vvv has created a wonderful program for us that has more power than anything else I have seen for creating LRF files for the Sony Reader. The purpose of this posting is to share observations on its operation and perhaps make a great program even better.

For example, when I am editing the chapter titles of a book I will have the main window, the corrector window, and the element browser window open. Almost any editing action I perform in the main window results in the main window then being moved to a background process and element browser assuming the active position. To make another edit I must position the mouse pointer back in the main window and left click. It would be far easier (and faster) for me if the main window could remain the active window until I clicked in the element browser or corrector again.

Another issue is the handling of graphics. I recently formatted Franklin's Autobiography and this included ornate block letters as the first letter of the first word for each chapter. Regretfully BD placed these on their own line above the start of the paragraph. Is there a way to add inline graphic support to BD so that these could be shown as originally intended? Additionally, is there a way to format simple drop caps on their own without using graphic files. (I remember reading that there was something like this available in the LRS/LRF specification.)

OK, that's my two cents worth.

vvv has created a wonderful program for us that has more power than anything else I have seen for creating LRF files for the Sony Reader.

Only if you suffer from GUI dependency syndrome. :)

EDIT: To answer your questions.
Yes it's possible to support simple drop caps and inline images in LRF files.

RWood if you download the HTML version and fix it up to have links to the chapters, you could try html2lrf that's part of libprs500. I tried it on Aesop's Fables and it almost worked except for the overly large inline images.

RWood if you download the HTML version and fix it up to have links to the chapters, you could try html2lrf that's part of libprs500. I tried it on Aesop's Fables and it almost worked except for the overly large inline images.

That will be fixed in the next release, which is a bit delayed as I'm working on support for tables.

That will be fixed in the next release, which is a bit delayed as I'm working on support for tables.

ooohhh! Nice!

By the way, how well would html2lrf work with MS Frontpage?

it should work fine with any halfway decent HTML

it should work fine with any halfway decent HTML

Great! I might try formatting my next PG book in Frontpage and see how well html2lrf handles it.

PG books should convert pretty well without any user interventions. See for example
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8532

Only if you suffer from GUI dependency syndrome. :)



The problem is, though, that completely automated tools can only go so far is converting books. Eg, BD makes a pretty good job at guessing what should be a "Title" that goes into the TOC, but it's far from perfect. I think personally that the ability to manually "clean it up" after the automatic processing is what makes the difference between an adequate book and a good one. That's what I love about BD - it's both a conversion tool and a GUI editor.

Ah but nothing stops you from editing the HTML file before you process it with an automatic tool. There are a plethora of nice little GUIs you can use to do that.

The downside of having an all-in-one tool is that it can never perform any one function as well as a single purpose tool. It's kind of the difference between the Unix and windows philosophies.

Another important point is that LRF is not a good archival format. Like PDF it needs to know the screen geometry and DPI for best results. You really don't want to have to put in all that work you do in cleaning it up on the LRF.

HTML or some dedicated XML semantic format is much better for archival. The proofreading work should go in there, not at the LRF stage.

Another important point is that LRF is not a good archival format. Like PDF it needs to know the screen geometry and DPI for best results. You really don't want to have to put in all that work you do in cleaning it up on the LRF.

HTML or some dedicated XML semantic format is much better for archival. The proofreading work should go in there, not at the LRF stage.

I completely agree with you. The other downside of LRF is that it's Sony Reader specific. I don't know what I'll be reading my eBooks on in 10 years time, but whatever it is it may not be able to read LRF. That's why I always store books in their original format.

Note that BD's "native" format is XML - whenever I work on a book I store that too. Having that, I can generate a wide range of different book formats from it.

Yup that's what I do as well. Store books in both the original format I got them in and whatever converted format I happen to need for my current ereader.

So you store the original HTML/RTF/TXT whatever, the XML and the generated LRF? Or just the XML and LRF?

I store the original format as well. Disk space is cheap, and book files are not big!

True. Well to each his own :)

Absolutely. It's great that we have such a wide range of different tools to choose from.

That's what makes the Sony Reader so good. Having tools like Book Designer and Libprs500 with html2lrf. We get to choose the best tool for the job and if we like the results then we are good to goto enjoy reading whatever it is we want.

Hmm... I was hoping to see some actual BD suggestions and observations here.

I'm afraid that wandering off topic is always a hazard around here. :wink:

Here's a suggestion to help find the text you want if you want to create a link or add an illustration to a specific page. Get your cursor somehwere in the text of the book by left clicking, then press Ctrl-F, a window will come up and if you type in the text you want to jump to and hit next, it jumps immediately to that word or sentence in the text.

I would like the ability to define my own elements... don't know how difficult that would be or even if it's possible, but that would be really useful.

Use the Book DEsigner Element tools dealio. You can use the pull down list to find all the elements in a book, then convert them to other elements by selecting etc. Use the shift key to select the entire list or the CTRL key to choose the ones you weant to convert, then use the pull down list at the bottom of the element tools window to change it to waht you want. Will save hours!

I posted this on another link somewehre on this board but I think it might be helpful for people who are trying to learn BD so Here it is on this thread...

I spent about an hour, maybe an hour and a half yesterday going through the text of Les Miserables. I was using the book element tool to find the titles. And Book Designer had assigned the "Chapter 1" etc. (Text in the raw TXT file I got from gutenberg) as Chapter titles. (Which means that on the bottom of the reader, (Chapter 1) Would appear... Unacceptabe, (To me) and first and foremost I'm making these for me and sharing them here.... because i didnt want to take the time to delete the "Chapter 22" text, (I made the compromise of leaving the text so it would appear on the reader but i didnt want it on the bottom of each page in the chapter) ((I hope everyone is following)) I was using the 'subtitle button to change the Chapter 1 text into subtitles, then going to the REAL chapter titles below, highlighting it and clicking "Title so THAT would read at the bottom of each page in that chapter in the reader.. A long tedious process indeed. Finally when i finished i clicked make book and had too many other programs opened. the program crashed, I lost EVERYTHING!!!!!!!! I almost said a bad word! My wife was waiting patiently to go on a motorcycle ride so i left to go.. When i came home i thought. Ok.. I'm just going to make the book so i can read it and i will deal with the stupid Chapter 16 at the bottom of the page on the reader.. I opoened elements again just for the heck of it and noticed a button at the bottom of the element window that said. "Change element to... " A bell rung. So.. This is awesome.. I had the element finder find all the titles, They were listed as the hated 'Chapter 77" etc on the element window. (And in les miserable theres about 15 million chapters because Hugo wrote every 6 paragraphs and started a new chapter in this book) I selected the top one, held down shift, selected the bottom one highlighting them all.. Then clicked the drop down list at the bottom.. found delete.. Clicked.. Dudes and dudettes. ALL those stupid "Chapter 44 etc, dissapeared at one fell swoop! Then... I had the element tool find all Subtitles... (The REAL chapter titles) Selected all, then CHANGED THEM TO TITLES at one fell swoop. Walla! in exactly 28 seconds accomplished what took me over an hour!!!! A west texas yell flowed out of my mouth! The dogs barked for blocks around my house.