BookDesigner update [Archive] - MobileRead Forums

vvv

10-05-2006, 04:36 PM

iLiad and Sony Reader owners

Due to the user's requests the following options allowing for more flexible pdf creation have been added to BookDesigner program (make eBooks -> iLiad).

1. User-defined page size ("page size, mm")

2. The MS Word bug related to the "custom page size" has been fixed. Now the pdf's made with the option "pdf printer -> PDFCreator" have correct page sizes (as they chosen in "page size, mm").

3. A possibility to use the inner pdf printer of Open Office ("pdf printer -> Open Office"). This option is recommended for iLiad owners: the pdf's are created faster and they are much more smaller than those ones made with PDFCreator.

4. A possibility to use the pdf printer chosen by the user ("pdf printer -> user: Open Office"). This option is recommended for Sony Reader owners (with PrimoPDF printer). But try to find a proper page size in "page size, mm" (I cannot do it because I have no Sony Reader yet).

The more detailed instruction can be seen pressing the "help" button in "Make iLiad file" window.

Who already has BookDesigner installed.
1. Download and unpack to Program Files/ Book Designer 4.0 directory the last update
http://www.the-ebook.org/e107/e107_files/downloads/bd/Bd_Update_2006_09_13.zip

Who has no BookDesigner installed.
1. Download and install the main program
http://www.the-ebook.org/e107/e107_files/downloads/bd/BookDesigner40.zip
2. Download and unpack to Program Files/ Book Designer 4.0 directory the last update
http://www.the-ebook.org/e107/e107_files/downloads/bd/Bd_Update_2006_09_13.zip

Slava

10-05-2006, 05:05 PM

Thank you! Will try it tonight.

Bob Russell

10-05-2006, 05:38 PM

Bob Russell

10-05-2006, 05:42 PM

Aha, I found some infohere (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7468&page=1&pp=15).

From a really quick scan, my guess is that (in the context of Sony and iRex owners) it's a gui application that uses the MS Word binaries to convert from any format that MS Word can read (like HTML, rtf, txt) into a pdf that is formatted to work on Sony Reader or Iliad. I didn't notice if the appropriate settings were clear in that thread or not, but am I close?

bingle

10-05-2006, 06:13 PM

iLiad and Sony Reader owners

Due to the user's requests the following options allowing for more flexible pdf creation have been added to BookDesigner program (make eBooks -> iLiad).

Woo, thanks! I was jealous of the Iliad owners for being able to use BookDesigner.

Have you given any thought to making a BBeB target format in BookDesigner? I realize it's not a trivial request, but I was just curious. Sony Reader handles BBeBs very well (unsurprisingly).

vvv

10-05-2006, 06:31 PM

This is extremely intriguing, but I have to admit that I'm not sure what it is/does... can you (or someone else that's tried it) give us a little summary that is understandable to us who are a little slower to catch on? Thanks!
Here there is a short program description and some pictures
http://forum.irexnet.com/viewtopic.php?t=418
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7468&page=1&pp=15

vvv

10-05-2006, 06:36 PM

Have you given any thought to making a BBeB target format in BookDesigner? I realize it's not a trivial request, but I was just curious. Sony Reader handles BBeBs very well (unsurprisingly).
A possibility to make books in lrf format was added about one year ago (make eBooks -> Sony Librie, make eBooks -> BookImage -> device:Sony Librie) . However if you will use this option to make lrf books for Sony Reader, bear in mind the following things:
1. For lrf books, Sony Reader understands the western europe languages only :( (contrary to Librie, which understands everything).
2. For make eBooks -> Sony Librie. Maybe your will need to adjust "page width". Also, if they use not Iwata fonts in Sony Reader, the hyphenations will not work.
3. make eBooks -> BookImage -> device:Sony Librie. Supports any language. But for Sony Reader the "page width" and "page height" have to be adjusted.

vvv

10-05-2006, 06:52 PM

From a really quick scan, my guess is that (in the context of Sony and iRex owners) it's a gui application that uses the MS Word binaries to convert from any format that MS Word can read (like HTML, rtf, txt) into a pdf that is formatted to work on Sony Reader or Iliad. I didn't notice if the appropriate settings were clear in that thread or not, but am I close?
A little bit close ;)

If "keep original format" is chosen in Settings, BD uses Word libraries to process some files. But not always, depending on the input file structure. For example, txt, pdf, and fb2 input files are always processed with the own BD converters.

However if somebody does not want to install MS Word, it is enough to check "re-format completely", and the files will be converted with the inner BD converters. But the initial formatting will be completely reconsidered. Sometimes it is better than with Word, sometimes worse...

Bob Russell

10-05-2006, 07:14 PM

As soon as I get a block of time to experiment, I'll give it a try!

bingle

10-05-2006, 08:39 PM

A possibility to make books in lrf format was added about one year ago (make eBooks -> Sony Librie, make eBooks -> BookImage -> device:Sony Librie) . However if you will use this option to make lrf books for Sony Reader, bear in mind the following things:
1. For lrf books, Sony Reader understands the western europe languages only :( (contrary to Librie, which understands everything).
2. For make eBooks -> Sony Librie. Maybe your will need to adjust "page width". Also, if they use not Iwata fonts in Sony Reader, the hyphenations will not work.
3. make eBooks -> BookImage -> device:Sony Librie. Supports any language. But for Sony Reader the "page width" and "page height" have to be adjusted.

Wow, I guess I was using a very old version.

Is there a difference between the *.lrf for Librie and for Reader? I thought I read somewhere that the BBeB specs had changed...

I'll experiment and let everyone else know what I discover :-)
Thanks, VVV!

vvv

10-06-2006, 10:44 AM

Is there a difference between the *.lrf for Librie and for Reader?
I have no Reader yet, so I can conclude about the differences from the user's reports only.

It seems they have changed nothing in the format itself. But the rackals have restricted the unicode support in the Reader: it understands the first 255 symbols only :angry:. What for - who knows, I cannot see any reason...

I do not know yet if they changed the inner fonts in the Reader (Librie has the Iwata ones). But if you have the Reader, you can check it yourself. Just load some short English book in BD, activate the hyphenation support in the Librie module, set a proper page width (I think ~ 500), make the e-book, and load it to the Reader. If the right text edge is more or less straight, so they kept Iwata fonts.

igorsk

10-06-2006, 11:01 AM

It seems they have changed nothing in the format itself. But the rackals have restricted the unicode support in the Reader: it understands the first 255 symbols only :angry:.
What makes you think so? I doubt they removed unicode altogether, considering that text in LRF is encoded in UTF-16. The Reader probably just has fonts with only Western characters.

bingle

10-06-2006, 01:04 PM

I'll experiment and let everyone else know what I discover :-)

I put the results of my initial experiments with the LRF creation here, (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7875) for anyone who is interested.

lordvetinari2

10-10-2006, 07:27 PM

Importing a MS-Word formatted into BD gives problems, as styles are not correctly reproduced (re-format completely does not work either). For instance "Normal+Bold" works fine, but "italic1" does not keep the italics in BD. Don't tell me how I got to "italic1" instead of "Normal+Italics", I just did. That's why Word should not be used for complex documents: it thinks ahead of the user when it should not. Easy does not mean good.

Opening and saving RTF file with Wordpad solves this problem, but it also looses footnotes. Will have to check Abiword / Openoffice.org to see what happens.

Importing a CSSed HTML file into BD also gives problems. Apparently the HTML has been formatted following OEB standards 1.0.1, so there are no regular HTML tags for bold / italics. Instead, everything is formatted with span tags.

It looks as if BD cannot understand what a format looks like, only how it is expressed. Funny, copying text from IE into Word keeps visual formatting, but not from Firefox. Again, easy does not mean good.

Anyway, BD looks like a powerful tool. Thanks for a good job, I will keep on learning.

vvv

10-11-2006, 03:14 PM

Importing a MS-Word formatted into BD gives problems, as styles are not correctly reproduced.
Send me please some input files with such problems (pointing out where formatting errors appear).

vvv

10-12-2006, 01:59 PM

Importing a CSSed HTML file into BD also gives problems.
Forgot to ask. When loading a CSSed HTML file, do you have a css file in the same dir as your html-file?

lordvetinari2

10-14-2006, 05:42 AM

Forgot to ask. When loading a CSSed HTML file, do you have a css file in the same dir as your html-file?

Yep (sorry, I've been busy with my baby Reader!).

FangornUK

10-15-2006, 08:37 PM

I've given the BookDesigner a go to generate LRF files and the results were impressive but I had the following major issues which stop me from using it. I'm mostly converting HTML either from Gutenberg or marked up text using GutenMark, which generates HTML. When loading a HTML document that has images, the images do not load. Also the biggest problem is that pagination does not work properly, sometimes page breaks just appear in the middle of paragraphs - is there anyway to switch pagination off?

A good example of the HTML with images that uses CSS from Gutenberg is http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19420/19420-h.zip

vvv

10-16-2006, 08:14 PM

When loading a HTML document that has images, the images do not load.

