EPUB BOOK Creator - From Scratch ???

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Not true for Atlantis read my review in our wiki AWP Review. Atlantis can accept a wide variety of formats for input. And you can start from scratch if you wish.

Dale

I've listed the formats according to the AWP website in post #7.

[DaleDe]

Yes, it is basically the same except you added the internal compressed format for Atlantis that cannot be created anywhere else.

Dale

[eschwartz]

Isn't Atlantis supposed to output cleaner code than MS Word?

Word creates a disastrous soup of ms-&%@#! tags which do nothing and make it really hard to edit.

[mrmikel]

Unless you need particular things that Word does, you can write directly in AWP.

As I said, you can't edit the epub that AWP puts out in AWP, but there is nothing stopping you from fixing up the mistake in AWP and exporting it to epub and repeating again until you hit something that AWP can't fix. Then Sigil comes in.

The code I have seen AWP put out is much simpler than the stuff that Word puts out with all its special styles. If you understand Word well, I think you can work around this by using a different template, styles, etc, but not being a Word person, except when forced to, I really don't know.

Much of what AWP doesn't do, like tables, doesn't translate really well into epubs.

[Toxaris]

That is the reason why I have made my own HTML tool. Also, in Word I can use my add-in which fixes a whole lot of problems with OCR-scanned texts.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Isn't Atlantis supposed to output cleaner code than MS Word?

Word creates a disastrous soup of ms-&%@#! tags which do nothing and make it really hard to edit.

Yes, it does output very clean ePub documents. Even better that Sigil in that there is a consistency across all of the chapters. It collects all of the paragraphs that have the same formatting whether done with styles or by manipulating the paragraph setting themselves and then creates the minimum CSS styles that will be needed to format the data. It adds none of the font stuff that Word adds to HTML output and it converts font points in word documents to ems for scalable fonts.

Dale

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Isn't Atlantis supposed to output cleaner code than MS Word?

Word creates a disastrous soup of ms-&%@#! tags which do nothing and make it really hard to edit.

{sigh}.

Word only creates a disastrous soup of ms-&%@#! tags when used by a typist who doesn't know how to actually use Word. When used properly--which takes all of 30 minutes to learn how to do with a simple online tutorial--what Word outputs is exceedingly clean and simple. It can be easily regexed into matching style names in an existing CSS sheet, OR, you can create your own named styles to already match your CSS sheet.

I'm the first to say that when you get someone who's typed a manuscript in an ad hoc manner, using Word like a typewriter, you get garbage. But that simply adheres to the old saw, "GIGO." That certainly isn't Word's "fault." If someone bothers to learn to use the Styles, Word can output a perfectly clean and usable HTML file that doesn't have a boatload of cruft. OR, if the bookmaker simply cleans the Word file first, which can be done in minutes, the boatload of cruft is eliminated.

Word tries to do a lot of the "heavy lifting" for people who can't be bothered to learn to use it. (Ditto Pages--you get cruft-heavy output on the backend, because it tries to do all the thinking for users who just want to "sit down and type."). What it outputs isn't one iota messier or cleaner than any other WP, not really. People who use WordPerfect, for example, almost always have cleaner ms's because, by nature, they look for opening/closing tags and are aware of what's going on behind the scenes. AWP doesn't make all those "oh, this is what you want" decisions for unskilled users, so again--you don't get that behind-the-scenes cruft.

I'm no apologist for MS, but don't blame Word for the users who use it, and how they use it. I'm constantly gobsmacked by how many writers simply can't be bothered to learn how to actually use their own tools properly, even when it would save them hours of work in the future. When used even remotely correctly, Word outputs perfectly clean HTML. AND has a feature set that would save authors tens of hours of work--if they learned how to use Outline View, Document Map, etc.

Hitch

[Toxaris]

hear, hear!

[DaleDe]

While not blaming word the html it creates is intended for browsers, not ePub. In this respect AWP is better. AWP will also build a HTML file if you wish and that file is similar to the one word does which is not nearly as clean as what the ePub file looks like.

