Calibre and FORMATTING how to stop it altering my formatting?

[nerys]

grr alas my unit does not support epub and from what I understand the epub firmware is seriously bad news for the prs-500

Guess I will have to stick with txt for the funky formatted stuff. Pitty its really nice to have a cover :-)

[nerys]

Well I am going to play with it and see if I can come up with some way of formatting it.

I have discovered a few things.

The program IGNORES line breaks where the line only contains a .

so if you do this.
.
and continue.

instead it will give you this

so if you do this..
and continue.

Grr :-)

it also ignores multiple "tabs" 1 tab is honored all other tabs are removed.

will keep trying :-)

[nerys]

Ok now I am confused. Where can I find the "rules" for how this works?

if I do

line.
.
line.

it changes it to

line..
line.

It does the same thing if I use a dash

line.
-
line.

it outputs

line.-
line.

why?

so I thought maybe it has to be a letter

so I replace the - with break

so

line.
break
line.

but it STILL balks and gives me

line.break
line.

its as if it KNOWS I am trying to trick it and its laughing at me. Ok not really but what am I missing here?

if

line.
break

equals

line.break

why does

line.

line.

becomes

line.
line.

instead of

line.line.

? is there a good url for "what" its doing so I can learn the rules and how to work within them?

[DoctorOhh]

The only url I know of is the Calibre manual.

The Constitution of the United States of America is the supreme law of the United States. It is the foundation and source of the legal authority underlying the existence of the United States of America and the federal government of the United States. It provides the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government to the states, to citizens, and to all people within the United States.

The Constitution defines the three main branches of government: a legislature, the bicameral Congress; an executive branch led by the President; and a judicial branch headed by the Supreme Court. The Constitution specifies the powers and duties of each branch. The Constitution reserves all unenumerated powers for the respective states and the people, thereby establishing the federal system of government.

The above two lines of text will look like the following when converted to LRF (this format also allows for a header and a cover) if you ...

The Constitution of the United States of America is the supreme law of the United States. It is the foundation and source of the legal authority underlying the existence of the United States of America and the federal government of the United States. It provides the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government to the states, to citizens, and to all people within the United States.

The Constitution defines the three main branches of government: a legislature, the bicameral Congress; an executive branch led by the President; and a judicial branch headed by the Supreme Court. The Constitution specifies the powers and duties of each branch. The Constitution reserves all unenumerated powers for the respective states and the people, thereby establishing the federal system of government.

... Set the following prior to converting the file.

1. Go under conversions - txt input - and check treat each line like a paragraph.
2. Go under conversions - Look&feel - and check insert blank line. (this inserts a line between paragraphs).

I believe the 500 supports RTF. You might consider using MS Wordpad to format your docs and transfer them to your reader as RTF files.

[nerys]

For Novels. all I have to do is check insert blank line (redundant since it already had a blank like that the formatting for some reason removes)

alas this won't work for "oddball" formatting. such as a script where you have of short physical lines.

it would treat EACH OF THOSE also as a paragraph.

Your method only works for lines that are long and wrap and are not intended to be "short multiple lines together" or when you do have those its supposed to be spaced apart.

no matter. I just can't use LRF have to stick with txt for those oddball files.

Very aggravating but meh no matter.

I will have to see if I can figure out how to do a cover image on a RTF.

As for the manual alas the calibre manual is useless for this function.

I am seeking a manual on the STRUCTURE of txt to lrf.

ie what does it look for what does it ignore what does it allow and what are the limits of what it will allow and how do I implement them on a txt to lrf basis.

I have not a clue how to make it trigger line break. it seems completely non standard and random how it handles those.

Sometimes it recognizes a line break other times ignores them.

it does seem to recognize "tabs" but only ONE tab. it will not permit multiple tabs.

I have seen LRF's with offset bodies of text. How are those done?

I have too much work tonight but sometime later in the week if I am in the mood I will prowl google for some LRF manuals.


My biggest confusion is why will it line break from sentence to sentence

but refuse to allow a single character or word to line break?

If I type this

and then this

it will give me

this
and this

but if I type

a line here
break
a line here

it gives me

a line herebreak
a line here.

why does it honor one but not the other?

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by nerys

For Novels. all I have to do is check insert blank line (redundant since it already had a blank like that the formatting for some reason removes)

alas this won't work for "oddball" formatting. such as a script where you have of short physical lines.

I'm sorry I missed all of the previous stuff today.

I have one more suggestion. If you are already messing with it in Notepad++ then just save it as html and your troubles should be behind you. Drag the html file to Calibre and convert that to LRF.

One heads up to avoid confusion. During the process of adding an html file to Calibre it will zip the file, this is normal.

Update: Or better yet convert your PDF file to HTML directly using Mobipocket Creator (free) then use Calibre to convert that HTML to LRF. This will preserve all italics and bold characters and should preserve the formatting.

