Here's some interesting leads for content creation, for anyone looking into it. I haven't done a lot of in-depth exploration, just a wide survey. This might be a good starting point, though! Mostly I was converting to RTF, unless otherwise noted.

HTML:
I used htmltortf, which works fairly well, preserving most of the formatting and cutting out any links. As I noted elsewhere, it had problems with some "advanced" typography, like em-dashes and smart quotes.

I also tried the Toolbar for Librie, which creates a BBeB file from an HTML page. It also preserved formatting, but left in hyperlinked text - as a seemingly "special" character in the Connect preview. However, on the Reader there was no way to actually follow a link :-( Does anyone know if the BBeB format allows for links in the document?

LIT:
I tried ConvertLIT, which has no options. It worked for a few documents, and failed for others, with very little explanation. It created fine HTML when it worked, which I could then convert to RTF. The HTML preserved footnotes, which are a must-have for me, but did so in the form of links, which were then stripped out in the RTF conversion.

ABCLit was a much better experience, and allowed me to convert straight to RTF. These files work beautifully, and the program was a pleasure to use. Not enough options for RTF output, though. Even setting the default font in the options dialog didn't seem to affect the RTF output. Footnotes were also destroyed here, too. I'd really like some way of converting that did something intelligent with footnotes...

PDF:
This is what I'd really like to do: I have a number of PDFs that I'd like to somehow get into reflowable, resizable text on the Reader.

I tried a demo of "Smart PDF Converter" and was underwhelmed. None of the RTF files I created had any contents, and creating an HTML file seemed to just make a file with the PDF pages embedded as JPGs.

I also tried ScanSoft PDF Converter. This was a much different experience! It has the ability to OCR pages in the PDF to create a text Word document. The resulting document is beautiful, preserving all the text and illustrations, even tables and background colors. (Of course, the illustrations and such will be lost converting to RTF, but it might be possible to resize the text and use Printer for Librie to create a BBeB file from the Word document - making an unreable PDF readable.) In fact, it may be too much like the PDF, it would take a lot of work to prepare it for the Reader's screen. But it would certainly be possible, if anyone has a need. Unfortunately, the full version costs US$99. So...

The two challenges that I'd like to solve in the future are finding a way to preserve footnotes from LIT and HTML files, and finding a way of producing a BBeB file with links intact (if that's even possible). I'll also give the Printer for Librie a try, and anything else anyone wants me to experiment with.

As a note, I'm not terribly picky when it comes to document formatting, this is mostly an exploration of how to get decently-readable content on the Reader. A very low bar, in other words.

Does anyone know if the BBeB format allows for links in the document?I'm pretty sure it does, I think they had one out there with a TOC in it....
I also tried ScanSoft PDF Converter. <snip> The resulting document is beautiful, preserving all the text and illustrations, even tables and background colors. <snip> it would take a lot of work to prepare it for the Reader's screen. But it would certainly be possible, if anyone has a need. Unfortunately, the full version costs US$99. So...This is excellent news, though the price is a bit steep. It'd probably be worth it for those with a strong need, or who's employers perceive a strong need. :smile:

Once you've got the doc as an RTF, I suppose you could always reprint it as a PDF properly sized for your screen....

Ought to work just fine for the iLiad, too.

Excellent find, bingle!

Actually, for just PDF to RTF conversion you don't need Pro version of the ScanSoft PDF Converter. Standard one for $49.00 (http://www.nuance.com/pdfconverter/standard/) should do that according to Matrix (http://www.nuance.com/pdfconverter/matrix/). As for RTF to PDF conversion one could use free PDF printers, e.g. PrimoPDF (http://www.primopdf.com/).

Cool, $49 sounds a lot more doable for my meager needs.

But before you buy it, there are a lot of "angry" customers that left their comments at Amazon. Apparently you have to pay $10 to get support, and there some quality issues with software. They were mostly complaining about Pro version, so I'm not sure if the issues related to conversion or creation/editing.

I am using the 'PDFcreator 0.90 (FREE)' to print all my document to PDF (BMP, TIFF, etc..) file.
It is VERY NICE!!!

Another free PDFtool named 'PDFill tools' has multi function to deal with a PDF file such as crop, rotate, add/remove password, etc. It is also my favorite.

