4 ms·

Just a warning to everyone, like the book this course is in development as I write the book. It's covering a lot of the chapters, but I have to go back and cle

by zedshaw 14y ago

Just a warning to everyone, like the book this course is in development as I write the book. It's covering a lot of the chapters, but I have to go back and clean up some videos and do the final ones. That's why the price is low for now.

stock_toaster 14y ago
I watched the intro on udemy. Very cool. You talked about installing xcode. For newer osx versions, people may be able to install just the [command line tools for xcode][1], which is only about 170MB or so. It might save some people from waiting around for the full xcode. [1]: http://kennethreitz.com/xcode-gcc-and-homebrew.html http://kennethreitz.com/xcode-gcc-and-homebrew.html
- zedshaw 14y ago
  Yes, I have to update to point people there. Apparently also the latest xcode is missing a bunch of stuff people might need and requires separate downloads of those pieces. I forget what but it's still annoying.
  - stock_toaster 14y ago
    I think the command line tools are now installed (and downloaded) from inside excode once you have xcode installed. Certainly an irritant. Just looked at it: preferences -> downloads -> command-line-tools
mhartl 14y ago
What's your method for making the ePub version of your books? I'm considering writing a custom program for my own stuff, but I'd love to be able to use something off the shelf.
- zedshaw 14y ago
  I'm ditching ePub. It's a crap format that has a bewildering number of options and it seems every viewer wants to implement some different subset of them. From now on, it's PDF and HTML only.
  - tjoff 14y ago
    In that case, consider making an ~A5 version of the PDF or viewing it on e-readers will be a hassle.
  - mhartl 14y ago
    Glad to hear it. When people ask me about ePub/Mobi, I tell them that both formats are broken and that if I ever produce them it'll only be as a stupid marketing gimmick. What we really need is a format that works across different devices. If only there were a portable document format that solved this problem...
    - tjoff 14y ago
      Yeah, because PDFs work really great on devices of different screen sizes. Also, the author should stop promote the epub version if he won't do it.
      - readme 14y ago
        this, pdf does not look very good on an e-ink kindle.
        mhartl 14y ago
        What you mean is that heavily formatted books don't look good on Kindles. There's no general mapping from publication-quality documents (as supported by PDF) to crippled formats like ePub and Mobi. The problem is the device—or, rather, your expectations regarding the device—and not the format itself.
      - mhartl 14y ago
        This is a limitation of the device, not the format. Why do people expect to be able to read heavily formatted books on every device they own? For books made up mostly of natural language text, this might be a reasonable expectation, but technical books have a different set of design constraints that make them ill-suited to general e-readers.
- davidw 14y ago
  Sigil is open source.

by zedshaw 14y ago

stock_toaster 14y ago

I watched the intro on udemy. Very cool. You talked about installing xcode. For newer osx versions, people may be able to install just the [command line tools for xcode][1], which is only about 170MB or so. It might save some people from waiting around for the full xcode. [1]: http://kennethreitz.com/xcode-gcc-and-homebrew.html http://kennethreitz.com/xcode-gcc-and-homebrew.html

zedshaw 14y ago
Yes, I have to update to point people there. Apparently also the latest xcode is missing a bunch of stuff people might need and requires separate downloads of those pieces. I forget what but it's still annoying.
- stock_toaster 14y ago
  I think the command line tools are now installed (and downloaded) from inside excode once you have xcode installed. Certainly an irritant. Just looked at it: preferences -> downloads -> command-line-tools

mhartl 14y ago

What's your method for making the ePub version of your books? I'm considering writing a custom program for my own stuff, but I'd love to be able to use something off the shelf.

zedshaw 14y ago
I'm ditching ePub. It's a crap format that has a bewildering number of options and it seems every viewer wants to implement some different subset of them. From now on, it's PDF and HTML only.
- tjoff 14y ago
  In that case, consider making an ~A5 version of the PDF or viewing it on e-readers will be a hassle.
- mhartl 14y ago
  Glad to hear it. When people ask me about ePub/Mobi, I tell them that both formats are broken and that if I ever produce them it'll only be as a stupid marketing gimmick. What we really need is a format that works across different devices. If only there were a portable document format that solved this problem...
  - tjoff 14y ago
    Yeah, because PDFs work really great on devices of different screen sizes. Also, the author should stop promote the epub version if he won't do it.
    - readme 14y ago
      this, pdf does not look very good on an e-ink kindle.
      - mhartl 14y ago
        What you mean is that heavily formatted books don't look good on Kindles. There's no general mapping from publication-quality documents (as supported by PDF) to crippled formats like ePub and Mobi. The problem is the device—or, rather, your expectations regarding the device—and not the format itself.
    - mhartl 14y ago
      This is a limitation of the device, not the format. Why do people expect to be able to read heavily formatted books on every device they own? For books made up mostly of natural language text, this might be a reasonable expectation, but technical books have a different set of design constraints that make them ill-suited to general e-readers.
davidw 14y ago
Sigil is open source.