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Endnotes, Footnotes in ePub


rumplestiltskin

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I've been playing with Storyist as a means to take an existing Word document and alter it accordingly so I may export as an ePub which Apple may then publish on iBooks with their DRM so it may be sold at the iBooks store. This book currently has footnotes which I know are not part of the ePub standard format. This is a work of non-fiction so including the references is critical. The way I understand it, I seem to have three options:

 

1. Include what were the footnotes (in the Word document) as inline references with optional live links to the source material if available online. In other words, when footnote 1 would appear as a "1" in the Word document, I'd actually include the text of that footnote right in the body of the document as, optionally, a live link. (Let me know if this isn't clear.)

 

2. Include sequential numbers (not sure if Storyist's export to ePub retains superscript) at the same locations where the original Word document has the footnote numbers and, at the end of the chapter or end of the book, include a page(s) with those numbers and the references. In other words: This would be a "reference page(s)". I'm thinking it might be better to have the entire thing at the end of the book for the sake of the book's continuity from chapter to chapter.

 

3. Same as #2 but make the numbers for the references (that appear at the proper locations within the body copy) live links to the reference pages at the end of the book. A tap on the "endnote link" (the blue number) would bring you to the page with the reference and a tap on that reference number would then bring you back to the chapter and page from where you came. The actual reference could probably be a live link. The weakness I see with this solution is that the reader (person, not app) would have to remember the exact number of the "endnote link" so he/she wouldn't accidentally tap the wrong link and return to the wrong page of the book.

 

I would appreciate any advice how to accomplish this. This is a history book so references are essential in some manner. Thanks very much.

 

Barry

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I have worked with converting heavily footnoted history articles from Word to ePub via InDesign 6 (CS4). The conversion has several bizarre elements, and in general I don't recommend it (Storyist does a much better job, with much less hair pulling and tooth gnashing by the ePub creator), but the footnotes are one thing that convert relatively easily. What you get as the end result is similar to your #3. In the text you have a note number in brackets:

 

As X once said, "You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs."[1]

 

The 1 is a hyperlink that, when clicked, takes you to the note, also indicated with [1]. Click on the note reference number, and you go back to the text.

 

Storyist has very flexible in-project linking (to character sheets, e.g., or from character sheets to plot points, or from pretty much anything to notes). And you could certainly set up your file in Word (which you would need to do before importing), by either converting the footnotes to endnotes or simply copying the whole set of notes and dumping them at the end of the file. You would then have to go through and renumber them manually: both the in-text references and the notes themselves.

 

But can you link one or two characters of text in a manuscript to either another specific place in the same manuscript or to a specific place in another manuscript (holding your reference pages)? I'm not sure that you can. Someone else will have to comment on that.

 

You can link to a website in Storyist. That might be a bit cumbersome for your reader, though, if the person has to go back and forth constantly. In that case, a list of unlinked endnotes to each chapter might actually be better in the long run.

 

Best of luck with this project, and welcome to the forums!

Marguerite

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Hi Barry,

 

A very interesting issue! I'm writing fiction at the moment, but all I've had published is non-fiction; I'm very interested in your solution, and how you make it work.

 

FWIW, my personal preference would be this option:

 

3. Same as #2 but make the numbers for the references (that appear at the proper locations within the body copy) live links to the reference pages at the end of the book. A tap on the "endnote link" (the blue number) would bring you to the page with the reference and a tap on that reference number would then bring you back to the chapter and page from where you came. The actual reference could probably be a live link. The weakness I see with this solution is that the reader (person, not app) would have to remember the exact number of the "endnote link" so he/she wouldn't accidentally tap the wrong link and return to the wrong page of the book.

 

I would not worry about the weakness; this is no more of an issue than if someone has to manually find the page of the reference, then manually flip back. iBooks allows for bookmarks, so one can easily bookmark pages, click to the reference pages, and if they click back to the wrong page, click on a bookmark to return to the proper page.

 

I've never made an ePub in Storyist that included internal links within a manuscript, but I'm guessing that using the Edit > Insert > Link command is the way to do it.

 

Take care,

Orren

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...snip...As X once said, "You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs."[1]

 

The 1 is a hyperlink that, when clicked, takes you to the note, also indicated with [1]. Click on the note reference number, and you go back to the text.

 

Storyist has very flexible in-project linking (to character sheets, e.g., or from character sheets to plot points, or from pretty much anything to notes). And you could certainly set up your file in Word (which you would need to do before importing), by either converting the footnotes to endnotes or simply copying the whole set of notes and dumping them at the end of the file. You would then have to go through and renumber them manually: both the in-text references and the notes themselves. ...snip...

 

Thank you Marguerite (and all who are replying to my post).

 

Might you know the exact process? I know how to create the link but to what is it linked? The dialog appears to expect that something has already been created and whatever that is should appear in the list and that item is what I should select. But how does something populate that list?

 

Thanks very much for your assistance.

 

Barry

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Might you know the exact process? I know how to create the link but to what is it linked? The dialog appears to expect that something has already been created and whatever that is should appear in the list and that item is what I should select. But how does something populate that list?

 

Thanks very much for your assistance.

Barry

Hi, Barry:

Creating the links is the easy part, but there are different kinds of links. To create links to the notebook, the easiest way is to use wiki syntax in the text. You don't have to have anything set up beforehand. Just click in the place in the manuscript where you want to link and type [[ followed by the name of the note, |, and the text you want to display in the manuscript. In the attached screen shot, your typing would look like this:

 

This is the first section of the first chapter of your manuscript.[[1-1|1]] ... The journey of a thousand (or a hundred thousand) words begins with a single keystroke.[[1-2|2]] (Don't type the ellipses!)

 

This creates two notes, displayed in the notebook and called 1-1 and 1-2. You can see in the righthand window that I have typed some sample note text. You can then select File > Export, make sure export type is set to ePub, and click on the boxes to the left of the manuscript and the two notes to export the whole.

 

The problem is that this procedure does not do exactly what you are looking for. The numbers appear in the ePub file, and the notes are present, but the live links from text to note are lost. And if there is a way to link back from the note to the section text, as distinct from the section sheet, I don't know how to do that.

 

I was hoping that Steve Shepard would answer your post. Only he can say definitively whether what you would like to do is possible with this incarnation of Storyist and, if not, when it may become possible.

Best,

Marguerite

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I was hoping that Steve Shepard would answer your post. Only he can say definitively whether what you would like to do is possible with this incarnation of Storyist and, if not, when it may become possible.

 

Sorry I'm late to the conversation. I just posted a quick example in the Sharing section showing how to create endnotes.

 

Unfortunately, the ePub exporter does not support internal links, so you won't be able to create an ePub file with endnotes. This is something I hope to enable in version 2.3.

 

-Steve

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