In your file there are the declarations of pre-formatted html. Usually such type of html's heed to be processed as a pure text that eliminated all the html tags. So, as soon as BD finds <pre> tag in html, it makes a complete file re-formatting.
However in your file <pre> tags are used to mark just a small part of the text. So just remove them from 19420-h.htm, and the pictures will appear.

Also the biggest problem is that pagination does not work properly, sometimes page breaks just appear in the middle of paragraphs - is there anyway to switch pagination off?

It is happening because the lrf creator was adjusted for the Librie rather than for the Sony Reader. As soon as I get Sony Reader, I will adjust the lrf creator for it. But now you need to make this adjustment manually playing with the "lines per page" number (around 22-25 for "book text"=17). Also try to play with "page breaks", "page headers", and "page footers" options.

diabloNL

11-17-2006, 12:47 PM

vvv, thanks for your great software!

Is there a way to prevent the text from wrapping to the next line when you set the size on the reader to "M" or "L"? I'm getting a lot of lines with one word. :(

Stingo

11-19-2006, 11:08 AM

Is there an answer to this question regarding wrapping? When I download an lrf from an online site and I change the font the text flows and adjusts. When I covert using this program and I change the font size the sentences break as if they had hard returns. Is there a setting that I need to change to make the text not line break at different sizes. Thanks.

igorsk

11-19-2006, 02:12 PM

diabloNL

11-19-2006, 02:38 PM

This is a known issue. Current version of BookDesigner used hard breaks to align the text. This was done to work around some bugs in Librie. It seems those bugs are not present in the Reader, so the program needs to be adjusted to not insert hard breaks. It will be done when vvv (the author) receives his Reader, which should be pretty soon, I think.

Thanks igorsk! Let's hope it will be soon. :D

tcv

11-19-2006, 07:29 PM

I finally downloaded this program and, well, it's quite a nice little app. I, too, am hopeful for vvv to get his Reader for the wrapping issue. :-)

Retina

11-20-2006, 06:17 PM

Axel

11-26-2006, 06:05 AM

I try to use BookDesigner for converting PDFs to BBeBook format. Sometimes it works, but if the PDF is more complicated and I press make-eBook I only get the error message "creation failed".

Is there a way to get a more detailed error description, so that I can find and fix the problem?

Many thanx,

Axel

vvv

11-27-2006, 02:54 PM

Is there a way to get a more detailed error description, so that I can find and fix the problem?

Check "validate failed lrs", then press "make book". A lrs-file (Librie Reader Source) is a xml-type-file from which a lrf-file is created. If there are some errors in lrs-file, it will be shown in the lrs validator and the first found error will be pointed out and described. Correct the error manually, then press eBook -> validate (or "validate" botton). When all the errors are fixed, press eBook -> make lrf (or "make lrf" button).

Also you can use lrs validator for the validation of your own lrs-files and for the creation of lrf books from your own lrs-sources. To run the lrs validator press Tools -> more tools -> Lrs Validator.

Bear in mind, however, that lrs validator was made for relatively small books (my own needs), so do not be surprised if it will not be able to load big books.

Notes related to the big lrs sources. If lrs validator is not able to load some lrs, you may correct it using any xml-validator/editor [for example, Xml Spy or even IE (the last one - just to find the error)]. The current lrs-file is located in TmpOut subdirectory of the main BD directory, however this subdirectory is deleted as soon as you close BD. So if you want to edit lrs-file, just copy this subdirectory somewhere outside of the main BD directory, then rename tmp.lrs as tmp.xml and load tmp.xml to your xml editor.

Also you can use the inner xml-validator/editor named "FBI" :) (Tools -> Fiction Book Investigator) which is designed for the manual editing of fb2-books. It has no restriction for the loaded file size, but you will need to rename tmp.lrs as tmp.fb2 and to choose "namespace" instead of "schema".

Stingo

12-07-2006, 12:04 PM

Whatever happened to the fix for this program? The hard return versus soft return issue. I figured that it would be a simple change in the code?

The program looks nice so I'm eager for the fix. Thanks.

vvv

12-07-2006, 07:38 PM

Whatever happened to the fix for this program? The hard return versus soft return issue. I figured that it would be a simple change in the code?

The changes are not so simple: too many special things were made to adjust the books for Librie. And another one problem: it is quite difficult to remember all of them :( (1.5 year already passed).
So it is easier to rewrite the lrs-module than to remove all the Librie adjustments. However up to the end of this year I will have no time to do it. I think I will do it at the middle of January.

Stingo

12-07-2006, 08:45 PM

Thanks a lot. Don't mean to rush you during this crazy time of year. Just like the program and am eager to use it. Have a great holiday season.

vvv

12-15-2006, 12:04 PM

-=AlexXF=- from the-ebook.org has made a new lrs->lrf convertor: lrsparser. lrsparser is a good replacement for lrs2lrf.exe (the interface to XYLogParser) because:
1. It is much more faster (up to 100 times)
2. The parts of lrf-books made with XYLogParser are often non-readable while lrsparser is free of this drawback.

These ones who wants to try the lrsparser can install it with BookDesigner as follows.

1. Download lrsparser.exe from
http://www.mailutilities.com/lrsparser.zip
2. Go to the subdirectory Tools/Librie of BookDesigner and rename lrs2lrf.exe as lrs2lrf.bak
3. Rename lrsparser.exe as lrs2lrf.exe and copy it to the Tools/Librie subdirectory.

P.S. These ones who wants to fix non-readable lrf's made by XYLogParser, can use fixLRF.exe utility. The utility has been written by obelix from the-ebook.org, who has discovered what is wrong in the XYLogParser output and found a way to fix it.
http://www.msh-tools.com/ebook/fixLRF.exe

Stingo

12-16-2006, 11:03 AM

obelix

12-16-2006, 11:26 PM

Hi. I installed your update and made a conversion. It worked well but still has the hard breack problem so it will not generate lrfs for the Sony E-reader that are scalable. After the first time, other attempts to generate books resulted in errors.

Necessity of hard breaks are inherited from the Librie; vvv (the author of Book Designer program) is going to change the format to scalable one by the end of January.
New LRSparser (by -=AlexXF=-) is the first ever “homemade” lrs to lrf parser which is much faster than XYLogParser.dll. It does not change format of the documents created by Book Designer.
I also had errors after first several runs of BD update on 2 my computers, but after second or third run it disappeared by itself.

-=AlexXF=-

12-17-2006, 01:54 AM

New parser (LRSParser) currently does not compatible with Sony Librie I. RS500 only.

Sorry, but i do not have this device (Librie).

PS. v.0.2 available by old link:
http://www.mailutilities.com/lrsparser.zip

jimbobuk

12-19-2006, 10:24 PM

it looks very promising this software.

I just had a play around, not really sure what i was doing other than loading up html files and immediately just trying to save out an lrf file.

Occasionally i had a problem where it said something about top level namespace (i'm trying to recreate it to be more specific but failing right now) .. in the lrs viewer that came up the beginning of the file was full of what look like absolutely loads of crosses characters (in the religious sense).. all the same.

Anyone seen this, have any idea what causes the problem? Next time i see it i'll post more thorough explanation of the error.

I had some files made that were only 2 pages long when looking at them on the reader (the reader itself, or the sony reader software) .. the new LRSParser seems to have fixed that.

I'm not completely sure what the problem is people are talking about with pagination.. I can try dabbling with the number of lines per page as described.. what am i looking for for it to be the correct value?

Should the width be left at 600? it looks very narrow in the PC sony reader software.

Other than that tho, it does look like it may be very useful.

dmikov

12-21-2006, 08:26 PM

Compiles almost anything - very nice. But doesn't output horisontal lines.
<RuledLine linelength="516" linetype="solid" linewidth="1" linecolor="0x00000000"/>
Lrs2Lrf does though.

skeid

12-25-2006, 01:32 PM

Hi vvv, thanks for this great tool. I've installed it and I like it a lot.

I do have an problem with the numbers are just dots "." in the page number of the main window and in the "Make Sony Libre File". Is there a setting I need to change? Font I need to install? etc? I've attached screen shots of my problem. Thanks!

vvv

01-08-2007, 06:23 PM

I do have an problem with the numbers are just dots "." in the page number of the main window and in the "Make Sony Libre File". Is there a setting I need to change? Font I need to install? etc?
Check for the MS Sans Serif font installation.

vvv

01-31-2007, 07:04 PM

The Reader module is ready for the testing.
The corresponding BookDesigner update is here
http://www.the-ebook.org/e107/e107_files/downloads/bd/Bd_Update_2007_01_29.zip

http://www.the-ebook.org/e107/e107_files/downloads/bd/SonyReaderWin1.png
http://www.the-ebook.org/e107/e107_files/downloads/bd/SonyReaderWin2.png
http://www.the-ebook.org/e107/e107_files/downloads/bd/SonyReaderWin3.png

http://www.the-ebook.org/e107/e107_files/downloads/bd/ReaderSample.png

pinenut

01-31-2007, 10:01 PM

Thank you, vvv, for your excellent program. I have used the previous version to convert PDF to DOC to convert it back to PDF via MS Word 2003. It still beats other programs for handling PDF files.

Do you have any plan to do the same thing for PDF files? I hope you can come up with a way to modify a PDF file and save it as a PDF file for use with the reader.

