Note: I've CC'ed the LyX Users list, because this is so topical to LyX. Hi Laurie,
My answers here are based on having created a conversion program for LyX->Mobi, not as an MSWord expert. However, I have a feeling the principles are the same. IMHO if you use Word's Heading 1 through heading 10, you're already way ahead of the game. If, instead of just bolding every word you want bolded, you make a character style called emph or bold_emph or something like that, and then apply that to what you want bolded, that can be made to show up in the finished .mobi. LITT TAKES A DETOUR AND LECTURES... In my opinion, in any authoring situation, the path to perdition lies in "fingerpainting" appearances in your document. Any text or paragraph that looks different should look different for a specific reason, related to what it's describing or its relation to the text around it. Said more simply, alter no appearance unless there's a reason within the text to do so. Any reason to alter appearance SHOULD be represented by a style. I have styles called NOTE, WARNING, STORY, EMPH, etc. Whenever my text has a note, I use the NOTE style, which has the title NOTE and then underneath, a block of text with much bigger margins so it appears centered and takes up much less of the line than normal text.. Whenever either a character or narrator tells a story, I use the STORY style, which happens to be formatted in italic font. This way, I don't have to remember back to how I formatted previous notes, and once again copy that format. I make the style once, and apply it endlessly. This way, if I change my mind and want all stories small caps instead of italic, I change the style to small caps, and bang, every story is now small caps. Another advantage: Let's say I want all my stories to be italic, as well as all my quotations. So I make both styles italic. If I later want to change one to bold instead, I just change one of the styles, and now quotations and stories DO NOT look alike. If I had just directly applied italics to all stories and quotations, then changing one would mean searching every quotation application, deciding which it was intended to do, and changing it. Uuuugly! In my opinion, changing an appearance directly, rather than through a style, is a mark of a rank amateur. It's the equivalent of an author who doesn't bother to proofread, or a publisher who prints a 5K run before receiving the author's OK on the proof. So, the way I do it, and the way I recommend everyone do it, is to map the communication intent to the style, and map the style to the appearance. If you come up with a new communication intent (let's say "blind alleys"), you should create a blind_alley style, and then apply that style to every instance of a blind alley in your document. Never use an old style to represent a new intent, no matter how easy that may seem at the time. What I describe here has nothing to do with what authoring program or wordprocessor you have chosen. Almost all products support styles: MSWord, LyX, LaTeX, TeX, LibreOffice, and probably most others. The question is, do you use them to represent all communication intent, or do you fingerpaint appearances directly into your text? LECTURE NOW ENDED ^^^^ But wait, there's more! If all your appearance formatting is done exclusively through styles, then at no added cost you get another benefit: Easy eBook making. That's right, easy eBook making. If your Word to HTML or LyX to HTML or whatever converter is half-way competent, then it will convert your styles to tag pairs. Therefore, when you create your CSS file for your eBook, you can define how each of those styles looks in your eBook. One source file does paper, PDF and ePub/Mobi. Yeah, you still have some organization stuff to take care of with the NCF, Spine, OPF, etc, but if you'd used styles exclusively, your heavy lifting's done once you or a CSS expert makes your CSS file. NOTE TO JOHN CULLETON... John, it looks to me like plain TeX would be just about the perfect eBook authoring environment. If you're anything like me, you format short stuff with defined commands, and long stuff with command pairs such as \beginstory and \endstory. As long as you followed that convention, it would be trivial to write a Python TeX to HTML translator perfect for eBooks that are completely style formatted. But why write it myself, when stuff like tth (http://hutchinson.belmont.ma.us/tth/manual/) and maybe TeX4ht (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX4ht) and LaTeX2HTML(http://get-software.net/support/latex2html/README), although I'm not sure the latter would work with plain TeX. What do you use for a TeX to HTML translator? Thanks SteveT Steve Litt * http://www.troubleshooters.com/ * http://twitter.com/stevelitt Troubleshooting Training * Human Performance On Mon, 3 Dec 2012 08:03:24 -0700, Laurie Boucke said: > Thanks, Leila. > > Not being a fan of or very knowledgeable about MS Word, how would we > know what to do in styles? For example, are there just a few basic > tags to use? We have Word 2002 SP3, which I imagine may be outdated > for this type of work. > > Thanks. > > Laurie > > -- pre-format the text in Word using styles, then import the text as > a .docx file to Jutoh (program costs $39), which will compile MOBI > (for Kindle) and EPUB (for > Nook and iPad) files (plus other formats, if you need them). There > are options for adding images, covers, and TOCs. Great software! -- > > -- > See http://www.pub-forum.net/myadmin for list information and to > change your settings, including unsubscribing. Please avoid off-topic > messages during the work week, and show restraint on politics or > religion at any time.
