My First Conversion Attempt

[m610]

I'm totally new to Calibra, so I don't understand the process well and I'll make plenty of mistakes, but I thought I'd describe my first attempt and ask if this is normal.

I converted a 300+ page book from PDF to ePUB. It took a few minutes, quite understandable. When I reviewed the result I could see I still had a lot of work ahead of me.

• The original table of contents was still there. Yes, I can delete that, but I was hoping Calibra could use the information I provided and convert it.
• The original page numbers are still there, even though the page breaks are different/nonexistent.
• The fonts were changed, including the size and typeface of chapter headings.
• All page breaks were ignored. I'd prefer that chapters start on a fresh page.
• Photo captions were separated from the photos, and they look like the text (same font and size) and are mixed in with the text. That sure makes reading difficult.

Is all this normal?
Mike

[theducks]

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=118605

PDF is a 'paste up' format. That means things are placed upon a page where they GO, not in a linear, top down order.
Really want a mess. Take a 2 column PDF

[gbm]

Yes that is normal for PDF.

See the calibre manual:

https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/con...#pdfconversion

PDF documents are one of the worst formats to convert from. They are a fixed page size and text placement format. Meaning, it is very difficult to determine where one paragraph ends and another begins. calibre will try to unwrap paragraphs using a configurable, Line un-wrapping factor....

bernie

Originally Posted by m610

I'm totally new to Calibra, so I don't understand the process well and I'll make plenty of mistakes, but I thought I'd describe my first attempt and ask if this is normal.

I converted a 300+ page book from PDF to ePUB. It took a few minutes, quite understandable. When I reviewed the result I could see I still had a lot of work ahead of me.

• The original table of contents was still there. Yes, I can delete that, but I was hoping Calibra could use the information I provided and convert it.
• The original page numbers are still there, even though the page breaks are different/nonexistent.
• The fonts were changed, including the size and typeface of chapter headings.
• All page breaks were ignored. I'd prefer that chapters start on a fresh page.
• Photo captions were separated from the photos, and they look like the text (same font and size) and are mixed in with the text. That sure makes reading difficult.

Is all this normal?
Mike

[m610]

Thanks, all.

Would it be better if I converted ASCII text?

I work with WordPerfect, but I doubt Calibra will handle that. I need to check to see if WordPerfect can output to ePUB.

Mike

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by m610

Thanks, all.

Would it be better if I converted ASCII text?

I work with WordPerfect, but I doubt Calibra will handle that. I need to check to see if WordPerfect can output to ePUB.

Mike

If your version of Wordperfect can't save as EPUB (IIRC it's fairly recent) try saving as DOCX and convert that. See ==>> What are the best source formats to convert?.

BR

[gbm]

Save as ODT or DOCX.

caliber manual is your friend.
https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/con...-specific-tips

bernie
edit:

Go to the Baen Free Library and download a ebook in RTF format use it to practice.

Originally Posted by m610

Thanks, all.

Would it be better if I converted ASCII text?

I work with WordPerfect, but I doubt Calibra will handle that. I need to check to see if WordPerfect can output to ePUB.

Mike

[m610]

Using Wordperfect and saving the book as HTML worked pretty well. It had a table of contents, photos had captions, fonts were preserved, etc.

[m610]

I'll definitely look at some ePUB books. I'm curious to see if they have a bastard title page, title page, what the copyright page looks like, etc.

[Quoth]

See can LO Writer open your Wordperfect files, and what formats WP can save/export in.

Which Wordperfect is it?

Edit LO Writer in odt, but an extra Save As in docx for Calibre.

Switch to LO Writer. Wordperfect for Windows was dead twenty years to thirty years ago. Wordperfect for DOS dead 35 years ago.

Edit:
LO Writer certainly opens some versions of Wordperfect directly.
It's free and runs on Mac, Windows and Linux.

[m610]

I'm using Wordperfect X7, and it is ten years old, but far from dead.

Link: https://www.wordperfect.com/en/

I've been using WP since DOS days and will keep using it as long as it is supported, and then some.

By the way, the PC I use for writing runs Win XP, version 2002. For my writing, there is no reason to upgrade. I have other computers for video production, web creation, etc.

The latest versions of WP do export to ePUB. I might try that.

The version I exported from WP to HTML recently looks okay. It even has the right type of table of contents, keeps my fonts, and the photos and illustrations came through, even with the captions intact. It's probably not eBook-ready, but it looks closer than what I got converting from PDF using Calibra. It'll be interesting to see what Calibra can do with the HTML version.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by m610

. . .
The latest versions of WP do export to ePUB. I might try that.

If for any reason you don't want to upgrade WP, do try saving as DOCX and converting that. The "best source formats to convert" link I posted rates DOCX a bit higher than HTML, and the DOCX Input code is actively maintained by the creator of calibre.

BR

FTR: Calibra was a not very good European GM car model.

[Quoth]

I used LO Writer on XP till 2016.
I've used Wordstar (CP/M and DOS), Wordstar 2000, Wordperfect (DOS and Windows), MS Word (DOS and Windows versions from 2.0a to 2007), Star Office, Open Office. I even taught word processing.

I've written maybe over 2 M words using LO Writer.

The docx input (via an extra save as) is by far the best import route to Calibre from word processing.

[BetterRed]

Wot, no Multimate!

Be interesting to see an EPUB save from Wordperfect. I sometimes use the Mammoth route to get a better mapping of Word's styles to the EPUB CSS entries.

Maybe DOCX->WP->EPUB would be better than DOCX->Mammoth(Sigil PI)->EPUB.

BR

[m610]

Thanks for the tips. I'm finally making progress.

I found that Wordperfect can export to EPUB, and in fact it includes tools to help you build your eBook. The version I have is quite old and I was surprised to find this feature, but there it was.

I was able to open and edit the eBook using Calibra, and while much of the book looked okay, it still needed a lot of work. Fortunately, I have some experience with HTML and CSS/styles, although I am quite rusty with it, so after some effort, I was able to get things looking about right.

The file WP gave me did not make extensive use of styles. For example, the settings for each paragraph, usually several lines of code, was used to set up each paragraph. I replaced them all with a p.Paragraph style I created. Seeing as the book has a little over 2,000 paragraphs, this saved a lot code, plus it makes changing the look of all of them at one time easy. Likewise for images, and pretty much everything, such as date formats and placements in letters, chapter and book section headings, tables, and more.

It's been a learning process, and as I am working with nearly 7,000 lines of code and text, it has been a lot of work, but things are turning out well.

I've been using Calibra for all of my post-WP work, and it has been great.

I guess now I need to get an actual eBook device. I need to be able to review and edit this book in an environment my reader is likely to be working in.

Speaking of editing, this project helped me find and fix a half-dozen typos. That's not a lot, considering the book is just under 70k words long, but it doesn't take many mistakes to spoil a book.

So, my first eBook project is turning out well, which means there will be future eBook projects.

Mike

[m610]

My quick-post is not showing up. DId I do something wrong?