Tidying up an eBook | Stuff I'm Up To

Using LibreOffice and Sigil

I use LibreWriter to write eBooks with, then save them as .epub.

LanguageTool Server

Why use LibreWriter? I’ve set up a docker container running LanguageTool and use this as an external spelling and grammar checker.

---
services:
  languagetool:
    image: meyay/languagetool:latest
    container_name: languagetool
    restart: unless-stopped
    user: "783:783"
    read_only: true
    tmpfs:
      - /tmp
    cap_drop:
      - ALL
    security_opt:
      - no-new-privileges
    ports:
      - 127.0.0.1:8010:8010
    environment:
      download_ngrams_for_langs: en
      langtool_disabledRuleIds: OXFORD_SPELLING_Z_NOT_S
    volumes:
      - /opt/ngrams:/ngrams
      - /opt/fasttext:/fasttext

This Docker image also downloads the ngrams data and extracts it to /ngrams - It’s a pretty large file (8GB zipped).

The disabledRuleIDs turns off the annoying ise to ize warnings.

TagMechanic

Saving as .epub, what I found was the formatting of the HTML within the .epub had some quirks. I’d often find a <span class="span3"> and what would make it worse would be there may be another nested within the same tag.

Install the Sigil plugin TagMechanic

Use Plugins > Edit > TagMechanic

Select all the .xhtml files within the .epub

Set the dialog to Delete, span, having class, value of span\d+, tick Regex

Click Process

Other Rules

Set the dialog to Change, p, having class, value of para\d+, tick Regex

PuctuationSmarten

This Sigil plugin sorts out the mess that LibreWriter seems to make of quotation marks, single or double. It doesn’t seem consistent in what it uses, this causes the spellchecker to have issues with words containing apostrophes, and where you may have used single quotation marks.

Meta Data

Use the meta-data editor to add in

Title

Belongs to a Collection

Collection is a Series
Position in Group
Id Attribute

dc:identifier: urn:AMAZON:[ASIN]

Description

Creator

Language: English - Great Britain