I’ve created a lovely PDF that I’m very happy with where each section begins with an icon and the name of the viewpoint character. This was quite complicated to create. When I switch to MS Word or print, my section layouts come along. When I switch to eBook, they all disappear! I know I can rebuild them from scratch, but that sounds really painful. Surely there is a way to copy them?
I tried just converting the PDF in Calibre - but it loses all the page breaks. I also tried uploading the Word doc to D2D hoping I could download a decent ePub from them, but their ePub adds lots of extra page breaks.
First-off, PDF and ePub are totally different beasts. PDF is a print-ready format, basically intended to print to sheets of paper (pages), so page-breaks are of the essence. ePub is a version of HTML, for use on e-Readers, where the reader rather than the author is given the choice of font, font size, line-height, justification… in that context, page-breaks are pretty much irrelevant.
Secondly, given that, the compile settings for each are necessarily different beasts, as the ‘engine’ through which the compilation is done is different, and so the compile-format you created for PDF is not available for compiling to ePUB.
All that said, looking at your screenshots, the examples in the left-hand pane are different: in the PDF version you show, the format is “Chapter - Dewayne”, which you have set to include a page break then the image and the name before the text; in the ePub version, the text is in a basic ‘Scene’ format which doesn’t have the automatic page-break.
So yes, you’re going to have to reassign section types to section formats for ePub, using a format (like the ‘Section’ below the “tharn lamax” text) which inserts the page-break, and edit them to include any image and name as required. That will provide the necessary section-break to mark a new chapter in the ePub.
Thanks for the reply! I definitely understand that we’re talking about very different formats. I was hoping to bring in the the PDF materials and then “fix” them for ePUB. But, if I’m understanding you correctly, I’m going to have to scratch build it again. That right?
Follow up question: I find working in compile is slow as molasses once the compile settings become complex. Any tips or tricks to minimize the slow down?
