Ebook Formatting Tutorial

[Amalthia]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

Hi Amalthia,

1. Created my own MSWord ebook template containing
   - a limited number of styles set up to my taste
   - a large number of macros which I can use as required
   
2. Created my own standard ebook CSS file which closely matches the ebook template styles - it doesn't have to be exact.
   
3. When I want to clean up a file (RTF, HTML, DOC, TXT), I import the source into my ebook template and apply the styles strictly using the macros. Then I save as Web-Filtered HTML.
   
4. Finally, I edit the HTML as a text file (using a macro) and:-
   - remove everything between (and including) the <style>...</style> tags
   - replace with a single line linking to a copy of my standard ebook CSS file

Result - simple, clean, readable HTML to import to Calibre.

Anyway, enough from me. I could discuss this stuff for hours but I don't suppose many people would be interested.

P.S. By the way, I use Notepad++ for text editing HTML files because of its automatic colour-coding. It makes it so much easier to find matching start/end tags.

I use Notepad ++ for when I want to find and replace all across multiple documents at once. But yes the color coding is rather nice. Though at this point with Wordpad it's just habit for me to use and I've been using it for so long switching to something else hasn't been easy.

I mostly just use Wordpad to open the html so I can copy and paste the html into Word (run my macros) and then recopy it back into Wordpad and save.

WordPerfect Plain HTML has so far given me the least amount of work when it comes to cleaning up the HTML. I use stylesheet elements in the Look and Feel section css override box.

The reason I only added my method of conversion and cleaning up the docs is that because I thought it would be more confusing to add all the other ways people can clean up their HTML. The goal was to give the people one way and then from there they can start exploring other options. The tutorial is actually geared towards newbies to formatting and I also wanted to stick with programs they should have on their computer like Wordpad. I know for me when I first saw Notepad ++ it was a bit overwhelming with all the options at the top.

I also tried the MS Word save as html, filtered and it was impossible to read through and I dreaded making macros to try and clean that up. For many years I was using Word 97 to save as HTML. I upgraded to Word Perfect because I heard from someone that it does save as html in plain html. (most of the times)

I do think for people who are not as familiar with HTML it's easier to read plain html vs the code MS Word throws in.

Having said all that if you're willing to create an html page with screencaps outlining all your steps I'd be willing to add it to the tutorial.

I think as long as we point out there are multiple ways to clean up the HTML depending on what program your using and specify the programs then it should work. I do think more people have MS Word than Word Perfect so most will probably try the save as html, filtered option.

The reason I didn't cover it myself is because I never use that method, I don't have any macros set up for it, and I wasn't about to add stuff to a tutorial in which I haven't tested and used first.

[Amalthia]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

"Heading 2" style is a paragraph-style not a character-style so it should only be applied to a whole paragraph not a selection of words. I think styling info may be stored in the end-of-paragraph character for paragraph-styles.

I'm sure you have come across Word's vicious habit of losing all your carefully prepared styling when you start to delete what you think are redundant empty paragraphs.

Yes! Word is so annoying sometimes!

I'll look for the character styling not paragraph and see if I can make it work. I may have to re-word my sentence because I bet I'm not the only one that's applied a paragraph style and then wonder why it didn't work.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by Amalthia

I do think for people who are not as familiar with HTML it's easier to read plain html vs the code MS Word throws in.

Having said all that if you're willing to create an html page with screencaps outlining all your steps I'd be willing to add it to the tutorial.

As I said in my original post, I don't think my methods are suitable for beginners. I merely wanted to say what is possible if one is prepared to invest time and effort.

Most people just want to do a quick-and-dirty so they can start reading ASAP - and there's nothing wrong with that. A year ago I thought I was one of those people myself. It's just that once I started "cleaning" ebook text using macros I found it rather addictive. I hate repetitive tasks. I'm also retired so I can afford to spend time learning/developing new stuff. It's the one thing I miss about being gainfully employed.

I will leave documentation to you I did too much of it when I had a real job to want to take it up as a hobby!

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by Amalthia

I'll look for the character styling not paragraph and see if I can make it work. I may have to re-word my sentence because I bet I'm not the only one that's applied a paragraph style and then wonder why it didn't work.

I hope I didn't confuse you. Applying the "Heading 2" paragraph-style is still the correct thing to do. It's just that you should make sure the chapter heading is in a paragraph of its own before applying it.

Also, do you know that if you don't like the way the "Heading 2" style looks you'll get much neater HTML if you modify the style itself, once, than you'll get if you start manually adding styling (font face, size, centre etc) to each chapter heading individually. The former adds the style detail once to the h2 CSS between the <style>...</style> tags. The latter adds it to every <h2> element in the HTML body.

[Amalthia]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

I hope I didn't confuse you. Applying the "Heading 2" paragraph-style is still the correct thing to do. It's just that you should make sure the chapter heading is in a paragraph of its own before applying it.

Okay this makes more sense. I think what happens is if you have ^l instead of ^p the heading 2 doesn't work quite right.

Also, do you know that if you don't like the way the "Heading 2" style looks you'll get much neater HTML if you modify the style itself, once, than you'll get if you start manually adding styling (font face, size, centre etc) to each chapter heading individually. The former adds the style detail once to the h2 CSS between the <style>...</style> tags. The latter adds it to every <h2> element in the HTML body.

Yes I did know about this but for the most part I've been happy with using the css override in Calibre to apply my Heading 2 and Heading 3 styles. Mostly it's just centered and bold.

[Amalthia]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

Most people just want to do a quick-and-dirty so they can start reading ASAP - and there's nothing wrong with that. A year ago I thought I was one of those people myself. It's just that once I started "cleaning" ebook text using macros I found it rather addictive. I hate repetitive tasks. I'm also retired so I can afford to spend time learning/developing new stuff. It's the one thing I miss about being gainfully employed.

I also used to just use RTF and drop it on my device but then I found that I liked how the stories looked in LRF and started formatting them. It's hard going back to RTF or not having chapter headers start on their own page like what I had in my earlier versions. Converting documents isn't hard what's hard is getting a consistent style across all the documents that are formatted.

I end up doing a lot of formatting for a fan fiction archive so I try to keep it plain, simple, and consistent.

Macros are truly a lifesaver. I'm thinking I may want to at some point expand upon that in the tutorial because truly they can save so much time.

But yeah, my goal for the tutorial was to make it as easy as possible with fewer steps towards getting a decent ebook. I don't even think my method is all that easy because I'm opening about three different programs and have settings all over the place and there are weird exceptions that only apply to epub.

I've learned a lot since I started formatting.