Unbelievably dumb question...

[Lexi Revellian]

Sigil sounds just what I need, as I'm going to publish on Kindle and Smashwords.

I've downloaded Sigil and loaded my novel in HTML form on to it...but...

How do I get to WYSIWYG editing? If I click on Book View nothing happens.

The manual seems to be all general information, rather than step-by-step instructions - how the engine works, rather than how you drive the car.

I admit, this is not my area of expertise...

[Lexi Revellian]

Also, all apostrophes and double speech marks have been replaced by question marks in black diamonds. I can't correct them with Find and Replace, as that would remove the distinction between them and I'd end up with single speech marks.

[Dave_S]

Originally Posted by Lexi Revellian

Also, all apostrophes and double speech marks have been replaced by question marks in black diamonds. I can't correct them with Find and Replace, as that would remove the distinction between them and I'd end up with single speech marks.

That *could* be due to an error in your HTML where the document specifies one set of character set but then is actually written in another character set. I have seen one novel where two different character sets were specified, and ended up causing problems similar to yours.
As for your previous question, what generated the HTML that you cannot see in Book View? There is apparently something out of order with the HTML that you imported, because Book View should be your default initial view. During import, Sigil runs the HTML through an HTML cleaner (Tidy), which may have not been able to produce clean HTML for import into Sigil?

[Lexi Revellian]

Thanks, Dave; I wrote the book on Word 2000, then turned it into an HTML document with Mobipocket. (This version looks fine on the Kindle Preview, except it goes right to the edges of the screen.)

As I don't know HTML beyond the most basic how to do italics stuff, I am beginning to think I am totally out of my depth. I'm very concerned with getting the formatting correct for ereaders, and don't know the best way to do this.

Perhaps I should just hope the Kindle Preview is accurate, and that Smashwords Meatgrinder will sort out any problems for me. Or is this too optimistic?

[Vintage Season]

Originally Posted by Lexi Revellian

Sigil sounds just what I need, as I'm going to publish on Kindle and Smashwords.

For Smashwords, you will need to uplad your work as a *.doc file... which is a shame, because Meatgrinder is still putting "margin-top: 1em" as a paragraph setting in the ePub CSS, which means your first-line-indented paragraphs are all going to have ugly blank spaces separating the paragraphs, in any reader that acknowledges that property (such as the ePub files being sent to Apple's iBookstore).

- M.

[pietvo]

You can try to save the Word document as filtered HTML and start from there. Actually Word is a terrible tool (in the bad sense) for producing HTML.

[Lexi Revellian]

Originally Posted by Vintage Season

For Smashwords, you will need to uplad your work as a *.doc file... which is a shame, because Meatgrinder is still putting "margin-top: 1em" as a paragraph setting in the ePub CSS, which means your first-line-indented paragraphs are all going to have ugly blank spaces separating the paragraphs, in any reader that acknowledges that property (such as the ePub files being sent to Apple's iBookstore).

- M.

I was confident about my nicely formatted Word doc file until I read up a bit about it - the more I read, the more complex the whole business seems. Much harder than writing the novel...

[Lexi Revellian]

Originally Posted by pietvo

You can try to save the Word document as filtered HTML and start from there. Actually Word is a terrible tool (in the bad sense) for producing HTML.

That doesn't seem to be an option on Word 2000, pietvo.

[Dave_S]

Originally Posted by Lexi Revellian

I was confident about my nicely formatted Word doc file until I read up a bit about it - the more I read, the more complex the whole business seems. Much harder than writing the novel...

I could not write a novel if my life depended on it, due to a lack of imagination.
As you have already heard, Word may be nice for writing, but it has some serious difficulties in producing clean HTML. The are various HTML repair tools like HTML Tidy for instance, but I have also imported Word docs into the free OpenOffice Writer and exported to HTML from there with passable results. There is also an OpenOffice to ePub export extension that will give you an EPUB ready to be polished in Sigil.

[GeoffC]

If your text is in WORD,
why not just cut&paste it into the Sigil Book View ....
and then let Sigil create the ePub ....

Unless there are unforseen issues you won't even need to do any html coding yourself .....

[Lexi Revellian]

Dave and Geoff, thanks for the good ideas. I'll try them.

(In the unlikely event you ever need help writing a novel, just ask.)

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by Dave_S

I could not write a novel if my life depended on it, due to a lack of imagination.
As you have already heard, Word may be nice for writing, but it has some serious difficulties in producing clean HTML. The are various HTML repair tools like HTML Tidy for instance, but I have also imported Word docs into the free OpenOffice Writer and exported to HTML from there with passable results. There is also an OpenOffice to ePub export extension that will give you an EPUB ready to be polished in Sigil.

Sigil uses HTML Tidy as an embedded component ....

[Dave_S]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

Sigil uses HTML Tidy as an embedded component ....

Yes, I know, and I already mentioned that in an earlier post in this thread. BUT, you can not see what Tidy is doing when it operates inside of Sigil. Since the thread originator is getting nothing when importing HTML into Sigil, it would probably be more beneficial to run Tidy separately to actually see what Tidy is having problems with. Also, the fact that the imported document is cleaned up during import into Sigil is the reason that Valloric has said in other threads that it is a bad idea to cut & paste into Sigil, since that bypasses the import error checking.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by Dave_S

Yes, I know, and I already mentioned that in an earlier post in this thread. BUT, you can not see what Tidy is doing when it operates inside of Sigil. Since the thread originator is getting nothing when importing HTML into Sigil, it would probably be more beneficial to run Tidy separately to actually see what Tidy is having problems with. Also, the fact that the imported document is cleaned up during import into Sigil is the reason that Valloric has said in other threads that it is a bad idea to cut & paste into Sigil, since that bypasses the import error checking.

[Okay without checking other threads]
Surely what Valloric is talking about is the import of html coded work into Sigil -

I'm suggesting the import of plain text .... which allows Sigil to "do its own thing" ....

[Dave_S]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

I'm suggesting the import of plain text .... which allows Sigil to "do its own thing" ....

Masochistic, but at least very little possibility for error with plain text, except for possible character encoding issues. It sure would be a PITA to loose all the formating information and have to start over from ground zero format wise though. I would hold that off until the last resort.