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SGH as ePub for ebook readers et al

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    SGH as ePub for ebook readers et al

    Hello SGH fans and primarily, hi Alex!

    I am a long time fan of Stargate Horizon virtual series. I liked the idea from the beginning and I believe you (and your staff) have accomplished something great. Now, I am thinking of "spreading the word" a little, so that you can gather broader support and hopefully deliver us new and exciting stories.

    I am a new proud owner of Sony PRS 505 eBook reader and an idea sparked in my mind. Delivering SGH for this device (and similar) would be just great way for enjoying it on the go. I actually printed out a lot of episodes before, but it tends to get over your head, if you actually consider how many pages of text that is (don't get me wrong, that is great ).
    So, even though these portable eInk devices can read pdf files, I thought about converting the episodes to ePub (open eBook format) and maybe giving them some nice look on the way (for use on smaller screens, than initially intented). Since I am going to read SGH from the begining in awaiting final episodes of season 4, I would be proof reading the texts as well, so the output should be pretty consistent.
    My final intention? Giving the ePub files back to the community. And as I am member of forums on mobileread.com, where there are lot of dedicated ebook fans (with those eInk devices), my thinking was to publish them there in their open ebook library. I am certain, that lot of members will know about SGH, but maybe this would be nice way to attract more readers.

    Anyway, in the end, it comes to you, Alex. Would you be okay with this? As you can see, my only interest is to get more people to SGH, as I believe it is great reading for sci-fi and Stargate fans alike.

    Hope to hear from you soon,

    Tomas

    #2
    I think that would be an absolutely fantastic thing to do!

    The series is out there and available, and I'd really love for it to be available to even more readers to enjoy! I don't know too much about ePub, so if you could help out with that it would be great.

    About the earlier episodes, mostly Season One and Season Two, the goal is to eventually go back and revise some of them anyway. Kind of like the new "Children of the God's" version that's coming out. Looking back, I think there's some episodes that we can do way better now. So one day I'd like to go back and take another stab at some of them. That won't happen while the series is still producing new episodes, though, due to time constraints.

    But yeah, like I said, I think that's a great idea! Would you be able to just convert PDF files into an ePub format?
    Click on banner to visit the Stargate: Horizon homepage.

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      #3
      Hi Alex,

      I am glad that you like the idea :-).
      Now about ePub. Basically it is bunch of xhtml files (usually representing whole chapters) with css stylesheets and images (if needed) zipped in one file. There are more things to ePub, but no need to get into that much detail.

      An open source project called calibre exists, which can convert between lot of ebook formats with various success, and can even convert pdf to ePub (apart from organizing eBooks, displaying them on screen etc.). However, pdf being an fixed image whereas epub is a reflowable format (considering, it is actually html), the conversion is not perfect. As far as SGH comes, it is even harder for the software to figure out how to format the text properly, because SGH pdf files use, understandably, a lot of alignment and line breaks etc.

      As I already experimented with this, it seems, that exporting the raw text and then recreating the formatting from scratch is better way to make the "conversion" (note those qoutes ) , than create a half-baked ePub and try to make it work, somehow.

      Ideally, it would be easier for me to create ePub files from original sources, which depends on whether you still have them available, and of course, if you would be so kind and sent me a few episodes, just to try things out.

      Hope this clarifies things a little, feel free to ask anything that crosses your mind.

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        #4
        is this thing you mention some kind of PDA...if so I thought most PDAs already came with the ability to read PDF files.....so I wonder why bother with a new format....or is this thing something else altogether?

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          #5
          I would liek to have SGH in epub/mobi/pbd. I cant read good PDF on my Kindle and converting in Calibre will lost some formating

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            #6
            I was wondering if the epub was ever created?

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