FangornUK

02-01-2007, 07:28 AM

Thanks vvv, the ebooks created on this now look great on the Sony Reader. Is there any way to switch off the cover title/author page creation for an ebook?

vvv

02-01-2007, 10:57 AM

Do you have any plan to do the same thing for PDF files?
Maybe with time...

vvv

02-01-2007, 11:06 AM

Is there any way to switch off the cover title/author page creation for an ebook?
To switch off the cover page: press "book cover page -> remove" in the "Make Sony Reader file" window.

There is no option to switch off the front page: the Reader heeds this info for the bookshell.

diabloNL

02-01-2007, 01:20 PM

Thanks vvv for your hard work, it is really appreciated!

bkilian

02-01-2007, 03:31 PM

The Reader module is ready for the testing.
The corresponding BookDesigner update is here
http://www.the-ebook.org/e107/e107_files/downloads/bd/Bd_Update_2007_01_29.zip

I'm having a problem with extended characters like é in my Baen RTF files. When I load the file, it replaces all my é with й. Then when I create the Sony Reader file, it removes the й character entirely, so I get blas instead of blasé, and r sum instead of résumé.
I tried replacing the cyrillic character with é, and that looks fine in Book Designer, but when I create the Sony Reader file, it then looks like
blasé and résumé, which is even worse than before. Any suggestions?

Govinda

02-01-2007, 03:33 PM

Thanks a lot vvv for your great program.

Just a question, is there any tool in Book Designer for removing the page numbers from the original file?

Vienna01

02-01-2007, 04:28 PM

I tried out the new Version 5 of Book Designer today and was very pleased with how well it works now for converting input to .lrf Sony Reader output. I have converted both HTML input books and PDF input. Both work very well.

When I tried to change the font size for a "local" string (a word or two) I found that when I selected the text to be changed, the Configuration-Fonts tool was minimized. I could not maximize the "Change Font" tool unless I removed the selection/highlighting of the words for which I wanted to change fonts. I was thus unable to change the FONT for a selected text string. Change Font worked well for global changes although the reader decides on its own which font types to display, irrespective of how I selected a global font. I was also unable to set the COLORS for a local text string using the "set colors" tool. As long as I had a character string selected the Set Colors remained minimized. Perhaps I am doing something wrong???

A very small "nit" I noticed in Self Teaching Lesson 1 was the use of the Expression "ups" in a couple of places. For example in the text: " Ups, three paragraphs but formatted as a verse. The paragraphs are not broken...". I think "ups" means in three paragraphs ABOVE. The term, may be used in non-US English (UK, NZ or Aus) but it was new to me. All in All the help files/self teaching documents were great and very clear to me. I was able to figure out what "ups" meant so it isn't a problem for me but might be for other users.

I found the DEFAULT values for the Fonts and Font sizes in the MAKE SONY READER file tool worked well for me.

One of the big new capabilities of Version 5 is the way it reflows the text so that we don't get short sentence fragments because of hard CRs.

Thanks very much for creating such a capable tool. :thumbsup:

igorsk

02-01-2007, 09:27 PM

It's probably just Runglish for "oops" :)

valkyriesound

02-01-2007, 11:45 PM

vvaann

02-02-2007, 03:08 AM

I'm having a problem with extended characters like é in my Baen RTF files. When I load the file, it replaces all my é with й. Then when I create the Sony Reader file, it removes the й character entirely, so I get blas instead of blasé, and r sum instead of résumé.
I tried replacing the cyrillic character with é, and that looks fine in Book Designer, but when I create the Sony Reader file, it then looks like
blasé and résumé, which is even worse than before. Any suggestions?
Check the book language in the main BD settings. There could be a problem with auto recognition. Try to put compatible language. It should help, I think.

pinenut

02-02-2007, 01:05 PM

Looks very cool.. and mostly works for me...

I have one problem (and I may just be doing something wrong).

I open a PDF file... it works on it... but somehow it looses all of the quotation
marks around dialog. Example: "Yes!" would be just: Yes!

What am I doing wrong? Thanks!

I've just noticed the same problem as well.

I don't think you and I are doing anything wrong. I hope the author will fix it.

bkilian

02-02-2007, 03:07 PM

Check the book language in the main BD settings. There could be a problem with auto recognition. Try to put compatible language. It should help, I think.I checked the language, made no difference. I even saved the RTF as a HTML and loaded the HTML and it still converted the extended characters to other extended characters.

scottb

02-03-2007, 11:51 AM

When i import an RTF file into Book Designer, italic and bold words lose their formatting. Anyone else having this problem, or know what to do about it? Is it related to using Word 2007? Thanks.

diabloNL

02-03-2007, 01:18 PM

When i import an RTF file into Book Designer, italic and bold words lose their formatting. Anyone else having this problem, or know what to do about it? Is it related to using Word 2007? Thanks.

I also have the same problem.

scottb

02-03-2007, 03:38 PM

Another quick issue -- & is showing up as & in the LRF file and on the reader, although looks fine in bookdesigner itself. Great work vvv! Thanks for doing this.

RWood

02-04-2007, 03:55 PM

For text files it has become my #1 choice for the Reader and it produces files that are 1/6th the size of RTF files. More comments as I do more and more things with it. For now, THANKS!

(Yes, I know that all caps used in that fashion is the same as shouting and that was what I intended.)

RWood

02-04-2007, 07:31 PM

I keep getting an error message on opening RTF and other files "Word cannot save this file because it is already open elsewhere. C:\Documents...\Normal.sty" Even if Word is not open.

vvv

02-07-2007, 01:42 PM

I'm having a problem with extended characters like é in my Baen RTF files. When I load the file, it replaces all my é with й. Then when I create the Sony Reader file, it removes the й character entirely, so I get blas instead of blasé, and r sum instead of résumé.
I tried replacing the cyrillic character with é, and that looks fine in Book Designer, but when I create the Sony Reader file, it then looks like
blasé and résumé, which is even worse than before. Any suggestions?
Try:
1. Settings -> book language -> French
2. Load your RTF
3. "save current file"
4. "Make Sony Reader file"

If it will not work, send me your RTF to valerii spmtwin.net

vvv

02-07-2007, 01:45 PM

When i import an RTF file into Book Designer, italic and bold words lose their formatting.
Everybody, who has some problems with the file import/export, send me please the corresponding files pointing out what it is wrong (to valerii spmtwin.net).

vvv

02-07-2007, 01:56 PM

It's probably just Runglish for "oops" :)
No, it is just the influence of my wife, so-called Spnglish :)

vvv

02-07-2007, 02:14 PM

When I tried to change the font size for a "local" string (a word or two) I found that when I selected the text to be changed, the Configuration-Fonts tool was minimized. I could not maximize the "Change Font" tool unless I removed the selection/highlighting of the words for which I wanted to change fonts. I was thus unable to change the FONT for a selected text string. Change Font worked well for global changes although the reader decides on its own which font types to display, irrespective of how I selected a global font. I was also unable to set the COLORS for a local text string using the "set colors" tool. As long as I had a character string selected the Set Colors remained minimized. Perhaps I am doing something wrong???

To be true, I do not know what it is wrong: I have tried to reproduce the "minimized" effect on several comps with different windows - everything is ok. What windows are you running?

As for the global BD font, it is ignored in lrf because the LrfMaker has its own global font assignment (styles -> paragraph).

vvv

02-07-2007, 02:32 PM

Just a question, is there any tool in Book Designer for removing the page numbers from the original file?
Try Find/Replace with RegExp.

Also you can try BookCleaner (it is a tool for advanced users allowing one to perform direct replacements in the book source code). To see how the code structure looks like, use html fragment editor.

Vienna01

02-07-2007, 09:52 PM

MEA CULPA. I do not now have (and never had) a problem with using the Font or the Color tools. I had the main frame filling the screen and forgot that these tools might be behind the main frame. I tried the program again today and no problem at all. Sorry if I caused you extra work. GREAT PROGRAM.
VIENNA01 ( That username refers to Vienna, Virginia USA not Austria)

L1Wulf

02-13-2007, 12:51 PM

I tried reinstalling Book Designer on my (relatively) fresh install of Vista (32-bit) last night anticipating that I will need it very soon, but I just couldn't get it to produce anything (Reader, RTF). I could load the files OK and read them in the main window of BD, but everything I tried failed miserably. I apologize for not taking notes on error messages, screenshots, or anything else that might of been useful, but it was quite late (which certainly didn't help), I was tired and I just wanted it installed so I could go to bed. I tried installing 4.0, then copying the 4.5 (?) update and the 5.0 update into the program directory. I also tried 4.0 to 4.5 (which failed to even run). And a straight 4.0 install. Last, I tried 4.0 to 5.0 (skipping 4.5) and still had no luck.

This morning I was determined to get it to work. I tried "run as Administrator" (from the program directory since there was no option to do it from the desktop icon). I tried changing the output directories to a folder under the user namespace (c:\Users\L1Wulf\BDOutput\Reader and so on). Finally, I uninstalled, searched again through the wiki and this post to see if I was missing something obvious. I went to the Book Designer Blog (http://www.bookdesigner.org/wordpress) (after translating of course :wink2: ) and downloaded the Reader Parser and took a deep breath...

