I have received a comment about the books that I have created for this site (lack of Em Dashes). That person hesitantly asked me to recreate all the books that I have already made (over 500). Due to a computer crash I have lost many of these books and the fact that I could not get the tools suggested to fix the problem to work correctly I have decided to retire from the book creation business. Many thanks for those of you have passed on karma for the books that I have created.

Sincerely,

Madam Broshkina
.

while i can understand your reaction, i just would like to say that in the short time i have been a member of this forum i have been impressed and grateful for all your contributions, and your work will certainly be missed (and the books you have already shared will certainly continue to be appreciated !).

This really sucks!

You shouldn't let someone bully you like that for em dashes!?!?!:eek:

I'm sure a lot of people around here feel the same. You have done a fastidious task that not many here have taken patience to do. Of course if there are other pressing reasons that might not be mentionable... but being bullied out! Unacceptable...

I personnally applaud yor work.:bow2:

Yvan, I feel that a hesitant request from someone isn't bullying. (Some people are very bothered by emdashes and there are several threads about them.)

Madam Broshkina, I do hope that you will reconsider your decision. You could quite reasonably decline to re-do your existing uploads. If you want to include emdashes in future books then I'm sure lots of people can give some advice on the book cleaner files if they are causing trouble.

There is absolutely no reason why you should feel obligated to update your existing ebooks.

The tools for handling MOBI files are now good enough that if someone really does not like the way a DRM-free MOBI handles em dashes, or whatever, then it should be relatively easy for them to fix the problem themselves.

If you don't still enjoy creating new ebooks, then, obviously, stop doing so. But please don't let something this minor cause you to stop. It sounds like part of the problem is that em dashes are not easy to handle in your normal work flow. My approach to this would be to ignore them (i.e. do whatever you are doing now). However, if you want to handle em dashes in new works but don't have a good way to do so - then perhaps someone can help if you provide more details.

Thanks for all you've done, and I'd like to add my voice to those that say you shouldn't even feel remotely pressured to make these changes.

If they are bothered, it is their problem, not yours. You've done a service you share for free, if they want it some other way - that is up to them.

But whatever you do, thanks for all you've done!

It sounds like Book Cleaner is not being used and any em dashes that are in the text are being converted to dashes. That was the original problem till I asked vvv what to do and he told me. Then I noticed that patricia has em dash problems so that was how the Book Cleaner attachment thread was born and thanks to HarryT and others it has grown to fix a number of loading issues with Book Designer.

As for stopping converting eBooks, please don't and just ignore the request for redoing the ones you've done. It's not that big an issue. But with the Book Cleaner files, you can sort it out for future eBooks and all will be well.

This really sucks!

You shouldn't let someone bully you like that for em dashes!?!?!:eek:


I honestly don't think that a "hesitant request" constitutes "bullying".

It IS a reasonable thing to request - at least for future books. Personally I far prefer books which have proper dashes rather than hyphens. It does seem something of an overreaction to say "someone's asked me to start using dashes so I'm going to give up creating books".

As Jon says, just use the BD bookcleaner files for your future books and you'll get dashes preserved. IF you decide to make improvements to your earlier books - as I frequently do to mine - then THAT'S the time to add dashes to those.

Don't give up, though; that's just daft. Personally I always welcome ways in which my books could be improved; I hope that nobody would be discouraged by polite suggestions for improvements.

Thanks most of you for all the kind words concerning my retirement from posting books on this site. Though having a moderator on this site saying my decision is an "overreaction" and "daft" only gives me more reason not to reconsider posting books again. The suggestion that I received came from another moderator on this site who I have found to be arrogant in his past posts. This moderator has already caused some members to leave this site. If it had come from someone else perhaps I would have not daftly over reacted.

Though having a moderator on this site saying my decision is an "overreaction" and "daft" only gives me more reason not to reconsider posting books again.

No offence intended, MB, but I'm afraid that I do think that it's rather an overreaction to say "I'm going to give up creating books" when you receive what you yourself say was a "hesitant request" to preserve dashes in your books. That's just a personal opinion - not speaking with my "moderator's hat" on. I know that the books that I post have been improved in all sorts of ways thanks to the helpful suggestions I've received from many other people, and I always welcome such comments (although I may on occasions disagree with the suggestion and not act on it!).

