Best platform for producers

[tadra...@gmail.com]

After following this list for several years and enjoying a few of your productions, I'm thinking about becoming a producer myself. I have PCs, Macs, and a Chromebook. What is the best platform for me to use if I want to keep things as simple as possible? I have older Macs and PCs, for instance, that I could dedicate to this work and perhaps install Ubuntu or whatever the preferred Linux version is. Thanks for your advice!

[Robin Whittleton]

Both Mac and Linux are easy to work with, but Linux is probably the easiest if you’re happy to work with it. Ubuntu and derivatives is our default but we’ve got producers on Fedora.

But really, the most effective platform is the one you’re most comfortable on. E.g. I’ve got a load of compose-key shortcuts on Mac memorised for characters not on the default keyboard, and moving to Linux would make me relearn all of those, regardless of the technical suitability of the platform.

-Robin

On 5 May 2022, at 18:12, tadra...@gmail.com <tadra...@gmail.com> wrote:

After following this list for several years and enjoying a few of your productions, I'm thinking about becoming a producer myself. I have PCs, Macs, and a Chromebook. What is the best platform for me to use if I want to keep things as simple as possible? I have older Macs and PCs, for instance, that I could dedicate to this work and perhaps install Ubuntu or whatever the preferred Linux version is. Thanks for your advice!

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[Andrew Rice]

If you have a late enough version of Windows 10 you can use Linux for Windows. I have a setup here I can run all the scripts in Linux and view and modify the files in Windows. It is pretty slick. 

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Not all that's gold glitters, not all that wander are lost. -J.R.R. Tolkien

[Alex Cabal]

The tools are designed on Ubuntu so that would be the best platform to
use, if you have a spare computer anyway. You can also just install
Ubuntu in a VM.

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[François Grandjean]

Robin: the Mac keyboard layout is indeed great for special characters. It is also available on Linux (at least Ubuntu and Fedora) and that’s what I use. If you are ever required to migrate, it’s good to know it’s there.

[Jay Martin]

Raspberry Pi Desktop is a low-demand OS that can be installed on most older Macs and PCs, <https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/raspberry-pi-desktop/>. You can even run it from a USB flash drive, 16 GB or more, which is what I'm doing.

I'm using it for my first project. I'm not speaking from deep experience, but I'm liking it. Its desktop feels sensible and relatable, even to me, a Windows user who is unfamiliar with Linux.

Git, Python, a code editor, and other useful applications are packaged with Raspberry Pi Desktop. I only needed to type a few commands in the Terminal to install pipx and the Standard Ebooks toolset. I downloaded the League Spartan font. I connected to GitHub with an SSH key. Then I was ready to produce an ebook.

I'll write up the installation steps. I'm curious whether people will say the steps are more work, or less work, than installing Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). I only had a hunch that Raspberry Pi Desktop would be simpler. I haven't tried any other setup yet.

[Kelson Vibber]

Any recommendations on a text editor that will show all characters including things like hair spaces?

[Alex Cabal]

Sublime Text had a setting to show invisible characters like word joiners and some more obscure characters like hair spaces.

[David Grigg]

You might also find this useful, a font I modified so it has glyphs for hairspaces, etc, and exaggerated quotation characters. It's based on the open-source Hack font.

On 8 May 2022, 9:46 AM +1000, Kelson Vibber <kel...@gmail.com>, wrote:

Any recommendations on a text editor that will show all characters including things like hair spaces?

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[C T]

VS Code has a 'gremlins' extension wich does a great job also. Tons of other extensions as well to speed things up and integrated Git.

On Sat, May 7, 2022 at 7:46 PM Kelson Vibber <kel...@gmail.com> wrote:

Any recommendations on a text editor that will show all characters including things like hair spaces?

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[Asher Smith]

Agree with all of the above (currently using SublimeText because of the ability to autocomplete the relevant closing tag when you type '</'). I would add that you should also considering using a git client (that is not GItHub desktop) rather than the command line; I've found Sourcetree useful there.

I'd also add an honourable mention for Atom as a text editor/git client combination. It makes it really easy to stage specific changes you make, which is particularly useful to me when doing editorial commits on one word without needing to discard other changes I've made to the file.

[Kelson Vibber]

Thanks! I gave Sublime a shot and was able to do a bunch of the
typography edits with it.
--
Kelson Vibber
KVibber.com

[Matt Chan]

Kelson, if you are going to use Sublime Text (of which I'm a BIG fan and I use regularly for my day job), you might try using Sublime Merge as well, a very useful graphical interface to Git, which I find very useful when having to do more complicating rebase or other operations (especially it helps me know if what I am about to do is the right git thing to do) https://www.sublimemerge.com/

Another super useful Sublime Text extension is "Show Unicode Name" https://packagecontrol.io/packages/Show%20Unicode%20Name, basically this will show you the name and "U+####" utf-8 code for the character your cursor is on at the bottom status bar; very useful to debug those en/em-dashes/hyphens/minus-signs; and also various space characters.

To show space and tab characters, in Sublime Text preference json file (you can reach there either via menu: Preferences > Settings, or common palette: Preferences: Settings) add this field: "draw_white_space": "all"

And it will now draw all spaces at center dots and tabs as lines/strike-throughs; I have this turned on for everything and it's useful for many use cases.

