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This appendix lists some third-party tools that work well with Jutoh. It’s not an exhaustive list.
EpubCheck, originally written by Adobe and now maintained by W3C, is a very useful checker for Epub files. It examines the HTML and XML files in your book and flags up errors, such as missing mandatory meta-data, ill-formed HTML, missing bookmarks, and so on. This tool is already installed and configured by default with Jutoh; it needs Java to be installed on your system. Use the checker by clicking the Check button or by switching on Check Epub after compiling in the General Preferences dialog. You can get updated versions of EpubCheck from github.com/IDPF/epubcheck/.
Amazon’s Kindlegen can be used to create .mobi (Kindle) books, although it’s not necessary as Jutoh can create Kindle-optimized .epub files that can be opened in Kindle Previewer 3 and submitted to KDP. Configure Jutoh by going to the Helpers page in the Jutoh Preferences dialog and clicking on Help Me Install Kindlegen. Jutoh will install and configure Kindlegen for you if you have Kindle Previewer 3 installed (see below).
To preview your Epub book on Mac and Windows, you can get Adobe Digital Editions from adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/.
Jutoh will launch the default application associated with the epub extension when you click on Launch. If you need to use several viewers and choose between them, you can add viewers in the Helpers page of the Jutoh Preferences dialog, by clicking on Configure, then Add. Type the name of the helper application, and browse for the command to use. Now when you click on the Launch button, Jutoh will offer you a menu of applications to use.
ADE is not supported on Linux, but there are alternatives, such as such as Kavita and Foliate.
Amazon recommends that you preview your book with Kindle Previewer 3 for Windows or Mac, which you can get from amazon.com/kindlepublishing.
This lets you select a number of different Kindle devices to test. You can install it and configure it for use with Jutoh via Help Me Install Kindle Previewer in Preferences/Helpers.
Kindle Previewer is not available on Linux, but here are some of the ways you work around that:
Use an Epub viewer most of the time, such as Kavita or Foliate. You can use the “Epub” configuration for this, and for simple formatting at least, it should be comparable to how it will look on Kindle.
Use a Kindle device (someone you know may have one in a drawer gathering dust) and email the Kindle-optimized Epub file to it.
View using the Kindle app on a smartphone, again emailing the book to it using its unique email address.
In the KDP page for your book, upload your file and use the built-in web previewer. There may be one or two small differences from how it will look on a device but it should be pretty close.
Use a virtual machine to run Windows and Kindle Previewer 3. You can download VMware for free at the time of writing (August 2024).
Use EpubCheck (via the Check button, or an online service) to check your Epub file since that may identify problems in the Jutoh file that need sorting out. However, if you have taken into account any Jutoh warnings and errors that are shown when compiling, that will eliminate a lot of problems, for example colour combinations that will look bad in some modes, missing bookmarks, broken font embedding, etc.
To view Kindle books, you can use Amazon’s Kindle for PC and Kindle for Mac, available from amazon.com/kindle-dbs/fd/kcp.
Formatting on this software can be different from on other devices, such as the Kindle device and iPhone.
LibreOffice is a free download from libreoffice.org.
It’s useful for converting Word and other word processor files to DOCX or ODT for import into Jutoh. If you plan to create ODT files with Jutoh, as well, you can use LibreOffice to convert your books to PDF, Word and other files. And of course, you may grow to enjoy it as a regular word processor instead of using one that costs a lot of money! You can also use OpenOffice, an earlier incarnation of LibreOffice, but arguably LibreOffice has better Word support.
These are great, inexpensive tools for Mac and Windows suitable for creating your covers and promotional materials. I use them myself and find them easier than the Adobe equivalents. You can use either tool, and they’re so cheap you may as well buy the whole suite, including Affinity Publisher. Get them from affinity.serif.com.
If you’re on Linux, the free Gimp photo editor is a popular choice, and some people have had success running Affinity on Linux via the WINE emulator. You can get it from gimp.org. Other tools include krita.org and canva.com, and various special-purpose cover designers are also available online.
Contents | Start | End | Previous: Appendix I: Working With Tag Objects | Next: Change Log