All I'm saying is please don't let what I'm sure was a suggestion aimed at nothing more than making your books better put you off; take it in the spirit in which I'm certain it was offered.

That's too bad. I appreciated your upload of My Lady Nicotine. Personally, I agree with people who say you should continue making books if you enjoy it. If you don't like it anymore, then I can understand that. I wouldn't quit something I enjoy doing just because of what someone else thought about the work. But then again, I find it pretty easy to ignore such things if I don't find the criticism constructive. Any any rate, a lot of people on this site appreciate your work, so if you are so inclined, please come back with an occassional upload if you find yourself making books in the future. :)

emdash? What's an emdash? And who cares? I think you've done a terrific job, MB, and I particularly like your choice of authors and titles. Whether you continue or not, I thank you for your efforts.

Reminds me of comments by some of the hackers. They spend many hours writing code for other people to use for free and then get criticized when it doesn't do what someone wants. Nuts!

Say it ain't so!! You'll be greatly missed, if you do cease to make books. If it isn't fun anymore, than so be it ..... but if you still enjoy it, with or without em-dashes, your work is GREATLY appreciated. :)

Please don't go ..... :(

emdash? What's an emdash? And who cares? I think you've done a terrific job, MB, and I particularly like your choice of authors and titles. Whether you continue or not, I thank you for your efforts.

Reminds me of comments by some of the hackers. They spend many hours writing code for other people to use for free and then get criticized when it doesn't do what someone wants. Nuts!

See here for a discussion on em dashes.

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14781

sounds like more e-book snobbery. sorry to hear about your decision, but thank you for all your contributions! they will be missed

See here for a discussion on em dashes.

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14781

Thanks, Jon. I know what an emdash is - that's not the point. It would have been nice if someone had offered to clean up Madam Broshkina's files to correct problems if they existed. I would hope people would feel free to do that with any imperfect conversion (all of mine, for example!). You are well aware of the work involved in doing conversions and to do 539 of them is a tremendous amount of thankless toil. To such a person I would hope people would want to thank and offer help, not ask that person to please do more.

Some people are so ungrateful

It would have been nice if someone had offered to clean up Madam Broshkina's files to correct problems if they existed.Unfortunately, that's more easily said than done. :sad: Without the cleaned up source files from which the versions are generated, correcting the books would require re-doing them entirely from the original sources. The formats that are posted here are still mostly terminal formats, in the sense that they can't be converted to something else. :shrug:

In this case, I think that Madam Broshkina mentioned that she's since lost her cleaned up files due to a system failure, so they're not even available to her. I don't blame her for not wanting to re-do the lot from scratch simply to fix emdashes. I'm particular about emdashes myself, and I wouldn't do such a re-work under those circumstances. :unafraid:

Unfortunately, that's more easily said than done. :sad: Without the cleaned up source files from which the versions are generated, correcting the books would require re-doing them entirely from the original sources. The formats that are posted here are still mostly terminal formats, in the sense that they can't be converted to something else. :shrug:

In this case, I think that Madam Broshkina mentioned that she's since lost her cleaned up files due to a system failure, so they're not even available to her. I don't blame her for not wanting to re-do the lot from scratch simply to fix emdashes. I'm particular about emdashes myself, and I wouldn't do such a re-work under those circumstances. :unafraid:

To write a program that takes a MobiPocket file and replace " - " with emdash seems to be rather easy.

But I have since I discovered this forum found it strange that books are uploaded only in a "terminal" format. I would have thought that the source was as important for later converting books to other format or to fix problems. And here we have an example of a disk crash tht affects a lot of books to connect this back to an argument if you should upload books in the secret MobiPocket compression scheme.

To write a program that takes a MobiPocket file and replace " - " with emdash seems to be rather easy.

But I have since I discovered this forum found it strange that books are uploaded only in a "terminal" format. I would have thought that the source was as important for later converting books to other format or to fix problems. And here we have an example of a disk crash tht affects a lot of books to connect this back to an argument if you should upload books in the secret MobiPocket compression scheme.

