PG has
no deadlines--take all the time you need. I'm working through a book now
that has all the nasties--an index (so needs page numbers preserved), variant
page headers (being converted to sidenotes), umpteen footnotes (100+ per
chapter), along with vari-sized fragments of italicized Latin (doesn't OCR all
that well, so needs word for word checks) and Greek (being
transliterated). It's so much of a grind that I can stand doing a
chapter only every couple of weeks, with easier stuff in
between.
Can't
help you with Bowerbird. To borrow a phrase, "you've made your bed,
now..." <g>
He was
right about one thing, though--reformatting your working file as you go was
wrong. There's lots of text formatting software out there that can
reformat a raw file to a formatted one, with the desired maximum line
length. Just Google "text formatter" or similar. When you're
finished editing/proofing/correcting, your working file should be sacred, with
absolutely nothing done to it except for any minor corrections you may encounter
afterwards. All other files (formatted text, HTML, etc.) should be
generated from it.
Al
Al,
The book has a special meaning to me. Most of the books I've
completed would be classed as too difficult for a beginner. It just
means it takes longer. I do intend to finish it, and it doesn't have to
be finished this week or this month. I have a pretty good handle on
putting in accents, doing ASCII art family trees, etc.
My own preference would be to remove page numbers. The book has no
index, and I want this to work well on a Kindle or a Nook (I own both).
My real question is what Bowerbird wants me to do next and with what.
Every time I think I understand it seems to change. Bowerbird
seemed to be offering an approach that with one lightly marked up source
document could produce several different output formats. I thought that
if he could do that with THIS book he could make it work anywhere and that
would prove his point.
A monolithic text file has advantages. I have to insert accents on
a whole bunch of Sanskrit names. If I can do as much of that as possible
with global search and replace that's a benefit.
James Simmons
On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 4:58 PM, Al Haines
<ajhaines@shaw.ca>
wrote:
James - PG has no preference
pro/con on page numbers in TOCs or elsewhere.
DP more or less routinely includes
them. Personally, I drop all page numbers unless the book has an index
and/or other internal references, such footnotes that refer to other
pages or a TOC that's sufficiently complex as to serve as an near
index.
As for your choice of
book, there's nothing wrong with the book itself, but from what
I've read here the past few weeks, I think you've taken on a project that's
more than your current skills/experience will let you handle easily.
Personally, I never have and never will do an ebook project by starting from
a single, monolithic text file. Far too
unwieldy.
Al
Bowerbird,
I notice a couple of things. First, you moved all the front
matter like title page, TOC, preface, etc. to the back of the book.
The TOC still has page numbers, and the lines in the TOC link to
those pages, not the actual chapter headings.
Second, you have put <pre> tags around some content that should
be just blockquoted text. The family trees should be pre-formatted,
but much of what you made pre-formatted text doesn't really need to
be.
Third, I notice italicized words also have underscores before and
after.
Fourth, I noticed that this book is incredibly long and I was crazy
to work on it.
I prefer having the contents of the book be in the same order as the
original, and I think PG prefers TOCs with no page numbers. I'm not
really sure what I'm supposed to do with this HTML. Is this the
output of a light markup file you will give me? Is there some sort
of web interface coming for working on this? I could use some
clarification.
Thanks,
James Simmons
On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 2:10 PM,
<Bowerbird@aol.com> wrote:
james said:
> Bowerbird has been suggesting using
light markup in text files
> so we can derive other
formats automatically and reliably.
> He will
doubtless have something to say on the subject.
thanks, but
no thanks; i've stepped off that merry-go-round.
if hunter wants
to know how he could get better results from
marcello's converters,
hunter should discuss it with marcello.
i'm more interested in
having discussions with people who
want to get better results from
_my_ conversion routines...
so, james, what do you think of this
.html file of your book?
> http://zenmagiclove.com/bhaga/bhaga-preview1.html
i
left the pagebreaks in for your convenience. you'll notice
i've
colorized the tables, family trees, and some other stuff.
all the
styling is inline, but it's a tightly-constricted subset.
take a
look at that formatting, comparing it to the p-book,
and let me know
where i've gotten any wrong, so i can fix it.
once that's right,
we can take a look at the .mobi and .epub.
(those formats are
based on the .html, of course, but i also
generate different x/html
files for the two different targets.
i'll also break the targets down
to even more specific levels,
such as .epubs specialized for the
nook, adobe, or ibooks...
there's also a slew of customization
options for end-users,
including stuff like paragraph indentation,
curlyquotes, etc.)
once you approve, the book is ready to be
turned back to you.
thank you for being so patient while it was under
my control...
-bowerbird
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