Atlantis Word Processor - ePub creation tool

[awp]

I did not mean a space like the character. I meant space as in distance.

In MS Word documents, a margin above a paragraph is called "space before". Atlantis is a word processor, and it is normal that it sticks with the "word processing" terminology, not HTML or CSS terminology. This "space before" is supposed to be saved to EPUB as a "margin-top" CSS property.

If you have a document containing a paragraph with non-nil "space before" (or "margin-top"), and Atlantis does not save this "top margin" to EPUB correctly, please email or upload your document file. As I said, I cannot reproduce this problem.

[mrmikel]

Originally Posted by awp

I am not sure that understand what you mean. You can specify "metadata" directly in the "Save as eBook" dialog of Atlantis:

In Sigil's metadata there is an option for Author, File as, so that things are put in alphabetical order.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by awp

In MS Word documents, a margin above a paragraph is called "space before". Atlantis is a word processor, and it is normal that it sticks with the "word processing" terminology, not HTML or CSS terminology. This "space before" is supposed to be saved to EPUB as a "margin-top" CSS property.

If you have a document containing a paragraph with non-nil "space before" (or "margin-top"), and Atlantis does not save this "top margin" to EPUB correctly, please email or upload your document file. As I said, I cannot reproduce this problem.

sorry, it seemed to be my error. I thought I had set the entry in the style and it displayed a space between the paragraphs like I had set it but upon reinspection of the style entry the entry was set to "auto" and not to a specific value. I changed it to a specific value and it then worked properly. Sorry for my confusion. I was setting the space after by the way.

Dale

[awp]

Originally Posted by mrmikel

In Sigil's metadata there is an option for Author, File as, so that things are put in alphabetical order.

Atlantis automatically generates this metadata item.

[awp]

Originally Posted by awp

The "avoid" value of the "page-break-after" CSS property does not seem to be widely supported by the HTML rendering software. If it is "overused" in an HTML document, it can lead to display problems.

It seems that ADE supports this CSS property (including the "avoid" value). I have composed a test EPUB eBook entirely formatted with "page-break-after: avoid". ADE can render it without a problem.

Any next release of Atlantis Word Processor will save the "Keep with next paragraph" item of the paragraph format to EPUB.

[awp]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Generation of the ePub is not WYSIWYG.

The conversion should be as WYSIWYG as possible. But a "MS Word document to EPUB" conversion cannot be 100% WYSIWYG. DOC(/RTF/DOCX) and EPUB are not fully compatible document formats. There are formatting types and document elements in MS Word documents that are not possible in EPUB.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by awp

It seems that ADE supports this CSS property (including the "avoid" value). I have composed a test EPUB eBook entirely formatted with "page-break-after: avoid". ADE can render it without a problem.

Any next release of Atlantis Word Processor will save the "Keep with next paragraph" item of the paragraph format to EPUB.

Thank you, that will be a great addition.

I have noticed that Atlantis uses smart quotes but this behavior is not documented. It would be nice to include documentation and limitations and a way to upgrade regular quotes to smart quotes. I did see that there are settings for foreign languages to provide their languages smart quotes.

Also the search and replace functions seem to include some automatic multiple finds such as find " will find regular and smart quotes, find - will find a hyphen, ndash, and mdash. Finding a space will also find variations of spaces such as nbsp. This can sometimes be problematic when doing searching with replacements. It would be nice to have a strict choice that would not do this. The search behavior is not documented well for how this works. Not all of the special characters are in the replacement list, for example smart quotes are not.

Dale

[awp]

I have noticed that Atlantis uses smart quotes but this behavior is not documented.

You can use any type of quotes in your document.

When you type straight quotes (or apostrophes) in a document, the AutoCorrect of Atlantis can automatically replace them with "smart" (or "curly") quotes according to the settings in the "Tools | AutoCorrect Options..." dialog. This feature is well-documented, I think:

http://www.atlantiswordprocessor.com...ct_options.htm

Straight quotes can be replaced with smart quotes not only on-fly (i.e. as-you-type), but also after-you-type. You can run the "Tools | AutoCorrect..." command, and it would suggest various corrections to your document text.

Also the search and replace functions seem to include some automatic multiple finds such as find " will find regular and smart quotes, find - will find a hyphen, ndash, and mdash. Finding a space will also find variations of spaces such as nbsp. This can sometimes be problematic when doing searching with replacements.

