For anyone following my epub creator tool... · 10:32pm Apr 25th, 2016
I released a new version; v1.13!
For those who have no idea what this is about; I made a tool to download stories off fimfiction to read them offline, either on an e-reader tablet thingy, or in a program like Calibre. You basically just dump a fimfiction url into it, make it download all the story content, and then press "Build EPUB" to bake your e-book. It automatically downloads the cover and any embedded images, and includes any author's notes that come with the chapters (a detail that's sorely lacking in fimfic's "export chapter as html" function) 
Now, this latest version doesn't have too many spectacular changes; that credit goes to v1.12, actually. With the help of djazz and an epub verifier he linked me to I managed to make sure that the output of this little tool is 100% compliant with the epub format standards(*)! This also identified some minor internal bugs that didn't really affect much besides the fact they made the epub output decidedly non-compliant 
(*) I have the utmost faith in the ability of fimfic authors to still put such horrible tag errors in their stories that the output is still kaput, though. I'm a programmer, not a magician.
Anyway, v1.12 and 1.13 removed the frankly gigantic epub conversion options screen. Everything that is not very specific to the actual story you're downloading has been moved to the main options screen. That options screen itself, in addition to gaining these options, also got a bunch of handy mouse-over tooltips to clarify options that might be confusing to users that don't wade through the html output of fimfiction on a semi-regular basis like I do.
The new options screen, with mouse-over tooltips. Why yes, it does work in Mono ;)
The only things left on the actual conversion screen are an option to add the story title to the cover image page (which is generally not needed, but could be nice if the cover image doesn't have the story title on it) and then the old "add titles to chapters" option, which is now enabled by default, since it mostly applies to newer stories. See, in the Olden Days, fimfic didn't show the chapter title in large letters at the top of every chapter. It did show it, but more as part of the header thingy above the story content. This made many fimfic authors decide it was really nicer to add it explicitly inside the text. Now, in an epub it's nicer to have that title, but with these old fics still floating around it's rather redundant to add it completely automatically since those stories would have it twice. So, it's an option. Now, I noticed it was really annoying to have to close the epub conversion screen to check if it actually has those chapter titles or not, so I added a handy link on that option to open the story contents right there, so you can quickly check that 
The vastly reduced epub conversion options screen, with that nifty little link to check the titles thing
I might actually add some form of autodetection on that later, by checking the start of the chapter for the chapter name as it appears in the index, after stripping off any "chapter X" stuff from the start dynamically. This might still fail on some chapters, but if there are enough chapters and it succeeds on most the program can be fairly sure that the option should be unchecked. Saves the user some time 
The main feature added in v1.13 is that it reads the "source" url you can set in a fimfic story entry to credit the original author of the cover image. This url will be added to the synopsis page (or, if that's disabled, to the cover page itself).
Another change in 1.13 is the method in which links in the text are treated. If you didn't know, you can make local links using the "site_url" tag instead of the "url" tag, like so: [site_url=/story/6001]story link![/site_url]. I love using these things (and everyone should!), but obviously the fimfiction url should be pasted onto that again to fix them. That already worked, but I expanded the way it works with some fringe cases. On a slightly related note, there are now two methods to determine the type of images embedded in the story content, to make sure that's correct. One is to check the bytes of the actual file. The newly added one checks the mime type the website it's downloaded from conveniently sends along with the file. Since these mime types are actually used inside the epub format, it's important for the aforementioned standard compliance.
Well, that's it for now! You can find the new version here and its readme file here, and you can always check if there's a new version by going to my user page (<- site_url tag! 
) and checking the sidebar on the right side.
[edit]
Aaand we're up to 1.13.1; it seems I broke the automatic story ID extraction code for URLs pasted into the tool
neat
Now, if you made a browser plugin, or an online bookmarklet-able version, I would kiss you. Through the internet. Somehow.
As it is, it's merely awesome
3896503
I don't even know what that means.
If you mean an actual online app, I'd need a server to run it on and all that too, so, not all too trivial, y'know 
Really, though, I just make small desktop apps in C#. Browser plugins would probably depend on the browser, and they'd be be javascript or something, and boo, hiss, untyped programming variables, keep that blasphemy away from me
But the tool works on Mono on Linux, so yeah, not sure what more I can do.
...seems I'm up to 1.13.1 now, btw. My latest changes apparently broke the code to actually take story IDs out of fimfic urls. That's what I get for only testing with ID numbers (and mostly just with debug code '0')
3896503
So, I looked up what "bookmarklet" means, and... you are vastly underestimating the complexity of this program
3897128 3897239
I meant an online app, so you could just click a bookmarklet while on a fimfic story page and instantly it would open the downloader in a webapp with the story URL already loaded. I've used a Youtube converter online app with that functionality. Takes current URL, opens the webapp page in a new tab, inserts URL.
Of course, the coolest thing would be if Knighty just integrated this with the site, but that would probably be loads of hazzle.
3897301
As I said, then I'd still need hosting on a place that could execute my code. And I'd need to write a web front-end for it *shudder*
I don't like web apps very much. Their internal run life cycle is an annoying and volatile mess, compared with normal desktop apps; you never know when a user randomly decided to reload, or heck, close, a page. Which, compared to desktop apps, is pretty much equal to a user suddenly completely ignoring a program they started and starting a second instance of it. The cleanup of such abandoned sessions is a mess, and the actual detection of when it happens and needs that cleanup is even worse
And then there's bandwidth, too; if people want to keep any images intact in high quality, that doesn't make much difference for a desktop app; it'll just download some files, and the epub will be larger. But for a server, that's data transfer from all of its users going through their connection, twice; once for downloading them, and once for sending the final file to the user.
Fimfic stories have an epub export option, y'know... but, eh, their abominable quality is exactly the reason I made this tool. No rich text, no descriptions, no images, no author's notes... The only thing it has is the chapter text, with all text formatting stripped from it
Besides that, though, the tool also cleans up a bunch of common user errors (like indenting with spaces instead of a tab character), and html errors fimfic itself causes due to its awful bbcode parser. No official export would ever have that.
Oh man, this is going to come in handy so much for me during long flights. You’re a lifesaver!
3900571
You're welcome
Nice work! :)
3904831
Thanks for the help on it
3897301
FYI, 3904831 here is working on exactly that
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fimfic2epub/fiijkoniocipeemlflajmmaecfhfcand
It hooks itself into the original epub export button on the fimfic UI, though you have to wait a while after pressing it before you get your file.
4072091
And here I am using Firefox. Dammit.
4072224
Hmm. The development site says it's a "Chrome/Firefox extension"... but I have no idea how it would be deployed/used on Firefox.
3896503
3897301
I made a bookmarklet out of my browser extension/tool. Just drag the link on this page to your bookmarks, and when you go to a story page click the bookmark. Wait a while for the server to generate it for you.
4072224
Firefox is a supported browser but it was removed from their Addons page for some reason. I have to investigate it.
EDIT: Updated link.
4152586
Neat.