I really liked the HTML file that was produced by Word 97 but since this it has gotten much worse in my opinion. My Word 2002 starts the file by including CSS entries for every type of font that I have on my system whether or not they are in the document. In addition it specifies all font sizes in actual points all over the document even when they are the same sizes which is a pain to fix. Yes, if you use styles everywhere you can use a search and replace regex to fix the resultant file of most of these oddities and a bunch of others but AWP ePub does a much cleaner job as I already posted earlier. Yes you can still make a garbage file by using a word processor as a typewriter instead of a word processor but it is surprising what AWP can do to clean things up even if you didn't use styles.

Dale

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

While not blaming word the html it creates is intended for browsers, not ePub. In this respect AWP is better. AWP will also build a HTML file if you wish and that file is similar to the one word does which is not nearly as clean as what the ePub file looks like.

I really liked the HTML file that was produced by Word 97 but since this it has gotten much worse in my opinion. My Word 2002 starts the file by including CSS entries for every type of font that I have on my system whether or not they are in the document. In addition it specifies all font sizes in actual points all over the document even when they are the same sizes which is a pain to fix. Yes, if you use styles everywhere you can use a search and replace regex to fix the resultant file of most of these oddities and a bunch of others but AWP ePub does a much cleaner job as I already posted earlier. Yes you can still make a garbage file by using a word processor as a typewriter instead of a word processor but it is surprising what AWP can do to clean things up even if you didn't use styles.

Dale

Dale:

I wasn't comparing AWP to Word. I was simply stating a fact: Word outputs what it's told to output, for all intents and purposes (like almost everything else on computers; it does what it's told, not what's meant). If AWP outputs cleaner code, ala RTF, then, great. I personally don't find deleting Word's CSS at the top of the file that onerous, and I simply use named styles. For a simple fiction title, you have about 10 styles, tops, and that's nothing.

I wouldn't use Word for an advanced non-fiction layout, in any event; if I were to stick with MS, I'd use Publisher (if were a DIY-er, which is what we're discussing), but around here, we use INDD for print or we just code the HTML by hand. Again, that's not AWP's bag, either, as I understand it.

My whole point was simply that I see a ton of Word-bashing all the time, and it's usually not what Word has done inasmuch as what the user has done. If AWP can "funnel" the user in such a way that the output is simpler, or better-conformed, then good for it. But I see massive garbage files (in ePUB) from programs like Jutoh, as well--where the "ad hoc" method of book-writing and creation is still the main method. Again, I'm talking by the user; I'm not dissing Julian's program. (And don't get me STARTED about Pages! OMG!)

So, anyway: I'm simply defending Word because most of the cruft seen is created by the user. That was my point. If AWP works better for you, that's great, and I mean it. One of these days, I'll give it a go.

Hitch

[DaleDe]

yes, I was just commenting on the fact that you said "AWP doesn't make all those "oh, this is what you want" decisions for unskilled users, so again--you don't get that behind-the-scenes cruft." In some cases it does!

Dale

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

yes, I was just commenting on the fact that you said "AWP doesn't make all those "oh, this is what you want" decisions for unskilled users, so again--you don't get that behind-the-scenes cruft." In some cases it does!

Dale

Okey-dokey. Pax, then.

Hitch

[JSWolf]

The problem with Word is that is does make it difficult for most to be able to output a fairly clean HTML file.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The problem with Word is that is does make it difficult for most to be able to output a fairly clean HTML file.

Not to get into a "does too," "does not" argument with you, Wolfie, but, no, it doesn't.

If people can't be bothered to learn their tools, how is that Word's problem or fault? A lousy few minutes in an easy, online tutorial would not only create a file with perfectly--perfectly--clean and usable HTML, but would create a Word file that would be easier to navigate, neater, easier to move around, drag and drop chapters with one click, etc. That would also allow them to use Outline View. Document Maps. Create TOCs with the click of a button. All the "real" power of Word is in learning its built-in Styles. All of it.

So, if people persist in using it like a typewriter, I just can't sympathize with that. If that's the approach that they're going to take with their software, they should buy Macs. That entire ecosystem caters to people who don't want to know how stuff works, or learn it.

OR, they can go the other route, and do their entire book with markup. Or learn Latex. Whatever. Personally, I don't care what people use. But listening to people whine about how "Word" creates all this cruft, when it's 99% created by their own unwillingness to invest half-an-hour in their own productivity--that dog doesn't hunt for me. Just my $.02, no doubt, all the Gates-haters will have their own opinions.

Hitch

[JSWolf]

So would the best way to start in Word be to create a default document that has just the styles that might be used?