once again, jim demonstrates for us that he
_will_ make a point, if he thinks he has one.
but it usually ends up that he really didn't...

jim said:
>   compare his ZML generated outputs
>   at his site z-m-l.com to the
>   HTML, EPUB, and/or MOBI files
>   for the same source documents
>   at the site gutenberg.org

first, jim forgot to give the exact u.r.l.:
>   http://www.z-m-l.com/go/vl3.pl

i'm quite confident i can make my output
conform to the files found at p.g. today,
if jim says that's how he wants 'em to look.

the trouble is, jim won't take a firm stand...
it's a lot easier for him to make vague claims,
call things "ugly", and hope you won't look...

besides, i thought he was always complaining
about the .epub and .mobi files created by p.g.?
now he's holding them up as some standard,
against which mine should be compared?  ok.

at any rate, if anyone _does_ care to look at
those .html files i generated at that website,
and has feedback for me, i'd love to hear it...

i did that converter years ago -- in perl!, and
we all know i'm in perl elementary school --
so it might be much different today, but i'd
be surprised if the converter failed to work
in a way, even today, that gave bad output...

ok, i looked, and i put that up february, 2007.

the converter i'm using _today_ is, in fact, very
much different from the one up on my website,
as the current one is programmed in realbasic,
which is my primary programming environment.
(my "real" converter has always been in realbasic;
i just did the perl to put something on the net.)

but jim doesn't want you to look at the work
that i'm producing today.  instead, he wants you
to look at the work i was making 4 years back...

or, even better, to look at apple and best buy and...

***

anyway, jim, put yourself to some good use, ok?

tell the people here just exactly what they need
to create, in the way of additional files, if they
want to turn an .html file into .mobi and .epub.

ok, i'll tell them: an .opf file and an .ncx file...

but jim, _you_ can give us some _examples_ of
those two files, which can serve as _templates_.

you can use the .html we created for "the jungle";
it's pretty simple, a dedication and 31 chapters...

if you don't want to create the files yourself,
you can point us to good examples on the net.

i will confirm if your examples are good ones...

(because i finally puzzled it out, after having
failed to find complete examples on the web...
so if you were expecting that you could do that,
because i just told you that i would settle for it,
you might want to think again.  or perhaps you
are just better at finding such stuff on the web.)

***

part of the reason for this exercise, so you know,
is that when you use the .epub to .mobi converter
which is referenced in the subject of this thread,
you probably _won't_ get a perfect .mobi out of it,
because kindle expects particular stuff in a .mobi,
and many .epubs just don't have that stuff in them.

for instance, .epubs from feedbooks.com do not...
you don't get a table of contents in the conversion.

.epubs from p.g. are not consistent in this regard.
(except that none of 'em give .mobi a cover-page.)

for instance, from "wings of a dove", which jim did,
you get no table of contents, and a messed-up .ncx,
as jim did "tag abuse" of headers on the title-page:
>   http://z-m-l.com/go/jjngl/doves-mobi-ncx.png

but the .epub for "the jungle" converts to a .mobi
which has a table of contents _and_ the .ncx too...
the only problem is that the formatting is a bit off,
once again due to some tag abuse on front-matter:
>   http://z-m-l.com/go/jjngl/thejungle-mobi-01.png
>   http://z-m-l.com/go/jjngl/thejungle-mobi-02.png
>   http://z-m-l.com/go/jjngl/thejungle-mobi-03.png

another .epub that i converted over to .mobi was
the one generated by the .tei done by jon noring,
a few years back, for the book "my antonia", which
had a fairly good table of contents and an .ncx too,
an .ncx which is quite excellent, in that it contains
nested elements (chapters within "books"), which is
a new development for .ncx, which used to be "flat".
there was a problem, though, in that page-numbers
were inserted into the text, in an obtrusive manner:
>   http://z-m-l.com/go/jjngl/antonia-page7.png

most of these things _do_ work in the "native" .mobi
being generated by p.g. (and probably feedbooks too),
so i'd say you're better off using that than trying to
"leverage" the .epub file by creating .mobi out of it.

and yes, if you're like most of us normal human beings,
all of this nonsense about "this works here, under such
circumstances, but not there, under those conditions"
is tremendously confusing. baffling, and unnecessary.

heck, it's enough to make you throw up your hands and
give up on electronic-books altogether, which is precisely
what the corporate publishing industry wants you to do,
which is why they have issued all this unclarity upon us...

so the real question is whether you are _wise_enough_
to throw it all off and adopt something much smarter...

in the meantime, jim, if you could report back to me
with those template files _sooner_ rather than _later_,
that'd be great.  thanks a bunch.  have a nice weekend.

-bowerbird