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Old 06-08-2017, 12:55 AM   #16
Hitch
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rodneylives View Post
Yeah yeah sure. Thing is though:

1. When I write in some word processor and paste into Sigil, which I imagine is using it as intended,
Actually, no, you're not. What would be the difference between doing that, and just typing in Sigil's BookView? (Diap: another nail....)

Quote:
I'm likely to drag in that WP's own cruft along with it. I write in Sigil because I'm not really sure what workflow will result in the cleanest code, other than just doing it in Notepad++. I know from experience that Word and Windows Scrivener (which is basically an RTF editor with extra stuff added in) are not great for this. Any suggestions for this? What do you guys use?
Well, honestly? I use Word. Bear in mind--I'm not an author. My business makes eBooks. From, in large part, Word files.

The hoohah about Word's cruft is grossly--grossly--overstated. If someone understands EITHER Word's built-in Styles and Headings, or same in CSS, Word can be used to produce VERY clean HTML. I do it all the time.

What Word (and Scrivener) do put out is utter cruft when someone just types along and creates ad hoc styles. NO word processor, none, zip, zein, zilch, does that well and then doesn't create cruft. By and large, all of them operate on your basic, simple, computer principle: GIGO. Whether it's Scrivener, Word, Pages, Ywriter, etc. If someone can't take a few minutes to learn Word--their own tool--then, yes, they get garbage out that has to be cleaned, top to bottom.

But even then--unless the user is hopelessly lost--the cruft isn't that hard to clean. I've seen some doozies, god knows, but almost all of them are cleanable very quickly. I'd strongly--strongly--recommend that you take a look at Toxaris' ePUBTools. Works a treat to clean Word files and output clean HTML.

What we do is either output the Word file to HTML, which we then clean in an HTML editor which exists for the purpose (I use NoteTab Pro, which about half of us do; the other half prefer Epsilon, which is a programmer's editor) or, we go directly from the Word output to Sigil. It depends on the cleanliness, or lack thereof, of the Word file. Once the HTML is cleaned, we put that cleaned HTML file into Sigil and finish it up. That, to my mind, is the best use of Sigil. It is, after all, not an HTML editor--it's an ePUB editor, yes?

Quote:
2. I don't see how even its intended use case is helped by randomly choosing whether to add a <p> or a <div> when typing in Book View. I'm sure there's some distinguishing feature, something I'm doing that's causing one to happen instead of the other, but darn if I know what it is. (If I knew what it was, I could avoid it. That'd probably be the best scenario actually, figuring out what I'm doing that triggers it....)
I seriously doubt that it's randomly choosing to add a p or div. It's adding it based on what it is YOU are doing, in BookView. As I can't see what you're doing, it's nearly impossible to tell. But you may be doing something that requires a div, versus a p. Without more information, it's impossible to tell.

Diap and Kevin are the experts here, by a long patch. They maintain and improve the Sigil Code. Others, too (if I've omitted someone, my sincere apologies). Folks like Doits create plugins that enhance it. I'm simply a user thereof.

If you can tell us--or show us--where you've done X that added a p, and Y that added a div, we can probably--probably--shed some light on the subject.

However, back to your initial point: you really oughtn't use Sigil as a Word processor. Unless you're writing in code/markup, it's a bit counterproductive.

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Old 06-08-2017, 05:28 AM   #17
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At the risk of putting in my opinion where others, better qualified, have expressed theirs I think the clue is in the name - Book VIEW. It's fine for viewing what you are going to see and does that job well; the problem comes if you try to use it for editing.

I used Sigil for quite a time before I discovered you could use Book View to edit. It wasn't long before I saw it wasn't a good idea.

Personally I tend to use Calibre's editor for most things but there are some things that Sigil does that Calibre doesn't and then I use Sigil for that.

The important thing is to know your tools and to use the most appropriate one for the job in hand.

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Old 06-08-2017, 07:10 AM   #18
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Pasting content into Sigil is definitely not the recommended usage. As Hitch mentioned, there are countless export tools for popular Word Processing programs (as well as import plugins for Sigil) which can be used to create clean html for import into a Sigil epub.
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Old 06-08-2017, 09:47 AM   #19
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Aaah, thanks, there is useful information there.
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Old 06-09-2017, 03:04 AM   #20
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rodneylives View Post
When I write in some word processor and paste into Sigil
I use a text editor, (Ultraedit), to compose text.

About the only styling I might need is italics. Ultraedit has "tag" buttons to add the <i>text</i> or whatever other html you want.

When I'm done I run a macro to convert linebreaks to <p> </p>,
then copy it all and paste into Sigil's CODE view.

Tweak the styles from there in Sigil.

Last edited by AlanHK; 06-10-2017 at 11:12 PM.
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Old 06-16-2017, 11:44 AM   #21
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Yes, Notepad is good for plain, straightforward text entry, which will paste into Sigil with no cruft.

Or, if you WANT some layout, compose in Word. As long as you use the layout functions correctly (e.g. centre text with the Centre function, not by padding with spaces) Calibre will convert it into good, functional EPUB code. Maybe not pretty code, but who cares?
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Old 06-18-2017, 10:29 PM   #22
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rodneylives View Post
Yeah yeah sure. Thing is though:

1. When I write in some word processor and paste into Sigil, which I imagine is using it as intended, I'm likely to drag in that WP's own cruft along with it. I write in Sigil because I'm not really sure what workflow will result in the cleanest code, other than just doing it in Notepad++. I know from experience that Word and Windows Scrivener (which is basically an RTF editor with extra stuff added in) are not great for this. Any suggestions for this? What do you guys use?
The intended usage (at least as far as I've seen) is not to copy and paste into Sigil. From what I've read, I believe that you are intended to save the output of the word processor as a .html or .htm file (I've done this with Microsoft Work => save as => filtered html, LibreOffice => Send => Create HTML document and other word processors with html export capability). That html file is then opened with Sigil and the code cleaned up as needed. Even when I am creating an epub from a webpage, I save the page and then edit the resulting html file. My few attempts at doing otherwise such as copying and pasting the webpage into a Sigil document have led to very odd looking pages.

