not the "prettiest." (I maintain that most of the mad love that Scrivener gets is because it's "pretty." I mean, how many people go on and on and on about how you can drag-drop--which you've been able to do in Word, in the Nav pane and outline view, for nearly 20 years?) You can export to ePUB, pretty as a picture. and you can use Sigil to clean it up from there.

And of course, that doesn't mention all the FANTASTIC other things that YWriter does, around scenes and all that, but...as this is a process discussion....

So, you'd use FreeMind or FreePlane; YWriter, which has the timeline and export to ePUB. Ta-da! Then work in Sigil to clean up whatever you want.

If that's too complicated, use Atlantis, which has a very nice ePUB export feature. Even exports the fonts that you use (pay attention to ePUB licensing and always, always, subset your fonts!). Piece of cake. I don't have mad love for the HTML that it outputs, but so what? That can be cleaned up easily with Sigil.


Hitch

[lordmax]

Thanks, really, for your response

Originally Posted by Hitch

And honestly, that described workflow is bonkers. No offense, but...sheesh.
Hitch

Yes, this is my first problem
The workflow works, no doubt, but's too much complex and dispersive.

So my ask for help in this thread

I've used ywriter and found it a little hard to use.
And now I've more and more need for a multi device software, I'm always more often outside home and in need to work with smartphone and tablet (sometimes not mine) so software like ywriter, scrivener (that I can't understand why someone want to use), writer's café and so on became a problem with they're proprietary files type.

libreoffice doesn't exists for mobile.
office online is not meant for book, no way. It can be used yes, and I use it obviously, but save in html it's a kinde of horror's film

At now the only thing I found usefull is a markdown txt file imported and exported in libreoffice (the only plug in found for office doesn't work well and doesn't work online). When it's time I convert the file in an epub with writer2epub (that's really good) and adjuste in Sigil for final version.

I will give another chance to ywriter for timeline.

thanks

[roger64]

Originally Posted by lordmax

At now the only thing I found usefull is a markdown txt file imported and exported in libreoffice (the only plug in found for office doesn't work well and doesn't work online). When it's time I convert the file in an epub with writer2epub (that's really good) and adjuste in Sigil for final version.

Doitsu has currently a Sigil plugin named "MarkdownImport" which converts directly a md file to ePub. It's still a work in progress but you may ask him to try it. For what I saw, it works nicely but I did not try it extensively.

[Quoth]

Jota to make text files on Android.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by lordmax

Thanks, really, for your response





Yes, this is my first problem
The workflow works, no doubt, but's too much complex and dispersive.

So my ask for help in this thread

I've used ywriter and found it a little hard to use.
And now I've more and more need for a multi device software, I'm always more often outside home and in need to work with smartphone and tablet (sometimes not mine) so software like ywriter, scrivener (that I can't understand why someone want to use), writer's café and so on became a problem with they're proprietary files type.

libreoffice doesn't exists for mobile.
office online is not meant for book, no way. It can be used yes, and I use it obviously, but save in html it's a kinde of horror's film

At now the only thing I found usefull is a markdown txt file imported and exported in libreoffice (the only plug in found for office doesn't work well and doesn't work online). When it's time I convert the file in an epub with writer2epub (that's really good) and adjuste in Sigil for final version.

I will give another chance to ywriter for timeline.

thanks

FYI, YWriter is available for Android and iOS, too.

The thing with YWriter is like all software that does a LOT--it looks intimidating and not immediately intuitive. There's nothing really "hard to use" about it; it's actually pretty dead simple--it can be as powerful or simple as YOU want.

If you just want to write scenes, great--write scenes. (I find the ability to "think" and organize in scenes or, for my non-fiction writing, sections, just GREAT.) You want timelines? In the Scene popups (you click the scene and the main "scene" panel pops up), you can set the Day/hour/minute that the scene begins, and how long it lasts. Do that for each scene, and it automatically calculates, over the narrative, the timeline FOR you. I simply love that.

If you follow Swain's method, (Action/reaction), you can set Goal, Conflict and Outcome for Action Scenes, and Reaction, Dilemma and Choice, for Reaction scenes. You can set your scene as plot or subplot; you can format blocks or lines of text as COMMENTS, so that you can note them whilst working--but not see them in final exported content.

And as I said, on the other hand, hell, you could just slog through your scenes, and not use ANY of that. (Although, the timeline obviously won't work if you don't tell it who is in what scenes, and the start time and duration of each.)

Honestly...I've seen software that really "does it all," like Power Structure, but even it doesn't do everything that Ywriter does. Of course, Ywriter was created BY an actual writer...so, that explains a lot of it.

HTH.

Hitch

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by lordmax

libreoffice doesn't exists for mobile.

Yes it does. Collabora Online is a commercial version:

https://www.collaboraoffice.com/

They have a free Android app, and their desktop/online version is similar to Google Docs.

(Except it uses LibreOffice in the backend + all bug fixes/changes get pushed back to LibreOffice core.)

Side Note: And if you wanted all the technical details... this LibreOffice talk was given a few months ago: "Collabora Office Android app gory details: How we tweaked LibreOffice & the Online to get an Android app".

[lordmax]

Thanks

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Yes it does. Collabora Online is a commercial version:

https://www.collaboraoffice.com/

They have a free Android app, and their desktop/online version is similar to Google Docs.

(Except it uses LibreOffice in the backend + all bug fixes/changes get pushed back to LibreOffice core.)

I will give it a try
Thanks again

[najgori]

Originally Posted by roger64

Doitsu has currently a Sigil plugin named "MarkdownImport" which converts directly a md file to ePub. It's still a work in progress but you may ask him to try it. For what I saw, it works nicely but I did not try it extensively.

1. All images with references in markdown file are also imported in sigil.
2. Every <span style="note">note</span> code is unchanged imported in xhtml code
3. Footnotes works great

Great job Doitsu!

[Notjohn]

>If I had to choose a "one app to rule them all,"

The human mind. I can go to bed recalling a messed-up review, and wake up in the morning with the whole thing straightened out, and sometimes the final paragraph all set out for me.

The most I have ever done app-wise on this line is to open up a parallel file (in WordStar, of course) with all possible additions and extra notes, so I can zip to it and copy over paragraphs as I find a use for them.

It's astonishing what the human mind can keep handy. I absolutely cannot imagine using Evernote or Ywriter or any such helper to outline a story or article or book.

John Irving claims that when he starts a book, he always knows what the last sentence will be. I believe him.