Any plans to add ebook formats ePub, mobi, etc.?

[Jeff Nailen]

Hello,

Are there any plans to add ebook output any time soon? Especially ePub and mobi formats?

Thanks!
Jeff

[rpcameron]

Mobi format seems a bit unlikely. Also, since ePub depends upon well-formed XHTML, I should think that Mellel would need (X)HTML export options before ePub could even be considered.

However, a stop-gap measure would be to export to RTF, then use Calibre to convert the RTF to either Mobi or ePub. If you have your sources in (X)HTML already, then Sigil does very well with creating ePubs.

[Jeff Nailen]

Mobi format seems a bit unlikely. Also, since ePub depends upon well-formed XHTML, I should think that Mellel would need (X)HTML export options before ePub could even be considered.

However, a stop-gap measure would be to export to RTF, then use Calibre to convert the RTF to either Mobi or ePub. If you have your sources in (X)HTML already, then Sigil does very well with creating ePubs.

Hi, thanks. Yes, I'm aware of Calibre, Sigil, eCub, iStudio Publisher, Legend Maker, as well as online conversion services, but am looking for a combined authoring/publishing app like Adobe InDesign, but would prefer a real Cocoa Mac app like Mellel, Nisus Writer Pro, or Pages for this. I'd be surprised if Apple doesn't add ePub output to the desktop version of Pages/iWork 2010, but they're unlikely to ever offer Mobi output...so it would be nice if Mellel or Nisus did so that we can have an ideal native ebook creation app.

[rpcameron]

... am looking for a combined authoring/publishing app like Adobe InDesign, but would prefer a real Cocoa Mac app like Mellel, Nisus Writer Pro, or Pages for this. I'd be surprised if Apple doesn't add ePub output to the desktop version of Pages/iWork 2010, but they're unlikely to ever offer Mobi output...so it would be nice if Mellel or Nisus did so that we can have an ideal native ebook creation app.

I, too, would very much like something similar to this, but I'm not sure how close the word processing industry is to embracing ePub. (Consider how difficult it has been for them to come up with a comprehensive/open file format.) Support in Pages would also be nice, but I'm not sure if I would trust Apple for an ePub solution. The style handling in Pages is awkward, and Apple's ePub support in iBooks is lacking and incomplete.

I, too, would like to put a vote in for ePub support in Mellel, however, I would much prefer to have proper (X)HTML support, first (with CSS for styles). Full documentation of Mellel's XML schema has been promised in the past (which would help with a Mellel to (X)HTML and/or ePub conversion), but RedleX has yet to release it. (IIRC, it was shortly after Mellel switch to XML for its format that the schema's documentation was promised.)

[este.el.paz]

Folks:

I'm just adding my "ditto" here so that I might get some notification of updates to the thread. I posted here a few weeks back with subject "Mr Mel speaks HTML" and got some replies from Mr Cameron; essentially looking for ways to get a clean export from Mellel that would plug riight in to Amazon's Kindle requirements. So far (not using WORD) the export to RTF, import to Open Office, export to HTML has gotten me close . . . table of contents seem to be spindled by the DTP conversion and now maybe I'm just playing with the photo images as per their requirements . . . .

Don't know enough to know if ePub is close to what Amazon wants . . . but if the Amazon thingie comes off bad I'll be looking for another option . . . . Thanks for the link to Calibre . . . if it's cheap or free it might be the solution to getting an eBook out of the reluctant Mr Mel . . . who doesn't yet speak HTML or it appears other file formats that might work online.

e.e.p.

[fbrzvnrnd]

We started a month ago a Publishing House (in italian) that uses Mellel for some of its books. We used Mellel for pdf version of our ebooks, and after export it in html (using the converter we found here in the forum) and work on html code to create the epub and mobi versions.
We got problems: Mellel is real nice to create a "for paper" book, and the cross references is good for hyperlink. But there is no way to add an external link to a "on line" site or document, and for some ebooks this is not acceptable. The last ebook we created has got a lot of external hyperlinks, so we have to drop Mellel for another program. Another problem is that the html code generated from mellel-->html converter need a lot of work to be good for epub. To do a good work we need to rewrite all the css and the clean the html code from redundant class, div, etc.
Imho the first steps to have a mellel--->epub converter is to have external hyperlink; a way to have a strong relation between mellel's style sheet and generated css ; and a simple but more clean xhtml code.

