So I'm starting to play around with using libprs500 to convert various LIT and HTML files and was wondering if anyone that had been doing this for a long time had suggestions on the defaults to use and why.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Also is there any user guide anywhere for it? I mean someplace that described the different settings and such?

So I'm starting to play around with using libprs500 to convert various LIT and HTML files and was wondering if anyone that had been doing this for a long time had suggestions on the defaults to use and why.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Most of the default defaults are pretty good -- probably why kovid made them that way ;-). Exceptions I've found:


From looking at kovid's code and messing a bit, it appears having something in the bottom 18 or so pixels of the screen sometimes crashes the Reader quite spectacularly (why, Sony, why?). libprs500 accounts for this automatically and won't put anything there, but this leaves an effective lower margin I find jarring with the default side margins. I compensate by adding larger side margins with --left-margin=34 --right-margin=34 (or whatever value looks right to you).
I like to have the book title the header, so I add --header --headerformat="%t" to the options.
html2lrf contains code to automatically detect chapters and insert page breaks at appropriate points. Most of the LIT files I have, however, already have a TOC and page breaks in the right places, so the detection/insertion code can only make mistakes. To disable it I add --page-break-before-tag='$' --disable-chapter-detection to the options.


Also is there any user guide anywhere for it? I mean someplace that described the different settings and such?

Try html2lrf --help -- that should show you all the available options.

My options are usually....

lit2lrf --base-font-size=10.5 --left-margin=0 --header --right-margin=0 --wordspace=1.2 <name of lit file.lit>

That way, I get no left/right margins, a decent word space and a header.

Let me also note that you can get help on the various setting in the GUI by mousing over them.

I just use the program defaults for my LIT files & have been very happy with the results.

I'm thinking to increase the base font a half-point or a point and reduce the font increment. The default (10.5, IIRC) is a touch too small for me and the increment (2.5, IIRC) is so big I never use the Large font!

Haven't messed with the borders yet but I can see reducing the left & right slightly. That note above about using the bottom is a bummer because it does look like wasted page space to my eye.

I have to say that this is really a great forum. I've come in with some fairly basic n00b questions and gotten a lot of helpful responses. Some forums if you ask anything, you get 20 people telling you how stupid you are if haven't read the 400 page thread that is vaguely related and happens to have the information on page 352 (oh yeah and don't actually tell you where the info is, just that it's in the monster thread).

Thank you for all the feedback and help so far and I hope I'll be able to pay back the information once I've become an old hat at all this.