PDF (Portable Document Format) is a high quality file format that can be used for any type of electronic publication.
It’s also a great semi-finished product in the chain of creating printed publications. But despite all of its positive qualities, problems can occur when trying to open PDFs on mobile devices, especially if the devices have smaller screens. Sometimes PDF files are too big for mobile Internet access. That is why you will often see people using other file formats when reading eBooks.
One of the most popular and well-known eBook formats is EPUB, which ranks second in popularity only to PDF files. EPUB files support just about all of the same functions that PDFs do and the file format is compatible with all major eBook readers on the market. It is also just as compact a file format as PDF and an open source file format as well, which is why it is used so commonly in electronic publications. It is very easy to edit, unlike PDFs, which have to be converted in order to be edited in most cases. However, only people who are familiar with HTML, as well as XML and CSS editors, can edit or create eBooks in the EPUB file format. It would be a pretty difficult task for people who are not familiar with them.
However, there are some programs that can help novices to edit and creates eBooks as EPUB files very easily. We have discussed conversion from PDF to EPUB earlier, with the Calibre program being the best one for doing so. However, most of the time, additional edits will be needed after the conversion in order to make the new file usable.
Changes to EPUB files can be made directly in a program called Sigil, which is also an open source program and available for all operating systems. It is a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) program, which makes it a great program for making changes to EPUB files and eBooks very easily and in a very direct manner.
Thanks to its technology, HTML pages are created as easily as you would make a page in a word processing program, with the HTML being automatically generated in the background. No prior knowledge of HTML is needed. CSS is not needed either, since the creation process through the editing yields good results without it. The program also allows you to enter pictures, videos and audio as you wish to the PUB file you are editing or creating.
Sigil saves files automatically as EPUBs. It saves all of the created HTML pages, along with all the imported videos, pictures and sounds, and then automatically creates XML files, uniting all of this into a compressed ZIP file with the .epub extension and making the eBook immediately usable.