My 2 cents

[este.el.paz]

fbrzvnrnd :

Agree that Mr Mel could use some insight into communicating with other formats . . . and I also found that the HTML converter as it stood didn't quite add that capability to Mellel. Recently I had to get my Mellel generated book reformatted to work with Kindle where PDF was "not expected to work" . . . and it was very, ah, simple to get there: Export to RTF; import to Open Office, save as HTML; for the HTML editor I used Sea Monkey as per Kindle's suggestion to add hyperlinks within the document, etc--I assume you could add external links there . . .; compress all the related files as a .zip and upload to the Kindle site. Had some issues with the first attempt in the Table of contents not showing up as -------------------------p.12 where the ------------------- part was folded back on itself probably because I had originally just typed it out without using a "lead tab." (I did try to "format" the ToC in Open Office but that message didn't get through to Kindle) so I just got rid of the page numbers which don't work or have any meaning in eBook anyway. Dat's what I did . . . .
Kindle recommended using MobiPocket Creator???? to format HTML files into their format, but didn't get there because it only works with PC, so I didn't want that distortion to come into the picture . . . . Anyway, it can be done; it just takes a bit of bouncing the file from application to application to get there. If you'd want to look at how it came out you could post back and I could find the link to the Kindle store edition, they do a free sample--it's a niche book on meditation. : - )

e.e.p.

[fbrzvnrnd]

Convert from mellel to rtf, from rtf to openoffice, from openoffice to xhtml could be done, but it is not a professional work. The xhtml you get after those translation is a garbage you have to clean line by line.
Mellel has got inline images support, stylesheet, crossreferences: with a "simple" xhtml converter mellel will become a real good epub creator. More: actually I have to drop Mellel for my next books 'cause I got no way to add an external hyperlink in PDF...

[signinstranger]

Here's my personal workflow for epub files based on MultiMarkdown and Sigil. I use my own Mellel2MMD to convert Mellel documents to MultiMarkdown. MMD is a command-line-tool to create XHTML, LaTeX and RTF files from plain text files with structural markup. The XHTML files can be opened with Sigil and saved in the epub format. I also got a special xslt file for MultiMarkdown that adds instructions for sigil to include pagebreaks after each chapter. The resulting epub files are usually very, very clean, but also restricted to a limited set of features. The whole method works best for novels and somewhat for illustrated/academic books.

[rpcameron]

Just an FYI for those still looking for a direct ePub export option, today's update to Pages (9.0.4) includes ePub as an export option. It appears to do reasonably well, and includes some good templates for sensible NCX creation.

[Cattus Thraex]

Just an FYI for those still looking for a direct ePub export option, today's update to Pages (9.0.4) includes ePub as an export option. It appears to do reasonably well, and includes some good templates for sensible NCX creation.

This was to be expeted. Rumours say iWork 2010 is on the way. ePub has become a core issue in Mac OS since iPad era.

[Et cetera]

On 2 July 2020, Mellel 5.0 was released (https://www.mellel.com/blog/mellel-5-0-released/ or https://www.mellel.com/release-info/5-0/). You will notice that ePUB is now an export option (mobi is not).

New Features

Export to ePUB.
Export to Word Format (docx).
Add Table Rows/Columns dialog.
New Document preferences option.
New Icon, about box and other related screens.
New "Novel" book factory template.

Improvements

Template Browser Delete Template button.
Track Changes Accept/Reject Selected Changes command.
Revised and updated user manual.
Revised and updated factory templates.
Revised and localizations.
Replaced icon for Traditional Chinese language.
Improved the way table borders are applied on a table selection.
Copying Cell text attributes from the appropriate cells when adding new table rows or columns.

Bug fixes

Fixed a rare and random crashing bug upon returning to work in Mellel after some time away from the application.
Fixed some minor memory leaks.