epub validation question

[VelvetElvis]

A friend wrote a book using Scrivener, and sent it to me to check out.

First thing I do is add it to Calibre and use the "Edit Book" function to look for errors and issues. It found a lot of issues, e.g. unexpected empty blocks, blockquotes in the wrong order, duplicate selectors, 166 unused classes, unused CSS styles, etc., yet he had no problems shown in Scrivener.

I uploaded it to an .epub validator site, and it found only one obscure issue.

My question is why can Calibre find all these issues that authoring tools and validator sites miss?

[kovidgoyal]

Why wouldnt it? It has its own check book tool it doesnt rely on epub validation tools, which are largely useless anyway, being simple minded XHTML DTD compliance checkers.

[VelvetElvis]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Why wouldnt it? It has its own check book tool it doesnt rely on epub validation tools, which are largely useless anyway, being simple minded XHTML DTD compliance checkers.

Thank you, Kovid.

Begs the question... Why don't published authors check for all these other issues? I find, almost without fail, that every book by Patterson, Grisham, et al, generate a pile of problems, which I fix after adding to Calibre. I've had books that won't open (CoolReader is especially finicky) until I've fixed them via the Edit Book function.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by VelvetElvis

Thank you, Kovid.

Begs the question... Why don't published authors check for all these other issues? I find, almost without fail, that every book by Patterson, Grisham, et al, generate a pile of problems, which I fix after adding to Calibre. I've had books that won't open (CoolReader is especially finicky) until I've fixed them via the Edit Book function.

CoolReader is garbage. That's why the problems with it.

[VelvetElvis]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

CoolReader is garbage. That's why the problems with it.

Wow, it's hard to argue with such a rational assessment.

FWIW, I haven't used CoolReader in probably 8 years. I can't talk the wife out of moving to a better solution, however.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by VelvetElvis

Wow, it's hard to argue with such a rational assessment.

FWIW, I haven't used CoolReader in probably 8 years. I can't talk the wife out of moving to a better solution, however.

Garbage is when the program does not respect the CSS well enough and CoolReader does not respect the CSS well enough.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by VelvetElvis

A friend wrote a book using Scrivener, and sent it to me to check out.

First thing I do is add it to Calibre and use the

Scrivener is not a good tool.

Big publishers might rent InDesign, which is a DTP program for paper/fixed/PDF layout and produces terrible epub and Kindle ebooks.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Scrivener is not a good tool.

Big publishers might rent InDesign, which is a DTP program for paper/fixed/PDF layout and produces terrible epub and Kindle ebooks.

Big publishers either have staff that have no idea how to make a well formatted/well coded eBook or they fob it off to India where the same mess happens.

[VelvetElvis]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Scrivener is not a good tool.

He's finding that out.

Can I ask your opinion of Sigii?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by VelvetElvis

He's finding that out.

Can I ask your opinion of Sigii?

I do like calibre's validator in conjunction with epubcheck in the editor. They both flags things the other does not.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by VelvetElvis

He's finding that out.

Can I ask your opinion of Sigii?

There is a difference between Content Creation and Editing (code touch up).

Both are (code) Editors. There are Authors that use them, but they are experienced wranglers .

PageEdit is more of a WYSIWYG creation tool (I don't use, because I am not a content creator)

[DNSB]

Personally my vote if for creating the original document in Word/LO Writer using styles and then importing the file into Sigil or calibre. Neither Sigil or calibre ebook editor are really designed for writing but both work well for cleaning up an existing document.

PageEdit is a lot better than Sigil's old BookView WYSIWYG editor in terms of not creating garbage code but not something I would want to use to create a book.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by VelvetElvis

He's finding that out.

Can I ask your opinion of Sigii?

Sigil and Calibre are good for turning content edited in LO Writer or MS Word, and possibly in some cases something using LaTex, into epub.

Sigil for more complex things like text books.

Calibre can pretty much automatically create a perfect epub novel from LO Writer (edit odt and an extra Save As in docx) or MS Word (2007 or later). Import docx and styles map 1:1 automatically to CSS.
You might need to edit the CSS of height / width of images.
You might spend less than a minute (any size novel) fixing non-standard headings with one operation.

If the Contents, headings, footnotes and styles are all done properly in MS Word / LO Writer, then the epub will have zero errors and work fine. Create all other formats from epub2.

A speciallist epub3 will need more work in Sigil, but the fancier it is the fewer ereaders and apps will run it.

PDF is best done by edit a copy of the wordprocessor source for epub after complete proofing. Add page styles, page numbers, headers, footers etc (a docx for epub has none of those). Then direct export of PDF. The LO Writer has been doing this as well as DTP or Indesign for regular novels and similar for ten years. Specialist DTP or InDesign etc only needed for very complex materials, magazines and newspapers and today they are better done with custom content management systems.

Scrivener does nothing for authors that free tools don't do better. InDesign and other DTP are for specialist paper publishing, madness for ebooks.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Personally my vote if for creating the original document in Word/LO Writer using styles and then importing the file into Sigil or calibre. Neither Sigil or calibre ebook editor are really designed for writing but both work well for cleaning up an existing document.

Yes.
And Sigil is less automated (you create style to CSS maps) but more powerful and flexible. Actual regular novels without eye candy take about 5 to 10 minutes to convert, check and clean up with Calibre.
We converted about 20 MSS (about 50 k to 130 k words) from LO Writer with extra docx Save As, with Calibre in the last month. Most of the time was actually reading. Zero errors on Calibre Check and Epub Check in the Calibre Editor. Save To Disk. Zero complaints on upload to Amazon, Smashwords (all passed premium to Apple, Kobo, Barnes & Nobel etc) and Google Playbooks.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Big publishers either have staff that have no idea how to make a well formatted/well coded eBook or they fob it off to India where the same mess happens.

I wonder is Vellum really bad or are they just clueless at using it?