We now have a perl program (script) that can reverse a MobiPocket file back into HTML with an OPF file so it is easy to get back. I guess it was a good thing that Madam Broshkina uploaded the files so she can get them back after the crash of her system. I have downloaded some of her books myself. I would like to thank her for her past effort.

Dale

But I have since I discovered this forum found it strange that books are uploaded only in a "terminal" format. I would have thought that the source was as important for later converting books to other format or to fix problems. And here we have an example of a disk crash tht affects a lot of books to connect this back to an argument if you should upload books in the secret MobiPocket compression scheme.
This point has actually been raised before.
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=84257#post84257
I don't know if Harry still holds that opinion or if others agree with him but for some reason very few books were ever posted in HTML or TXT.

This point has actually been raised before.
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=84257#post84257
I don't know if Harry still holds that opinion or if others agree with him but for some reason very few books were ever posted in HTML or TXT.

So there is from some people a policy of making books posted here less useful. Strange.

This touch on what status the postings has here. I am really missing a statement from each poster about what status the book has. I want it explicitly said that it is has no use licence or that it is not in the public domain if that is the case since i think many people post here and assume that it is implied that people can do whatever they want with the book since it is based on public domain sources.

Unfortunately, that's more easily said than done. :sad: Without the cleaned up source files from which the versions are generated, correcting the books would require re-doing them entirely from the original sources. The formats that are posted here are still mostly terminal formats, in the sense that they can't be converted to something else. :shrug:

In this case, I think that Madam Broshkina mentioned that she's since lost her cleaned up files due to a system failure, so they're not even available to her. I don't blame her for not wanting to re-do the lot from scratch simply to fix emdashes. I'm particular about emdashes myself, and I wouldn't do such a re-work under those circumstances. :unafraid:

I was not aware of that. So if I load BD with a PRC file, I can't fix it (for emdashes or whatever) by referencing the PG file? I was actually planning to do a bit of that myself on a few books I wanted to make minor improvements to.

sounds like more e-book snobbery. sorry to hear about your decision, but thank you for all your contributions! they will be missed
How is it snobbery to want to help someone make the conversions as good as possible for the best possible reading experience?

Once I was given the info on Book Cleaner, I did pass it on to others and they've been making better eBooks since. That's how the thread with the BC files started so I'd have a place to post them so Patricia could get them.

Sorry to hear you are quitting the uploads. I find someone complaining about em dashes pathetic. I mean If you were to read "The Great Gatsby" would you say it is a bad book because of incorrect use of em dashes.

People being anal retentive about free books is amazing. One should enjoy the book for what it is. not minor punctuation/format problems.
Thanks for contributing your books to MR- mochiron.





I have received a comment about the books that I have created for this site (lack of Em Dashes). That person hesitantly asked me to recreate all the books that I have already made (over 500). Due to a computer crash I have lost many of these books and the fact that I could not get the tools suggested to fix the problem to work correctly I have decided to retire from the book creation business. Many thanks for those of you have passed on karma for the books that I have created.

Sincerely,

Madam Broshkina
.

quibbling over the length of dashes ... sounds like snobbery to me

Did you guys actually read the post?
I have received a comment about the books that I have created for this site (lack of Em Dashes). That person hesitantly asked me to recreate all the books that I have already made (over 500).
(emphasis mine)
From what I see it was just a suggestion, not a "complaint", "quibbling" or "bullying".

We now have a perl program (script) that can reverse a MobiPocket file back into HTML with an OPF file so it is easy to get back. I guess it was a good thing that Madam Broshkina uploaded the files so she can get them back after the crash of her system. I have downloaded some of her books myself. I would like to thank her for her past effort.

Dale

Yes, we can convert the Mobipocket into HTML, but that means that someone has to manually go through every dash. It would (in some cases) be easier to reload the original source once Book Cleaner is setup to handle em dashes.

I do applicate her efforts. And I hope she does keep converting.

One other reason to want the widespread adoption of the epub format. If someone wants to correct dashes and such, just unzip the epub and edit the XHTML source. Couldn't be easier.

Thinking that the use of proprietary ebook formats like Mobi will keep someone else from doing something that you don't like with an ebook is just as useless as adding DRM. Honest people will respect the author's/publisher's rights and dishonest people will steal, regardless of format or DRM use.