****************************
The bellow softwares need few money but priceless.
The Iceni's 'Gemini' can convert PDF to html, including transfer TOC of pdf to a hyperlink one in html.
It works good and supports CJK fonts. However, some special picture, for example, made by WORD, will lose.

And I recommand the Solid Document's 'Solid Converter PDF'.
It can convert PDF including CJKs to DOC (with correct layout, figure, and table) and RTF.
To my knowladge, it is one of the most precise converter tool in the world.
*********************

BTW, I think good PDF supports of a ebook device can decrease user's inconvinence most all.
I hope, in near future, the Sony Reader can display the small size fonts of PDF in a blacker way.

So, to continue the odyssey ;-)

I've mostly been playing with BookDesigner over the past few days. The reason for the switch is that LRF files show up with the correct author and title information, and can also preserve links. I tried converting from HTML, LIT and RTF to LRF, the examples below come mostly from a LIT file with embedded cover art, a table of contents, and lots of footnotes. In MS Reader, the footnotes show up as links, mousing over them pops up a box with the footnote text.

At first, using the Sony Librie export created texts with big blank pages, every other page. However, by forcing 26 lines per page and a page width of slightly less than the default 600, I got good-looking LRF files. I even was able to get Tables of Contents with links that jumped to chapter headings! Very promising, especially for reference books. One downside was that the table of contents was created at the very end of the book, along with all the other links (including linked footnotes).

Another downside was that the footnotes didn't work - the links weren't created correctly. In any case, the ideal book conversion wouldn't create *linked* footnotes, but rather create the pages so that the footnotes were inserted at the bottom of the correct page.

But really, BookDesigner created some excellent results. It has tons of options for the output file, including auto-hyphenation, and the resulting files look fantastic on the Reader, with included title pages and nice page headers with the name of the author and title as well as page numbers showing the current page and total page count. Unfortunately, the help is somewhat limited; I couldn't find any information on footnotes, for example. Also, getting the beautiful results definitely takes a little work: at least a quick glance through to catch mis-assigned "title" elements and such. Luckily, the software makes it easy to do, once you learn the interface.

I'll keep experimenting, and see if I can figure out some solution for footnotes other than manual editing.

Edit: Another problem. The software doesn't always make a full file, and it's not clear when it fails. So you might only get 275/350 pages or so (which, needless to say, will be incredibly frustrating when you reach that point...)

I'll keep experimenting, and see if I can figure out some solution for footnotes other than manual editing.

The manual editing is simple and fast (one just needs to mark a note block):
double-click on the first note, shift+click on the last note, then -> Format -> mark note block.

You do not need to mark note block (blocks) if:
1. The book has the anchors (A-tags) related to the notes and their links only (no linked TOC, etc).
2. All the notes are located at the end of the book.

Sorry,I forgot to write about this restriction in the help.

If you are not sure about notes and their locations, all the anchor's structure can be checked with Edit -> "notes and links". Choosing the options in "show" dropbox, you can analize all the types of bookmarks and links.
To see where a note/link is located, just double-click on the corresponding item.
If you want a clean book, kill all the anchors shown with options "bad notes", "empty notes", "empty links".

If you use Adobe Acrobat to create the file, how do you change the font settings? I like Georgia and a smaller font that what is created with program now.

Okay, I figured that out. In the "settings" tab, you need to double click on html and that will bring up more options. But now I can't figure out why I have these extra paragraph marks. These don't show up when I use ubook to read the extracted lit files.

Another problem. The software doesn't always make a full file, and it's not clear when it fails. So you might only get 275/350 pages or so (which, needless to say, will be incredibly frustrating when you reach that point...)

vvv figured out the problem for me. Apparently, the LRF file display fails on some complex styles. Setting the "Style" option when making the LRF in BookDesigner to "very simple" fixes this issue! So now I am making all my ebooks into LRFs with BookDesigner - it remains the best method I have found. The files are better formatted, have correct metadata, and surprisingly are even smaller size than the same book in RTF.

The files are better formatted, have correct metadata, and surprisingly are even smaller size than the same book in RTF.
Not really surprising, considering LRF supports zlib compression for text streams.