This time around, I installed directly into the user namespace (c:\users\L1Wulf\BookDesigner), did the 4.5 and 5.0 updates and copied the new parser over. I changed the output directories to the user namespace again. I should have tried it after this, but I didn't, instead I went to the configuration settings and selected reformat completely (on a whim) then I loaded a book and gave it a shot. :wink3: It worked! I went back to configuration settings and reset everything to defaults (are the defaults on fresh install different from what is set by clicking "default"--it seemed to me that it changed more than what I did originally) and tried again... and again it worked.

I don't know what I did right this time, but it is working now and I am again a happy reader. I haven't fooled around much with it yet, but from what I've seen just on the make ebook screen and the corrector sidebar, I'm duly impressed.

VVV, thanks for making such an incredible and powerful application for everyone to enjoy!

bkilian

02-13-2007, 02:39 PM

L1Wulf

02-13-2007, 03:06 PM

But I had changed all output to the user namespace the first time around (since I had already thought of the reason you mentioned which is also the reason why I changed the install destination--I just am not keen on doing this on a regular basis; call me silly but I'd like to keep my installed programs in "Program Files" with the default Vista protection in place :wink: ). Perhaps the temp files are hard coded to the temp directory?

Just took a look at the temp directory as it is currently installed and I noticed that there is several subdirectories (numbered 1-3), some of which contain .html0 files. Would I be mistaken in assuming these are the intermediate files used when converting the original file to BM native format?

If so, then it disproves the possibility that Vista's protection is disabling the writing of temp files there since each test book I tried converted fine to the native format (ie I could open a PDF and view the converted text, make changes, etc), but would not "make ebook" to RTF, or Sony Reader.

Now it bugs me to know what exactly is keeping it from working...but not enough to uninstall and reinstall back into the "Program Files" directory since I suspect I will have to just reinstall back to where it is at now in the long run.

Incidentally, I can no longer open unprotected MS Reader files (.lit) as it throws an error on clit12a.exe (12a???). The error dialog must be in Russian as it comprises mostly of question marks on my system. The following is from the event viewer for the error:

Faulting application clit12a.exe, version 0.0.0.0, time stamp 0x3e12334c, faulting module ntdll.dll, version 6.0.6000.16386, time stamp 0x4549bdc9, exception code 0xc0000005, fault offset 0x0006715c, process id 0xb28, application start time 0x01c74fa14f7a13f0.

vvv

02-13-2007, 07:54 PM

Incidentally, I can no longer open unprotected MS Reader files (.lit) as it throws an error on clit12a.exe (12a???). The error dialog must be in Russian as it comprises mostly of question marks on my system. The following is from the event viewer for the error:
lit files are unpacked to the root directory of the logical disk where BD is installed. Maybe this is the reason.
To be true I do not remember why I am unpacking lit files in such a way. But there were some reasons...

L1Wulf

02-13-2007, 11:05 PM

Ah, that might explain it then. Thanks for the insight! Perhaps if I ran as Administrator... If that works, I'll be sure to post back on it.

Stingo

02-16-2007, 08:36 AM

I appologize for not reading the whole thread due to time restraints but have others noted an issue with embedded graphics? I tried converting The Virgin of Small Plains which I had in HTML mode. I tried from both HTML and RTF. In each instance it cut the chapters short wherever there were inline graphics. It did not seem to have a similar effect with graphics in front of chapter titles. Where it abruptly ended the chapter it normally shows about a dozen garbage characters. I ended up having to read into wordpad and then save as RTF (in order to preserve chapter title bolding).

Is this a known issue? Thanks.

vvv

02-20-2007, 11:40 AM

HarryT

02-26-2007, 04:44 AM

bkilian

02-26-2007, 01:30 PM

I tried French, and it now keeps my extended characters pretty well, I only really have one more issue with this software, it seems to strip all & characters out of my original RTF.

R&D becomes RD, this would probably not normally be an issue, but baen's military scifi uses a lot of & :)

RWood

02-26-2007, 02:16 PM

Sorry to be dense, but could someone tell me what needs to be downloaded to use this program, please? I've looked at the web site, but I'm unable to find any description of it in English, and unfortunately I don't read Russian.

Thanks!As to installing the program, download the base set of BookDesigner40 and install it. This sets up the framework for the program in Windows. Then in turn download and copy to the folder in "Program Files" the following updates: Bd_Update_2006_09_13, Bd_Update_2006_12_19, and Bd_Update_2007_01_29. This will give you the latest updated version.

There is a file in the Help subdirectory called DesignerHelpEng that can load into Book Designer. (All of the graphics seem to go away and are replaced by red "X" signs if the file is viewed in anything other than Book Designer.) From there it can be viewed or saved as required.

It is a good program with a few quirks; but, it does produce very nice output.

vvaann

02-26-2007, 02:17 PM

Sorry to be dense, but could someone tell me what needs to be downloaded to use this program, please? I've looked at the web site, but I'm unable to find any description of it in English, and unfortunately I don't read Russian.

Thanks!
I do read Russian. :rolleyes5 You need to download the main program
http://www.the-ebook.org/e107/request.php?8

and the last update
http://www.the-ebook.org/e107/e107_files/downloads/bd/Bd_Update_2007_01_29.zip

Install the program and extract all files from the update to the BD directory. That's all - have fun.

HarryT

02-27-2007, 01:45 AM

Thank you!

RWood

02-28-2007, 12:20 PM

I saved out the English Book Designer 5 (alpha) help files in MS Word format for anyone who needs them or wants to see the options in Book Designer before loading it.

Edit: Added a PDF version.

FangornUK

03-08-2007, 12:09 PM

I've noticed that Book Designer doesn't import HTML entities properly, for example 'ó ;' should be imported as 'ó' but it appears as 'у'

Some other examples: 'û ;' appears as 'ы' instead of 'û'

(Had to put spaces in to stop the forum parsing the '&#' values.

There's a good site with all entities listed here (http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_entities.asp)

FangornUK

03-14-2007, 11:54 AM

Figured out my problem with accented characters. I had some Tolkien words which would always be converted to junk until I set the language to German. That fixed this issue for me.
Latest version of Book Designer is just brilliant!

jriihi

03-18-2007, 03:58 AM

I hope author reads this..

There is bug in bookdesigner (latest version 15.3.2007) when importing pdf documents. It seems to remove all double quotes during conversion.

"He said... " becomes He said...

For lit and txt there is no such problem.

astra

03-19-2007, 05:19 AM

Is there the lates version 15 March 2007??

jriihi

03-19-2007, 05:51 AM

Is there the lates version 15 March 2007??

Yes there is update dated March 15th, 2007. Latest updates for bookdesigner can be found from www.bookdesigner.org website (Russian).

RWood

03-19-2007, 12:47 PM

I went there and my Russian (haven't used it in 30+ years) is very bad so I could not find a download link for it. Everything seemed to point to a copy of the old version 4.

NatCh

03-19-2007, 01:18 PM

Ran it through Bablefish (http://babelfish.altavista.com/) (BabelFish is your frieeeeend!), which let me see an update from January 29th, I thought that one was the newest. :shrug:

RWood

03-19-2007, 01:26 PM

I have that one; but, it seemed that there was something about a March 15th update. I am very sure that most of the current problems I have with BookDesigner are caused by an error between the keyboard and the chair.

NatCh

03-19-2007, 01:36 PM

Ah, yes, the insidious PEBCAK (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebcak) issue (also known as a wetware (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wetware) problem). :laugh4:

jriihi

03-19-2007, 01:39 PM

Yes 1st news/blog item in front page of that site is dated March 15 2007 and that talks about update for sony reader functions and download link to it.

google translate (russian to english):
http://www.google.com/translate_t

NatCh

03-19-2007, 01:46 PM

RWood

03-19-2007, 01:51 PM

Thanks, I got the new update. It seems to say that it now supports multilevel TOCs.

vvv

03-21-2007, 12:26 PM

Ah, I see it now -- I thought before that it was just a download of the V4.
The modification date on the BookDesigner.exe file, inside the zip is 3/16, so that suggests that something has been adjusted. :nice:
The last update (16.03.2007):
http://www.the-ebook.org/e107/e107_files/downloads/bd/BookDesignerExe.zip

1. Make eBooks -> BookImage -> Sony Reader: the screen rotation support has been added (orientation, deg: 0, 90, 180, 270).

2. Make eBooks -> Sony Reader:
a). e-book -> author -> shift button: shifts the text in the "author" field.
b). options -> book elements -> book author. If "from last name" is checked then the book author line (e-book -> author) will begin from the book author last name, otherwise - from the first name.
c). options -> book elements -> book serie pos. If "begining" is checked then the serie abbreviation will be added before the book title, otherwise - after.
d). options -> headers/footers -> footer
- auto (add): puts all the titles found on a page to the footer.
- auto: puts the longest title to the footer.
- title 1: puts the first title to the footer.
- title 2 (add): puts the two first titles to the footer.
- title 2: puts the second title to the footer.
e). options -> headers/footers -> footer -> use subtitles checked: the subtitles will be included to the footer.
f). options -> headers/footers -> header
- author: puts the book author name to the header.
- title: puts the book title to the header.
- title+author: puts the book title and book author name to the header.