Quote:
Originally Posted by rodneylives View Post
2. I don't see how even its intended use case is helped by randomly choosing whether to add a <p> or a <div> when typing in Book View. I'm sure there's some distinguishing feature, something I'm doing that's causing one to happen instead of the other, but darn if I know what it is. (If I knew what it was, I could avoid it. That'd probably be the best scenario actually, figuring out what I'm doing that triggers it....)
IMNSHO, Bookview should have it's editing capability removed. While Strahinja Val Marković (Sigil's father) may have intended to make it more useful, little if any developer effort has gone into (or, IMO, is going to be expended on) supporting Bookview's editing capability. Make it exactly what the view in the name suggests -- a viewer not an editor.

Last edited by DNSB; 06-18-2017 at 10:31 PM.
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Old 06-19-2017, 05:44 AM   #23
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Quote:
I seriously doubt that it's randomly choosing to add a p or div. It's adding it based on what it is YOU are doing
Probably 50 percent of the plaints on the KDP forums can be answered with a variation on that rule.

Quote:
Maybe not pretty code, but who cares?
I do! Pace Hitch, I hate the html that comes out of Word. Msonormal, ugh.

I use Word to compose, because I have an add-in that enables it to understand WordStar keyboard commands, which double my typing speed. Again pace Hitch, I have no interest in learning how to use Styles in Word. It takes literally seconds to clean a 60,000-word Word doc, may one minute for a 150,000 word. Of 26 published books, not nearly as much as half an hour.

The only time I use Book View now is to do a quick check on hyperlinks. For me, Preview Pane has wholly replaced it.
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Old 06-19-2017, 07:54 AM   #24
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If you hate the code produced --- then write the code yourself. If you won't/can't write the code yourself --- then don't hate the code that's the produced for you. These are the choices.
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Old 06-19-2017, 08:17 AM   #25
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I use Notepad++ and it's a very good text editor. I highly recommend it. It so blows away Notepad. And Notepad++ is free and very well supported. Notepad++ handles text files with different line endings no problem. Notepad has trouble with any text files created on OS X or Linux.
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Old 06-19-2017, 09:20 AM   #26
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf View Post
I use Notepad++ and it's a very good text editor. I highly recommend it. It so blows away Notepad. And Notepad++ is free and very well supported. Notepad++ handles text files with different line endings no problem. Notepad has trouble with any text files created on OS X or Linux.
Not to mention, that if you want (or need) to take a little bit of a "walk on the wild side," great REGEX support.

Notepad is what I call a "Free with Microsoft Windows" program. Notepad++ is a "Free, VALUABLE" program.

Either way, I think the OP is much ado about nothing. Using a hammer to place a screw is always likely to get you results you don't want.
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Old 06-19-2017, 11:16 AM   #27
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I've come to prefer EditPad-lite to Notepad++, myself. On Windows, anyway.
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Old 06-19-2017, 05:58 PM   #28
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Notjohn View Post
I do! Pace Hitch, I hate the html that comes out of Word. Msonormal, ugh.

I use Word to compose, because I have an add-in that enables it to understand WordStar keyboard commands, which double my typing speed. Again pace Hitch, I have no interest in learning how to use Styles in Word. It takes literally seconds to clean a 60,000-word Word doc, may one minute for a 150,000 word. Of 26 published books, not nearly as much as half an hour.

The only time I use Book View now is to do a quick check on hyperlinks. For me, Preview Pane has wholly replaced it.

NJ, dear:

You should be careful to use "multi-quote" when replying to more than one poster. The secodn quoted portion of your response was to exaltedwombat, not me. *do* care about the quality of the code, because IMHO, and IME, using hinky code gets you hinky results, and worse, unpredictable, unforeseen, hinky results. I'm not a happy camper about those.

ALSO, if you don't want to learn how to use Styles, in Word, nj, then honestly, you should NOT be giving toots, or lessons, or selling a book, on how to turn Word into html, because, with all due respect, you are missing 90% of the actuality of it, and making MORE work than needs doing.

The REASON that you "hate the HTML that comes out of Word" is because you don't know how to bloody use Word. It's like the posters that complain that Sigil is a crappy word-processor. So it is, because: it's not a word-processor. If you refuse to take the entire HOUR it might take you, to learn how to use Styles and Headings, in Word, then you have precisely ZERO right to bitch about what it outputs--because it is outputting exactly what you are INPUTTING. You can pace me all you want, NJ, but them's the beans. Literally, in this instance, scitis autem rei vobis loquor. (With apologies to Foxe).

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Old 06-19-2017, 09:34 PM   #29
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Notepad is what I call a "Free with Microsoft Windows" program. Notepad++ is a "Free, VALUABLE" program.
I used Notepad not five minutes ago to do something no other editor I know of can do - inject an alternate data stream into an NTFS directory/folder (notepad myfolder:secrets.txt)

But for less esoteric tasks I use Notepad++ ಠ_ಠ For a change of pace, I use Bowpad, particularly when I want a side helping of file system tree.

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