[	Tags	|	ebooks:all, ebooks:content-creation, ebooks:sample-content, techytalk:ebooks	]
[	Current Mood	|	accomplished	]

Yes, I know I started ficpdfs and let it languish. But that doesn’t necessarily mean things are always going to stay that way…I think :P

Today, though, I went out on a limb and decided to try cobbling a tiny ebook together out of one of my shorter, quasi-unfinished fics. I threw the united power of Textmate, Parallels, Mobipocket Creator, Markdown, CSS and the really rather helpful Mobipocket content generation guide at one short story, and these are the results:

• Mobipocket (i.e., un-DRMed .prc file) download, first pass of editing. Here via Box.net.

  • The good: You don’t know how tasty this looks on my Kindle, despite a few missed typos and that sort of thing :D.
  • The bad: This is put together using a couple html files I made myself, for all intents and purposes. And I still missed niggling errors— I don’t want to imagine how time consuming it will be to error-check a longer source text.
    Also, I have to sort out the table of contents and the cover image so they look okay on my Kindle. The TOC chapter/part summaries need to be separated from the chapter links so that they’re easier to click when browsing with a device. And, I dunno, my image looks okay, but could look better.

• HTML “download”, after second pass of editing. Here at my website for easy access.

  • The good: Satisfying to make everything look pretty. Primitive but working (and prettyish) nav bars, yay.
  • The bad: Again, thinking of sorting out longer works this way makes me shudder. I’m definitely going to do splits into shorter sections if possible— it’s just easier to work with that way, as Textmate, my text editor, tends to start choking when you feed it anything really long. And besides, you miss stuff editing even a short file.

Check both formats out (if possible, for the .prc) and let me know what you think.

[	Tags	|	ebooks:all, updates:general	]
[	Current Mood	|	amused	]

It is ITEMISED LIST TIME, folks.

1. ficpdfs may be named drily, but it is tarted up all in green, and possesses a short blurb in its info. Soon to come: the brief first post and the first FAQ. Oh, and eventually my first attempt at conversion, which will be posted here, then (probably) tweaked based on any suggestions I get, then posted at ficpdfs. That won’t be the process for all the fics I convert, only for the first one.

2. The Kindle I ordered shipped yesterday!! I will probably be giggling over that until it gets here g.

3. Discs 2 and 3 of season 4 of The Wire have come in. I am SO LOVING IT still.

4. I have had Travails with Textmate while testing its html —> markdown. There might eventually be a post on the whole process of converting fics to pdfs with or without a powerful, sexy but troubled text editor on your side. Or at least on preparing fics for sane, easy conversion with whatever resources you have.

5. I think I want to learn applescript. Knowing a bit about bash and python scripting saved me hours of confusion when I was trying to get things set up, and I think learning how to applescript programs into doing my bidding would be a Good Thing.

6. I got an invite to Pownce yesterday. Then I signed up— jesus their signup process is intrusive! Real name, birthday and zip code? You know I faked some of that. I can’t believe they think anyone would trust them with important info just for access to some weird mashup of Twitter and Yousendit. I haven’t used it for anything yet, and if anyone wants invites, I’ve got six, so…*shrugs*

7. Have changed layout! I love this incarnation of Bloggish to death :D

[	Tags	|	ebooks:all, ebooks:content-creation, techytalk:ebooks	]
[	Current Mood	|	accomplished	]

Now, let me preface all this with something that should be in giant text: I’ve never done this before. What I’m bringing to this table as far as skill goes is a miraculously relevant handful of applications that I own, a good working knowledge of CSS and HTML, and steely determination.

Yesterday, I went on a PDF learning rampage of sorts. I tried to find out how to do specific things, and tried to discover why Adobe 8 Pro was bitching me out and was so eye-bogglingly complex to figure out. In backwards order, I learned about how Adobe 8 will do accessibility, then learned where on earth in the document that you’d go about adding accessibility features like tagging and whatnot, then mistakenly tried to use the tools to test out what I’d found, then found Acrobat Distiller, then searched for the mythic Rich Content PDF settings file (missing from the extras folder on my Adobe DVD shakes fist), then realised I could create my own settings file…if I knew what to put in it.

