[scribus] Scribus sla to epub (export) q. (calibre does not work)

[Gregory Pittman]

On 06/05/2014 08:01 AM, Richard Foley wrote:
> I understand what you mean about the complexities of a decent algorithm to
> decide what to do in various cases. However, I would have thought, (probably
> incorrectly), that most (?) devices would be at least content with:
> 
>     heading
>     text
>     image
>     caption
>     text
>     text
>     text
>     image
>     caption
>     text
> 
> At least that's what I see on most mobile device interpretation of html.
> 
> Ideally, of course the epub would reflect the PDF, but that's going to be
> challenging, isn't it, as you have no idea on what device the epub will be
> read, eg; what is the perfect way to display x content on y device, ahead of
> time.
> 
> At the moment, I'm looking for an epub which either generates me something
> which looks like the PDF, simple page after scrolling page OR something which
> looks like a mobile interpretation, as per the above clunky (one item after the
> other) description. Currently this apparently simple requirement seems
> impossible for my mixed text and photos book, without going into Word and
> re-doing ALL the work which Scribus has already done...
> 
> Believe it or not, I used Scribus as a DTP layout program on purpose :)
> 
My current thought is that a good solution may involve something like:

Scribus completed layout > (via script) > XML/HTML > perhaps a tweak
with XSLT (or not) > Sigil > ePub.

I like Sigil a lot, since it gives you both a WYSIWYG approach and the
ability to get to the markup to fix problems (and there will always be
some problems). Sigil also has some built-in ability to fix so that you
end up with well-formed XML.

Something else, which I think of as a mindset for both DTP as well as
ebooks, is that you use the best tool for the particular task at hand. I
worry that Scribus by itself is not going to be the best tool to get the
end product if that end product is an ebook. You need to find the
intermediaries which automate or semi-automate the process, but you
should expect that in the end some hand-tweaking will be necessary if
you want your ebook to have as professional a look as your DTP document
did. I see a lot of mediocre ebooks out there.

Greg