If you are doing a lot of (x)html elements and tags insertion and editing; you might wanna check out Emmet (https://packagecontrol.io/packages/Emmet), the learning curve is a little higher but once you get the hang of it, it makes everything so much faster. Even if Emmet is too much for you, making new snippets that expends to frequently used elements in ebooks (like those epub:type etc. stuff) is very easy, check out this post on how to do it: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/a-guide-to-preserving-your-wrists-with-sublime-text-snippets-7541662a53f2/ (It only looks complicated, but once you make you first one you can keep referring to it and copy-and-paste)

Hope this helps!

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[Alex Cabal]

There is also an SE plugin for Sublime Text that adds some helpful
context menu items: https://github.com/standardebooks/sublime-text-se-plugin

On 5/9/22 11:56 AM, Matt Chan wrote:
> Kelson, if you are going to use Sublime Text (of which I'm a BIG fan and
> I use regularly for my day job), you might try using Sublime Merge as
> well, a very useful graphical interface to Git, which I find very useful
> when having to do more complicating rebase or other operations
> (especially it helps me know if what I am about to do is the right git

> thing to do) https://www.sublimemerge.com/ <https://www.sublimemerge.com/>

>
> Another super useful Sublime Text extension is "Show Unicode Name"
> https://packagecontrol.io/packages/Show%20Unicode%20Name

> <https://packagecontrol.io/packages/Show%20Unicode%20Name>, basically

> this will show you the name and "U+####" utf-8 code for the character
> your cursor is on at the bottom status bar; very useful to debug those
> en/em-dashes/hyphens/minus-signs; and also various space characters.
>
> To show space and tab characters, in Sublime Text preference json file
> (you can reach there either via menu: Preferences > Settings, or common
> palette: Preferences: Settings) add this field: "draw_white_space": "all"
>
> And it will now draw all spaces at center dots and tabs as
> lines/strike-throughs; I have this turned on for everything and it's
> useful for many use cases.
>
> If you are doing a lot of (x)html elements and tags insertion and
> editing; you might wanna check out Emmet
> (https://packagecontrol.io/packages/Emmet

> <https://packagecontrol.io/packages/Emmet>), the learning curve is a

> little higher but once you get the hang of it, it makes everything so
> much faster. Even if Emmet is too much for you, making new snippets that
> expends to frequently used elements in ebooks (like those epub:type etc.
> stuff) is very easy, check out this post on how to do it:
> https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/a-guide-to-preserving-your-wrists-with-sublime-text-snippets-7541662a53f2/
> <https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/a-guide-to-preserving-your-wrists-with-sublime-text-snippets-7541662a53f2/>
> (It only looks complicated, but once you make you first one you can keep
> referring to it and copy-and-paste)
>
> Hope this helps!
>
> On Sun, May 8, 2022 at 11:58 PM Kelson Vibber <kel...@pobox.com
> <mailto:kel...@pobox.com>> wrote:
>
> Thanks! I gave Sublime a shot and was able to do a bunch of the
> typography edits with it.
> --
> Kelson Vibber
> KVibber.com
>
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[Matt Chan]

Do we want to submit this package to Package Control to ease installation?

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[Alex Cabal]

Eh, I think the number of users could be counted on one hand. Installing
it by hand isn't hard, though we could certainly create a readme with
instructions.

On 5/9/22 5:20 PM, Matt Chan wrote:
> Do we want to submit this package to Package Control to ease installation?
>
> On Mon, May 9, 2022 at 4:41 PM Alex Cabal <al...@standardebooks.org
> <mailto:al...@standardebooks.org>> wrote:
>
> There is also an SE plugin for Sublime Text that adds some helpful
> context menu items:
> https://github.com/standardebooks/sublime-text-se-plugin
> <https://github.com/standardebooks/sublime-text-se-plugin>
>
> On 5/9/22 11:56 AM, Matt Chan wrote:
> > Kelson, if you are going to use Sublime Text (of which I'm a BIG
> fan and
> > I use regularly for my day job), you might try using Sublime
> Merge as
> > well, a very useful graphical interface to Git, which I find very
> useful
> > when having to do more complicating rebase or other operations
> > (especially it helps me know if what I am about to do is the
> right git
> > thing to do) https://www.sublimemerge.com/

> <https://www.sublimemerge.com/> <https://www.sublimemerge.com/

> > <mailto:kel...@pobox.com <mailto:kel...@pobox.com>>> wrote:
> >
> >     Thanks! I gave Sublime a shot and was able to do a bunch of the
> >     typography edits with it.
> >     --
> >     Kelson Vibber
> >     KVibber.com
> >
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[Matt Chan]

I know I have a number of tasks on my hand that needs to be done 👀 but maybe I can PR for a readme file...

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[Matt Chan]

Okay I submitted a PR for the readme file; hopefully I got the installation direction correctly...

[David Grigg]

If you are on a Mac, I can’t praise Keyboard Maestro too much. I use over a hundred KM macros when working on SE projects, and am always making up others on the fly to tackle particular jobs.

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