On Sun, 24 Aug 2014 10:08:19 +0200 Morten Bo Johansen <m...@spamcop.net> wrote:
> On 2014-08-23 Steve Litt wrote: > > > If any of you writes ePubs, you're probably familiar with Sigil, at > > least for partial conversions and touchups. But if you haven't used > > Sigil for awhile, you might not be aware that it's really grown up > > in the past two years, to the point where it's a reasonable ePub > > authoring environment. > > I would also point you to asciidoc. Not that I have tried it, > but from the description and examples, it looks promising: > > http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/publishing-ebooks-with-asciidoc.html > > > Morten Thanks Morton, AsciiDoc has lots of potential for lots of things. For starters, it translates to Docbook, from which you can generate many outputs using XSLT. Also, it has no tags, making authoring easier than using something like Bluefish. It looks like it would be an outstanding choice for many usages, especially simple books in which additional styles aren't necessary. My 10 minute look at the AsciiDoc website makes me think it wouldn't be good for authoring a book for sale. I see no way of inserting unanticipated styles. For instance, there's a "story" paragraph style in every book I write, used when a character or the narrator tells a story. The different formatting of the story style prevents a lot of reader confusion that would otherwise pop up. I can't say that AsciiDoc doesn't allow customization of existing styles, because although AsciiDoc itself offers no such facility, you can customize existing styles through XSLT, or in the case of ePub, a CSS stylesheet. So my main objection on styling is the inability to create arbitrary paragraph or character styles. AsciiDoc can do a lot with appearances, but with styles it's very limited, and for styles-based authoring, that's not a good thing. See this: http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/bluefish/#a_structured_document Keep in mind also, that although AsciiDoc can represent a large number of predefined styles, actually using all of them requires memorization of some pretty arcane AsciiDoc constructs. In other words, learning AsciiDoc to the extent you'd need to do substantial formatting isn't a lot easier than learning CSS. The other problem with AsciiDoc is something you'd appreciate only if your job involves writing 2500 words per day into long documents. When it comes to authoring speed, WYSIWYG helps. A lot. When operating in a text environment, it's very easy to lose your place, requiring the question "where am I" and a probable text search. During all that, you lose your train of thought, setting you back minutes. Many times per day. With WYSIWYG, a single glance lets you know where you are and reminds you what you need to do, and you do it and continue working. No lost time. For a document with very modest formatting needs, such as the Anna Karenina sample on the AsciiDoc site, AsciiDoc is an excellent choice. For styles-based authored documents with more demanding formats, my 10 minute perusal of the website tells me AsciiDoc falls short. Thanks, SteveT Steve Litt * http://www.troubleshooters.com/ Troubleshooting Training * Human Performance -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20140824122149.6caaf...@mydesq2.domain.cxm
