Book Designer 5.0 (alfa)
Copyrights
The program is free for the personal use only.
Any commercial applications have to be agreed with the author.
Вы можете переключится на русский, нажав кнопку"russian", расположенную в левом верхнем углу.
!!!Read "Quick User Guide" section first!!!
The program is designed for the creation and reading of e-books.

Input Files | Output Files
Text (txt) | iLiad (pdf, html, txt)
Html (html, htm, shtml) | Sony Librie (lrf)
MS Word (doc) | MS Reader (lit)
Rich Text (rtf) | MobiPocket Reader (prc)
Fiction Book (fb2) | Palm Reader (pdb)
PDF Documents (pdf, restricted) | Simple Palm e-books (prc) (Tiny Reader, CSpotRun, etc)
MobiPocket Reader (prc, restricted) | Fiction Book (fb2)
Palm e-books (prc, pdb, restricted) | Rocket eBook, REB1100 (rb)
Rocket eBook, REB1100 (rb) | GEB1150/2150, REB1200 (imp, Latin-based Languages)
MS Reader (lit) | BookImage - the books with MultiLangual support for GEB1150, GEB2150, REB1200, REB1100, Rocket eBook, Hiebook (imp, rb, kml)
Hiebook (kml) | Franklin eBookMan (prc)
Psion (tcr) | Hiebook (kml)
| Psion (tcr)
BookDesigner (html0)
BookDesigner Citation file (cit) | Html (html, htm)
| Html with hyphenations (html)
| MS Word (doc)
| MS Word with hyphenations, pictures, paragraph's justification (doc)
| Text (txt)
| Text with hyphenations (txt)
| BookDesigner (html0)
| BookDesigner Citation file(cit)

Quick User Guide
How to assign the help language
BookDesigner provides the help in two languages: English and Russian. The help language can be chosen by the user pressing "english/russian" button located at the left top corner of the help window.
How to start to work with the program
1. Open the "Settings" window.
2. If you see non-readable text in the "key words" window, check "MultiLanguage support".
3. Press "set colors" button and assign custom colors for main book elements (titles, subtitles, etc.).
4. Press "set path" button and assign custom directories for e-books to be created.
5. Press "set icons" button and customize the ebook creators toolbar.
6. If you rather prefer to see the help and messages in Russian, check "russian help" check box.
7. Choose your book language in the "book language" drop box.
The boxes "keep original format" and "re-format completely" allows to assing the re-formatting type for html, doc, rtf, and rb input files. Warning. To work with these file types, MS Word 2000 or higher has to be installed on your PC.
- The box "keep original format" is checked. The input file is converted to the BookDesigner format. The main elements of the original file formatting (titles, paragraphs, images, links) are kept. The epigraphs and verces search is not performed.
- The box "re-format completely" is checked. The input file is converted to the BookDesigner format. The pure text is extracted from the input file and the book formatting is performed basing on the text structure.
Comment 1. Mainly (but not always) the option "keep original format" gives better results than the "re-format completely" one.
Comment 1. The usage of either of two options resolves ??? problem of doc and rtf files.
- Neither of the two boxes is checked. The input file is not converted to the BookDesigner format. The input file format is keeping completely. Warning. This option is for the book reading only! It is not suitable for the e-books creation!
How to find a book in Internet
Run BookBrowser , press button, double-click on a library name with which you want to be connected, then find and download a book of your interest.
How to rename a book
For the convenience of the future usage, it is recommended to change the book filename by the standard one. This operation can be performed automatically with the FileConvertor utility (included into BookDesigner distribution). FileConvertor has two options for the file re-naming: either to re-name the file without changing its type, or to re-name the file converting it to the text one.
1. Run FileConvertor and load your book file to it.
2. In the FileConvertor window, make the following editions.
Comment. For the renaming of Fiction Book files (fb2) it is not necessary to edit the file.
First line: ^
Second line: book author (authors): first name, middle name (optional), last name.
Third line: book title
Fourth line (optional): if the fourth line is bracketed by () brackets, it will be considered as a book subtitle.