This is correct. Different types of quotes can look identically under some fonts or font sizes. And quite often, they play the same role in the document. By default, straight quotes are automatically replaced with smart quotes in Atlantis as-you-type. So when searching for text, many users would not need different types of quotes to be reported as different characters. You cannot type a smart quote directly in the "Find what" edit box of the "Find/Replace" dialog of Atlantis (at least there is no simple way to do this). What's more, straight and smart quotes might look identically in that "Find what" edit box. So in many cases it would be counterproductive if Atlantis did not treat all types of quotes as the same character.

You cannot search for straight quotes only through the "Find/Replace" dialog. But if you paste a specific type of smart quote to the "Find what" edit box of the "Find/Replace" dialog, Atlantis would not report straight quotes. If you need to search for straight quotes instead, you can use the "Tools | AutoCorrect..." command of Atlantis.

[DaleDe]

thanks for that explanation. I hadn't really explored the autocorrect option. I am usually a little hesitant about turning everything over to the computer for fix things automatically until I learn it better. But I wouldn't have looked there for smart quotes. I typed all sorts of things in the index but nothing ever showed up. Anyway, I am learning and Atlantis is quite powerful I am finding.

Dale

[awp]

"Save as eBook" is one of the most popular features (maybe even the most popular feature) of Atlantis Word Processor. But it has plenty more stuff to offer. In first place it is a word processor, not just a conversion tool.

I must admit that its features are under-documented. But you can find some info by exploring the following links:

http://www.atlantiswordprocessor.com.../atlantips.htm
http://www.atlantiswordprocessor.com...ick_tour_1.htm
http://www.atlantiswordprocessor.com/en/help

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by awp

"Save as eBook" is one of the most popular features (maybe even the most popular feature) of Atlantis Word Processor. But it has plenty more stuff to offer. In first place it is a word processor, not just a conversion tool.

yes, I would agree. It is quickly becoming my ePub generation tool. Much less work that Sigil. You might want to consider the ability to kick off KindleGen after the ePub so that you would have all the eBook bases covered.

Things I still miss are flow of text around images and some minimal table support.

One thing I noticed is its ability to generate a paper booklet as well. It can rearrange the the printed pages so that you can just print a booklet, stack the pages together, fold the paper and half, staple the seam and you have a book! You do have to run the pages through twice for a double sided booklet if your printer doesn't do double sided. Nice feature.

Dale

[awp]

It is quickly becoming my ePub generation tool. Much less work that Sigil.

Some like the harder ways.

You might want to consider the ability to kick off KindleGen after the ePub so that you would have all the eBook bases covered.

From a technical point of view, this would be the simplest thing to do. But...

1. I am not sure that the kindlegen's license agreement allows redistribution of kindlegen by commercial software.

2. kindlegen.exe is twice as big as Atlantis. Including it in the setup file of Atlantis would significantly boost the setup file size. I am not sure that this would make sense. Even those who cannot use command-line tools, can easily convert EPUB to MOBI with Kindle Previewer.

3. When an EPUB file is converted to MOBI in a "silent" mode, the user has no chance to review possible warnings, and take corresponding actions.


But any next release of Atlantis Word Processor will automatically generate .mobi if you put the kindlegen.exe to the home folder of Atlantis.

You can already try a test build of Atlantis including this feature. Just click here to download a new setup file of Atlantis, run the setup file, and follow the onscreen instructions to update your Atlantis.

Then put the kindlegen.exe to the home folder of Atlantis (normally "C:\Program Files\Atlantis" or "C:\Program Files (x86)\Atlantis"). If you do not have kindlegen.exe, you can download it from here.

This test build of Atlantis also saves the "Keep with next paragraph" formatting attribute to EPUB.

[awp]

Things I still miss are flow of text around images and some minimal table support.

The "to do" list is very long. Sooner or later, Atlantis will have all the major features expected in a word processor.

[mrmikel]

One feature that Sigil has that AWP does not is Title case, which capitalizes the first letter of the world and makes the rest of the word lower case. This is useful when converting PDFs where words like FoREwoRD appear.

[mrmikel]

I can not use join paragraphs on the attached document. It simply does not respond. I chose another different document and it worked fine. What is wrong with this one?