History Eliot, Charles W. (editor): Harvard Classics Volume 1 V2.0 21 Mar 2014

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by GeorgeH

That would certainly work. What I did what right click on the page I wanted, select "save image as", and go from there.

I usually do a right click display the image and then do the save image as. Occasionally that gets a bigger image that is true sized. Most of the time there is no difference. What I did was find the ePub on the archive site and used 7 zip to open the ePub and then selected the image inside. I have no idea which one is better.

Dale

[GeorgeH]

Updated to version 1.2. Added frontispiece, corrected some typos and cleaned up the TOC.

[DaleDe]

I didn't see the frontispiece. Also the inline links in the various chapters do not work. The book links to the chapter links do work so I think it is like a filename thing. The NCX file links work fine. One tip. When updating the book I think it is useful to capture the number of downloads from the older version or versions and display it on the first post to help track the popularity of the book.

Dale

[GeorgeH]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

I didn't see the frontispiece. Also the inline links in the various chapters do not work. The book links to the chapter links do work so I think it is like a filename thing. The NCX file links work fine. One tip. When updating the book I think it is useful to capture the number of downloads from the older version or versions and display it on the first post to help track the popularity of the book.

Dale

I'll check that all out, Dale. Good point on the DL count as well.

[GeorgeH]

Version update due to self-inflicted wounds. The frontispiece disappeared and the internal chapter links stopped working - they actually linked back to the source document for some reason. My apologies and a big thanks to DaleDe for bringing these errors to my attention.

[PauloWerneck]

Dear GeorgeH,

First of all, I thank you very much indeed for your superb work. I did not know this collection but for seeing some collections to be sold in old books shops. I did not get interested because all was written in English (my mother tongue is Portuguese) and had a apparently mix of unmixable authors.

Later I knew the history of the books, etcoetera, and get interested in reading them all. Searching internet I found some in Gutemberg Project, not really to my need, because they did not offer the books, but the books contents, for instance, in volume 1 they had different epubs with the Autobiography, the Journal, etc. Then I started converting all to make one single book and proposed myself to make this for all the collection.

Afterwards I found your superb work and changed to my primary goal, that is, to read all of them. So, thank you very much indeed.

Now, the question.

I've noticed that you made lots of classes in the styles sheets, more than forty blocks, some texts and calibres. Why? I try to have few classes in the books I convert to epub and I think I can do a pretty job with the few classes I use. That makes more easier the conversions, for I use to format the book using paragraphs styles in word, then I change all ends of paragraphs (^p) to </p>^p<p class="xx">. After that I change "xx" of each style to "name of class" for that style, and p class="xx" to h1, h2... according to the heading styles. Then I search and change /p to /h1 ou /h2 according to the title style and the word is almost done, for I have to handle the tables, that are a little more difficult.

Also I try not to define font-size in actual sizes, but prefer to use small, medium, to make easier to the reader have the font sizes as he or she prefers.

These are some comments. I beg your pardon if I am sort of teaching grandma to suck eggs.

Thanks again.

[PauloWerneck]

GeorgeH,

I have just read all the comments here and want to say that I think the easiest way to put a comment is just as you have chosen to do, that is, inline. My Kobo has no return button to get back from a note, besides, reading a book standing in a moving public vehicle (metro, autobus) is quite difficult to click on links.

My only suggestion is to use a smaller font-size. In my books I use medium for text and small for notes.

Best Regards

[GeorgeH]

Paulo, thank you for your comments and suggestions. I'll try and answer as best I can.

CSS classes. I use Word 2007 to intially format the book, thus giving me a .docx file and then use Calibre to convert the book to epub format. I think the reason so many classes are created by Calibre is because I'm trying to replicate the original books as much as possible and a lot of different paragraph styles are generated as a result. This is especially noticable in poetry and blank verse. Since I haven't made any attempt to optimize or otherwise tinker with the different styles, the result is what you see in the stylesheet. Not great, but I don't think the overhead has any negative impact on ebook readers. I don't doubt it makes any competent epub guru cringe though. I guess a good exercise for me would be to review all the volumes later and see what optimization/clean-up could be done with Sigil or a similar editor. To that end I'll use your tips as a guide for things that should be changed. Thank you for pointing them out.

Font sizes. I generally only use 2 sizes, one for headers and the other for general text. A third size is sometimes used for footnotes depending on the context. It didn't occur to me that using a specific font size in Word would result in fixed sizes on ebook readers, I assumed the reader would resize appropriately as selected by the person using the device. I'll most definitely investigate that further and attempt to make the books more reader friendly.

Footnotes. For the most part I've put the notes inline at the end of the appropriate paragraphs. This also works well for plays. For poetry and blank verse I used a different approach, either placing the notes at the end of the poem/passage or hyper-linking them. This seemed a more reasonable way of doing it since some works have upwards of a thousand footnotes that would completely clutter and obscure the story (the Divine Comedy comes to mind). Poetry, to me, would be unreadable otherwise.

You mention the lack of a 'back' button on the Kobo, I wonder if that is true for other ebook readers as well. I thought Calibre created a back link within the footnote so this wouldn't cause problems. Of course I may be completely wrong.

Anyway, you are definitely not teaching me to suck eggs , I'm very much a novice at this and appreciate all suggestions and criticisms, especially when it helps me better understand the inner workings of ebooks.

Thank you and cheers,
George

[GeorgeH]

Further to the font size issue, I checked the stylesheet.css in this volume (Volume 1) to see where it may have hard-coded font sizes and I don't see that anywhere. The base font seems to be referenced here:

.calibre {
color: #000020;
display: block;
font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;
font-size: 1em;
padding-left: 0;
padding-right: 0;
margin: 0 5pt
}

It specifies a font size of 1 em. Is that not supposed to be the size relative to the default size used by the ereader? All other references to font sizes also use the 'em' convention.

[PauloWerneck]

GeorgeH

I went to CSS and you are perfectly correct, as far as "em" is the default font size of a e-reader as set by the owner. So I will change my CSS stylesheets to use em instead of medium, small etc, as far I will have more control on the relative sizes of the fonts.

About the notes I agreed with you that inline notes are the better, my only suggestion is to use a smaller font, to make easier for the reader do not read notes if he or she chooses to skip them.

As to think that I am a sort of "guru", I'm very far from anything like that. I'm a newcomer that do not stand to learn how to use new softwares (as Caliber) so I use the old ones I know with some brute force, that I think generally is more easier than learn new tricks.

Best regards.

[GeorgeH]

Version 2.0 uploaded.

Changes:
New Book Cover.
Revised Table of Contents.
Various formatting issues resolved.