Scan epub

[DeclanOB]

I've been writing in Ulysses of late. I was wondering if it would be very difficult to include the possibility of scanning an ePub file. It seems a bit circuitous to produce the ePub from a Word Processor if Ulysses (for example) will produce it directly. To my naive and uninformed mind, it shouldn't be too difficult (italics would be necessary). But what do I know? Can it be done?

Declan

[Jon]

Scanning is one of the most complex operations in any reference manager. The internal epub format is HTML, which would require developing a whole new set of rules for scanning. I'm sure it's possible, but it would be quite a bit of work, and so far there has been little (no) demand. If that changes in the future it's something I'd revisit.

Jon
Sonny Software

[DeclanOB]

Thanks for the reply. In my mind, the ePub file was just a text file, such that it would be something like going through the document looking for something in the format {xxx, xxxx, #xxxx} and replacing it with the full citation, with markers for italics. Obviously it is more complex than that.
Anyway, if anyone else sees the need for this, I suppose it'd be helpful to let Jon know.
All the best!

Declan

[Jon]

But it's not a text file, it's much more complex that that (Bookends can already scan text files).

http://www.idpf.org/epub/30/spec/epub30-overview.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB

Again, not impossible to create a function that would scan it, but not a few day's work, either.

Jon
Sonny Software

[DeclanOB]

Yes, I was sure that it was not simple, since you had said so.
Thanks for the links.

Declan

[mkhabbaz]

+1 for ePub reader/viewer.
I use Bookends databases as a one stop to organize and sort my research materials. Many of ebooks are in ePub format so it would be great if I can read them within bookends.

[Jon]

Scanning epub files makes no sense to me (Ulysses saves as Text, Markup, or their own bundle as far as I can tell). I don't know of any word processor that saves as epub. Reading is a different matter. It looks pretty complex to me at first glance, but we'll see.

Jon
Sonny Software

[Philologist]

epub is the future […] important in modern times where you work on the same text from iphone / ipad to desktop.

I find epub a really annoying format.

Books that I am interested in contain mainly text, and I want to be able to find that text with Spotlight. Spotlight still can't find text in epub files, or to be precise, you need to install special plugins for that.

In addition to that, I haven't found an ePub reader yet that allows me to work on text in the same way I can do in Preview and Skim.

If I download a book and it happens to be in an ePub format, I use Calibre to convert it to PDF and RTF, and then I delete the original ePub file. I then use the PDF file to quickly skim through the document, and if I need to seriously work on the text (comments, styles, footnotes, index, cross-references, concordance, etc.) I open the RTF file and do all that advanced stuff in Nisus Writer Pro.

I have neither iPhone nor iPad, and I can't imagine that you can do any serious editing on those devices. I also guess it vastly depends on your purpose and the type of text you are working on, whether one likes epub or not.

For those who are interested, I just found plugins that enable Spotlight to search ePub files:

https://github.com/jaketmp/ePub-quicklo ... s/tag/v1.7

And here is a Terminal command to make it work:

https://github.com/jaketmp/ePub-quicklook


At least epub files can now be used with Spotlight on my computer, but the QuickLook plugin doesn't allow me to scroll through the document (like in normal text files), so I'm disappointed as far as that is concerned.

If anyone knows about better plugins, please share.

[Jon]

From my research I've found the epub is an awful mess. That's one reason so few apps support it. I could conceivably (conceivably) be able to extract raw text. But that's about it (that is, the same level of output as we get now with .doc attachments). Whether it's worth the effort I have my doubts.

And don't forget that just because you can't read them in Bookends doesn't mean that they aren't useful as attachments -- you can always open them in a epub reader from Bookends. Just double-click on the lower pane where it says Bookends can't display the file's contents.

Jon
Sonny Software