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Have you used the epub tool in Finale?
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I've used it and love it - 0.0%
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I've used it and can't get it to work properly - 100.0%

 
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Chad Criswell
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  		   Posted 10/29/2013 9:48 PM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
I have a set of pieces I created in Finale solely because of the promise that it would export to epub format. I was excited that I might be able to export my music then sell it as an ebook in the iTunes book store. The music looks great when I load it straight to my iPad, but I want to distribute it, and the best way to do that is to sell it on the iTunes store. Unfortunately I can't do that because the same file fails dozens of validation checks from the Apple and epub validation services. Thus, they won't take it. None of the other online booksellers will take it either because of the same errors. Even a one page test file with a single note on it exported as an epub fails validation!

I've spent many long evenings working on this problem, trying to extract the epub archives that Finale creates and then manually fix the dozens of errors but I have not been successful. The errors are not in my notation, they are in the way the epub generator is creating the meta data and referencing the html files inside the archive. Has anyone had success with this part of the program? Does anyone know of a workaround that will allow me to fix these errors while still displaying the notation correctly?

Sorry if I sound grumpy and ranting but this is so incredibly frustrating to have completed a 39 page full score project and then discover that I can't use it the way I had intended!

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,
MaestroC
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Jetcopy
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  		   Posted 10/29/2013 9:56 PM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Have you tried opening the Finale epub's in Calibre and creating your ebook from that program? I haven't created a music ebook, but I've used Calibre (and Scrivner) for text ebooks which turned out great. I've done a minimal amount of testing using FInale epubs and what I've tried has also worked.

Macbook Pro OSX 10.8.5, 2.66GHz Intel Core i7, 8 GB RAM

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Chad Criswell
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Total Posts : 9
  		   Posted 10/30/2013 12:49 PM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
jetcopy said...
Have you tried opening the Finale epub's in Calibre and creating your ebook from that program? I haven't created a music ebook, but I've used Calibre (and Scrivner) for text ebooks which turned out great. I've done a minimal amount of testing using FInale epubs and what I've tried has also worked.


I've tried Calibre, Sigil, and at least four other epub editors. The problem is that Finale outputs in epub3 which is not supported by any of the major epub editors yet. If you import a finale epub into one of those apps, make the changes, and save it it will corrupt the music notation and all you get is gibberish.

Let me clarify, I know that exporting to epub DOES work, and if you upload that epub directly to your tablet or ipad using iTunes it will open and display correctly on that device. The problem is that there are still a bunch of HTML and XML formatting errors inside the document that epub validator programs will not accept. Hence, Apple, Amazon, etc. will not accept the epubs for sale because they "do not validate." To prove what I am saying take an epub export from Finale and run it through the epub validator at http://validator.idpf.org/. It will pop back out with errors.

The thing that bugs me is that from my research it appears these would be relatively easy fixes for MakeMusic's programmers to fix. They are all textual errors inside HTML and XML documents. The errors are not related to how the music is being formatted, the errors are related to how the accompanying text files that make up the epub package are being written.

For those who don't know, inside the epub package are several text documents that contain XML information that tells the reading application how to display things. Some of the errors you get when you try to validate a Finale epub can be fixed by something as simple as adding the word "none" to a particular tag inside these documents. Other errors like forgetting to add a descriptor between two XML tags, or leaving out the Landmarks statement in the content.opf file, or forgetting to properly format the XHTML statements to conform to EPUB 3 standards are more complicated to do by hand but still an easy fix if done by an experienced programmer.

These errors can all be fixed just by having one of the devs do a little research on each one of the error statements, seeing what that error means is wrong in the way the epub is being exported, and then changing a line of code that determines how the text file is written.
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Zuill
"The Troll"



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  		   Posted 10/30/2013 1:03 PM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
MakeMusic often comes out with a feature and it is not quite up to par in the first release. Native pdf exporting is a prime example. It just doesn't work properly. So, creating a pdf requires an outside program.

I am going to guess that is not available with epub creation? Can a pdf be conveted to epub?

Zuill

"When all is said and done, more is said than done."
 
Finale 2002b, 2003a, 2004b, 2005b, Win XP SP3, 2011b Win 7 64bit, 2012a Bought and Paid For (Hopefully soon 2012b with some of the MAJOR BUGS fixed--well, now with 2012b and some of the bugs are fixed) 2012c, with some bug fixes
Favorite Forum quote: "Please, everybody, IGNORE THE TROLL!"

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Michael Good
MusicXML Maven



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Total Posts : 1299
  		   Posted 10/30/2013 1:14 PM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Chad, we're sorry that the EPUB export is not meeting your expectations. Each EPUB store has its own requirements for submission which go beyond what Finale can do automatically. This is why we include the following in our documentation of the File | Export | EPUB command:

"Note. If you plan to publish and sell EPUB files exported from Finale additional updates to the file will be required. For example, you will need to introduce a properly formatted cover image, and create a page list so the EPUB page numbers match the printed page numbers."

It sounds like you may have run into some issues that go beyond that, perhaps due to changes in the iTunes validator since Finale 2012b and c were released (which was right around the transition between EPUB 2 and EPUB 3). Would you be willing to send a list of those issues to Customer Support, asking them to forward it to me? Thanks for any further help you can offer.

Michael Good
Director of Digital Sheet Music
MakeMusic, Inc.

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Chad Criswell
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Date Joined Mar 2012
Total Posts : 9
  		   Posted 10/31/2013 8:21 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Michael,

I put in a support request on it a few days ago and submitted a copy of the error report from Apple when trying to submit (reference is incident #131029-000779). Unfortunately the response I got was that they were unable to help and they suggested exporting to PDF then converting PDF to epub which also does not work due to the fact that third party epub converters (I've tried half a dozen at least) do not handle the glyphs in the PDF file correctly so they output an epub that is nothing but gibberish.

Also just to clarify, the statement that the file must be edited to include a cover image is not entirely correct any more. Both Amazon and Apple accept epub files with or without a specified cover image because they ask for the cover image to be uploaded separately as a part of the submission process.

Thank you for looking into this.
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