To write a program that takes a MobiPocket file and replace " - " with emdash seems to be rather easy.

But I have since I discovered this forum found it strange that books are uploaded only in a "terminal" format. I would have thought that the source was as important for later converting books to other format or to fix problems. And here we have an example of a disk crash tht affects a lot of books to connect this back to an argument if you should upload books in the secret MobiPocket compression scheme.

Madam... As much as I can, since I don't know you in real life. I want to say I love you in a purely literary sense (without a trace of stalking or weirdness... I am married and happy and love my wife and so on...)

I too format books for this site and understand your frustration at a word of criticism but its possible that, in the weakness of this medium, a forum instead of a real conversation with real relationships, (Wouldn't it be great if we could all get together and talk and see each others expressions and body language and smiles) you may have misunderstood waht was meant to be a respectful request for a criticism.

That said. I know sometimes I do my books in a hurry and have made mistakes with em dashes and so on. I have a family and a job and like to read and do a hundred other things and am not getting paid anyhow for my books I contribute here so if someone doesnt like my book uploads... They are totally welcome to make their own. (Which I've noticed quite a few people have done, re-doing a book I've already formatted.)

To this I take no offense at all. PD books mean anyone can edit or remove stuff or change stuff or whatever, (All things I don't do when I make a book for this site.)
I format books first and foremost for myself and if someone else likes em great! If not. I'll still do it.

Anyhow I guess my point is, I appreciate your uploads and have quite a few on my computer waiting their turn to be read. I don't give a rats you know what if there are emdashes or little green men hanging about in the text! I'm into the story and only the story.

With all respect.

Roy

One other reason to want the widespread adoption of the epub format. If someone wants to correct dashes and such, just unzip the epub and edit the XHTML source. Couldn't be easier.
Actually, if the em dashes were lost from the original text where they were, then manually checking all the dashes is going to be a lot harder then just redoing the book from the original source (unless a lot of editing went into the conversion).

Thinking that the use of proprietary ebook formats like Mobi will keep someone else from doing something that you don't like with an ebook is just as useless as adding DRM. Honest people will respect the author's/publisher's rights and dishonest people will steal, regardless of format or DRM use.
We can convert Mobi to HTML fairly easily now. But sometimes it's not always easiest to edit if you need to fix a lot of things best fixed by redoing the original text.

Due to the many kind words of encouragement and private messages from some of the moderators on this site I am going to end my brief retirement. I still have not figured out the whole em dash thing. For those of you that this an issue I offer the following graphic as a warning.

Due to the many kind words of encouragement and private messages from some of the moderators on this site I am going to end my brief retirement. I still have not figured out the whole em dash thing. For those of you that this an issue I offer the following graphic as a warning.

Please read the following thread and if you still need any help with em dashes and Book Designer with Book Cleaner, I will be happy to help. I know others will as well.

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11649

Due to the many kind words of encouragement and private messages from some of the moderators on this site I am going to end my brief retirement. I still have not figured out the whole em dash thing. For those of you that this an issue I offer the following graphic as a warning.I'm very glad to hear you're coming out of retirement, Madam Broshkina! :yes:

If you choose (as is your undisputed right) not to include emdash support in your past, present or future uploads ... well then, folks who prefer them (like myself) can just take "thank you for your interest, but I don't do emdashes" for an answer, and re-do the books ourselves if it bugs us enough. :nice:

If you should decide to do them at some point, that's your call, and you know where to find info on the subject. :wink:

That matter aside, welcome back! :pleased:

great news, thank you


Due to the many kind words of encouragement and private messages from some of the moderators on this site I am going to end my brief retirement. I still have not figured out the whole em dash thing. For those of you that this an issue I offer the following graphic as a warning.

Due to the many kind words of encouragement and private messages from some of the moderators on this site I am going to end my brief retirement. I still have not figured out the whole em dash thing.

MB,

I believe that you create your books with Book Designer, yes? All you have to do is:

1. Go to this thread (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11649) and download the book cleaner files. Unzip them into the "BookCleaner" subdirectory of the BD installation.

