Converting Scribus to ePub format

Previous topic - Next topic

MrsClaus

Hi,
I am publishing my husbands book.  No problem with formatting for print, but wondered if the PDF would convert well to an eBook format.  I want to do Kindle and more.

Any info would be greatly appreciated.  BTW love your product.  The first book I did turned out great at the printers.

Thanks, Mary

GarryP

Hi Mary.

You could try Calibre (at calibre-ebook.com).

It can convert from and to many different formats...
From: CBZ, CBR, CBC, CHM, DJVU, EPUB, FB2, HTML, HTMLZ, LIT, LRF, MOBI, ODT, PDF, PRC, PDB, PML, RB, RTF, SNB, TCR, TXT, TXTZ
To: AZW3, EPUB, FB2, OEB, LIT, LRF, MOBI, HTMLZ, PDB, PML, RB, PDF, RTF, SNB, TCR, TXT, TXTZ
...but not directly from a Scribus file.

It can convert from PDF as you asked but you'll need to take various things into consideration: http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/conversion.html#pdfconversion

However, it's free and open source so installing it and seeing if it works for you shouldn't be too much of a bother. Try it, and if works then great, or if it doesn't just uninstall it.

If this doesn't do what you want I hope another forum member will come up with a better solution.

Garry.

a.l.e

hi mary,

i'm working on a epub converter for scribus.

it's available in its current status in our git repositories and will officially be released with scribus 1.6 next year.

since i'm interested in having a few people testing it, it would be wonderful if we could find a way how you can test it...

have a nice evening
a.l.e

MrsClaus

Hi I would be happy to be your guinea pig!!  I really like this program and as I said we have already published one book which looked great.  No problems with format, font or anything.  It would just be much easier to work in the same program I am used to for the eBook formats.

I am now just proofing the novel and working on the cover.

How do I get to your git repositories?

BTW again I think this is a great program.  I learned from scratch and thought all the tutorials and such were great.
Thanks, Mrs. Claus

Enviroeberhardt

Hi, I'd also be interested in helping with testing, although I'm newer to scribus.

Arran

Hi

I could be perhaps of some help too. My wife is sort of author, starting to write the first three, four chapters and then going on to something else. So we have a few novels and one more or less complete Fairy Tales book. So, yes, by all means, if this can help? I have enough time, as being retired.
Have you first consulted the Manual? You can probably find the solution there.

Happy Greetings from Scotland's nicest Holiday Island

dave61430

Sigil is a freeware epub editor. It's complete on it's own, you might want to see if it's useful, you could copy and paste with what you have.
While Calibre will convert a .pdf, the results can be very unsatisfactory depending on content. Works fine on straight text. Uploading a .pdf to Amazon with the subject or message containing the single word 'convert' works best (I forget which field Amazon wants so I place in both). The convert will help with things like search and dictionary on the Kindle if .pdf is real text, i.e. not converted to an image.
The problem with .pdf is the Kindle won't wrap long lines, however, if you know the end use, you can format your page to fit. I've never done this so you will have to experiment on a few test runs. Looks like my Kindle has a 3 inch text width.

montsamu

Hello! Resurrecting this old thread because it seems the best place to ask about the status of this. I'm on 1.5.0svn and don't see how to export to ePub; I'd love to help test this, as I have 8 back-issues of a magazine that I developed originally in Scribus (for print/PDF editions) and now would love to be able to more or less "easily" put together ePub issues.

a.l.e

no release code, but if you can compile scribus yourself, you can get the sources from here:

https://github.com/aoloe/scribus-plugin-export-epub

test it and tell me what you want as the next feature...

ciao
a.l.e

montsamu

Unfortunately I don't have a compile environment these days. Hoping to trade up at work for a Macbook early next year, which should get me back able to try things out. Thanks for the reply!

randagia

Hi all,
same old troubles arise. I've created a good-looking PDF with Scribus, I'm pretty much satisfied, but actually it was an e-book I wanted...

The PDF is probably a bit too complex:
* it contains web-link and reference between pages
* pages with a different background colors (Yep yep,  ebook are b/w this will make no issue, but in pdf it's fine)
* lots of images with captions

Tried many converters (calibre included) to get some epub/xhtml that Sigil would like but the result is a disaster, so I've put my lazyness on a side and I'm thinking of trying the exporter plugin with all the compilation stuff that it requires.

Sorry if I ask: on the github page the plugin seem to support image and text frame, but says nothing about links , are they supported ? Are there any samples.epub we can have a look at?


Randagia, lost in conversion




"To lose a passport was the least of one's worries. To lose a notebook was a catastrophe"
― Bruce Chatwin

Nermander

It has been said a few times before: Trying to to go from PDF to e-book is the "wrong way".

Create the e-book first, then use it as content for the PDF.

En e-book is usually a structured content, while a PDF is intended for print and might not be structured at all. For a printed page it does not matter in what order the lines were written, the printed page looks the same even if the printing started in the bottom right corner.

a.l.e

scribus does not have (real) links yet...

once they're there, the epub plugin will not have any issues supporting them... i guess...

randagia

Quote from: Nermander on March 04, 2017, 05:56:18 PM
It has been said a few times before: Trying to to go from PDF to e-book is the "wrong way".

Create the e-book first, then use it as content for the PDF.


You're right, unfortunately I figured it out when I had already completed my ebook in scribus, and so no other way to save it than PDF. It was just a hope someone could give a me a positive hint, but definitely there's no way...
All do it all over again.

Quote from: a.l.e on March 04, 2017, 06:37:08 PM
scribus does not have (real) links yet...
I'll give it a try, before rewriting all over...

Thanks
Randagia
"To lose a passport was the least of one's worries. To lose a notebook was a catastrophe"
― Bruce Chatwin

a.l.e

if you send me your .sla collected for output (with all resources) i can send you an epub generated from it...

you can send a download link (if possible, please do not attache the archive to the email) to ale.comp_06@xox.ch) or publish it here in the forum.

i can't promise much on the quality on the output, since it's alpha quality, but maybe it helps you...

ciao
a.l.e