3. Press either of the following four buttons.
Example (Russian):
^
Мария Семёнова, Елена Милкова
Те же и Скунс
(Скунс 1)
To rename the file and to save it as a text one
If you have pressed , the file will be converted to the text one and its new name will be
Семенова Мария_(с1) Те же и скунс.txt
If you have pressed , the file will be converted to the text one and its new name will be
Semenova Maria_(s1) Te sze i skuns.txt
To rename the file without changing its type (assuming that the input file is the Word file)
If you have pressed , the file type and contents will be not changed, but its new name will be
Семенова Мария_(с1) Те же и скунс.doc
If you have pressed , the file type and contents will be not changed, but its new name will be
Semenova Maria_(s1) Te sze i skuns.doc
How to open a file
A file can be opened using either of the five options below.
1. Press button.
2. Drag&Drop a file either to the title bar area, or to the toolbar area, or to the status bar area.
3. If a file has html0 or cit extension, just double-click on it.
4. Run BookFinger , type your searching criteria in "search for" box, choose the drivers to be searched, and press "find". When the search is finished, double-click in the "found" window on the desired filename.
5.To run from the command line: BookDesigner.exe -r «file name»
Non-readable text
If you see the non-readable text of the loaded book, it meens that you need to assign the chaset corresponding to your language. Right-click somewhere inside the main BookDesigner window, then press "Encoding" and choose the proper charset name.
How to use Book Corrector
BookCorrector allows one to transform to each other such main book elements as book title, book author, titles, subtitles, paragraphs, epigraphs, verses and text author (text author is the author of the epigraph or verse). See the BookCorrector local help for details.
How to join several books
1. Open two instances of BookDesigner (say, window 1 and window 2).
2. In the window 2, switch to the "editor" mode .
3. Load the book to the window 1, select the whole its text (Ctrl+A) and copy it to the clipboard (Ctrl+Insor Ctrl+C).
4. In the window 2, put the cursor to the position where you want to paste the book text and press Shift+Ins or Ctrl+V.
5. Repeat the operations 3, 4 with all the books which you want to join.
How to join several files
Press then "join books" and see local help for the "join multiple files" window.
How to access recent files
The access to the recent file list is provided from the "reader" mode only. To see the recent file list, right click somewhere inside the toolbar. To open some file from the recent file list, click on its name. Additionally, the navigation among the recently loaded files can be performed pressing "go back" and "go forward" buttons.
How to see hot keys list
The access to the hot keys list is provided from the "editor" mode only. In order to see the hot keys list, right double-click somewhere inside the toolbar.
Warnings related to the e-books creation
1. If you are planing to make your e-book from html, doc, rtf, prc, pdb or rb input file, always check either "keep original format" or "re-format completely" in "Settings" before the input file loading.
2. Do not insert your own tags with Html Fragment Editor.
3. Do not insert left and right margins.
Tricks with text fragment selection
It is strongly recommended to use Book Corrector options (especially related to the selection of text fragments) instead of the book editing in the Editor mode. The usage of Book Corrector allows one not only to simplify the book editing procedure, but also to override severe MS DHTML Editor bags which appear often in the Editor mode with the transformations of the book elements.
Hovewer if you want to use the options available in the Editor mode, but not presented in BookCorrector, do as follows.
Most part of editing operations is performed with selected text fragments. Comparing to the conventional text editing, selection operations for HTML text editing are a little bit more complicated because often not only the text but also invisible HTML tags have to be included into selection. For the many cases of practical concern, however, a proper selection can be done using the following tricks.
to select a word, double-click on its start.
to select a paragraph, click on it holding Ctrl key or triple-click on it.
to select a part of text, click on the beginning of the part, press Shift key and, holding Shift key, click on the end of the part.
Tricks with fonts and colors
Book Designer supports two types of font setting: global and local which are assigned through "Fonts" and "Colors" menus. These settings include font type, font size, and font color settings. The global settings affect the whole book text, while the local ones affect the selected text fragments only. If you select nothing in the main Book Designer window, the global settings are assigned, otherwise the local ones are assigned.
When you are typing being in the editor mode, Book Designer keeps the last local settings for the text under typing. If you want to come back to the global settings, make a space, type the first letter of a new word starting from which you want to apply global settings, and press "Esc".
Example. Assume that your global settings are: font: Times New Roman, font size: small, color: blue. Using these settings you typed "global settings". Then you switched to: font: Impact, font size: medium, color: red and typed "local settings". Now you want to type "back to global settings" using again the global font settings. To do it, type the first letter "b" of the word "back", press "Esc" and continue your typing. As a result you get:.
If you want to assign the global setting for some text fragment, select it and press "Esc".