That sounds like a big step forward for the top solutions to the big question -- How to best get content onto the Reader. Fantastic!

We're going to have to start consolidating all this great info from various approaches somehow for reference. It would be great to have a guide that has some of the favorite ways to convert content, with step by step instructions and key parameters.

Not really surprising, considering LRF supports zlib compression for text streams.I remember that the LRF/BBeB is actually an XML based format ... somewhere way down deep. I'd expect that to contribute to a smaller size. :shrug:

... LRF/BBeB is actually an XML based format ... I'd expect that to contribute to a smaller size. :shrug:

XML? Smaller size???
:thinking2

XML = Bloat (by design) :)

BBeB is based on Xylog XML, which is then compiled into a binary form.

Why anyone would think "XML" would make a smaller eBook format is baffling to me. What makes a smaller eBook format is being able to compress the text streams inside the eBook.

BBeB is handicapped in this department as it only allows sentence level compression via zlib compression in it's page layout mode. The compression dictionary is built on each string so it never gets very efficient.

I had hoped Sony might implement a document level compression dictionary, which would greatly enhance the compression in BBeB, but alas the format is apparently compact enough for Sony. :)

Why anyone would think "XML" would make a smaller eBook format is baffling to me.Oh, probably my relative ignorance on the topic. :smile:

I was basing my surmise on the fact that XML is essentially saved as text (or am I off there too?) and that text saves very small (the complete works of Shakespeare on a 3.5" floppy, and all that). :shrug:

BBeB is handicapped in this department as it only allows sentence level compression via zlib compression in it's page layout mode. The compression dictionary is built on each string so it never gets very efficient.

Not sure where you got this from... AFAIK, each text block is compressed in full, not "per sentence". And you can have a text block lasting for a whole chapter.

So, to continue the odyssey ;-)

I've mostly been playing with BookDesigner over the past few days. The reason for the switch is that LRF files show up with the correct author and title information, and can also preserve links. I tried converting from HTML, LIT and RTF to LRF, the examples below come mostly from a LIT file with embedded cover art, a table of contents, and lots of footnotes. In MS Reader, the footnotes show up as links, mousing over them pops up a box with the footnote text.

At first, using the Sony Librie export created texts with big blank pages, every other page. However, by forcing 26 lines per page and a page width of slightly less than the default 600, I got good-looking LRF files. I even was able to get Tables of Contents with links that jumped to chapter headings! Bingle, I'm trying BookDesigner with a LIT file, but my Table of Contents links to the chapters are not preserved upon viewing it in my Reader. However, when I view the created file from within BD, mousing over the items in the TOC displays an empty popup with that heading. Do you have any suggestions for me?

Also, I lose all the italics from the text in the main body. I selected the option to keep original formatting, but still...

Good to see some good ideas...

Now if some one can figure out why a RTF with picture will not show the pictures... Tried even 4bit very small pictures and no luck.

Only thing that works is print to PDF using Adobe PDF using MS Word.

Now if some one can figure out why a RTF with picture will not show the pictures... Tried even 4bit very small pictures and no luck.

Because reader doesn't support pictures within RTFs.

Because reader doesn't support pictures within RTFs.


Figure it had to be somthing simple... Thank you ! :D Guess for books will illustratuions its PDF or BBeB foramts...

"Why anyone would think "XML" would make a smaller eBook format is baffling to me."

Compared to PDF? Yea, that would be smaller.

Has anyone put together a quick tutorial on how to create a .lrf file? I have tried, but there are so many gaps between lines and I haven't been able to create a TOC. I would like to add my cover art, but if that's not possible I can live without. Also when resizing the lrf files on the reader the gaps get even larger even within the same sentence. This frustration has really put me off of the reader and I think if I can make a clean book, I could finally learn to enjoy my newest ebook reader. Thanks.

Bingle, I'm trying BookDesigner with a LIT file, but my Table of Contents links to the chapters are not preserved upon viewing it in my Reader. However, when I view the created file from within BD, mousing over the items in the TOC displays an empty popup with that heading. Do you have any suggestions for me?

Also, I lose all the italics from the text in the main body. I selected the option to keep original formatting, but still...