3. misc -> toc -> all: the subtitles will be included to the ТОС.

P.S. Because the settings structure was extended, some problems with settings may appear after the update. If so, press "settings -> default" or, if the settings were saved before the update - load the saved settings file pressing "settings -> load".

Armor78154

03-21-2007, 02:07 PM

igorsk

03-21-2007, 03:26 PM

LRF format doesn't support setting of text justification. Reader's render uses full justification for Western text.

vvv

03-21-2007, 04:09 PM

I am using the latest update of the software, but I cannot get the Font window to display when opening my book. It is an .rtf file that I downloaded from Baen.com. I also do not see how you can set the justification of text. I have looked at the Book Converter toolbar, and I do not see any tools that allow for basic text manipulation tasks such as adjusting fonts or modifying the justification. I would appreciate any help anyone can provide.
Thanks.
The settings for SonyReader books are assigned through Make eBooks -> Sony Reader -> styles. The table allows to set the styles for each element supported by BD format (paragraphs, titles, subtitles, etc). Particularly, the element's alignment is assigned through the "align" column. Choose the element's styles suitable for you, press "sample -> make", and you will see in Connect how the book elements will look at the Reader.

As soon as your styles are chosen, do not forget to save them (settings -> save), then load your book to BD and press "e-book -> make"

P.S. If you are going to use some external fonts, choose them first pressing "external fonts -> add". As soon as some fonts are presented in the "external fonts" list, they will be available for assigment through the "font" column.

Armor78154

03-21-2007, 05:34 PM

Thanks for your assistance guys. I was just worried when I couldn't access the Fonts menu by hitting F6. I thought that in updating the application, I had broken something.

RWood

03-21-2007, 07:08 PM

P.S. If you are going to use some external fonts, choose them first pressing "external fonts -> add". As soon as some fonts are presented in the "external fonts" list, they will be available for assigment through the "font" column.
If I use a font other than Dutch (Times) or Swiss (Ariel) for creating an LRF file for the Sony Reader, will BD5 embed this font in the file? My tests seem to all revert to the native fonts in the Reader.

Aprilbeginnings

03-23-2007, 10:57 AM

The Reader module is ready for the testing.
The corresponding BookDesigner update is here
http://www.the-ebook.org/e107/e107_files/downloads/bd/Bd_Update_2007_01_29.zip

I can't get any of these to install........ I am stuck with the old version...... what am I doing wrong? HELP. I had it overwrite all the files under programs/bookdesigner 4.0 and when I run it it reverts to the old default, i get that message.

Aprilbeginnings

03-23-2007, 10:58 AM

I went there and my Russian (haven't used it in 30+ years) is very bad so I could not find a download link for it. Everything seemed to point to a copy of the old version 4.

ha ha, having the same problem here too.

Aprilbeginnings

03-23-2007, 11:08 AM

ha ha, having the same problem here too.

Okay found the newest update...... I can't use the sony reader icon, I have to use it from the toolbar uptop..... will play with this and see what happens. I have a feeling I will just be leaving the books I have as they are...... <sigh>

RWood

03-23-2007, 12:43 PM

Karen, unlike the original install of BD4, for the updates you have to unzip the contents and then copy them over the existing files in the "Program Files/Book Designer 4" subdirectory.

Aprilbeginnings

03-23-2007, 12:50 PM

That is what I had done and it didn't work... but I got the newest version to work.... still says version 4 with my icons and such but I have the sony reader button now so I know I have the correct one.

Aprilbeginnings

03-23-2007, 12:57 PM

you know what I am looking at this again. I still do not have the sony reader button, I have libre button, BUT I do have the sony reader choice up in *make books*..

HarryT

03-23-2007, 01:01 PM

Strange! The first three entries on the "Make eBooks" menu should be:

Sony Reader
Iliad
Sony Librie

It sounds as if you're still running version 4. If you look in the "Book Designer Update" thread a few below this one, on the last page you'll find a download link to the most recent March 17th update. All you have to do is download that, unzip it into a folder, and then copy the contents of that folder into the:

C:\Program Files\Book Designer 4.0

folder, saying "Yes" whenever Windows asks you if it should overwrite existing files. That will update BD to the latest v5.

HarryT

03-23-2007, 01:08 PM

Oops - sorry; this is the "Book Designer Update" thread :grin:. The update link you need is in message #89 by "vvv", which for me is on the previous page of this topic. All you need is the most recent update.

Aprilbeginnings

03-23-2007, 01:25 PM

I can't seem to get the margins at the top and bottom...... at the bottom I have about a 1/2 inch of space that could be used for text...... the text at the top is about a quarter of an inch which is fine.... I have changed the top and bottom settings but it's not taking? Any ideas.

HarryT

03-23-2007, 01:30 PM

Are you now using version 5 and generating books for the Sony Reader, Karen? If you're still using the "Librie" option you're probably just seeing the different page sizes of the Librie and the Reader!

diabloNL

03-24-2007, 07:56 AM

Does anyone know why some characters are transformed in Russian characters?

Also the "&" sign disappears when importing a RTF file and if you add it yourself to BD it will print it as "&" in the LRF file. When I import "é" in BD he will show it as "й" and when it's a LRF file it will show it as "&-#233;" :(

See picture:

HarryT

03-24-2007, 08:08 AM

Does anyone know why some characters are transformed in Russian characters?

I've found that, if you have the book language set to "English", accented characters get converted to Russian characters. You can get around this by setting the language to "German" and reloading the RTF.

diabloNL

03-24-2007, 08:15 AM

Thanks Harry that helps a lot! Do you also happen to know a workaround for the "&" sign?

HarryT

03-24-2007, 08:22 AM

Thanks Harry that helps a lot! Do you also happen to know a workaround for the "&" sign?

I've not met that problem yet, so I'm afraid I don't have a workaround. I only started using BD yesterday, so my experience of it is extremely limited, so far!

diabloNL

03-24-2007, 08:29 AM

Well in my opinion you know a lot already! I just discovered the "Element Browser" and that is really handy. :)

jwhayn

03-24-2007, 11:08 AM

The following was fixed by unstalling an Intuit program called Find My Deductions and loading a different program that fixed the VB 6 runime problems.
__________________________________________________ ___________
I migrated from XP to Vista -- please do not ask why. Bookdesigner seemed to work okay at first. Now I get the following error:
++++++++++
Component 'comctl32.ocx' or one of its dependencies not correctly registered: a file is missing or invalid
++++++++++

__________________________________________________ ___________

Now I unistalled and reloaded BookDesigner and the updates to a user space area (also tried the default program files area with the same result). BookDesigner now works for most if not all book format outputs except for Sony Reader. Nothing happens at all when I press Make eBooks fore the Sony Reader but it does work for Librie and others. Any ideas?

humandroid

03-24-2007, 11:05 PM

I've been using this a lot today and am very happy with it for the most part.

For a while I was discouraged about converting lit files.
It took me a while to figure out that I needed to double click the images to bring up a second window in order to delete them.

And sometimes when there is the word "by" before the authors name it puts the word "by" way down on the next page when you actually create the book.
I don't know why so I have started deleting the word before I create the book.

Now I guess the only thing bugging me now is that I can't seem to get very good output from any pdf files.
They just do not seem to translate well for me at all.
Any tips on converting pdf files would be nice.

Thanks for such a wonderful program!

astra

03-25-2007, 05:39 AM

Now I guess the only thing bugging me now is that I can't seem to get very good output from any pdf files.
They just do not seem to translate well for me at all.
Any tips on converting pdf files would be nice.

Thanks for such a wonderful program!

Unfortunatelly, BD converts PDF to TXT and looses all special formatting.

So far I am aware about two ways to make LRF from PDF.

1. Use ABBYY PDF Transformer 2 to convert PDF to RTF. Then use BD to make LRF from RTF.

2. Open PDF in Adobe Acrobat Ptofessional and save all as HTML 4. Then use BD to make LRF from HTML. (If you save it as HTML 3 the formatting will be bad. Lots of spacing between every line etc.)

sartori

03-25-2007, 10:06 AM

diabloNL

03-25-2007, 11:57 AM

I posted this tip in another thread - If you have a gmail account - email the pdf to yourself as an attachment - view your message and click on view attachment as html.

For all the pdfs I have tried this with it keeps the bold, italics and font sizes and it also handles line breaks nicely.

Rob

I tried it and this is what GMAIL says:

The entire attachment cannot be displayed because it is too large.If there are images in this attachment, they will not be displayed.

He shows until page 169 and that is not enough for most books.
:(

NatCh

03-25-2007, 02:01 PM

Can you break the file up into smaller chunks?

Aprilbeginnings

03-25-2007, 02:04 PM

I do read Russian. :rolleyes5 You need to download the main program
http://www.the-ebook.org/e107/request.php?8

and the last update
http://www.the-ebook.org/e107/e107_files/downloads/bd/Bd_Update_2007_01_29.zip

Install the program and extract all files from the update to the BD directory. That's all - have fun.

