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Pages-to-EPUB workaround

15409 Views 63 Replies Latest reply: Jun 18, 2011 11:43 AM by steven from san diego RSS
  • Barbara Brundage Level 7 Level 7 (22,075 points)
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    Jun 23, 2010 11:43 AM (in response to Chris Hayden)
    Well, it would be a lot of work, depending on what kind of book it was (I believe I mentioned earlier in this thread that the folks at Take Control say it takes a full week to convert one of their highly formatted books), but I have to agree that DW would totally not be my choice if you want to get something of that sort involved, and I'm not sure why you would. You for sure didn't save any time there and probably added to the amount of cleanup needed.
    iMac C2D 2.16, iMac G5 2.1, flat panel imac 700, ibook G4 1G, Performa 6116CD, Mac OS X (10.6.4)
  • Barbara Brundage Level 7 Level 7 (22,075 points)
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    Jun 24, 2010 6:29 AM (in response to Chris Hayden)
    Barbara, I'm sure you save your publisher a lot of work by submitting files that require very little tweaking in the conversion and finishing steps, but self publishers do not have have your toolset.



    Nah, I'm not allowed to. I would much prefer to submit a laid out MS, for example, but I have no control over where production decides things should go and how large a particular illustration will be in the final layout.

    A novel is a very different thing, since it doesn't mandate these things.

    If I were going to write a novel in a web program, I would use wordpress (which is used fairly often for ebook production) instead of running it through dreamweaver, though. I was just commenting that I don't see the point of getting DW involved. I would have followed roughly your suggested workflow of WP app->Calibre->Sigil for a novel.

    And novelists don't have to care about things like how ibooks 1.1 broke font tag support for body copy, a very big problem for anyone doing any kind of technical book.
    iMac C2D 2.16, iMac G5 2.1, flat panel imac 700, ibook G4 1G, Performa 6116CD, Mac OS X (10.6.4)
  • Magnus Lewan Level 4 Level 4 (3,655 points)
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    Jun 24, 2010 10:54 AM (in response to Barbara Brundage)
    Barbara Brundage wrote:
    What we can do is use InDesign, and go straight from InDesign to ePub.


    Actually, that's not the end of it, by any means. There is a great deal that needs to be done to an epub after InDesign to fix output errors, and InDesign CS5 has some very severe bugs that have made it a poor choice till Adobe fixes some very big problems that are new with it.


    Barbara, do you happen to have some link or reference to the ID epub problems? I still have not tried it, and I would like it to work at first attempt if possible. If there is no use even trying, I won't. If there are known pitfalls to stay away from, it would be good to know beforehand.
    MacBook, 4GB, 1067 MHz, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, Mac OS X (10.6)
  • Barbara Brundage Level 7 Level 7 (22,075 points)
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    Jun 24, 2010 11:04 AM (in response to Magnus Lewan)
    Hi, Magnus, for ID CS4, the best thing is to watch this:

    http://instantindesign.com/index.php?view=414

    (although there some specific tweaks necessary for ibooks afterwards, too)

    EDIT If you aren't familiar with the basic ID process for setting up an ebook, it would be good to watch the first section, too, for a general overview

    For ID CS5 problems, see

    http://www.pigsgourdsandwikis.com/2010/06/indesign-cs5-creates-faulty-links-in.h tml

    and

    http://www.pigsgourdsandwikis.com/2010/06/update-on-indesign-cs5-links-bug.html




    And in ibooks 1.1 span tags for body font are no longer recognized.
    iMac C2D 2.16, iMac G5 2.1, flat panel imac 700, ibook G4 1G, Performa 6116CD, Mac OS X (10.6.4)
  • Magnus Lewan Level 4 Level 4 (3,655 points)
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    Jun 24, 2010 12:32 PM (in response to Barbara Brundage)
    Barbara Brundage wrote:
    Hi, Magnus, for ID CS4, the best thing is to watch this:

    http://instantindesign.com/index.php?view=414

    (although there some specific tweaks necessary for ibooks afterwards, too)

    EDIT If you aren't familiar with the basic ID process for setting up an ebook, it would be good to watch the first section, too, for a general overview

    For ID CS5 problems, see

    http://www.pigsgourdsandwikis.com/2010/06/indesign-cs5-creates-faulty-links-in.h tml

    and

    http://www.pigsgourdsandwikis.com/2010/06/update-on-indesign-cs5-links-bug.html


    And in ibooks 1.1 span tags for body font are no longer recognized.


