From dec6c61a1356e8c46d2e53c3fe7e2967ddf7f0b2 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Lethe Beltane Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2026 17:14:48 -0600 Subject: [PATCH] 2026-W4 --- blog/2023/12/typesetting.mu | 28 ++++++++++++ blog/index.mu | 3 ++ ld/directory.mu | 89 +++++++++++++++++++------------------ 3 files changed, 76 insertions(+), 44 deletions(-) create mode 100644 blog/2023/12/typesetting.mu diff --git a/blog/2023/12/typesetting.mu b/blog/2023/12/typesetting.mu new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4b8ad15 --- /dev/null +++ b/blog/2023/12/typesetting.mu @@ -0,0 +1,28 @@ +> How I typeset my books +>> 2023-12-01 + +A few people have asked me over the years how I make ebooks. Until now, my answer has always been to shrug and say, "I just throw them into Calibre." But I realize that's not an actual answer, just an oversimplification because I usually don't have the energy to type out whole essays into one person's inbox, `*especially`* when the question is only being asked for the sake of curiosity and not because they want to make a book of their own. + +My earliest books were made by throwing whatever poorly-formatted Microsoft Word documents I could squeeze out of Google Docs into Calibre and then using a Calibre plugin to merge them into a single book. Because the documents were split by "part" and not by "chapter", the resulting Table of Contents wasn't exactly useful. Then, around the time of `*Living Wasteland`*, I got my first computer and switched to LibreOffice for all my (non-school) writing. I also started writing a separate document for each chapter. During the typesetting of this book (or maybe it was `*Me Before You`*) I learned that Calibre allows you to make a blank book and then open an ebook editor and import Microsoft Word and HTML documents directly into it. + +After `*The Duality Of Mankind`*, instead of using LibreOffice for writing, I just used a plaintext editor and wrote everything in Markdown. I was tired of the poor formatting and cruft that both Microsoft Word and LibreOffice spat into exported HTML files, and I was also seeking to reduce the size of the resulting files. Plus there was also the privacy concern of copy-pasting entire chapters into an online HTML stripper to forcibly remove `=