BookDesigner vs Crocodile Wrestling

[Gideon]

It is an obscenely designed piece of software... yikes. It's like dealing with something from the early 90s when so many designers just threw crap into an interface without actually thinking about usability.

Having used it to put a few books together... well, I'm glad I switched to the Kindle and could, for the main, avoid ever using it again. I spent such an obscene amount of time editing something I wanted to read... Now I can just go into Word, make a few adjustments, toss it into MobiCreator and get something very usable.

[Patricia]

I do my main edits in word then drag and drop the edited text into BD. Then I just check that the titles and subtitles are correct (using the Element Browser), link any footnotes, add an automatic TOC,and put epigraphs and verses into appropriate formats if necessary.
A straightforward novel might only take about 15 minutes in BD. On the other hand, I have spent hours making notes and links. The Jessie Weston took ages because there were a lot of footnotes to link.

[RWood]

Returning to the main point of today’s symposium (and leaving the Land of Oz, where the men are men and the sheep are afraid), BookDesigner. I should note at this point that currently I use it to produce Sony BBeB/LRF, Mobi/PRC, and eBookwise/IMP eBooks. Most of the following is based on observations made in the LRF and PRC format books.

Building on Patricia’s earlier comments, we turn our attention first to the ever-popular TOC in DB. For most books, I use the Automatic TOC and relocate it where I want it -- after the book title page I created. It picks up everything identified as “Title” in the BD paragraph tagging system.

Text topic on the agenda is paragraph styles. I stick to BookTItle, Arthur, Title, Subtitle, Body, and Verse. Everything else is a bit undefined at the moment and has not produced consistent results for me. Sometimes applying a change to an existing paragraph style can result in it becoming another style without identified itself as such. For example, if I was to center a short line and bold it then in the resultant eBook it will shift into a Subtitle and shift font if the Body and Subtitle paragraph styles have different fonts defined. This bothers me the most when setting the “slug” line under a graphic.

New pages were a pain for me at the start. I start all Chapters with a Title paragraph and expect them to start at the top of a page. After so many lines this is true. I play it safe and put a page break before each Chapter Title. This works on Sony, I think it worked once upon a time for Mobi although with the current revision it seems to have stopped, and I am not sure about the IMP format.

As Patricia said, anytime you reload a file you lose all of your edits. Invoking just BookDesigner reloads the last file used at the state of its last save. Save early and often.

Source files and editing in BD. I don’t like editing in BD and avoid it as much as I can. I rather like a “Load & Go” approach where I do most of my editing in Word or UltraEdit and then transfer the DOC, RTF, or TXT file to DB. I use Stingo’s Word Macro for converting TXT files to real paragraphs. I found early on that I did not like the choices DB mad for me. HTML editing has been so imprecise for me that I shy away from it unless I have to. Many times I have loaded a book into BD from HTML only to find that DB has converted this epic novel into a single paragraph that ran from page 1 to page 2,805. (Plus it ate the graphics.)

What’s next? Oh, a pop quiz on BookDesigner. All those wishing to avoid the quiz, the crocs are in the next room.

[DixieGal]

Originally Posted by slayda

DixieGal, I see you're back in the pink!

I'm starting to unwind from last week's black stress.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I do love things like chicken fried steak with white sauce, grits, collard greens and black-eyed peas.

Hey, are you spying on my PM's? I was comparing a certain politician to chicken fried steak, witih another MRer.

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by RWood

Many times I have loaded a book into BD from HTML only to find that DB has converted this epic novel into a single paragraph that ran from page 1 to page 2,805. (Plus it ate the graphics.)

Exactly, the reason I stopped using it! So it wasn't just me after all!

I like using, as my source, html with graphics/images, so I guess this precludes me and BD ever being on speaking terms again...

[Patricia]

Originally Posted by RWood

For example, if I was to center a short line and bold it then in the resultant eBook it will shift into a Subtitle and shift font if the Body and Subtitle paragraph styles have different fonts defined. This bothers me the most when setting the “slug” line under a graphic.

There is a workaround. BD considers all centred text to be a subtitle. So, when making the Sony Reader books I just set the subtitle font to be identical with the paragraph font. The result is centred ordinary text. (Obviously this only works if you don't need subtitles elsewhere in the text.) I worked that one out while desperately wrestling with T S Eliot's 'The Waste Land' (which makes crocodiles seem tractable and amenable beings).

Yes, BD sometimes does ignore paragraph breaks and deliver a whole novel of unparagraphed text. I've discovered that this is sometimes due to the manual line breaks. If you replace all manual line breaks with paragraph breaks in the source document then, 90% of the time, the problem sorts itself out.

For the remaining 10%, I just copy and paste the text into BD. This almost always preserves the paragraphing. However, because the file hasn't been through Book Cleaner, the emdashes will turn into hyphens. So I do this:
1. In the source text, change all emdashes to #.
2. Paste into BD.
3. Use find and replace to change all # into emdashes.

This only takes a couple of minutes with an average novel. But I've got used to BD's strange little ways over the course of the last year, and can understand that many other people don't find it the most endearing program about, when it is new and strange.