2. Run BD, and from the "Tools" menu select "Book Cleaner". In the Book Cleaner window, select "1.bcf" from the "input file before formatting" drop-down, and "2.bcf" from the "input file after formatting" drop-down.

3. Close the Book Cleaner window and exit BD.

Those settings will be remembered. Now, whenever you load a new book, Book Cleaner will "process" the file and automatically preserve dashes, etc.

The only other thing you have to do, when you create a SONY book, is go to the "Options" page of the "Make Sony Book" dialog, and in the "Misc" section of the page (at the far right side), set the "Dashes" drop-down to "as it is".

That's it!

To write a program that takes a MobiPocket file and replace " - " with emdash seems to be rather easy.


It is indeed very easy. The problem, however, is that if you create books with the standard settings of BookDesigner, the emdashes (or the equivalent "--" of a PG book) get converted not to " - ", but to "-" (without any spaces) and hence can't be distinguished from hyphens. One can of course search for "-" and decide in each individual case whether it should be a hyphen or a dash, but it's a lot of work for a long book. I speak from experience, having done exactly that for a number of books where dashes were missing from the original.

MB,

I believe that you create your books with Book Designer, yes? All you have to do is:

1. Go to this thread (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11649) and download the book cleaner files. Unzip them into the "BookCleaner" subdirectory of the BD installation.

2. Run BD, and from the "Tools" menu select "Book Cleaner". In the Book Cleaner window, select "1.bcf" from the "input file before formatting" drop-down, and "2.bcf" from the "input file after formatting" drop-down.

3. Close the Book Cleaner window and exit BD.

Those settings will be remembered. Now, whenever you load a new book, Book Cleaner will "process" the file and automatically preserve dashes, etc.

The only other thing you have to do, when you create a SONY book, is go to the "Options" page of the "Make Sony Book" dialog, and in the "Misc" section of the page (at the far right side), set the "Dashes" drop-down to "as it is".

That's it!

I have tried all that but to no avail. But I think that I may be on to something. I am running Windows Vista and I tried the whole book cleaner thing on a friends computer running XP and it worked as advertised. I need to have Vista so I can talk my Dad through computer problems via the phone. It is easier when we are both working on the same page. He is not very computer literate. I remember one time I asked him to right click on the desktop and he stated that he had to get a pen. So I really do not want to go back to XP. If anyone has any ideas with this issue I would welcome their advice.

Due to the many kind words of encouragement and private messages from some of the moderators on this site I am going to end my brief retirement.

:thanks:
Great news!

Is the problem that BD is not "remembering" the Book Cleaner settings (ie when you run BD and select "Tools/Book Cleaner", has it "remembered" the two file settings?), or that it doesn't appear to be "doing" anything?

Book Cleaner only does anything when you load a new file into BD; it doesn't do anything when you open an existing BD file, or if you "paste" content into a BD window; you have to actually open the new file, either using the "File/Open" button in BD, or by right-clicking on a file in Windows Explorer and selecting "Open With..." then "BookDesigner".

Is the problem that BD is not "remembering" the Book Cleaner settings (ie when you run BD and select "Tools/Book Cleaner", has it "remembered" the two file settings?), or that it doesn't appear to be "doing" anything?

Book Cleaner only does anything when you load a new file into BD; it doesn't do anything when you open an existing BD file, or if you "paste" content into a BD window; you have to actually open the new file, either using the "File/Open" button in BD, or by right-clicking on a file in Windows Explorer and selecting "Open With..." then "BookDesigner".

Well that brings up another problem I have. I always get an error when I try and open a new file. I have to cut and paste. It may be have something to do with the fact that I do not have Microsoft Word installed on my computer. I use OpenOffice for my word processing needs.

Well that brings up another problem I have. I always get an error when I try and open a new file. I have to cut and paste. It may be have something to do with the fact that I do not have Microsoft Word installed on my computer. I use OpenOffice for my word processing needs.

That explains why Book Cleaner isn't working then, I'm afraid; it doesn't do anything when you paste material into the BD window. That's a bit of a "show stopper", unfortunately!