*Sighs* This will be more complicated than I was anticipating. Before, I planned to just print to PDF from my browser with the final edited html file in my sights. Now, I see I’m going to have to pipe the files through Word and/or Scrivener and edit everything into submission. So my workflow will look something like:

1. Get hold of the html file(s) for the fic in question.
2. Pipe the file into Scrivener somehow— not too clear yet on how I will do this. I’m considering two ways. I can
   • convert the html files into Markdown, then import them into Scrivener as text files, or
   • save the html files into rtf files with TextEdit, then import those files into Scrivener.
3. Edit the file(s) in Scrivener (if needed). I’m seriously considering editing them as Markdown-formatted text in Textmate, because then I could write valid Markdown, get that to Scrivener and then export as solid RTF, and only end up sticking Scrivener with higher-level design decisions and structuring and all that jazz. I do not envision myself having the time or inclination to go through each fic nitpicking on italics and stuff like that— I would really like fairly uniform output that I can tweak a little in Word as it suits me.
4. Export the file(s) from Scrivener, preferably into .rtf.
5. Go over the file(s) in Word. Add numbering, or header/footer, etc.
6. Either
   • save the finished word file as postscript using the print dialog, or
   • save the finished file as a .doc, period
7. Use Distiller to convert the postscript or .doc file into a pdf
8. Torture the pdf in Acrobat Pro until it capitulates.

Then I’ll upload, link, pimp, etc etc.

For my sanity, I think I’m going to stick to the goal of creating a well-formatted, tagged, easy-to-read, words-only pdf at first. I hate and have always hated and will always hate working with Word to put pictures in anything. Word sucks for adding pics to anything, and since I don’t have Adobe InDesign or any other fancy publishing program on hand (and also don’t feel much like working with one anyway), AND don’t have a word processor that sanely handles images, I’m just going to leave them alone. A good looking cover page and back page and well-done insides should be just fine.

ETA: Markdown editing it is. After wrestling with the Textmate bundle editor, I now have a way to quickly and easily convert html fic files to text files that I can easily edit. sighs in relief

[	Tags	|	ebooks:all, ebooks:content-creation, techytalk:ebooks, updates:general	]
[	Current Mood	|	amused	]

I think I said a while ago that I was doing a general search-and-download of every fic I could find that I know I’ll be craving to read when my Kindle finally materialises. Both parts of my post today are born of that aim.

1. SNARRY SEARCH: snakeling to the rescue! This fic is "Through a Glass Darkly", by lexin.
I’m looking for an AU where
a) Voldemort won, and the Death Eaters are now running the Ministry and Hogwarts and everything
b) There is an Eton-type fagging system in place at Hogwarts
c) Harry is still alive (though Lily is dead, and James is as well, I think)
d) Harry and Snape get together.
It’s a delicious read, and good god I cannot find it for the LIFE OF ME on Walking The Plank, despite the fact that I strongly remember it being on that site. Please help?

2. FICS -> PDFS: After shivering all over at the thought of the Kindle when it first came out, I realised I’d have to put stuff on it. And there is only so much available for purchase that will find its way onto my as-yet-absent Kindle, so eventually I thought of creating PDFs out of my fave novel- and novella-length fics. And I say PDFs here because I’m on a mac, and am not about to bother with Parallels to load Mobipocket Creator (which I also hear isn’t a pleasant experience to use for heavy-duty book putting-togethering), especially not when I have the good fortune to have Acrobat Pro available to me.

Currently, my proposed workflow is as such: a) Ask authors/artists/whoever for permission if I can get hold of them
b) Download html files for the fic in question, including images where possible
c) Attack html files with the power of Textmate, and get them semantic and xhtmlized and so on
d) Create one or two CSS stylesheets for all the fics
e) Obsessively tweak stylesheets until the fics display really well
f) Convert fic html files + stylesheets to PDF using (hopefully) Prince XML, OR just print them to PDF using the Acrobat printer thingy or Preview’s built in machismo
g) Open PDFs in Acrobat Pro and tag them so that they will reflow, and make damn sure the links and whatnot work
h) …
i) PROFIT
h) Send finished product to authors/artists AND upload files to a forgiving file upload site
i) Create masterlist either here on IJ or in my Wordpress archive thingy
j) Keep pdf links updated as needed (i.e. reupload as needed, then change the links, etc etc).

eyes her master plan Yes, that’s a ton of work. But…I can’t find my pdf copy of Cartographer’s Craft. And I want to have A Deeper Season in pdf, as well as about fifty other long fics I should damn well have saved to my hard drive by now. And I’ll have space on my Kindle for them, right?