Troubleshooting eBook Format Compatibility - Emmanuel Katto

[emmanuelkatto]

Hi All, I’ve been having trouble with eBook format compatibility across various e-readers and devices. I wanted to know what are the most reliable tools for converting eBooks between different formats (e.g., EPUB, MOBI, AZW3) without losing formatting or metadata?

Thanks!
Emmanuel Katto

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by emmanuelkatto

Hi All, I’ve been having trouble with eBook format compatibility across various e-readers and devices. I wanted to know what are the most reliable tools for converting eBooks between different formats (e.g., EPUB, MOBI, AZW3) without losing formatting or metadata?

Thanks!
Emmanuel Katto

Without a doubt, calibre.

https://calibre-ebook.com

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/fo...play.php?f=166

[Sirtel]

Calibre, of course.
https://calibre-ebook.com/

Whether you'll lose formatting or not depends on the input format.
https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq...mat-conversion

[theducks]

Hint:
PDF is NOT even in the running as a starting point.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by theducks

Hint:
PDF is NOT even in the running as a starting point.

Except if you want to OCR and make a docx file and do loads of proofing. A docx with good styles converts perfectly with Calibre. One where computer is used like a glass typewriter will be very very poor.

But yes, mostly PDF is an end point and not a source!

[j.p.s]

Is that page out of date, or are LIT, MOBI, and AZW still considered superior to EPUB as input to conversion by calibre?

[DNSB]

IMNSHO, that list of preferred formats is old and out of date. I find that ePub gives me the best overall results when converting to other formats such as AZW3/KF8 or KFX. I seldom convert to other formats.

MOBI/AZW is a old format with very limited formatting capability (a subset of HTML3). LIT is slightly better but not by much. Of course, this may make them easier to convert.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Is that page out of date, or are LIT, MOBI, and AZW still considered superior to EPUB as input to conversion by calibre?

Massively out of date.
AZW isn't AZW3/KF8, it's mobi/KF7 with Amazon DRM. A download from Amazon using MOBI/AZW/KF7 for eink is very rare. Mostly Download and Transfer for eink gives AZW3/KF8 and it's similar to epub.

Lit is dead, unless you already have some.

The epub2 seems to work best as a source in Calibre, and for non-ebook source with styles for an ebook the docx from MS Word or odt edited in LO Writer with an extra Save As in docx for Calibre. Then ONLY convert that to epub2.

There are different kinds of epub3. The "pure" ebook kind (reflowable, no interactive, no audio, video or animation) will convert fine to epub2 and epub2 will convert to basic epub3 in Calibre which can then be extended in Sigil (probably better for fancy epub3) or Calibre.

LIT, LRF, mobi/azw, the two kinds of PDB (Palm OS and some other Mobipocket clients older than mobi support) are all more basic than epub2.

The regular KF8 reflowable azw3 for eink is very similar to epub2.
The reflowable KFX for eink Kindles is usually from from the same source (docx or epub upload) as the KF8/azw3 and simply renders a bit different on a Kindle.
The fixed layout Kindle formats mostly don't work on Kindle eink, needing an app on tablet, or the Fire (really an Android tablet) and mostly need exported as RTF or DOCX to make them reflow, and then import a docx to epub. The rare Kindle interactive titles might not convert.
The epub2 converts really to anything (though KFX is actually by using an external Amazon program with Calibre, so won't work on Linux.
Calibre can convert to PDF, but export to docx or RTF and clean then export works better.

Often best to convert to epub2, check in Calibre Editor (image sizes/CSS, headings, TOC etc) and then the non-epub2 required, inc epub3.

Calibre can also import HTML trees, text, markup, HTML etc, but I find import to LO Writer, clean / format / index edit as odt and extra Save As in docx for Calibre is best.

If you have a wordprocessor file with no index, all direct formatting etc you get a garbage single HTML in epub with no TOC. If everything uses a style and you edit Insert Index to have no tabs or page numbers and do all footnotes as mutually linked etc, lists as paragraph styles without list properties, no headers, footers, page numbers, line-height or page registration and 7" page for WYSIWYG, then the docx to epub2 only needs a little tweak on image CSS and headings (if you didn't use default names) Headings need to be Heading levels with Insert Page Before Style Default and everything else a body level.
Then the epub2 is pretty good.
All conversions are GIGO. A conversion rarely makes bad formatting better.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by DNSB

IMNSHO, that list of preferred formats is old and out of date. I find that ePub gives me the best overall results when converting to other formats such as AZW3/KF8 or KFX. I seldom convert to other formats.

MOBI/AZW is a old format with very limited formatting capability (a subset of HTML3). LIT is slightly better but not by much. Of course, this may make them easier to convert.

That's what I thought, based on years of reading mobileread, but not on extensive conversion experience. (Although in the special case amazon generated azw3, I strongly prefer converting to EPUB with KindleUnpack.) My concern is that people reading that page might infer that converting to LIT before converting to something else or choosing to archive their books as LIT.

In my experience Kovid Goyal is fast to approve documentation pull requests that have a reasonable case behind them. I don't feel qualified to change the particular topic of conversion input format precedence myself.