So your options as I see them are to send either text or RTF straight to your reader (which loses your cover and the ability to add a bock jacket/metadata page up front) or convert to html, ensure your formatting is as you like then convert that to LRF via Calibre.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Sigh you seem to be expecting cailbre to preserve the layout of your text exactly. that's not going to happen. E-book are "reflowable" that means that they are "semantic" not layout oriented.

So a parapgraph in an e-book is represented as <paragraph>some text</paragraph>

Not a set of instructions like "leave 3 blank spaces then write the following characters, then change to next line". This is what a TXT file looks like to a computer.

calibre's conversion pipeline converts everything into a reflowable format internally, so you are never going to be able to preserve formats that specify exact layouts, like TXT and PDF.

Thank you for this explanation. I always knew how to move around the text format limitations but it never dawned on me that this was in fact an exact layout type of format.

Obviously when you send text to the reader itself there is a dedicated interpreter for that format that lays the text out for that particular reader. Even with an interpreter built into the reader you often get garbage because of the formatting of the original text being for 132 column vice 80 column etc.

It never bothered me, but I do appreciate the explanation.

[colinsky]

nerys, try the following:

take the text file you are working on
paste this at the top:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"><html><head>
<style type="text/css">
pre {white-space: pre-wrap;}
</style>
</head>
<html>
<pre>

paste this at the bottom

</pre></html>

save the file as "filename.html"
and then import the file into calibre and try to convert it.

That should preserve your spacing with a modicom of line wrapping. If you still get lines run together, you may want to see the "Line Un-Wrapping Factor" value close to or even at 1.00.

[nerys]

Hmm I will try the html method tommorrow (I just spent 11 hours doing accounting work I am beyond wiped out :-)

Will html to lrf retain the small size of a text based medium? ie I know I can go image based and off course retain all formatting but then its HUGE :-) hehe

I guess I will find out when I try it! Thanks for the suggestion!

[nerys]

Woh Colinsky cool idea!

alas it failed to work. its worse in fact. it literally erases 100% of all formatting and makes it one gigantic block of text :-) hehe

FYI the html loads prefectly in a browser though :-)

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by nerys

Hmm I will try the html method tommorrow (I just spent 11 hours doing accounting work I am beyond wiped out :-)

Will html to lrf retain the small size of a text based medium? ie I know I can go image based and off course retain all formatting but then its HUGE :-) hehe

I guess I will find out when I try it! Thanks for the suggestion!

[Html vs text] converted to lrf? No real difference in the LRF file except now it looks like you want it to look like. The size is still relatively small. HTML is essentially text with some tags added for formatting.

Update: Saving the text as html from Notepad++ causes you to get one big lump of text. I tried various html saves from Word (normal and filtered html) and nothing was superior to the text file by itself. LRF is a reflowable format and doesn't lend itself to this easily.

Even the text file if you increase the font size ends up screwed up. As long as you don't mind the smallest font then text is your best bet for this file or pdf if you have zoom on the 600 or in landscape mode.

For publications like this a larger reader is the solution like the 900.

I think I've killed it by now.

Good Luck

[AFK_Matrix]

Nerys, I have not read the whole of this post so I'm sorry if this has been suggested or you have tried it already.

But have you used BookCreator 3.0 to setup you formating? It is a template for Microsoft Word and it can also output to many different formats, including LRF and EPUB. I use it to get the formating right for my Sony PRS as some books have lines between paragraphs which i hate and they also have to big an indent for paragraphs so I get the book into RTF format and then import it into the BookCreator template and sort out the format. You can also put page breaks in so the chapter headings are on a seperate page which is great.

If this isn't what your after sorry for wasting ur time.

[nerys]

Oh AFK just use Caliber. all your indents and paragraph lines will be gone without any effort (sorry it was just too funny not too :-)

I used Notepad to add the html code. I only use notepadd++ when I have to do funny Relacements (ie fixing things with \r\n etc..)

I will try it in wordpad but I don't see how it will be different. I did not save as html. I saved at txt and simply used the windows interface to change the .txt to .html

smallest font is what it is and what I want. if you up the font size the formatting would break :-)

[MBatchellor]

Barnes and Noble offered a free download of the pilot for The Glades this month and it's properly formatted as a screenplay so I know it can be done. But, I too, am frustrated. Cannot get Calibre or any of the online free conversions to convert any format at all that maintains proper screenplay proportions and margins. Tempted to call the publisher and find out who formatted the freebie!!

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by MBatchellor

Barnes and Noble offered a free download of the pilot for The Glades this month and it's properly formatted as a screenplay so I know it can be done. But, I too, am frustrated. Cannot get Calibre or any of the online free conversions to convert any format at all that maintains proper screenplay proportions and margins. Tempted to call the publisher and find out who formatted the freebie!!

What happens to this sample when you increase font size?