Book-writing with Writer

users
#61

Hi all !

Virgil, How did you try to install the "writer2epub" ? Did you use the
wizzard that have LO or AOO ?

Regards,

Jorge Rodríguez

#62

That was an ambitious test! Perhaps LaTeX might be better: convert to
(x)html using tex4ht and then compile the epub. Personally, would edit
the xml using a text editor and compile the epub via the command
terminal; compilation is surprisingly easy.

#63

Hi :slight_smile:
That sounds like a nightmare!  You made it look like a series of stepping stones rather than the single hop we were hoping for.

However, when i look again you are really talking about just 1 format in the middle?  Then the extra editing is just an optional finesse that Virgil could probably dodge for the test-run?

The command-line bit also sounds a bit scary but if you could give a command that Virgil could try out by using copy&paste then that might be "do-able"
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#64

Hi.

Has anybody tried to do the exporting with eLAIX? It's in the official LO extensions repository, and I think it works quite well:
http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center/elaix

I can give it a try, if someone gives me the link to a specific ODT document.
Regards,
Joaquín

#65

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications

#66

I installed it through LO's extension manager.

I also found that I had to change the name of the extension file from a "zip" file to an "oxt" file. I just did that through Windows Explorer. Even though LO's extension manager says it recognizes ZIP files, it installed better with an OXT extension. I don't know why.

Now that I think about it, maybe that was the key variable rather than uninstalling AOO. Looks like I changed too many variables to be able to say for certain *which* change made the whole thing work. And, I did it all so quickly that I cannot now recall the order of all my changes.

Virgil

#67

I was just playing around. I'm not so motivated as to do all of what you're suggesting.

I've had a Kindle now for a couple years, and I've been fascinated with trying different ways of creating/converting documents for its use. The basic Kindle (as opposed to the Fire), is just a text reader. While it will display graphics, it's not very elegant. I've found that books with anything more than a stream of text create issues for the Kindle.

I have to wonder if the LO user guides are simply too complex for elegant translation to e-reader format.

Virgil

#68

"e-letter":

...maybe epub for electronic archives.

EPUB is an Apple/Adobe proprietary format not supported beyond iF... devices, which is missing critical features needed for books.
It's not an option.

#69

Hi  :slight_smile:
Yes, it was a good trial run.  I was wondering how much further you would have time for or if anyone else would be keen to "take the batton" and see if they could take it further.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#70

http://idpf.org/epub

#71

Hi :slight_smile:
Does that mean it is an ISO standard?  It's a bit unclear who international Digital Publishing Forum are.  Are they widely known and accepted or are they just a branch of Adobe or Apple or someone? 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#72

It is an ISO standard (or at least in the way to be): http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=53255

Also, there's some useful information on Wikipedia. I didn't went to it thoroughly, though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB

Maybe Urmas confused EPUB with the Digital Rights Management system (DRM) which is basically proprietary anticopy software, and is supported by EPUB (as a way to avoid piracy and, I guess, to control the market of books). But EPUB is open source, standardized and is the format used by most e-readers (by all, I will say, with the exception of Kindle, which of course has a proprietary file format). And there's no need to use DMR on it.

#73

Hi :slight_smile:
Perhaps :)  I think there are a lot of us who still haven't checked out these fancy new gizmos.  I'm still calling LiveUsb a LiveCd and then having to correct myself. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#74

"Joaquín Lameiro":

Please name me any 3rd-party reader which supports HTML5 and CSS3 sufficiently enough to provide all the features one can expect from a book.
That so-called standard is too expensive for independent implementation and cannot guarantee acceptable results.

#75

The strange thing was I didn’t extract the oxt from the zip. I simply renamed the zip to an oxt. There was no oxt file inside the zip.

Virgil

#76

You didn't need to. An .oxt file, like other ODF formats, is itself a zip archive. What has happened is that the process of downloading the file has incorrectly modified its .odt extension to .zip - which is not unusual, in fact. (Don't ask me why or in what circumstances this occurs, but it does: it appears to be a quirk of Internet Explorer.) In such cases, you need merely to rename the file back to have its correct original extension - as you did.

Brian Barker

#77

No idea. It's true that epub is quite limited when it comes to style, but it is mostly used for electronic ink readers, which, by now, are black and white small devices designed to read books, in the classic meaning of the word: that is, text with some minimal format. Maybe you're right when you say that is not good enough, but it serves to a very specific purpose. What I fear is that it may not be appropriate for complex structured documents, like manuals, text-books, etc. that usually are built with a lot of frames.

Then again, I'm going to try to export one of the LibO manuals and see what happens.
Regards,
Joaquín

#78

Nice reply Brian and spot on. And correct it is a quirk of IE to see a file with a compressed content, and assume it's a zip. And again I continue my head scratching until I'm bald, as to why people still want to use IE with it's archaic code, and ongoing quirks and security flaws.

This when there are superior and up to date Internet browsers out there.

Andrew Brown

#79

trie the Elaix extension

#80

Joaquin wrote:

Then again, I'm going to try to export one of the LibO manuals and see what happens.

Good luck. I just tried it and, as you allude, the manuals have much too complex formatting for my Kindle. The Writer2epub extension wouldn't even produce an epub file from the two manuals I tried. I don't blame the extension as I was simply trying to make it do something it was never intended to do.

For an e-reader, keep the text simple, with a stream of words and letters and minimal formatting.

Virgil