rockie667
Level 1 (5 points)

Q: Best way to create Math-Book for several devices

Hello,

 

I have written some Books about Mathematics and past months I rewrote the first one directly in iBooks Author - My original files have been written in WinWord 15 years ago, so there was only plain text, I could copy/paste into iBooks Author. The rest I had to edit completely new in LaTex in iBooks Author. Now I see it was the wrong way because it is pain in the *** to come back from ibook-Format to ePub and other formats to also sell them at Amazon for example.

 

So I hope to get some Pro-Tips for the best base format for easiest export to all possible formats. Of course ibook has more possibilities, but it would be a way to have a base version as epub, pdf, etc and then import into iBooks Author to make an extended version with videos, etc.

 

Would pages be the best way to make a base version (as far as I have seen there seems to bee a pay to export to ibooks Author and also to make ePub-version)? Or maybe making an HTML-Version with calibre (I think this is possible in calibre).

 

Problem is simply that I have so much Mathematic expressions in my books and so I need LaTex for best presentation and design.

 

Has anyone experience with creating Science Books?

 

But second problem of course is still to find a way to get an ePub version of my ibooks-file. So far I did not find a way to export the book including LaTex source.

 

I so much would appreciate some good advices on this...

 

Thank you so much in advance!

 

Bye

rockie

MacBook Pro (15-inch Early 2011), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Mar 16, 2013 10:08 AM

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rockie667

Q: Best way to create Math-Book for several devices

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  • by Tom Gewecke,Helpful

    Tom Gewecke Tom Gewecke Mar 17, 2013 6:34 AM in response to rockie667
    Level 9 (79,548 points)
    Mar 17, 2013 6:34 AM in response to rockie667

    I don't have any experience with your kind of text, but offhand I would think Pages might be the easiest, since iBooks Author can import Pages chapters and both apps can use MathType for equations and Pages can export to epub.

  • by RoberRM,

    RoberRM RoberRM Apr 3, 2013 5:36 PM in response to rockie667
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 3, 2013 5:36 PM in response to rockie667

    Hi Rockie!

     

    I have this very same question, and I would be very interested in knowing what approach you finally took and how it went for you. So, could you please keep us informed?

     

    Thank you very much in advance.

  • by rockie667,

    rockie667 rockie667 Apr 5, 2013 10:08 AM in response to RoberRM
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Apr 5, 2013 10:08 AM in response to RoberRM

    Hello RoberRM,

     

    I am sorry that I can not give you a convenient solution for our problem. I finally went the same path like with my first book: I mainly target at students with iPads, so I decided to get the best out of iBooks Author to get the full palette of features. I simply did not want to stumble into experiments with uncertain results.

     

    Maybe later on I will go the hard way to copy and paste text and latex part of the books into pages. I will see if it will be worth the efforts...

     

    Besides this the workflow in iBA is simply more effective and time saving. So, at the moment for me everything points into the iBooks Author direction.

     

    Maybe in later versions we will have ways to export into other formats.

     

    Bye and good luck with your work!!

    rockie

  • by RoberRM,

    RoberRM RoberRM Apr 5, 2013 5:40 PM in response to rockie667
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 5, 2013 5:40 PM in response to rockie667

    Thank you anyway, Rockie!

     

    My problem is that many of my students do not even have Apple devices (and none of them have iPads). So I was hopping to create ePubs from my original Word-for-Mac files that could be read in as many devices as possible (so iBooks Author, although very easy to use, is not for me). Also, as you said, this would be easy but for the formulas. Apple's Pages does not seem to import them properly! So I cannot use it either.

     

    Anyway, if I find a solution I will posts it here.   I hope you will do the same, please.

     

    Good luck to you too!

    RoberRM

  • by Tom Gewecke,

    Tom Gewecke Tom Gewecke Apr 5, 2013 6:22 PM in response to RoberRM
    Level 9 (79,548 points)
    Apr 5, 2013 6:22 PM in response to RoberRM

    RoberRM wrote:

     

    this would be easy but for the formulas. Apple's Pages does not seem to import them properly! So I cannot use it either.

     

    Have you asked for help regarding that in the Pages forum?  It seems like something which should be fixable.  Are you using MathType?

  • by rockie667,

    rockie667 rockie667 Apr 6, 2013 1:45 AM in response to RoberRM
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Apr 6, 2013 1:45 AM in response to RoberRM

    Hello RoberRM,

     

    I understand your problem. I first tried to go the pages way - there is a good way to get the formulas into your pages document via services. Maybe this site helps you, too:

    http://getpocket.com/a/read/58651360

     

    There you find a way to do this. The iBA workflow is much easier and more effective. So for me it was the better decision. But maybe for you it is worth a try. I tried and I saw that it worked very good the way described in the website mentioned above. The formulas where displayed very nice.

     

    Check it and please let us stay in contact for exchanging experiences.

     

    Good luck for you in finding your perfect way!

    rockie

  • by rockie667,

    rockie667 rockie667 Apr 6, 2013 1:58 AM in response to RoberRM
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Apr 6, 2013 1:58 AM in response to RoberRM

    Oh - you created your formulas via the Word formula editor? Same problem like for me with my original files: How do I get the (Win-)Word formulas into latex/pages? Oh, this was my biggest problem, too!

     

    As I have written in the original post, I had to edit every single math expression new within the iBA latex editor. This was much, much work... A book with 400 pages and lots of math expressions on every page - really a lot of typing effort!!!

     

    For this problem I also did not find any proper solution.

     

    Of course now I face the problem to get the iBA-document including the latex quellcode into pages for creating ebooks. So as I told you, I hope for future updates with export features and decided to create the second book with iBA as well! I hope I won't regret this decision some day...

     

    Best regards

    rockie

  • by RoberRM,

    RoberRM RoberRM Apr 6, 2013 5:30 AM in response to rockie667
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 6, 2013 5:30 AM in response to rockie667

    Thank you both, Tom and Rockie!

     

    Yes. I use MathType with Word 2011 for Mac. Unfortunately, when you import a Word document into Pages the formulas appear without any symbol (i.e., the summation, the horizontal line of a division, Greek letters, etc., they all disappear). Also, the formulas seem to be converted into pictures that I cannot re-open with MathType in Pages (in case I need to edit them). These two problems make importing my Word files into Pages impossible. I have not asked the question in the Pages forum, but I have looked around the web a lot for a solution and have not found it yet. In any case, I see myself waiting for an update of MathType or Pages that imports Word documents with formulas better, or doing what Rockie did: rewriting each and every formula.

     

    As for your problem of going from iBA to Pages, Rockie, have you tried copying and pasting from iBA to Pages? Maybe start small (one or two paragraphs at a time) and increase the amount to pages or whole sections...

     

    Best regards,

    RoberRM

  • by Tom Gewecke,

    Tom Gewecke Tom Gewecke Apr 6, 2013 6:01 AM in response to RoberRM
    Level 9 (79,548 points)
    Apr 6, 2013 6:01 AM in response to RoberRM

    RoberRM wrote:

     

    when you import a Word document into Pages

     

    I'm not optimistic about that workflow, but asking in the Pages forum may still be worthwhile.  Perhaps better to search/ask how best to turn Word directly into epub in the MS forums:

     

    http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mac/forum/macword