Ebooks:howto

How to create eBooks

The program Calibre is used to generate an e-book in epub format. Although it accepts a variety of inputs, by far the best is HTML. The ebook itself is also expressed in HTML, and thus the conversion is pretty faithfull. Do not even attempt to convert an Acrobat file! Using Word is acceptable, but you will need to use the Word option to save as HTML. But the outcome depends very much on how fastidious you have been in your Word authoring. If you have carefully used the Word Template (stylesheet), and marked up section headings etc, then the outcome will be pretty good. If however, you have avoided the use of Templates, the result might not be that good.

A useful program which can be used to edit an (unsatisfactory conversion as done above) is Sigil. Using this, you can edit the initial conversion to something more reasonable.

How to use eBooks

Currently, some lecture course materials are being offered in eBook format. The standard used is the epub and this is supported on a variety of eBook readers. The combination tested thus far is the Stanza ebook reader as available on Apple iPhone/iPod/iPad devices. There are two ways to install an ebook into this environment.

Getting an ebook, Method 1

1. Download the ebook from the appropriate location. Four examples are linked here, as
   1. Pericyclic Reactions (iPad) or Pericyclic Reactions (Kindle)
   2. Molecular modelling (iPad)
   3. Conformational analysis (iPad)
2. Open iTunes on a computer.
3. From the iTunes Store, go to the App store, and find Stanza and install it into your apps (it is free).
4. Plug your mobile device in. When it shows up in the DEVICES panel on the left, select it and go to the Apps tab.
5. One of the items shown should be Stanza. Select it, whereupon an area labelled Stanza documents will appear. Using the Add button in this area, browse to the downloaded ebooks (as .epub files).
6. On your iPhone/iPod/iPad, open Stanza. The ebook should now show up as items in your library.

Getting an ebook, Method 2

On your mobile device, open the Stanza app, and go to the top Catalog/Shared/Downloads area, select downloads and press + and invoke Download book from URL using one of:

1. http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/local/ebooks/pericyclic.epub
2. http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/local/ebooks/conformational.epub
3. http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/local/ebooks/modelling.epub

Getting an ebook, Method 3

Download the ebook by clicking on the link above, and then drag the downloaded file to the Library using iTunes. You can then sync this book and use the iBooks app to read it.

Getting an ebook, Kindle

The .mobi version of the ebooks above is for the Kindle device.

Reading

Using Stanza, tap on the bottom to reveal a toolbar, which includes a full text search option. Resolve links by tapping and pressing for 1-2 seconds. The link will go yellow. Release and it will open. Local links to the ebook itself will open in Stanza. External links will open in the Web browser. Molecules which are rotatable on a Java-enabled browser will NOT display in an ebook.

The Future

We are exploring ways of populating e-books into either an epub server or a local iTunes store, so that course notes, and more importantly, updates to course notes (in the manner of updates to eg apps) can be propagated directly to your e-book reader. Watch this space. Or, go read about Epub3, an emerging standard which will take advantage of the capabilities of new mobile devices such as the iPad. There are also concerns about how annotations might work with the ebup format. One (proprietary) solution to this is Inkling