RE: [libreoffice-users] assembling an OTM into an EPUB.

Chris,

As I’m sure you’re aware, an LO Writer document – especially a Master Document --  is full of 
formatting that is not needed on a Kindle. For example, Kindle doesn’t care about page margins, so 
it’s not surprising that Calibre will dump page margins. I believe your results will also depend on 
whether you use style-based formatting rather than direct formatting. For example, I have found 
that Calibre retains my style-based paragraph indents, but eliminates tab-indented paragraph 
formatting. So, that may explain why your paragraph indents are being ignored; have you created 
them with tabs instead of a paragraph style?

As you’ve already discovered, I would avoid PDF, which is page oriented and not for free-flowing 
text.

I’ve enjoyed playing with Amazon’s Kindle Create, which will take an MS-Word source document 
(.doc/.docx) and convert it to a native Kindle format (which is *not* EPUB). You can download it 
from Amazon (just search for Kindle Create). From what I’ve seen, your source document must be a 
Word format file, but from there, you can do all sorts of formatting from within Kindle Create 
itself. You can also export as an EPUB, although that is not needed for a Kindle, which doesn’t use 
EPUB files.

If your ultimate destination is an e-Reader rather than a printed book, then I would try to 
create/edit the document without any thought to page formatting as none of it will be needed. I 
would even consider writing it in Markdown on a text editor and then using Calibre for my 
conversion. Calibre can easily convert a Markdown file into any of its supported e-Reader formats 
and you can clean it up with Calibre’s own editor. Of course, the difficulty comes when you need 
both, a printed book formatted for the page and a Kindle book with a free-flowing text. In such a 
case, the process required for each type of publication necessarily gets in the way of the other.

Good luck.

Virgil

From: Chris J.<mailto:rchristopherjohnson@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, October 16, 2023 1:41 PM
To: lo user help<mailto:users@global.libreoffice.org>
Cc: Chris Johnson<mailto:rchristopherjohnson@gmail.com>
Subject: [libreoffice-users] assembling an OTM into an EPUB.

Hi, all.


Subject says it. OTM -> EPUB so I can get it on a Kindle. Kindles can
handle PDF. However I'm told PDF is more graphics in nature and doesn't
necessarily work well with every Kindle as far as easy readability.


LO Writer Export claims to be able to do this. I get an error when I
try. Examination of this error indicates I need  5 or 6 other pieces to
pull this trick off and I can't find them all.


Enter Calibre which can translate a bunch of formats into another bunch
of formats.


Calibre dumps all my formatting it seems, no paragraph indents, no
margins, no centering.


I can assemble an OTM into an ODT and go from there to a DOCX for
submission. But I need to get it into an EPUB as well.


Any construction thoughts will be gratefully appreciated.


--

Chris Johnson    rchristopherjohnson@gmail.com
Ex SysAdmin, now, writer         /For all sad words of tongue or pen, the
saddest are these:
"It might have been".
/(John G. Whittier)

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