epub from pages iwork 09

[blackest]

Hi
I recently discovered that pages in iwork 09 can export to epub

it wasn't the worst experience ever it wasn't perfect by any stretch but it did get me a file i could edit in Sigil.

However Apple have a template epub_best_practices.zip and I downloaded it and it wouldn't open complaints of missing index.xml

it turns out that Apple being Apple had updated it to a later version of pages.

This was a bit of a disaster not only wouldn't the template open the newer version of pages was pretty much panned by everyone who had the good 4.03 version of pages.

However I managed to find the missing template in a dusty part of the internet
now i can't promise that pages will be very good with your epub but you should be able to edit the css into something reasonable with the text having appropriate classes even if the style isn't what you want.

It seems a reasonable way to generate epub and pdf files from the pages word processor.


Anyway i've attached the original template, have fun

Another possibility is to save a document file to html and then use Sigil to create a ePub from that. I'm a Mac person, but I don't use Pages much as I prefer MS Word. I know Word allows you to save documents into HTML. I assume Pages does too, but I'm not sure on that.

[JSWolf]

I've seen output from Pages and I'd say avoid it. The code was just awful. Pages is for ePub what Frontpage is for websites.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I've seen output from Pages and I'd say avoid it. The code was just awful. Pages is for ePub what Frontpage is for websites.

I suggest saving the documents as unformated HTML then letting Sigil apply the formatting. MS Word always turned simple HTML into a raging mess that was nearly impossible to read if you let it hardcode the formatting, but it did okay if you let it create generic, non-formatted HTML. I'm talking about the convoluted CSS garbage Word creates. I assume the same is true for most any document editor like Word, Pages, etc. And the same is likely true of creating ePubs directly with those editors. The CSS will be total garbage and difficult to edit. Start with a blank slate and use Sigil to add a bit of formatting where needed.

[blackest]

Originally Posted by jswinden

I suggest saving the documents as unformated HTML then letting Sigil apply the formatting. MS Word always turned simple HTML into a raging mess that was nearly impossible to read if you let it hardcode the formatting, but it did okay if you let it create generic, non-formatted HTML. I'm talking about the convoluted CSS garbage Word creates. I assume the same is true for most any document editor like Word, Pages, etc. And the same is likely true of creating ePubs directly with those editors. The CSS will be total garbage and difficult to edit. Start with a blank slate and use Sigil to add a bit of formatting where needed.

To be fair the code is quite ugly a lot of spans to clean up but it has made a pretty good start a lot of unnecessary white space too but fairly easy to chop into shape. It doesn't import the fonts which is a shame so there is a fair bit of work to be done but it's not entirely a mess. It's probably a bad idea to get too far into the book before transferring to Sigil but after a few pages most of your styles are in and you just need to refine them and then apply to the rest of the content. I'm actually re editing from a pdf file created by indesign. The epub from indesign just caused pretty much all the ereader software i have to choke.

I've been using affinity designer to edit the pdf file and transfer to pages. The pdf export from pages is actually pretty good. it's epub which is tricky.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by blackest

To be fair the code is quite ugly a lot of spans to clean up but it has made a pretty good start a lot of unnecessary white space too but fairly easy to chop into shape. It doesn't import the fonts which is a shame so there is a fair bit of work to be done but it's not entirely a mess. It's probably a bad idea to get too far into the book before transferring to Sigil but after a few pages most of your styles are in and you just need to refine them and then apply to the rest of the content. I'm actually re editing from a pdf file created by indesign. The epub from indesign just caused pretty much all the ereader software i have to choke.

I've been using affinity designer to edit the pdf file and transfer to pages. The pdf export from pages is actually pretty good. it's epub which is tricky.

Given that you are starting with PDF, you WILL NEED to A/B compare the PDF to the output. There is NO PROGRAM that can take a novel length PDF and convert it without any errors. The problem is that if errors are found, your readers will be pissed. There's no reason for errors these days.

Pages is too much work to make good looking eBooks that both look good and have good code. So delete Pages and just don't ever use it. It's awful.

[blackest]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Given that you are starting with PDF, you WILL NEED to A/B compare the PDF to the output. There is NO PROGRAM that can take a novel length PDF and convert it without any errors. The problem is that if errors are found, your readers will be pissed. There's no reason for errors these days.

Pages is too much work to make good looking eBooks that both look good and have good code. So delete Pages and just don't ever use it. It's awful.

I figured out a better way
Still using pages to generate a document.