I don't have any ideas, sorry. I tried only one book with a TOC and links, and it worked fine for me.

And I've never lost formatting before.. is that when you import the file to BookDesigner, or after you create the Librie file?

Heck I would kill for a decent interface to some of these program...

BookDesigner has a lot of power but a real pain to use. And Ghtmldoc... Well easer to use word with a PDF plug in than it.

As I know now, rtf would be greate as long as you dont want illustrations in your book.

Does anyone know how to force PRIMOPDF print driver to do a small page? Cant get it to go to the size for the Reader. Switch over to the Adobe PDF Writer driver. Comes out aok...

May need to do my own...

Has anyone put together a quick tutorial on how to create a .lrf file? I have tried, but there are so many gaps between lines and I haven't been able to create a TOC. I would like to add my cover art, but if that's not possible I can live without. Also when resizing the lrf files on the reader the gaps get even larger even within the same sentence. This frustration has really put me off of the reader and I think if I can make a clean book, I could finally learn to enjoy my newest ebook reader. Thanks.

Cover art is definitely possible. Here's a quick overview of the steps I take:

* Drag and drop supported file (mostly *.LIT files, for me) to BookDesigner window.

* Right click on author's name and set it as Book Author; do the same for title

* Cut out any unneeded text

* Open the Element Browser (Tools->Element Browser) , and look for all "title" elements. For some books, this will get text that is capitalized or bolded and fairly alone on a line, so it might catch some text that is just meant to be emphasized. Select these and change to "paragraph". You might also want to check "subtitle" elements, they sometimes have the same problem.

* Then change any remaining "title" elements to "subtitle"s. This may not be necessary, but what I've found is that "title" elements will result in every other page being blank, with only the title displayed. There's probably a better way to deal with that, but this works for me.

* Close the Element Browser, and click on the "Make Sony Librie File". This opens the dialog box with book options. If this is a LIT file with an embedded cover image, the cover image should show up here. Otherwise, you can drag-and-drop or browse for the image.

* Set the "book style" to "very simple". Unfortunately, this will give you wider margins and much more basic formatting, but it seems to be the only way to avoid an early ending for your Reader file.

* Set the "page width" to 530 or so. Otherwise you'll get lines where the last few words end up on the next line, alone.

* I leave the text size and cover size set to the default 17 and 24, respectively.

* Press "test book" and the Connect Reader should pop up in a few moments with the first few pages of your book. Look it over to make sure nothing is terribly wrong, then close Connect Reader and click "Make Book". A little while later, your book will appear in the Sony Librie directory under BookDesigner (or where ever else you saved it). Connect Reader will open again, displaying the whole book.

* At this point, I move the book to its permanent home and add it to the Library.

As you can see, this is pretty simple - I don't generally worry too much about having the perfect fonts or margins or text sizes. BookDesigner and the Element Browser do allow you to take a much more proactive role, but I'm interested mostly in quickly making readable files.

Unfortunately, to get links and TOCs working I think (although I haven't investigated much) that you have to use a style other than "very simple", which leaves you open to Premature Ending Syndrome.

Anyway, I hope this provides a usable base you can work off of to make more complex, working LRFs. Please post your improvements here! :-)

@ Bingle. Thanks so much. I am sure this will help me a lot. I have had great success using BD for making mobi and imp files. I will try this out today!

Thanks for the info, Bingle, but the TOC links or italics are stripped from the unsecure lit file where they do exist. Maybe it's an elements problem.

Edit: Clue: I noticed that the italicized text also disappears when I convert the same text from html to rtf. In html it has an <em> enclosing it (embedded?). Maybe someone knows more about this than I do, and it may be the same reason it disappears with BD.

BookDesigner is a great program, but it seems to strip all formatting from an html file when making libre documents. Links, bold, italics, underline and anything similar vanishes. Also I have a lot of problems using it on anything other then "very simple" because it almost never makes the full size book if I try to use "simple" or "advanced" modes.
I kept converting a file for a good half hour, and got varying page lengths, from 3 to 580, and most everything in between, but none were the full file. It seems something gets in the way, but I haven't been able to track down what, as multiple conversions with the same settings, keep getting different page numbers.