Wasn't there a bookdesigner.exe file as well to install? I know I did thinking that is what made this version work for the sony reader?

diabloNL

03-25-2007, 03:58 PM

Can you break the file up into smaller chunks?

I tried that as well but when I try to open it in BD I get an error saying he can't read the format. :huh:

vvaann

03-25-2007, 04:07 PM

Wasn't there a bookdesigner.exe file as well to install? I know I did thinking that is what made this version work for the sony reader?
My post was before bookdesigner.exe file appears. ;)

NatCh

03-25-2007, 04:52 PM

I meant break it up into smaller chunks and send the smaller chunks through the g-mail transformation, diabloNL. :wink:

humandroid

03-25-2007, 09:56 PM

diabloNL

03-25-2007, 11:51 PM

I meant break it up into smaller chunks and send the smaller chunks through the g-mail transformation, diabloNL. :wink:

I know NatCh, that's what I did. But BD doesn't want to open it. :wink:

NatCh

03-26-2007, 12:04 AM

Ah, well, I guess I should have assumed that was what you meant, diabloNL. :dizzy:

How are you trying to recombine it once you copy it out of the g-mail? I'd think that OpenOffice/Word/WordPad would be the obvious choice. And I guess the other SOQ (Stupidly Obvious Question -- my very own TLA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TLA)) would be: what format are you saving it in? :mad:

diabloNL

03-26-2007, 12:17 AM

I edit the file afterwards with notepad and combine them again into one file. Maybe I'm removing a TAG to many. :p

NatCh

03-26-2007, 12:25 AM

Have you tried copy/pasting it directly from your browser straight into something like WordPad, and then saving it as something simple like RTF? Maybe BD would like the taste of that better, and it would, at minimum, avoid the tag thing. :nice:

diabloNL

03-26-2007, 12:56 AM

I can try that but I was trying to use this method to see if BD indeed keeps the formatting and with RTF he doesn't. :(

astra

03-26-2007, 03:39 AM

Some RTFs that you get after conversion from PDF could be very ODD. In fact, without BD they are considered as a faulty files by the reader. You might want to try to save as HTML, then apply BD. Somtimes PDF->HTML->BD produces much better results than PDF->rtf->BD.

RWood

03-26-2007, 05:58 AM

I have several ebooks that I made with BookDesigner that somehow have the date as the author.
I have no idea how that happened.
Is there any way to edit the author and title without starting all over from scratch?
I tried EditLrfMetaGUI but it never works correctly for me.
I always either get errors or unreadable files.
If that has not worked I know of no other way. One of the beauties of BD is the simplicity of it use.

Since your type of reader is not mentioned in your profile I am unsure what format you are creating. If it is for the Sony Reader, there are fill in the blank boxes on the Make eBook|Sony Reader screen that already have the program's best guess as to the title and author. If these are wrong as in your case just change them to the correct value and generate the ebook.

astra

03-26-2007, 06:02 AM

diabloNL

03-26-2007, 10:11 AM

BD for sony reader is just a ...miracle :)

All I do is open RTF or HTML in BD, go to Make ebook/Sony Reader, type manually Author and Title, in styles I set parahraph font size (which is the actual size of the main book text), set dutch font and press Make book...10 seconds, the book is ready.

It works good, but not that easy. I always check the book because some paragraph text is sometimes set to "titles" or "subtitles" or even set as paragraph while they should be "title". But it works way faster than word. I don's have to spent hours on a book in word making all look good. :cool:

HarryT

03-26-2007, 10:53 AM

One bug that I have found in BD is that if you do a "View/Book Info", find all the titles, and then step through them one at a time (a good way to find titles which shouldn't be titles), eventually it always crashes BD.

If anyone knows a different way to find the titles, I'd be grateful!

diabloNL

03-26-2007, 11:27 AM

humandroid

03-27-2007, 09:53 PM

If that has not worked I know of no other way. One of the beauties of BD is the simplicity of it use.

Since your type of reader is not mentioned in your profile I am unsure what format you are creating. If it is for the Sony Reader, there are fill in the blank boxes on the Make eBook|Sony Reader screen that already have the program's best guess as to the title and author. If these are wrong as in your case just change them to the correct value and generate the ebook.

Yes I do have the Sony Reader and did try to make sure that I always had the correct information in the boxes before creating the book.

I guess I'll just have to remake the books because EditLrfMetaGUI is not working for me and I do not know of any other way to edit the meta tags. :(

dandan77

03-29-2007, 07:09 AM

http://www.the-ebook.org/e107/e107_files/downloads/bd/Bd_Update_2007_01_29.zip

i posted it again enjoy !!!!!

this update include a special tool that make lrf for the sony reader

vvv

03-29-2007, 02:31 PM

http://www.the-ebook.org/e107/e107_files/downloads/bd/Bd_Update_2007_01_29.zip
this update include a special tool that make lrf for the sony reader
This is an update for the testers from www.the-ebook.org, while the final one (2007.03.14) is here
http://www.the-ebook.org/e107/e107_files/downloads/bd/BookDesignerExe.zip

JSWolf

03-29-2007, 03:08 PM

I want to say to vvv a very big THANK YOU!

Now, on to my one peeve... I read Star trek books and they use a lot of italics. I have a bunch of books in lit format I want to convert. But when I load them in, Book Designer gets the italics all wrong. It loses the italics and loses the space in front of the italics section so sometimes words run on without a proper space. Is this something that's on the list to fix? I hope so.

Jon

vvv

03-29-2007, 04:32 PM

Now, on to my one peeve... I read Star trek books and they use a lot of italics. I have a bunch of books in lit format I want to convert. But when I load them in, Book Designer gets the italics all wrong. It loses the italics and loses the space in front of the italics section so sometimes words run on without a proper space. Is this something that's on the list to fix? I hope so.

Send some of your lit's to valerii spmtwin.net.

JSWolf

03-29-2007, 05:16 PM

Send some of your lit's to valerii spmtwin.net.

Message sent. I zipped up 3 lit files for you to play wth. If it turns out thatthe zip file is too large, I'll do it in 3 seperate messages.

vvv

03-29-2007, 08:58 PM

Message sent. I zipped up 3 lit files for you to play wth. If it turns out thatthe zip file is too large, I'll do it in 3 seperate messages.
Check your e-mails: I have sent you a link to the new BD update.

JSWolf

03-31-2007, 04:29 PM

I sent in via e-mail a lit file and a bug report for emdashes not importing properly.

RWood

04-08-2007, 05:59 PM

While the LRS/LRF spec has a provision for drop cap, is there a way to format this in BookDesigner? If so, is there a way to do this with a graphic (jpg or gif) or just a letter/character?

JSWolf

04-10-2007, 08:47 AM

I have not found a way to get text to the right of a graphic.

FangornUK

04-10-2007, 10:38 AM

obelix

04-10-2007, 01:03 PM

I think it always puts graphics on a new line and can't put them on the same line, I think though this is a limitation of the LRS compiler it uses. The only HTML to LRF compiler I know that can put graphics on the same line is HTML2LRF.

Are you sure?
As far as I know LRF format does not have such option. The only way is to put small picture "inline" between characters, the size of such picture will depend on font size. If you have some example were 2 different pictures are located side by side, or there is some picture with a FEW lines of text at the right or left side, please, give us a reference.

FangornUK

04-10-2007, 02:51 PM

Are you sure?
Try my gutlrf.pl (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8532&highlight=gutlrf) scripts (which use HTML2LRF), the following command line will generate an example from Gutenberg:
gutlrf.pl -s http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19499/19499-h.zip

obelix

04-10-2007, 03:27 PM

Try my gutlrf.pl (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8532&highlight=gutlrf) scripts (which use HTML2LRF), the following command line will generate an example from Gutenberg:
gutlrf.pl -s http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19499/19499-h.zip

I did not find such examples in this book. All images that look like several side-by-side images are actually one image. In the book I can see also small images inserted between characters in a line of text (the ones I mentioned in my previuos post). The latest one (images between characters) are embedded with the "<Plot>" element of lrs, they are indeed not supported by BD.

UncleDuke

04-10-2007, 04:47 PM

at the rate things are going i won't need to use this at all. just wait for everyone else to upload all the books already formatted. i have enough now from harryt and others to last until summer.

maggotb0y

04-11-2007, 03:58 PM

Check your e-mails: I have sent you a link to the new BD update.
Any chance you could post that link for the rest of us? I'd love to be able to convert .lit files without having to search the HTML for <I> and manually correcting.

Thanks!

vvv

04-12-2007, 03:07 PM

Any chance you could post that link for the rest of us? I'd love to be able to convert .lit files without having to search the HTML for <I> and manually correcting.

Thanks!
http://www.the-ebook.org/e107/e107_files/downloads/bd/BookDesignerExe.zip

FangornUK

04-13-2007, 05:41 AM

vvv, do you have a list of the changes in this release? Also what's the best way to donate? My Russian isn't great! :p
Also BD doesn't appear to support em-dash character for the Sony Reader, is there any work around?

