complete example - bookalope/Bookalope GitHub Wiki
The best way of learning to work with a new tool is to use it. And so on this page we’ll walk through a complete book conversion from start to finish, but without diving into the details just yet. This gets you started, and you can then explore more of how Bookalope works by following the links on this page.
If you haven’t done so yet, set up your account and take a look at your Profile, Billing, and Plans pages just to get a sense for the website. When you log in, Bookalope takes you straight to the Home page where all of your current books and bookshelves are listed.
To start a new book conversion—or Bookflow as we call it—click the Create a new book button (read more) which takes you to the next page. Enter the name of the book you’d like to convert and pick a name for the Bookflow; if nothing comes to mind then you can use the default names for now:
If you have added bookshelves already, then a list of your existing shelves shows on this page and you can sort the book into one of your existing bookshelves, too. Just to keep your books and conversion a little more organized. Next, click the Create new book and Bookflow button, which takes you directly to the Upload page:
Select the file you’d like to upload to Bookalope. That can be a Word document or a file in a similar file format like OpenOffice or Apple Pages or an older RTF file, etc. You can also upload an existing ebook in EPUB format. Then click Upload file and Continue, and take a short coffee break while Bookalope does the heavy lifting for you…
When Bookalope has finished cleaning up and analyzing the structure of your book, it takes you to the Review page which shows your processed book rendered in the browser as genuinely as possible to the original. The page may look complicated at first, but the purpose of it is simple:
- Check that Bookalope understood the structure of your book correctly and tweak the classification labels if necessary;
- Add more meaningful information to the structure; and
- Check and edit the content, if necessary.
On the left side of the page you see the “labels” that Bookalope has already assigned to every paragraph, page break, image, and table. You can click on any of these labels to see a list of available alternative labels and to make changes (read more).
To the right of the label is a checkbox which allows you to select an element. And at the bottom of the page is a floating Toolbox which allows you to add more information about the selected paragraph, page break, image, and table—such additional information is generally optional but it improves greatly the accessibility of an ebook!
Circling back to Bookalope’s base principle to strictly separate content and presentation, reviewing the labels and enriching the information using the Toolbox helps Bookalope to confirm that it classified the visual styling of your book correctly and therefore understood the structure of your book. Neat, huh?
If you want to fix typos or make other changes to your text, simply click on a paragraph to edit! Bookalope sports an increasingly nifty paragraph editor which allows you to change almost any text you need to change. That is, if you want to make changes; maybe your book’s text content is already in perfect shape?
When you’re done reviewing the structure and content of your book, click the Confirm and Finish button at the bottom of the page… and that’s it! You’re now ready to convert your book: simply select the file format into which you’d like to convert your book into, pick a visual styling and adjust the export features, and click the Convert full version button.
If you haven’t purchased a plan yet and assigned it to this Bookflow then you’ll see a Convert test version button instead. This test version of your book is free so that you can explore the Bookalope tools at your convenience.
And that’s it… welcome to Bookalope!