    Thanks, Barbara, that was just the kind of information I was looking for!
    MacBook, 4GB, 1067 MHz, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, Mac OS X (10.6)
  • tasslehawf Calculating status...
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    Jun 25, 2010 10:33 AM (in response to Chris Hayden)
    I am having an ePub conundrum. I got my html file all cleaned up and into sigil. I tweaked and tweaked and finally got the file where I want it (I was using iBooks on my wife's iPhone 3GS to test).

    Yesterday I picked up an iPad (and an iPhone 4). I noticed that there are interesting formatting differences between the two versions of iBooks which I had assumed were both the same "version" for both pieces of hardware. On iBooks on the iphone, my title page justifies center and my book text justifies left. On the iPad, my title page seems to justify left (the images stay centered). The body text force-justifies (justified left and right). But now that I think of it, my title page is probably also force-justified. I'm assuming there is no way to override this. My thought was to maybe convert the title and copyright pages to images.
    Unibody Macbook Pro 2.53 9400/9600GT 512mb, Mac OS X (10.6.2), 6 gb RAM; 500 gb 7200 rpm HD
  • Barbara Brundage Level 7 Level 7 (22,075 points)
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    Jun 25, 2010 10:57 AM (in response to tasslehawf)
    My guess would be that the ipad is still using ibooks 1.0 while the iphone has 1.1. There are big differences between the two:

    http://www.pigsgourdsandwikis.com/2010/06/apple-makes-full-justification-worse-i n.html
    iMac C2D 2.16, iMac G5 2.1, flat panel imac 700, ibook G4 1G, Performa 6116CD, Mac OS X (10.6.4)
  • tasslehawf Level 1 Level 1 (0 points)
    Currently Being Moderated
    Jun 25, 2010 11:17 AM (in response to Barbara Brundage)
    So it was force-justifying (full justifying). Based on that blog, I was able to turn it off. I wonder if I should add an item into the preface about shutting it off.

    I can't remember if the iPhone iBooks was off by default (I think it was), or if I turned it off. What a weird discrepancy.

    Message was edited by: tasslehawf
    Unibody Macbook Pro 2.53 9400/9600GT 512mb, Mac OS X (10.6.2), 6 gb RAM; 500 gb 7200 rpm HD
  • AaronShep Calculating status...
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    Jun 26, 2010 11:50 PM (in response to Chris Hayden)
    It's ironic that one of Apple's greatest ePub tools is never mentioned. ePub is basically glorified XHTML 1.1, and you can save a Word or RTF file directly to that with TextEdit, as chosen in the preferences. After that, it should be simple to put it into Sigil or ecub and complete the package.

    Page layout software and word processors are simply not the right tools for making ePub books. But neither are Web design programs. What we need is a cross between them: A fully-developed word processor that uses XHTML as its native file format.
    Mac Mini, Mac OS X (10.5.8)
  • Tom Gewecke Level 9 Level 9 (70,900 points)
    Currently Being Moderated
    Jun 27, 2010 3:14 AM (in response to AaronShep)
    ePub is basically glorified XHTML 1.1, and you can save a Word or RTF file directly to that with TextEdit, as chosen in the preferences.


    What are you referring to exactly? The TextEdit .html option saves to html 4 strict and not xhtml.

    iWeb does export to xhtml 1 transitional.
    iMac Intel/2C2D, eMac G4/700, Mac OS X (10.6), 10.5, 10.4, 10.3, 9.2
  • Tom Gewecke Level 9 Level 9 (70,900 points)
    Currently Being Moderated
    Jun 27, 2010 3:50 AM (in response to AaronShep)
    PS Sorry, disregard my earlier post -- I now see the xhtml 1.0 option in TextEdit preferences.
    iMac Intel/2C2D, eMac G4/700, Mac OS X (10.6), 10.5, 10.4, 10.3, 9.2

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