ebukafy 0.0.2

Turn a text file into an epub chapter

ebukafy

The ebukafy utility will convert a plain text file into a nicely formatted html file to be used as a chapter in an epub.

Usage

It is recommended that you use ebukafy in conjunction with Calibre. If you do, read the Use with Calibre section first.

Usage: ebukafy [-h] [-p paragraph-separator] [-s section-separator] filename...

Options

1. paragraph-separator: sequence of characters that will delimit paragraphs. Default value: "\t".

2. section-seperator: the sequence of characters that will delimit a section (the things I'm calling 'sections' are usually delimited by an empty line in paper books. In other words, sections are the chunks bigger than paragraphs and smaller than chapters). Default value: "\n\n". If the text only has one section, just make this something random that won't appear in the text.

NOTE: If you want to change these two separators, make sure to use ANSI C like strings. These are used like so: $'string'. For example: if you want to use ebukafy with \n\n as the paragraph-separator and \n\n\n as the section-separator, you would call it like so:

ebukafy -p $'\n\n' -s $'\n\n\n' filename...

3. -h: print out usage statement

Args

After these options, include as many files as you want to ebukafy.

Output

The output of this utility will be a folder called ebukafy_index filled with files named index_n.html, with n starting at 1 and incrementing for each filename you include when calling ebukafy. These are the nicely formatted html files that you can use in your epub. Additionally, the folder will include a copy of stylesheet_additions.css that you can find in this repository.

Use with Calibre

This utility is meant to be used in conjunction with Calibre.

1. Create an empty txt file anywhere.

2. In Calibre, in the upper left corner, click "Add books", which should open a file selector.

3. In the file selector, navigate to the empty txt file you created, and open it.

4. This should create a new empty book in Calibre. If you want to, you can add the metadata for the book such as the title, author, cover, etc.

5. In Calibre, convert the book you created to an EPUB.

6. After converting, select the book in the library and click "Edit book" in the top right corner.

7. On the left side you'll see the files that were created. Remove the one called index.html, if one exists. You probably want to keep the title page (titlepage.xhtml) since most books need a cover.

8. IMPORTANT: All EPUBs use a css file called stylesheet.css to give greater control over the formatting of the book. ebukafy uses its own stylesheet to format the html. To find it, look at the stylesheet_additions.css file in this repo (or in the ebukafy_index folder created by ebukafy after you run it) and add its contents to the stylesheet.css of the EPUB. In Calibre, you can find this stylesheet in the "Edit book" editor.

9. At this point, the boilerplate code is set up and you need to run ebukafy. Look at Usage section.

10. Click the "Add file" button in the top left of the "Edit book" editor. You should name it index_n.html where n is a number that increments with each file you add (first file is index_1.html, second file is index_2.html, etc.). Into each file, you put the html created by ebukafy.

Use without Calibre

ebukafy generates nicely formatted html documents based on a provided txt file. Though it is much easier to put these files into an actual epub with Calibre, it is not necessary if you know what you're doing. Just make sure to read the Usage section.

IMPORTANT: All EPUBs use a css file called stylesheet.css to give greater control over the formatting of the book. ebukafy uses its own stylesheet to format the html. To find it, look at the stylesheet_additions.css file in this repo (or in theebukafy_index folder created by ebukafy after you run it) and add its contents to the stylesheet.css of the EPUB.