Next step creating chapters in iBooks Author.
Add a Chapter to a new book, Select the chapter in pages and copy paste into iBA. next style the sections.
Chapter name number
heading
caption
body text no indent
body text italic

Pretty much covered everything, styled it all, it looks horrible by default and now export it to Sigil where you can do the real styling

[JSWolf]

The solution is to start in Sigil and forget Pages. Why make a mess in Pages that you then have to clean up when you could work in Sigil and do it right the first time without the need for the cleaning process?

Basically you are creating much more work for yourself. Pages is crap and you are making site with it that you then need to clean up. Start with Sigil and you can get it done much faster and much neater.

[blackest]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The solution is to start in Sigil and forget Pages. Why make a mess in Pages that you then have to clean up when you could work in Sigil and do it right the first time without the need for the cleaning process?

Basically you are creating much more work for yourself. Pages is crap and you are making site with it that you then need to clean up. Start with Sigil and you can get it done much faster and much neater.

Yes and no there are some aspects which are better than others for each chapter there are classes created and unfortunately they are not the same classes between chapters. However the find and replace can be quite useful once you have identified which class is being used for what e.g s1 might be chapter heading so you can replace s1 with say ch or something of course in the next chapter s1 might be body text but then you do a find and replace for that.

If I write in Sigil it isn't going to set classes for me at best I have the 6 H tags and P I see no way of automatically adding say <P class="caption"> any text will be <p> by default and it's going to be pretty tiresome to rewrite each and every <p> tag. At least with ibook creating <p class="s5"> i can search and replace <p class="s5"> with <p class="caption">

I may be missing something in Sigil that will make things easier.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by blackest

Yes and no there are some aspects which are better than others for each chapter there are classes created and unfortunately they are not the same classes between chapters. However the find and replace can be quite useful once you have identified which class is being used for what e.g s1 might be chapter heading so you can replace s1 with say ch or something of course in the next chapter s1 might be body text but then you do a find and replace for that.

If I write in Sigil it isn't going to set classes for me at best I have the 6 H tags and P I see no way of automatically adding say <P class="caption"> any text will be <p> by default and it's going to be pretty tiresome to rewrite each and every <p> tag. At least with ibook creating <p class="s5"> i can search and replace <p class="s5"> with <p class="caption">

I may be missing something in Sigil that will make things easier.

The headers in Sigil for the chapter titles will be the same based on which h you click in the toolbar. As for <p>, you want that because most <p> will be the same and you define p in the CSS as what p is most used for. You can then add in the classes for p when you need to change p. It's very simple really. You can make sure your eBook's code is compact. The way to do it is to keep the code as simple as possible. Most eBooks will work with very simple code.

Working in pages creates a mess that you then have to work to fix and fixing the mess can (more times than not it will be more work) be more work than working in Sigil from the start.

[blackest]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The headers in Sigil for the chapter titles will be the same based on which h you click in the toolbar. As for <p>, you want that because most <p> will be the same and you define p in the CSS as what p is most used for. You can then add in the classes for p when you need to change p. It's very simple really. You can make sure your eBook's code is compact. The way to do it is to keep the code as simple as possible. Most eBooks will work with very simple code.

Working in pages creates a mess that you then have to work to fix and fixing the mess can (more times than not it will be more work) be more work than working in Sigil from the start.

captions figures boxouts all require a different style to the main body text. When you have a lot of graphical content it gets to be pretty tricky.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by blackest

captions figures boxouts all require a different style to the main body text. When you have a lot of graphical content it gets to be pretty tricky.

So once you've created the styles, you just apply them. <p class="caption">

That was so very easy.

[blackest]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

So once you've created the styles, you just apply them. <p class="caption">

That was so very easy.

yes

.note {
page-break-inside:avoid;
background-color: #E6E6E6;
display: block;
padding: 1pt 12pt;
margin: 6pt 24pt 12pt 36pt
}

I created a clip in sigil <div class="note">\1</div>
and just select the paragraphs for the new div and click the clip
ok maybe i'm a little too excited over that. Took me a while to figure out \1 means the code to be included

On the plus side i think i have figured how to hack iBook Author to work for me instead of apple.

Short version when you tell IBA to make a preview to iBooks it creates a preview copy which is very nearly an epub which looks like ffgfgfgjkxkgxk.epub

This is actually a folder
use archive manager to create a zip file (you need to tell it to use zip)
and rename to mygreatepub.epub

if you import it with calibre you get your epub but the book editor can't edit it.
So convert it with calibre to epub again.

This copy can now be polished in calibre or sigils editor.

The conversion was pretty good the only visible errors was with a few headers where the line height was wrong and that was fixed in one css style.

The best bit is only 2 stylesheets one for the page and one for the content
where as iba's epub export made a style sheet for each page and did horrible things to the css.

It seems to be well formed captions are with images headings don't start at the beginning of pages. In fact it's become a rather nice experience.

Thank you for your help