Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Book-writing with Writer

save the original as docbook and use pandoc to convert to epub or epub3
and compare ;-)

On 8/15/13 7:20 AM, Joaquín Lameiro wrote:
> Hi again.
>
> OK. I've been through the eLAIX extension and found it works quite well. I have successfully 
> exported the first chapter of the Getting started with LO 4.0 guide (the one titled "Introducing 
> LibreOffice"). Main problems I had were:
>
> - eLAIX doesn't like custom styles for headings, I had to change the headings to the standard 
> values. I didn't gave them the properties the original document headings had (fonts, colour, 
> etc.) but it could be easily done. It's probably useless, though, because most readers would 
> ignore this settings. I think Virgil had problems with customized styles with the writer2epub 
> extension too.
>
> - The first item on the lists would display different from the rest, because two different custom 
> styles were used to create lists in this ODT: one for the first item and another for the rest of 
> the list. Don't know why, but just giving standard list style to all solved the problem.
>
> - For some reason I don't understand, but may be something regarding frames, eLAIX failed to 
> export the images embedded in the document. I solved this by extracting the "Pictures" folder 
> from the ODT file (I used 7-zip) and then eliminating each image from the original document and 
> inserting it again via the macro provided by eLAIX itself to insert pictures. Then, the images 
> were properly exported.
>
> - eLAIX creates its own index, so I eliminated the ODT index.
>
> - When opening the epub file in my reader, I found a weird thing about the "figure" fields. These 
> are auto-numeric fields used in the captions that follow images, like, let's say: "Figure 1, 
> LibreOffice starting window". The number here is introduced as a field (which is wise if one 
> doesn't want to keep on updating the captions manually). Well, my reader marked these as links 
> that linked to the beginning of the epub. This is not solved in my export. Rough solution, to 
> eliminate the field and work the captions manually.
>
> So, my experience with eLAIX is that it would do a pretty good job, but it would take some time 
> and effort. By the way, is there a method to make Writer select all the text with a specific 
> style so then one can change the style of similar headings at a time? It will reduce a lot of 
> work just to tell Write: "take all the text styled as OOoHeader1 and change it into Header 1."
>
> Now, there is another much easier way to export ODT into EPUB, specially if they are well built, 
> like is the case with the LO documentation: to pass them through the calibre ( 
> http://calibre-ebook.com/ ) converter. I checked this with the full Getting Started Guide. It 
> took to it quite an hour and a half in this laptop I'm using (which is not the most powerful one 
> in the world) and it gave a reasonably good EPUB. Just two main problems:
>
> - It changes page with each new chapter or sub-chapter, so the epub has more pages than the ODT, 
> and all the references in the original text (go to page x") make no sense, though the links will 
> still link to the good place. Same thing for the numbers of page in the index. Maybe this can be 
> fixed through calibre's configuration, I haven't tried that.
>
> - Some frames are rendered in a way that they don't fit in the reader's screen, so they remain 
> partially illegible.
>
> Both these problems could be solved by editing the ODT prior to the calibre exportation, 
> eliminating the numbers of page in the references and the index and making the frames smaller.
>
> Conclusion: eLAIX could do the job, is more flexible and works as a part of Writer. Calibre will 
> do a more quick and less accurate work, and is third-party software, not related to LibreOffice. 
> Still, if one just uses the exporting tools of eLAIX and calibre without any previous editing of 
> the ODT files, calibre will come with a much better epub than eLAIX.
>
> But all of this means nothing if you don't check the epubs by yourselves. How can I share them? 
> I'm not sure that attaching them to a mail to this list would be the appropriate way. I wait for 
> your comments.
>
> Regards,
> Joaquín



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