Well that brings up another problem I have. I always get an error when I try and open a new file. I have to cut and paste. It may be have something to do with the fact that I do not have Microsoft Word installed on my computer. I use OpenOffice for my word processing needs.
May I offer a suggestion here :
Maybe this is related to the lack of the msvcr71.dll.
If I remember well, this is a DLL that is installed with a lot of MS products, and is used by quite a number of other programs.

Here is where you can download it :
http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?msvcr71

Or it could be related to the .Net framework not being isntalled on your PC.

Is the error message you get containing specific information or is it a generic one ?

Actually, I think that a lot of the problem is that Madam B does not have Microsoft Word on the computer. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that this is necessary for the correct running of Book Designer.
You don't have to use Word, but it needs to be there.

A hint: it is often possible to get Microsoft Office very cheaply and legally as a licensed copy from your workplace or College. Mine is licensed to me as a member of my university. My sister is running a copy licensed to her from the NHS.

May I offer a suggestion here :
Maybe this is related to the lack of the msvcr71.dll.
If I remember well, this is a DLL that is installed with a lot of MS products, and is used by quite a number of other programs.


No, it's related to the fact that BD uses one of the COM libraries of Word to do a lot of file conversion. I don't think it uses it to read text files, but it does for HTML, RTF, etc.

Actually, I think that a lot of the problem is that Madam B does not have Microsoft Word on the computer. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that this is necessary for the correct running of Book Designer.
You don't have to use Word, but it needs to be there.

A hint: it is often possible to get Microsoft Office very cheaply and legally as a licensed copy from your workplace or College. Mine is licensed to me as a member of my university. My sister is running a copy licensed to her from the NHS.

I found a copy of MS Office lying around so the Em Dash issue is solved.

No, it's related to the fact that BD uses one of the COM libraries of Word to do a lot of file conversion. I don't think it uses it to read text files, but it does for HTML, RTF, etc.
That's not very good news for me, because I too don't use Word at home, I only have Open Office.

If I have the time, I'll try and see if it works on my PC or not, and if I can get it to work.

I found a copy of MS Office lying around so the Em Dash issue is solved.
:thanks: :thanks: :thanks: :thanks: :thanks:

Due to the many kind words of encouragement and private messages from some of the moderators on this site I am going to end my brief retirement. I still have not figured out the whole em dash thing. For those of you that this an issue I offer the following graphic as a warning.

Yay! :2thumbsup

Glad you are back at it. I personally have downloaded and enjoyed many of your posted books. Thanks for your hard work!

Here are a couple of hints which I have found useful with emdashes if (for any reason) the book cleaner files aren't working.
1. Edit your text in your word processor.
2. Use 'find and replace' to replace emdashes with # or@.
3. Drop the text into BD.
4. Use 'find and replace' to replace # or @ with a long dash.
This only takes a few minutes and I think that the result is worth doing.
I used to do it all the time until Jon perfected the book cleaner files.

Another hint.
After making the Sony Reader/Palm/Reb book, always remember to save the BD file. This means that you can go back and make corrections later. Either select 'Book Designer' on the make books tab (which is what I do) or move your 'last file' into the BD folder.

Here are a couple of hints which I have found useful with emdashes if (for any reason) the book cleaner files aren't working.
1. Edit your text in your word processor.
2. Use 'find and replace' to replace emdashes with # or@.
3. Drop the text into BD.
4. Use 'find and replace' to replace # or @ with a long dash.
This only takes a few minutes and I think that the result is worth doing.
I used to do it all the time until Jon perfected the book cleaner files.

That's an excellent suggestion, Patricia!

Another hint.
After making the Sony Reader/Palm/Reb book, always remember to save the BD file. This means that you can go back and make corrections later. Either select 'Book Designer' on the make books tab (which is what I do) or move your 'last file' into the BD folder.

To clarify that last point, in order to save your work you need to copy the "LastFile" folder out out of the BD folder. BD overwrites it whenever you load a different book. What I do myself is to copy the entire "LastFile" folder into the folder containing the source files for the book I'm workin on (I have one folder per book). When I next want to work on the book, I just go to the "LastFile" folder and double click the ".html0" file.