HarryT

04-13-2007, 06:03 AM

Can you clarify - is this a later update than the 16th March one? If so, what has changed in it?

Thanks!

FangornUK

04-13-2007, 07:05 AM

Can you clarify - is this a later update than the 16th March one? If so, what has changed in it?

Date on the .exe is 12th April.

vvv

04-17-2007, 04:09 PM

Also BD doesn't appear to support em-dash character for the Sony Reader, is there any work around?
By default, middle and long dashes are converted to the short ones during the initial book formatting. But if you want to keep them, do as follows
1. Tools -> Book Cleaner
2. In Book Cleaner
"input file: before formatting": choose MiddleDashes_before.bcf
"input file: after formatting": choose MiddleDashes_after.bcf
3. Close Book Cleaner
4. Load your book
5. In "Make Sony Reader file" -> options -> dashes: as it is

NatCh

04-17-2007, 04:21 PM

Smokin'! Thanks vvv! :yes: :yes: :yes:

aw3524

04-17-2007, 06:18 PM

Is it possible to change the font size of selected text?

NatCh

04-17-2007, 06:53 PM

Hmm. I don't seem to have MiddleDashes_before.bcf or MiddleDashes_after.bcf as options -- did I miss some files somewhere?

Nevermind -- found 'em. :beam:

FangornUK

04-18-2007, 04:42 AM

vvv, great stuff! Only problem after setting Book Cleaner up it also changes "oe" to em-dashes too, i.e. shoe changes to sh—

RWood

04-18-2007, 05:38 AM

Just added "shoe" to the start of a book I'm converting (one with lots of em dashes) and both the em dashes and the "shoe" came out fine.

JSWolf

04-18-2007, 05:46 AM

vvv, great stuff! Only problem after setting Book Cleaner up it also changes "oe" to em-dashes too, i.e. shoe changes to sh—
That depends what language you have set Book Designer for before you load the file. If you set it to French, you will have oe converted to —.

FangornUK

04-18-2007, 06:09 AM

Yes, I always use German so it doesn't mangle accented characters.

HarryT

04-18-2007, 06:28 AM

This is getting very confusing. I always set BD to French precisely so it doesn't mangle accented characters! Do you reckon that German works better for this?

FangornUK

04-18-2007, 06:45 AM

Yes, German seems best and I haven't seen any characters mangled by that setting, like Old English and Tolkien.

HarryT

04-18-2007, 06:47 AM

Thanks - I'll try using that and see how it works out.

NatCh

04-18-2007, 07:43 AM

All right, you've convinced me to go with German too.

RWood

04-18-2007, 08:04 AM

There was a suggestion on that a long time back, I tried it and never switched back to English. This tip is also in the BookDesigner Wiki.

NatCh

04-18-2007, 08:16 AM

Yeah, I've just been using French ... probably due to greater familiarity with that language, which is of course irrelevant since I'm not actually using the language. :mad:

FangornUK

04-18-2007, 10:42 AM

Figured out the "oe" problem, the Book Cleaner uses the character œ (unicode 156) as a temporary conversion character, Book Designer must be matching this to "oe" and then converting to an em-dash. I simply ammended the before and after macros in Book Cleaner to use the unicode character 137 (guess this is never used in books) instead of 156 and it seems to work fine now.

NatCh

04-18-2007, 02:01 PM

I simply ammended the before and after macros in Book Cleaner to use the unicode character 137 (guess this is never used in books) instead of 156 and it seems to work fine now.Hey, FangornUK, what are you editing the .BCF files in? NotePad?

I can open them there, but all the undefined characters (that show up as little boxes) are making me a bit unsure of what I'm seeing, and a bit leery of just editing them ....

FangornUK

04-18-2007, 02:40 PM

You just edit them in the Book Cleaner utility. I made copies of the two .BCF files and edited those. It's not too intuitive, but just select the 'before', edit the unicodes and 'save', then select the 'after' and do the same.

vvv

04-18-2007, 02:48 PM

vvv, great stuff! Only problem after setting Book Cleaner up it also changes "oe" to em-dashes too, i.e. shoe changes to sh—
Just replace uni(156) in scripts by some other unicode symbol (or by symbol's combination) which is not used in your book.

The default replacement of middle and long dashes by the short ones was done in order to accelerate and simplify the book formatting and editing. However recently many users have asked me to make this feature optional. So, when I will have a time, I will add a checkbox "keep dashes" to the Settings.

JSWolf

04-18-2007, 02:59 PM

NatCh

04-18-2007, 03:47 PM

vvv

04-19-2007, 01:15 PM

vvv, would it be possible to add a few features? I would really like tables, graphics next to text, the ability to change the text sizes and fonts. So for example, I can use Times New Roman if I desire and for bold text, I can use Times New Roman (Bold) and then for itlaic, Times New Roman (Italic).

The table's support is in plans (you can see the "table" row in styles). But right now I have no time to provide it, maybe in July...

As for the images inside the text, BD itself has this support. And in lrf there is such an option, but unfortunatly it is not working properly...

vvv

04-19-2007, 01:45 PM

The users have found a problem with formatting of lit-files (sometimes the spaces before <i>-tags are lost). It turns out that it was a bug in clit12a which is used in BD for the preliminary lit processing. The bug was fixed in clit18. To install it under BD: Get it from
http://www.convertlit.com/clit18.zip
unzip, rename clit.exe as clit12a.exe, and copy it to the main BD dir.

Azayzel

04-19-2007, 09:00 PM

vvv,
Does this also fix the problem with meta-tags not being recognized by Reader or Connect; i.e., LIT-to-LRF via BD? I've posed the question in a few other threads, but no one has responded, perhaps because they don't know. I edited the tags using EditLRFMetaGUI, but no tags show while when polled using the meta tool, the tags are there. Thanks for the help!

LaughingVulcan

04-19-2007, 09:34 PM

vvv

04-20-2007, 12:28 PM

vvv,
Does this also fix the problem with meta-tags not being recognized by Reader or Connect; i.e., LIT-to-LRF via BD?
What meta-tags do you mean?

Azayzel

04-21-2007, 10:50 AM

Yaksha

04-22-2007, 11:20 PM

astra

04-23-2007, 05:50 AM

Question: When I import a file (a pdf) that has superscripts, it makes these "titles."

Is there any way to either

a) Remove the superscripts
b) Keep them as superscripts, and not titles

I tried unchecking "detect titles by keyword" and "detect titles by style keywords" but the superscripts still came up as titles.

I am also curious about this feature. If a pdf file has a name of the book on every even page, BD thinks it is a title and insert it into TOC as well. I didn't know what to do and just gave up...

Yaksha

04-23-2007, 02:28 PM

If a pdf file has a name of the book on every even page, BD thinks it is a title and insert it into TOC as well. I didn't know what to do and just gave up...

I might be able to help you with this as I also had this problem.

My work has Adobe Professional, and while you can probably do this with Adobe Standard, I'm not sure if you can do it with Adobe Reader. But give it a shot!

Anyway, open the PDF and go to a page with the title at the top. Then go to Document -> Crop Pages.

Under "Margin Controls" change the top so that the line appears below the title.

In "Page Range" select All. I kept mine as Apply to: "Odd and Even Pages" but you might try just Even.

Click OK to crop the document.

Now, even though it's cropped, the words are still there. If you try to save the PDF and import it into BD, it'll still detect the title text. Also, you should check the document to make sure you didn't crop anything you didn't want to.

What you have to do is go to File -> Print. Select Adobe PDF and print it to a new document.

Open the new document and voila, no more titles every two pages.

Yaksha

04-23-2007, 08:40 PM

Can you please make it so when you click the "New" button it asks if you want to save your work?

I spent quite a while making a lot of changes to a book. I went up to save my changes. But instead of hitting the disk, I hit th piece of paper, they're right next to each other.

Without notice, my book was gone, NewBook had been created with the text "Start to type here".

I tried to get back to my old book, but it only had where I had last hit save. I've never seen a program that didn't ask if you wanted to save your changes before starting a new document (or opening the new document in a new window).

RWood

04-23-2007, 09:07 PM

I found out the same thing also by the hard method. Based on a hint that NatCh wrote earlier I learned to select the BookDesigner File option from the Make eBooks menu command. This creates a BD format file in a subdirectory under BookDesigner 4.0 named "bd"

HarryT

04-24-2007, 02:20 AM

I suspect that's something we've all found out "the hard way" by now :grin:. Yes, please make it ask "are you sure?" when you have a book loaded and you click the "New" button!

astra

04-24-2007, 05:44 AM

I might be able to help you with this as I also had this problem.

What you have to do is go to File -> Print. Select Adobe PDF and print it to a new document.

Open the new document and voila, no more titles every two pages.

Thanks for a piece of advice. I will try it.

vvv

04-24-2007, 03:55 PM

Can you please make it so when you click the "New" button it asks if you want to save your work?

Ok, it will be included to the next update.

vvv

04-24-2007, 04:24 PM

The ones that the Reader and Connect use to see the author, title, Book ID, etc., when loaded. If either cannot be read, the book will be filed by file name. I opened the file in EditLRFMetaGUI and was able to see that BD filled these when it was created; however, for some reason the software nor the device can read them.

