Sigil or Calibre?

[DaleDe]

From PDF form, what would you gentlemen suggest is my next step for conversion?

Never start from the PDF form. It is a destination format, not a source format. Use the source for the PDF form to build an eBook.

Dale

[exaltedwombat]

Originally Posted by fbrzvnrnd

I used SVG in mobi and they works. Oblivious there is no support for "interactive" things of SVG, like xlink or animation (but animation could not be used in ePub too).

Can you confirm that these were mobis uploaded to Amazon for sale, not just ones made for your personal use?

[fbrzvnrnd]

I just downloaded from KDP a mobi with SVG we are selling, and I can see the SVG inside. I do not know how to give you a better feedback.

[exaltedwombat]

Originally Posted by Riqiv23

From PDF form, what would you gentlemen suggest is my next step for conversion?

Sometimes, on a commercial job, we HAVE to start from PDF. When we've stopped swearing, we double (or more) the price then... :-)

I think the best thing YOU could do with a PDF of one of your musical books is convert each page (or at least those containing music examples, and/or text containing musical symbols) to a picture format. Then make each page of your EPUB a full-page graphic. Ebook readers aren't all the same shape and size. On some of them you won't fill the full screen, and you won't want your pages to be distorted by stretching to fit. But it's probably the best compromise.

So you can probably ditch the PDF stage. If the whole book was prepared in Sibelius, export graphics directly from there.

Svg looks attractive. But,. remember, you don't WANT your pages to stretch-to-fit every possible screen size. And I'm not yet fully convinced you won't hit problems sending svg-based pages to the Kindle Store.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by fbrzvnrnd

kf8 and mobi support SVG. For the font problem, he can transform all in path before insert the SVG in ePub/mobi

Sorry, but Mobi does not support SVG.

http://www.mobipocket.com/dev/articl...File=image.htm

The following formats are supported: GIF, JPEG, PNG, BMP

[Riqiv23]

exalted wombat - This is a communication from my friend across the pond who did the conversion dated in an email 4/2/2012:
The mobi file is for Amazon, should you choose to sell there as well.
---
Doitsu - I have Kindle Previewer already to view the previous ebook.
Answer: S _ _ t - this is embarrassing: Sib exports to SVG and when the SVG is double-clicked it opens in an app I have called "Graphics" beautifully! (I thought it would open in a Text Editor all garbled.)

Sigil and Calibre should show both code and WYSIWYG I suppose.
---
EX - "Try. In Sibelius, Export/Graphics/SVG. Add the resulting SVG files to the Images folder in a new Sigil document. Create sufficient blank pages, Insert a SVG file into the Body area of each (working in Code View, of course). Put in enough metadata (Title, language..) to keep the validators happy. Add a Cover.

See if the result works in ADE. Drop it into Kindle Previewer and see how the conversion pans out.

There's more.... You've still got the fonts issue to sort out (even if some of the formats display OK on YOUR computer, which has the Sibelius fonts installed). But start learning!"

Answer: I will! My friend mentioned there may be font issues also.
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fbrzvnrnd - That's a little disturbing that Sigil is changing code and adding values and metadata. I like the interface but may have to try Calibre first.
---
DaleDe - Never start from the PDF form. It is a destination format, not a source format. Use the source for the PDF form to build an eBook.
Answer: Understood, thx!

----
Thx everyone, I'm going to drop the unproofed book into Sigil and Calibre and start from scratch. But everyone here has been a GREAT help!

[Riqiv23]

I know the is jumping ahead but:
Regarding Sibelius fonts (on my computer): Is it best to change the fonts in the Sib file, or after someone views it and it shows up as garbled . . . to change it in the Editor I'm using???

[fbrzvnrnd]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Sorry, but Mobi does not support SVG.

http://www.mobipocket.com/dev/articl...File=image.htm

Oblivious I'm talking about real word in 2016. Mobipocket FOR KINDLE today is a archive with, inside, mobipocket, KF8 and sometimes EPUB for debugging. And yes, mobipocket for Kindle support SVG, as you can read in ufficial Guidelines for Publishers.

[fbrzvnrnd]

You can also open the single PDF page in Inkscape, convert all in path, and export every single page as SVG image.

[KevinH]

Not a problem and not in any way related to the bug. The bug also had nothing to do with splitting. It happens when anything invokes the parser (such as extracting subsets of xhtml as splitting does) when separate svg closing tags are used.