I'm wondering whether there is sufficient demand for me to compile a list of BD hints and tips.
After 17th July, I'm largely free for the summer, so would then have time for this. On the other hand, there might not be a demand, especially given the prediliction for crocodile-wrestling, Calibre or other conversion tools.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by nrapallo

Exactly, the reason I stopped using it! So it wasn't just me after all!

I like using, as my source, html with graphics/images, so I guess this precludes me and BD ever being on speaking terms again...

*sigh* same...

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by Patricia

I'm wondering whether there is sufficient demand for me to compile a list of BD hints and tips.
After 17th July, I'm largely free for the summer, so would then have time for this. On the other hand, there might not be a demand, especially given the prediliction for crocodile-wrestling, Calibre or other conversion tools.

Patricia, if you feel the courage to do it and have the time, i think it would be a good idea. i suspect other people would be interested as well. in any case it would be a great ressource, and i think it's safe to say you're the most experienced bd user around here...

i'm wrestling (ar ar ar) with the idea of going back to bd from time to time, if only to test the waters, since i would like to make other formats of the books i've uploaded here, as well as of future ones (bd is pretty terrible for making imp books, so i was wrestling with my imp book editor soft instead, which is a whole nother sack of knots, but i can only make imps with it). i think mobi should be pretty easy with the mobi software but i'm not sure how to go about the lrf. i may test out calibre as well though. *sigh* damned etower of babel and stupid format wars... "why can't we all just get along ??" (one nation, under epub...)

[vivaldirules]

There's so much good info in this thread. Thanks to all of you. I need to try some of these tips. Also, Ted Park created his Geneva Convention LRF by editting the HTML a bit and then using html2lrf. I may give this a try because it looks beautiful. I have problems with so many little quirks with BD that even after 6 months of using it I feel completely at its mercy. By the way, vvv, whoever and wherever you are, I really do appreciate your efforts at creating this tool you've provided for our free use. It really does seem to be pretty powerful, if I could only manage to hang onto the reins while driving it.

[RWood]

Patricia: The plan for an additional tip sheet for BD sounds great. I started one a while back, turned it into a Wiki page, and others have added their two cents (slightly higher in the EU) since then.

[montsnmags]

Originally Posted by Patricia

...
I'm wondering whether there is sufficient demand for me to compile a list of BD hints and tips.
After 17th July, I'm largely free for the summer, so would then have time for this. On the other hand, there might not be a demand, especially given the prediliction for crocodile-wrestling, Calibre or other conversion tools.

I'd chuck my vote in for BD-tips before crocodile-wrestling tips (Hey, if you don't know "Never smile at a crocodile" by now, it's probably too late for you).

I tried, with some success, to use BD to format some poetry, but in the end I just edited the html to get the verse-breaks in. I think "hints and tips" are great for those like me who tend to STFM rather than RTFM ("Skim" rather than "Read") Seeing these types of things would tend to make me do more to get the books I want that aren't already available in my preferred format, and obviously then also upload them here.

In the meantime, though (ie. no rush, Patricia ), I'll just put a little more effort in ("You say "lazy" like it's a bad thing" ).

Cheers,
Marc

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by montsnmags

"You say "lazy" like it's a bad thing" .

*i* certainly don't.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Patricia

Saving Files
BD is very quirky here. In the beginning I lost a couple of novels. How I swore.
This is what I do now.
1. Put text into BD (I just drag and drop the file in).

The problem with dropping text into BD is that it bypasses Book Cleaner and thus, anything that Book Cleaner is set to fix won't be fixed such as em dashes (for example). I know that BD has trouble with paragraphs sometimes when you load in a text file. So I don't know if this problem exists when pasting text.

As an aside for everyone, don't load a text file into BD. Convert it first to RTF or HTML. Though RTF is easier to convert to. Then load the RTF or HTML into BD and it will load without the paragraphs being mangled.

[JSWolf]

I have used epigraph, verse, text author, & subtitle with no issues at all. I do use BD for creating LRF. To create IMP and PRC, I use HarryT's tutorial on BD > PRC and then nrapallo's mobi2imp to go to IMP.

Anyway, I do use things like text author if I want the text to be right justified or verse if I want a different size font. In the eBook Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, I used text author to get courier to match the style set by Cory. But by using these different elements, you can have more control over the look and feel. Also you can embed a font where you might want say a different font for chapter titles. There is a lot you can do with the elements like start a new section with no indent like some books do.

[=X=]

Originally Posted by Patricia

I'm wondering whether there is sufficient demand for me to compile a list of BD hints and tips.

I would be interested in a hints and tips.

I'd also think it would be a great idea if we had a WIKI on Book creation.

I'd be very interested in seeing how other folks are creating books. Your comment earlier was very enlightening to know you where indeed using Word for editing instead of pure BookDesigner

I've found the best practice for me so far is to
1) Open the html in BD
2) Get the Book cleaner to run on the HTML. (For the TOC and Page Breaks)
3) Open the HTML in OpenOffice and edit the HTML
4) Create the book in Calibre

Hearing how others create books would be quite helpful to me.