04-03-2013, 11:07 AM | #16 |
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You don't need anything more than Notepad, I agree, just as one doesn't need more than a quill pen and a bottle of ink, but using more sophisticated tools I think personally can make the task a lot easier. If you're happy writing books in Notepad, good for you, but it doesn't suit me.
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04-03-2013, 11:37 AM | #17 |
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What particular features of Word or Writer do you want to have to be able to write books comfortably, if you *don't* use any markup? (IMHO it's much better to do any markup in CSS directly, as you'll know how it'll come out.)
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04-03-2013, 11:43 AM | #18 |
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Spell check and formatting (much easier to highlight a phrase in Word and hit "Ctrl+I" to italicise it than to add the "<I>...</I>" tags in Notepad), but primarily the fact that it's visual - I can see what it looks like instantly. And if you use Styles properly in Word, they convert directly to CSS when you export to "filtered HTML". I just like Word. As I say, if you're happy with Notepad, good for you.
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04-03-2013, 11:53 AM | #19 |
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A quick glance seems to confirm that Sigil has a spell checker and WYSIWYG in it's later versions if you want that, and I'm sure it has hotkeys too; I'd have to check that. Seems that Sigil is more than capable of being a word processor, at least for what you'd need for ebooks.
Last edited by Katsunami; 04-03-2013 at 11:55 AM. |
04-03-2013, 12:00 PM | #20 | ||
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04-03-2013, 12:13 PM | #21 | |
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04-04-2013, 07:33 AM | #22 |
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I'd have to agree with this. Also, since almost every editor asks for a word doc. since it's that much easier to include comments and respective indicators for corrections etc. It's a cinch to transfer from Word into the actual formatting software of your choice. Mine is Indesign.
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04-04-2013, 08:06 AM | #23 |
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For a simple document Notepad would probably work just fine. For a complex book? Not for me. I'm much more productive using Word to automatically generate a Table of Contents, Index, Bibliography, End Notes, etc.
Plus everyone I work with for reading and editing use Word. Turn Track changes on and collaberation is a wonderful thing! Cleaning up the filtered web page output in Sigil really doesn't take much time. |
04-04-2013, 11:14 AM | #24 | |
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For me, each short story or chapter is a separate 'simple document.' I don't fire up the big stuff unless I need a word count for the whole project, or its time to compile it for publication. I also don't usually think about the TOC and all that. |
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04-04-2013, 11:19 AM | #25 | |
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04-04-2013, 11:22 AM | #26 | |
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It kinda gives insight into the story making process, better than "author's notes"... |
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04-06-2013, 12:11 AM | #27 |
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I really don't have that many problems using Word and uploading to Smashwords. The main things to remember are to not have trailing spaces after paragraphs, to using a title style for the title and heading 1 for the chapters, and to use a font less than 18. I use 14 TNR for my text and 16 TNR for my title and chapters. If the epub fails it is usually because of one of these.
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04-08-2013, 02:57 AM | #28 |
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I was going to suggest copy and pasting everything into notepad and then converting the .txt in Calibre to an epub. That would at least produce a clean epub. But then you would lose page breaks. I suppose you could re-insert them with Sigil. What a palaver! Perhaps produce a .rtf file and then convert it with Calibre? I would veer away from .html as it can produce so much weird code in there. If .rft supports page breaks, I think that might be the way to try.
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04-09-2013, 01:53 PM | #29 |
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Well... the easiest way is to write your book using Scrivener and export it as an epub.
L |
04-14-2013, 07:05 PM | #30 |
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Notepad is a decent tool. It does its job and stays out of the way. If i had to use Windows & couldn't install cygwin (like at work), i might very well use Notepad to write my TeX & LaTeX docs. I hate writing with word processors.
I haven't tried it yet, but i imagine it would be relatively simple to convert my tiny bits of prose poetry into epub docs via tex4ht & convert from html. |
Tags |
epub creation, google ebooks, smashwords |
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