Thanks for addressing my question, love the program!
Sorry, but I was not able to reproduce this.

A complete meta-info created by BD consists of: author, title, category (in BD is has a name "genre"), id, and so-called "free text" which corresponds to the book annotation.

The Connect shows (i-button): author, title, category, id.

The Reader device shows: author, title.

The Librie shows: all the items above plus "free text" (unfortunetely they skiped it in Reader).

I can add two more items (Publisher and Classification), but I am doubting that they are of interest...

jimmyzou

04-24-2007, 08:22 PM

:) finally I found the newest BD, I was trying on the old version and had many qiestions...

astra

04-25-2007, 03:20 AM

:) finally I found the newest BD, I was trying on the old version and had many qiestions...
...better late than never ;)

Azayzel

04-25-2007, 08:21 AM

Sorry, but I was not able to reproduce this.

A complete meta-info created by BD consists of: author, title, category (in BD is has a name "genre"), id, and so-called "free text" which corresponds to the book annotation.

The Connect shows (i-button): author, title, category, id.

The Reader device shows: author, title.

The Librie shows: all the items above plus "free text" (unfortunetely they skiped it in Reader).

I can add two more items (Publisher and Classification), but I am doubting that they are of interest...

VVV, Thanks for looking into this, too bad you couldn't reproduce it (has happened the same way for all LIT files I've converted over). I have a hunch that it has something to do with the LIT import, or something along those lines. I've located the latest cLIT binary, so I'll try udating that and generating an LRF to see if it fixes it. If not, I'll try re-installing BD from scratch and see if something might have been broken on install.

Cheers!

beelzebozo

06-01-2007, 10:06 AM

What a great program! There's not much it doesn't do.

Thanks so much to you, vvv, and everyone else who contributed their modules and testing time.

Simply outstanding.

novalis78

06-02-2007, 05:51 PM

Hey guys, maybe someone can help me with this. I tried to use arial narrow or courier ext to show up some unicode characters like:

ekarūpampi samanupassāmi Nāhaṃ

etc.
When i use lrs2lrf and manually add

<RegistFont fontname="aaa" file="C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\courx.ttf" encoding="TTF" fontfilename="aaa"/>

in the LRS file it works perfect. I can see dots/dashes above and below letters which are part of courier extanded.

Unfortunately with BD i have less luck. Even if i switch to "book language: german" or french for that matter, i see only HTML code in the LRF files generated by BD:

s a m m & # 257;

Does anyone have an idea what i have to change?

JSWolf

06-02-2007, 06:51 PM

Decide which style to pick for use with the font you want. Then make your text in that style. When you go to create the LRF file, embed the font and then find the style you chose and change the font to the embedded font. Then set all the other settings for that style the way you want.

Should work.

adinb

06-03-2007, 10:42 PM

BTW, I haven't checked lately, but does the latest version of BD5 support the new mobipocket format (.mobi)?

JSWolf

06-04-2007, 05:20 PM

BTW, I haven't checked lately, but does the latest version of BD5 support the new mobipocket format (.mobi)?
Another ebook format? Mobipocket, piss off. We don't need it or want it.

Anyway, BD does not support this new format. It does support PRC and PDB. Besides, this is the SONY READER forum. You won't be needing any Mobipocket format except maybe to convert from to LRF.

lady_morana

06-05-2007, 03:49 PM

NatCh

06-05-2007, 04:56 PM

JSWolf

06-05-2007, 05:41 PM

If I'm remembering correctly, BD uses MS Word as a resource to process certain file types, and from what you've said it must also use it for .LIT files. However, there are a number of conversion apps that will put your .LIT file into something else (like HTML) for you, which BD will handle fine on its own. I'd suggest Amber Lit Converter (http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html), or ConvertLIT (http://www.convertlit.com/) for starters. They seem to be the ones that folks have the best luck with, based on recommendations around here. :nice:
Amber LIT Converter has a bug in it that really bugs me. Just like one of the earlier versions of BD left out the leading space in italics, so does Amber LIT Converter. That's why I don't use it. I think it may be based on the code for CLIT 1.2 which also I think had the same bug.

HarryT

06-06-2007, 03:13 AM

If I'm remembering correctly, BD uses MS Word as a resource to process certain file types, and from what you've said it must also use it for .LIT files. However, there are a number of conversion apps that will put your .LIT file into something else (like HTML) for you, which BD will handle fine on its own. I'd suggest Amber Lit Converter (http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html), or ConvertLIT (http://www.convertlit.com/) for starters. They seem to be the ones that folks have the best luck with, based on recommendations around here. :nice:

BD does use Word to import HTML - at least some types of HTML. I suspect that what's happening here is that it's converting the LIT to HTML and then trying to use Word to import the HTML. The reason I know this is that, when I open an HTML file in BD, I get a pop-up from my virus scanner telling me that it's waiting to scan the Word template file.

vvv

06-11-2007, 02:48 PM

I have bookdesigner installed.

However, I do not use MSWord, I use OpenOffice.

When I try to open a LIT file, It comes up with an error that says

"Operation failed. Check your MS Word Installation"

While I know that MS Word can be used to make LIT files, why do you have to have Word installed to open LIT in book designer?

Is there a work around?
Try:
1. Settings -> re-format completely, keep pictures, keep bookmarks and links, keep styles: all checked.
2. load your lit

Under the above settings BD will not use Word for the pre-processing of html's extracted from lit. However in this case some tag tree errors may appear. To check a tag's tree, press Tools -> Html Fragment Editor -> whole code. If there are some errors, they will be reported at the statusbar, and you will have to fix them manually (an automatic tree corrector is not ready yet).

JSWolf

06-11-2007, 10:25 PM

So what part of Word is needed to do the conversion so maybe only that bit can be installed and not the rest? This is a guess that it's possible to do this.

Studio717

06-12-2007, 09:25 PM

I haven't seen this addressed, but does BD work with Word 2007? I have Win XP (not Vista).

RWood

06-12-2007, 10:26 PM

If you look at the files used by BD in the Program Files subdirectory you will see "clit" which I suspect is what BD uses to convert LIT files.

JSWolf

06-12-2007, 10:51 PM

Yes BD uses CLIT to convert LIT. But it also accesses Word in order to convert to something BD understands. That is if I am understanding what vvv has been saying.

NatCh

06-12-2007, 11:33 PM

I haven't seen this addressed, but does BD work with Word 2007? I have Win XP (not Vista).I have XP pro and Office 2007 running on my wife's machine, which is where I do my BD work, I haven't seen any issues. :nice:

JSWolf

06-12-2007, 11:35 PM

I'm running Office 2003 with BD and it works great.

Studio717

06-13-2007, 12:52 PM

I have XP pro and Office 2007 running on my wife's machine, which is where I do my BD work, I haven't seen any issues. :nice:

Thanks, NatCh. :)

NatCh

06-13-2007, 01:04 PM

You're welcome, Studio717. :nice:

vvv

06-13-2007, 02:21 PM

Yes BD uses CLIT to convert LIT. But it also accesses Word in order to convert to something BD understands. That is if I am understanding what vvv has been saying.
You are right: Word is used to standardize html's and to fix tag tree errors which occur frequently in original html's. Well, Word outputs quite complicated html's, but I prefer to deal with them rather than with messed originals...

astra

06-14-2007, 05:05 AM

BD never ceases to amaze me.

Yesterday I encountered a book that looked very odd in html format.

All ' signs were replaces by some sort of grey rectangles about a size of a capial N. All " signs were replaced by black squares about 1/2 size of the mentioned rectangles. More over some of " signs were replaced by some odd sign...when I uploaded the file into BD, it sorted all the problems!

Isn't it amazing? :grin2:

astra

06-19-2007, 05:27 AM

I might be able to help you with this as I also had this problem.

My work has Adobe Professional, and while you can probably do this with Adobe Standard, I'm not sure if you can do it with Adobe Reader. But give it a shot!

Anyway, open the PDF and go to a page with the title at the top. Then go to Document -> Crop Pages.

Under "Margin Controls" change the top so that the line appears below the title.

In "Page Range" select All. I kept mine as Apply to: "Odd and Even Pages" but you might try just Even.

Click OK to crop the document.

Now, even though it's cropped, the words are still there. If you try to save the PDF and import it into BD, it'll still detect the title text. Also, you should check the document to make sure you didn't crop anything you didn't want to.

What you have to do is go to File -> Print. Select Adobe PDF and print it to a new document.

Open the new document and voila, no more titles every two pages.

You genius!
It works!

vvv

06-19-2007, 02:29 PM

Yesterday I encountered a book that looked very odd in html format.

All ' signs were replaces by some sort of grey rectangles about a size of a capial N. All " signs were replaced by black squares about 1/2 size of the mentioned rectangles. More over some of " signs were replaced by some odd sign...when I uploaded the file into BD, it sorted all the problems!

Most probably you got an html where far unicodes are used for common symbols. Then, if a corresponding font installed at your computer does not contain such unicodes, your html browser shows a default symbol (in your case - black squares) instead of not found symbols. When BD processes html's, it replaces such far unicodes by the corresponding ansii.