eBooks, Conventions, and conversions oh my…

random.pngSome miscellany as I get ready to head over to Origins (scheduled appearances Saturday and Sunday, but you may be able to catch me Friday!)…

I hate formatting stuff for Smashwords. I’m occasionally asked to do so by customers, and I always regret it. The very simple reason is this: I can’t see and directly manipulate the codes in Microsoft Word.

Since ePub is (at its heart) glorified HTML, I can easily track down a problem. In Word (which “meatgrinder” then converts), I have to hope that the word processor is showing me everything… and then have customers annoyed when the hidden codes do some funky stuff.

In related news, I learned a new way of displaying images:

<div>
<svg xmlns="https://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" version="1.1" width="100%" height="100%" viewBox="0 0 489 747" preserveAspectRatio="xMidYMid slice">
<image width="489" height="747" xlink:href="images/coverfile.jpg"/>
</svg>
</div>

Theoretically, this should work a bit better. Theoretically. (Yes, I’m taking notes for V2 already.) You can find more on the SVG standard here and here.