Epub

[Castle Al]

2 hours ago, Fixx said:

PDF to fixed layout probably works well, but PDF to reflowable epub is something that usually takes days of work to fix and requires some understanding of HTML.

Do you think it would be possible to create an ebook just like a website? That would be fine. At least, with HTML, tons of limitations could be clown away and allow beautifully constructed books.

[Wosven]

4 hours ago, Castle Al said:

Do you think it would be possible to create an ebook just like a website? That would be fine. At least, with HTML, tons of limitations could be clown away and allow beautifully constructed books.

Epub are made of HTML, but it's a limited and specific HTML.
And the problems for visualization are the same as for browsers, not all applications respect or can display the full specification, for different reasons.

  

On 1/21/2020 at 5:09 PM, Castle Al said:

./tmp/uploads/1565850427757_0000101295/inputFile/LaMalediction_v0.1.epub - File 'OPS/Images/Crapaud3piècesRecadr.png' could not be found.

A good habit is not to use special characters as accented ones or punctuation, etc. in file name. And avoiding spaces too if the files are used for Internet/browser/epub… web based usages.

[MauricioC]

On 4/23/2020 at 10:30 AM, Medical Officer Bones said:

Wait: you embarked on a full publishing project in Affinity Publisher and did not check whether epub export is possible before doing so? And you knew in advance epub export is required (Ingram Spark clearly states what is required for upload)? How could you NOT check for epub export?

Anyway, there is perhaps a solution.

1) use a conversion service such as magicepub.

Free to register and try the service. It will watermark images, but at least you can try the service before paying for the conversion (which is a couple of euros per conversion).

But this service merely converts either all pages to images, or embedded SVG files. I found the img + text conversion to be lacking, and it will need manual intervention.

So, since a service like magicepub needs to convert your complex layouts to either flattened images or SVG, why not do it yourself?

2) convert all your pages to SVG, and use an epub editor like Sigil to create a epub3 fixed layout file. Place each SVG on its own page. Save the epub.

Or if you want to publish on Amazon, export as PDF, and then use Kindle Creator to create the KPF file. Creator includes a TOC, and converts the entire thing to SVG as well.

The advantage of SVG is that text and vectors will be rendered at high quality. Converting the entire page to a JPG obviously results in a fuzzy looking text, and is probably something you want to avoid. PNG works much better, but may blow up the file to unacceptable file sizes.

There are many online PDF to epub convertors online, although the quality of conversion varies. I prefer to keep the conversion process under full manual control, so generally for complex fixed layouts I will use SVGs and place those in Sigil. 

 

I embarked on raising money for a charitable cause, rallying artists and contributing my own art and resources. No staff, 70+ contributors, no salary, just goodwill.

I am an idiot and all the responsibility rests on my shoulders, however...I took Affinity at it's word. I am an idiot for assuming that a company that touts it's software "Professional Desktop Publishing Software" would not have considered the EPUB market- a relatively new, untested, untried obscure format used by twelve people... oh c'mon, seriously, EPUBs are approximately 19% of the book sales market. 1 out of 5 books sold are e-books.

Setting that aside, I appreciate your suggestion of SIGIL, although it will require yet another few days of commitment to learning a new, free bit of software--time I would rather spend writing glowing rave reviews about Publisher.

I have approximately 8 pages (including TOC) that are text pages, everything else is simply TIFF files. Ingram has a +/- 100MB limit and restrictions on the pixels per page (resolution height x width in pixels) so I'll see if I can get acceptable results. The other suggestions are not applicable but appreciated.

It's a shame we are talking about SIGIL on an Affinity forum and not Affinity, but such is life when one believes the adverts. It won't happen again!

[Wosven]

12 hours ago, MauricioC said:

I am an idiot and all the responsibility rests on my shoulders, however...I took Affinity at it's word. I am an idiot for assuming that a company that touts it's software "Professional Desktop Publishing Software" would not have considered the EPUB market- a relatively new, untested, untried obscure format used by twelve people... oh c'mon, seriously, EPUBs are approximately 19% of the book sales market. 1 out of 5 books sold are e-books.

APub is only in its 1st version. I wouldn't expect a young app to export to epub, since bigger apps do a mess of it. It's better to use dedicated apps for this, or for complex layouts, PDF (those can display articles as reflowable text you can enlarge, etc. combining the option to view the "nice" composed pages and being readable on any device). With the confinement, we can see magazines and newspapers using those in France.

For following a time BlueGriffon's developper difficulties and the complexity of implementing the EPUB's specs, it doesn't seem wise to try implementing EPUB in an app that's not even finished.

Converting a layout book to epub can be tricky, since you'd better know about HTML to later use different CSS rules to obtain the same result as rules/options used in the layout app, and you'll want to apply/modify/remove those rules on different parts of the text or words, because there are a different set of problems and needs that occur.

For example, ID do a poor job of exporting to epub, but if you export well formatted text (enough paragraph and character styles), and export to HTML (not epub), you'll have a better result, and you'll need less work on the HTML produced to obtain usable code. And there are a lot of "things" you can't or shouldn't do on epub, it's better to keep it a different work, in a different app, using the layout app to get the final text and perhaps base HTML if possible.
For now, perhaps a good export to RTF or DOC(X) would be more usefull.

 

Depending of your book, there's certainly best suited solutions to find, and I hope you'll find one soon.

[Castle Al]

On 4/24/2020 at 5:10 PM, Wosven said:

  A good habit is not to use special characters as accented ones or punctuation, etc. in file name. And avoiding spaces too if the files are used for Internet/browser/epub… web based usages.

 

Yessss! Of course: I've overseen the "è" in the file name (damned auto-corrector!).
Thank You!