Creating E-books

Important Information!

.TXT - generic ascii text file, most commonly used. Also the preferred format for posting.
.HTML - Hyper-Text Markup Language. A standard "web" document. Used mostly when special formatting like italics or boldface are wanted, or pictures/tables, etc. are needed. The second most preferred format for posting.
.LIT - M$-Reader. Proprietary format. Preferred by a few (that don't know any better). Hated by many.
.PDF - "Portable Document Format" created by Adobe Acrobat.
.PRC/.PDB - PalmOS, compressed files that can be loaded directly onto your PalmOS device
.DOC - This extension could be one of three different things:

• MS-Word Document. Looked down upon due to formatting issues between versions. Proprietary format.
  There are some programs that can convert or view them though.
• A PalmOS Document. In this case it has nothing to do w/ MS and can be converted easily to something else.
• Windows Document. Usually created with Wordpad. Allows for additional formatting/fonts than plain ascii.
  Not recommended for posting due to cross-platform incompatibilities.
  

.RB - RocketBook. Can be read on the RocketBook Reader, on your pc with software or converted.
.CHM - MS-Windows Compiled Helpfile. Can be read on a MS-Windows based pc only. Proprietary format. (can be converted/decompiled though)
.RTF - Rich Text Format, a universal format that allows for formatting, font selection, embedded images and even some rudimentary support for tables

Creating a basic HTML-based e-book

From a recent post:

I've scanned and checked my 1st book:
"The Three Investigators - The Secret of Terror Castle" Now I want to create an e-book that will be universally acceptable.
I thought a *.html using basic commands. I have images to insert. At the moment it is in *.rtf with page breaks and no inserted images.
Can anyone point to a link or just note down basic commands for:

font select
size select
bold on/off
italic on/off
page breaks
inserting images
justifying (Left, Right and Center)
Page width
... and any other command you think I may need.

any help would be much appreciated.

Sounds to me like you're not quite ready to do what you want to do.  I must agree with Mr. Crawford, as I always seem to do, that you should avoid using MS Word to make the html file.  The reason for this is that it will be AT LEAST three times larger than it would be otherwise.

Also, the resulting html code, because it is so bloated, will be nearly impossible to modify after conversion.

Here is what I suggest you do for your first attempt at making an html-based e-book.

1.  Get Textify.  It is listed in my sig.

2.  Save your file as "Text Only". Example

Your page breaks are meaningless in html, someone correct me if I am wrong.

3.  Put a little extra space before and after each chapter heading. I'm guessing 10 extra linefeeds before the chapter heading, 3 extra linefeeds after each chapter heading.

4.  Around each chapter name put the following:

<center><h1>Chapter 1</h1></center>

NOTE:  the slashes tell html to stop doing something

<center> will center something on the page. <h1> is the largest available heading size

5.  If you like, you can use italics.  If so, wherever you want them you must put _underscores_ on either side of the text.

Textify will put <i></i> around the italicized text in the html file.

6.  Insert pictures as follows:

<center><img src="Daddio.jpg"></center>

I'm assuming that you want the picture centered.  If not, just leave out <center>  </center>

What is between the quotation marks is the name of your picture file.

Now run your text file through Textify.  For our example (and I am including a short text file, a picture, and the resulting file you should be able to get) I will provide for you with every response appropriate for this specific example in Textify.

What follows is each successive prompt and the appropriate answer.  This will be clear if you follow along with my example in Textify.  To make things easy, have Textify and the files in the same folder/directory.  DO NOT have the example html file in this directory as it will be overwritten automatically.

Anyway, here are Textify's prompts and how you should answer.

Enter C to continue > C
File Name > Light
Which number best describes your file?  (0-2)> 2
Remove extra spaces?  (Y or N)> Y
(1 - 3) > 3
Use italics? (Y or N) > Y
Would you like to reformat another file?  (Y or N) > N

You now have an html file.  Example

The chapter headers are nice and big and centered.  There is italics in a couple places.  And there is a picture inserted centered on the page.

If you want more space around the picture, top and/or bottom, just add carriage returns before or after the <img src=""> line.

That's about as easy as it gets, and you end up with nice clean easy to edit html code.

NOTE:
If you are going to use MS Word to edit your text file, you must turn off auto formatting so far as underscores and italics are concerned.
Under the format menu select auto format, then click "options . . ." and go through the tabs and deselect anything to do with underscores and italics.