The bug is actually in some code that has existed since the time of Tidy way back in the Sigil-0.6 days. Tidy used to only support one xmlns prefix per tag, So there was code that someone wrote to Preprocess the code to remove the svg: prefix and fix the namespace. Only they did not use a real parser to do it and they did not properly handle prefixed end tags ala "/svg:text" and so the preprocessor ended up mangling your code. Very few people use much SVG and of course when they do it is typically embedding svg image tags for covers which are void tags (so no need for a separate end tag) so it seemed to work especially as the new gumbo autocorrecting parser fixed almost of of the broken cases. It took a more complex example like yours in order to see the bug at all. Even gumbo could not fix the damage done by the poorly written PreProcessSpoecialCases code.

I now work mostly in epub3 and of course the prefix is removed since svg is now part of html5 and it therefore completely avoids this messed up preprocessing code.

Either way the bug will be fixed for the next release. I realize you are not a heavy user of Sigil but dropping a line in any Sigil thread in MR would help when and if you run into other bugs.

All of the behind the scenes changes, happen because Sigil moves things to the structure it wants. This requires parsing and of course an auto-correcting parser (just like a browser uses) is needed. When I get support for fixed format epub3 done, I plan on spending some time changing Sigil to not relocate things (leaving the relocation code as a user option). That way the user can control if the parser is run or not if they do not use any of Sigil's more advanced tools.

KevinH

Originally Posted by fbrzvnrnd

Yes, my fault, I make a copy & paste from the PDF version. If you like I could attach the ePub version, but there are only cosmetic differences.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by fbrzvnrnd

Actually I use Oxygen and I feel fine with it, thank you.

Well, if a very expensive XML-oriented editor is what floats your boat over an application specifically designed to manipulate an EPUB container, sure thing.
The important thing is that you are using whatever makes you productive.

Originally Posted by Riqiv23

fbrzvnrnd - That's a little disturbing that Sigil is changing code and adding values and metadata. I like the interface but may have to try Calibre first.

Sigil automatically adds a metadata tag referring to itself as the/a tool which edited the ebook.
It also enforces a standard directory structure for the internal resources, and validates the XHTML to ensure it can be properly parsed -- automatically fixing things if necessary according to standard HTML5 rules for resolving invalid code.

calibre does none of this automatically, although most of that is available as optional tools (you will have to edit the metadata yourself).


The changes aren't tremendously evasive, and in fact the Mend Code functionality has improved a lot since the days of HTML Tidy.
Some like it, some don't.

Sigil, by design, does more handholding than calibre,

[fbrzvnrnd]

Originally Posted by exaltedwombat

I have experience of EPUBs including SVG graphics (except, maybe, just one as a cover image), then converted in Kindle Previewer and uploaded to the Amazon Kindle Store, losing content. Not just on certain readers, but in the preview seen by potential buyers on Amazon. So I don't put SVG pictures in books that will be sold on Kindle. Has something changed that would now allow me to? It would be very useful. No point in suggesting EPUB4 until the market has caught up.

I downloaded the file from Amazon KDP and I opened with a basic Kindle. I can see the SVG and I can zoom it too. I believe the file I download from Amazon KDP is the same the reader receive when he buy it. So, AFAIK, Kindle support SVG.

[Riqiv23]

My cover pages (back and front) were done in a Mac program called Swift Publisher I like to work on.

1) Should I can download Inscape?
2) I'm thinking of doing this any way and will it require Quartz?
https://inkscape.org/en/download/mac-os/

Here's a vid of how it works for the conversion process:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cZk08x_rAI

Or SP will export as: PDF, TIFF, JPEG, Portable Network Graphics image and EPS

3) Are any of these usable for my project in Sigil/Calibre?

[fbrzvnrnd]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Well, if a very expensive XML-oriented editor is what floats your boat over an application specifically designed to manipulate an EPUB container, sure thing.
The important thing is that you are using whatever makes you productive.

You are right. The good tool is the tool you are comfortable with. Actually a LOT of ebooks are XML based, so a XML tool is very useful *for me* to handle big and sophisticated ebook. Some of my work is also create script to query XHTML and generate indexes for ePub, so tools like XQuery are important for me.

[fbrzvnrnd]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Either way the bug will be fixed for the next release. I realize you are not a heavy user of Sigil but dropping a line in any Sigil thread in MR would help when and if you run into other bugs.

All of the behind the scenes changes, happen because Sigil moves things to the structure it wants. This requires parsing and of course an auto-correcting parser (just like a browser uses) is needed. When I get support for fixed format epub3 done, I plan on spending some time changing Sigil to not relocate things (leaving the relocation code as a user option). That way the user can control if the parser is run or not if they do not use any of Sigil's more advanced tools.

KevinH

Thank you for the answer. I did not want to be rude before about Sigil and I'll keep looking for next releases. Thank you for your work.

Fabrizio