.. include:: global.rst .. _edit: Editing E-books ======================== |app| has an integrated e-book editor that can be used to edit books in the EPUB and AZW3 (Kindle) formats. The editor shows you the HTML and CSS that is used internally inside the book files, with a live preview that updates as you make changes. It also contains various automated tools to perform common cleanup and fixing tasks. You can use this editor by right clicking on any book in |app| and selecting :guilabel:`Edit book`. .. image:: images/edit-book.png :alt: The Edit Book tool :align: center .. contents:: Contents :depth: 1 :local: Basic workflow --------------- When you first open a book with the Edit book tool, you will be presented with a list of files on the left. These are the individual HTML files, stylesheets, images, etc. that make up the content of the book. Simply double click on a file to start editing it. Note that if you want to do anything more sophisticated than making a few small tweaks, you will need to know `HTML Tutorial `_ and `CSS Tutorial `_. As you make changes to the HTML or CSS in the editor, the changes will be previewed, live, in the preview panel to the right. When you are happy with how the changes you have made look, click the Save button or use :guilabel:`File->Save` to save your changes into the ebook. One useful feature is :guilabel:`Checkpoints`. Before you embark on some ambitious set of edits, you can create a checkpoint. The checkpoint will preserve the current state of your book, then if in the future you decide you dont like the changes you have made to you can go back to the state when you created the checkpoint. To create a checkpoint, use :guilabel:`Edit->Create checkpoint`. Checkpoints will also be automatically created for you whenever you run any automated tool like global search and replace. The checkpointing functionality is in addition to the normal Undo/redo mechanism when editing individual files. Checkpoints are useful for when changes are spread over multiple files in the book. That is the basic work flow for editing books -- Open a file, make changes, preview and save. The rest of this manual will discuss the various tools and features present to allow you to perform specific tasks efficiently. The Files Browser ------------------ .. image:: images/files_browser.png :alt: The Files Browser :class: float-left-img The :guilabel:`Files Browser` gives you an overview of the various files inside the book you are editing. The files are arranged by category, with text (HTML) files at the top, followed by stylesheet (CSS) files, images and so on. Simply double click on a file to start editing it. Editing is supported for HTML, CSS and image files. The order of text files is the same order that they would be displayed in, if you were reading the book. All other files are arranged alphabetically. By hovering your mouse over an entry, you can see its size, and also, at the bottom of the screen, the full path to the file inside the book. Note that files inside ebooks are compressed, so the size of the final book is not the sum of the individual file sizes. Many files have special special meaning, in the book. These will typically have an icon next to their names, indicating the special meaning. For example, in the picture to the left, you can see that the files :guilabel:`cover_image.jpg` and :guilabel:`titlepage.xhtml` have the ocon of a cover next to them, this indicates they are the book cover image and titlepage. Similarly, the :guilabel:`content.opf` file has a metadata icon next to it, indicating the book metadata is present in it and the the :guilabel:`toc.ncx` file has a T icon next to it, indicating it is the Table of Contents. You can perform many actions on individual files, by right clicking them. Renaming files ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ You can rename an individual file by right clicking it and selecting :guilabel:`Rename`. Renaming a file automatically updates all links and references to it throughout the book. So all you have to do is provide the new name, |app| will take care of the rest. You can also bulk rename many files at once. This is useful if you want the files to have some simple name pattern. For example you might want to rename all the HTML files to have names Chapter-1.html, Chapter-2.html and so on. Select the files you want bulk renamed by holding down the Shift or Ctrl key and clicking the files. Then right click and select :guilabel:`Bulk rename`. Enter a prefix and what number you would like the automatic numbering to start at, click OK and you are done. Merging files ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Sometimes, you may want to merge two HTML files or two CSS files together. It can sometimes be useful to have everything in a single file. Be wary, though, putting a lot of content into a single file will cause performance problems when viewing the book in a typical ebook reader. To merge multiple files together, select them by holding the Ctrl key and clicking on them (make sure you only select files of one type, either all HTML files or all CSS files and so on). Then right click and select merge. That's all, |app| will merge the files, automatically taking care of migrating all links and references to the merged files. Note that merging files can sometimes cause text styling to change, since the individual files could have used different stylesheets. Changing text file order ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ You can re-arrange the order in which text (HTML) files are opened when reading the book by simply dragging and dropping them in the Files browser. For the technically inclined, this is called re-ordering the book spine. Marking the cover ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ E-books typically have a cover image. This image is indicated in the Files Browser by the icon of a brow book next to the image name. If you want to designate some other image as the cover, you can do so by right clicking on the file and choosing :guilabel:`Mark as cover`. In addition, EPUB files has the concept of a *titlepage*. A title page is a HTML file that acts as the title page/cover for th book. You can mark an HTML file as the titlepage when editing EPUBs by right-clicking. Be careful that the file you mark contains only the cover information. If it contains other content, such as the first chapter, then that content will be lost if the user ever converts the EPUB file in |app| to another format. This is because when converting, |app| assumes that the marked title page contains only the cover and no other content. Deleteing files ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ You can delete files by either right clicking on them or by selecting them and pressing the Delete key. Export/import of files ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ You can export a file from inside the book to somewhere else on your computer. This is useful if you want to work on the file in isolation, with specialised tools. To do this, simply right click on the file and choose :guilabel:`Export`. Once you are done working on the exported file, you can re-import it into the book, by right clicking on the file again and choosing :guilabel:`Replace with file...` which will allow you to replace the file in the book with the previously exported file. Search & Replace ------------------- Edit Book has a very powerful search and replace interface that allows you to search and replace text in the current file, across all files and even in a marked region of the current file. You can search using a normal search or using regular expressions. To learn how to use regular expressions for advanced searching, see :ref:`regexptutorial`. .. image:: images/sr.png :alt: The Edit Book tool :align: center Start the search and replace via the :guilabel:`Search->Find/replace` menu entry (you must be editing an HTML or CSS file). Type the text you want to find into the Find box and its replacement into the Replace box. You can the click the appropriate buttons to Find the next match, replace the current match and replace all matches. Using the drop downs at the bottom of the box, you can have the search operate over the current file, all text files, all style files or all files. You can also choose the search mode to be a normal (string) search or a regular expression search. You can count all the matches for a search expression via :guilabel:`Search->Count all`. The count will run over whatever files/regions you have selected in the dropdown box. You can also go to a specific line in the currently open editor via :guilabel:`Search->Go to line`. .. note:: Remember, to harness the full power of search and replace, you will need to use regular expressions. See :ref:`regexptutorial`. Automated tools ------------------- Edit book has various tools to help with common tasks. These are accessed via the :guilabel:`Tools` menu. Edit the Table of Contents ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ There is a dedicated tool to ease editing of the Table of Contents. Launch it with :guilabel:`Tools->Edit Table of Contents`.