It is indeed very easy. The problem, however, is that if you create books with the standard settings of BookDesigner, the emdashes (or the equivalent "--" of a PG book) get converted not to " - ", but to "-" (without any spaces) and hence can't be distinguished from hyphens. One can of course search for "-" and decide in each individual case whether it should be a hyphen or a dash, but it's a lot of work for a long book. I speak from experience, having done exactly that for a number of books where dashes were missing from the original.

This seems to me to be an obvious bug in BD. Why has it not been fixed? Is BD closed source so it is impossible for people to fix it? I am a bit surprised that BD which seems to have a lot of problems is still used so much and that there is no better alternatives available.

So I assume you don't have space before and after an emdash or an --. Maybe english do not use hyphens so much so you can have a word list for common hyphenated words.

This seems to me to be an obvious bug in BD. Why has it not been fixed? Is BD closed source so it is impossible for people to fix it? I am a bit surprised that BD which seems to have a lot of problems is still used so much and that there is no better alternatives available.

BD is a very "unique" piece of software which is great in some ways, and utterly infuriating in other ways. Once you get used to it, it's fantastic, but it takes a lot of experience with it to learn all its peculiarities. What we've been talking about here, "Book Cleaner", is a part of BD which basically allows you to define a set of "pre-processing" and "post-processing" rules which gets applied when you load a book. It's very powerful, but again takes experience to get to know how to use properly.

BD isn't open source, but the developer, vvv, is generally very responsive to fixing reported bugs.

I think it's a wonderful program which is why I stick with it, but it definitely "breaks the rules" in all sorts of ways; it has a very steep "learning curve".

....
To clarify that last point, in order to save your work you need to copy the "LastFile" folder out out of the BD folder. BD overwrites it whenever you load a different book. What I do myself is to copy the entire "LastFile" folder into the folder containing the source files for the book I'm workin on (I have one folder per book). When I next want to work on the book, I just go to the "LastFile" folder and double click the ".html0" file.
Rather than copy the folder I use the "Make BD File" option (Cntl F11) to save a copy of the workfile. I do this after editing and before ebook generation.

I feel the pain... I've had the same headaches doing multiple copy-and-replaces to get em-dashes into my books. It's easy to get to the point where it hardly seems worth it... and I only format a new book every six months or so!

Thank goodness for a forum like this, where members often have plenty of solutions to others' problems...

Now I have found my major problem with BD. I have been trying to use a Microsoft word 97 program. If the directions hit me in the face I might have noticed it in the program directions. Off to ebay to buy at least a Microsoft word 2000 or later so it will work. I thought Vista was causing the problem. As was said on the last post, thank heavens for this forum. Sometimes it overcomes my ignorance. (Not all the time mind you!!)

Oh, I almost forgot. Very, very glad you are back Madam.

Now I have found my major problem with BD. I have been trying to use a Microsoft word 97 program. If the directions hit me in the face I might have noticed it in the program directions. Off to ebay to buy at least a Microsoft word 2000 or later so it will work. I thought Vista was causing the problem. As was said on the last post, thank heavens for this forum. Sometimes it overcomes my ignorance. (Not all the time mind you!!)


That's right - Word 2000 or later versions all work fine.

2. Use 'find and replace' to replace emdashes with # or@. Whenever I search and replace, I use strings that will definately not be part of the original document. A # or @ could be used in the book. Try using something like ##emdash## to prevent replacing #s or @s by mistake.

BD is a very "unique" piece of software which is great in some ways, and utterly infuriating in other ways. Once you get used to it, it's fantastic, but it takes a lot of experience with it to learn all its peculiarities.

...

I think it's a wonderful program which is why I stick with it, but it definitely "breaks the rules" in all sorts of ways; it has a very steep "learning curve".

You can say that again, Harry! Versatile, powerful, etc. I'm sure I don't know even 1% of its capabilities and I mean that literally. But the learning curve is so steep that each time I try something simple I am bludgeoned to death with multiple baseball (or cricket) bats as I try to head up that hill. I was thinking of making a short list of "don'ts" to post but the list is too long and too confusing (most of the time I don't know why it does what it does). I am so very glad that this is not something I have to use every day to make a living. Most of all, I want to say thank you, Harry, for all your very good advice on its use. I would have quit trying long ago without it.