It's a good program, and I use it for most of my conversions, but I'd love to be able to use the settings to fit more text per page then what the default setting does.

BookDesigner is a great program, but it seems to strip all formatting from an html file when making libre documents. Links, bold, italics, underline and anything similar vanishes. Also I have a lot of problems using it on anything other then "very simple" because it almost never makes the full size book if I try to use "simple" or "advanced" modes.
I kept converting a file for a good half hour, and got varying page lengths, from 3 to 580, and most everything in between, but none were the full file. It seems something gets in the way, but I haven't been able to track down what, as multiple conversions with the same settings, keep getting different page numbers.

It's a good program, and I use it for most of my conversions, but I'd love to be able to use the settings to fit more text per page then what the default setting does.

Yeah, I just realized this also (after converting a ton of books... grumble). The "very simple" mode strips out all formatting, even simple things like italics and bold :-( So perhaps LRF is not the way to go after all, at least currently. I am holding out hope for either a Reader-specific extension to BookDesigner or an official set of LRF tools from Sony.

I guess for now it's back to RTFs for me...

Thanks for the info, Bingle, but the TOC links or italics are stripped from the unsecure lit file where they do exist. Maybe it's an elements problem.

Edit: Clue: I noticed that the italicized text also disappears when I convert the same text from html to rtf. In html it has an <em> enclosing it (embedded?). Maybe someone knows more about this than I do, and it may be the same reason it disappears with BD.

Well, I've just realized that the text will get stripped of all formatting if you use the "very simple" option. So it's pretty useless to try to get it into BD that way.

However, as far as the links go, using VVV's earlier suggestion (manual editing via BookDesigner's "Notes and links" editor) works great. When you don't have too many things to deal with, manual editing of the notes isn't too bad. I've been experimenting some more with footnotes, and they work in the Connect software.

Of course, there's no way to make a complete book with links intact, so it's a moot point, I guess. I wish the Reader supported HTML, or that the BBeB format wasn't so fragile!

Yeah, I just realized this also (after converting a ton of books... grumble). The "very simple" mode strips out all formatting, even simple things like italics and bold :-( So perhaps LRF is not the way to go after all, at least currently. I am holding out hope for either a Reader-specific extension to BookDesigner or an official set of LRF tools from Sony.

I guess for now it's back to RTFs for me...

Why don't you use Librie Toolbar? It converts HTML nicely, keeps italics etc, supports links, doesn't have pagination issues and produces an LRF. I tried PDF for a while but I don't like the way the Sony Reader smooths out the fonts, BBeBs (LRFs) are the only way for me. Librie Toolbar isn't perfect but until we get a complete tool from Sony I think its the best for creating e-Books, for now, on the Sony Reader.

Why don't you use Librie Toolbar? It converts HTML nicely, keeps italics etc, supports links, doesn't have pagination issues and produces an LRF. I tried PDF for a while but I don't like the way the Sony Reader smooths out the fonts, BBeBs (LRFs) are the only way for me. Librie Toolbar isn't perfect but until we get a complete tool from Sony I think its the best for creating e-Books, for now, on the Sony Reader.

Hmm, I tried it before and abandoned it for some reason. Now I'm not sure why... Perhaps because BookDesigner had fewer steps. (Most of the books I'm converting have been LIT files, so the Toolbar requires two conversions.)

But thanks for reminding me about it! I'll try it again.

Dumb newbie question...

Where can I get this Libre toolbar?
It's not on my reader install disc....?

Links and tutorial are here http://www.sven.de/librie/Librie/AddonSoftware

Has anyone figured out how to get Librie Toolbar to display in IE7? I have it in IE6 on my laptop, and was about to upgrade. But when I installed Toolbar on IE7 at work, I don't see an option in the View menu or anywhere else to display it.

Hi,
I gave up converting PDFs with all sorts of programmes, as the results were not very pleasing. The most acceptable way I have found so far is the conversion with ABBY FineReader an OCR programme. I guess other OCR programmes can do the same. After the conversion the files are not perfect, but better - a least in my opinion - than the results from special converting programmes.
Friedhelm

Answered my own question: I just had to restart IE, then go to View | Toolbars | Toolbar for Librie.