Main Program Features
Input file formatting
1. Text files formatting and the formatting of files from which the pure text is extracted (p. 2.3).
1.1. Automatic detection of the format type based on the statistic analysis of the text structure.
1.2. Automatic format recovery for badly-formatted files.
1.3. Titles, subtitles, epigraphs and verses search.
2. Three methods of html, doc, rtf, and rb files formatting.
2.1. The original file format is keeping completely.
2.2. The main elements of the original file formatting (titles, paragraphs, images, links) are kept.
2.3. The pure text is extracted from the input file and the book formatting is performed basing on the text structure.
3. Automatic detection of six non-Latin charsets: win-1251, koi8, cp866, iso, alt, and MacCyr.
4. Custom colors for titles, subtitles, epigraphs, verses, etc.
5. Joining of multiple files in a single book (for rb).
Book reading
1. Automatic loading of not finished books from the page where the reading was interrupted.
2. Exact and approximated (as in Internet Explorer) PageUp, PageDown, LineUp, LineDown operations.
3. Recent books list.
4. Previous/next position navigation.
5. Increase/decrease zoom.
6. Change font type, size, foreground and background color.
7. Bookmarks and links.
8. Citations.
9. Find/replace expressions.
10. Find books.
11. Find titles, subtitles, epigraphs, verses, etc.
12. Auto scroll.
13. Book statistics.
14. Book file info.
15. English and Russian help.
16. ClearType fonts support (for Windows 2000 and higher).
Book editing
1. Search, assignment and transformation one to another of titles, subtitles, paragraphs, epigraphs, verses, etc.
2. Dynamic HTML (DHTML) editing.
3. Two options of DHTML editing: automatic (by button pressing, as in Word) and manual (direct editing of chosen html-fragments).
4. Changing of font type, size, foreground and background color for both the whole book and for selected fragments as well.
5. Inserting and editing of images.
6. Inserting and editing of bookmarks and links.
7. Inserting and editing of control elements.
8. Find/replace expressions, regular expressions, ASCI codes.
9. Spell check.
10. Export to html, doc and rtf formats.
Features supported for e-books creation
1. Hyphenations.
2. e-book optimization for the chosen device.
3. Bookmarks and links.
4. Images.
Book Designer Hot Keys
In order to activate hot keys, left-click somewhere inside the main Book Designer window.
F1 - help
F2 - search/replace
F3- spell check
F4- bookmarks
F5 - run Citation Editor
F6- fonts
F7- colors
F8- switch between Microsoft/Book Designer scroll
F9- settings menu
F10- run Book Corrector
F11- run Book Browser
F12- run File Converter
Ctrl+F1 - make rb-file
Ctrl+F2 - make lit-file
Ctrl+F3- make Palm or Pocket PC file
Ctrl+F4- make Hiebook file
Ctrl+F5 - make Fiction Book file
Ctrl+F7 - make imp-file (GEB1150/2150, REB1200, only Latin-based languages support)
Ctrl+F8 - make book image (for GEB1150/2150, REB1200, and Hiebook, provides MultiLangual support)
Ctrl+Ins(Ctrl+C) - copy
Shift+Ins (Ctrl+V) - paste
Ctrl+Z - undo
Ctrl+Y - redo
Esc - returns to global font settings.
Book Designer supports two types of font setting: global and local which are assigned through "Fonts" and "Colors" menus. These settings include font type, font size, and font color settings. The global settings affect the whole book text, while the local ones affect the selected text fragments only.
When you are typing being in the editor mode, Book Designer keeps the last local settings for the text under typing. If you want to come back to the global settings, make a space, type the first letter of a new word starting from which you want to apply global settings, and press "Esc".
Example. Assume that your global settings are: font: Times New Roman, font size: small, color: blue. Using these settings you have typed "global settings". Then you switched to: font: Impact, font size: medium, color: red and have typed "local settings". Now you want to type "back to global settings" using again the global font settings. To do it, type the first letter "b" of the word "back", press "Esc" and continue your typing. As a result you get:
If you want to assign the global setting for some text fragment, select it and press "Esc".
Alt-F (Esc) - remove font formatting from the selected text
Ctrl+B - convert selected text to bold. The reverse operation is performed by pressing the buttons again.
Ctrl+I- convert selected text to italic. The reverse operation is performed by pressing the buttons again.
Ctrl+U - underline the selected text. The reverse operation is performed by pressing the buttons again.
Ctrl+1 - Ctrl+4 - insert 1-4 non-broken spaces. If a text of some paragraph is fully justified, word separations are chosen automatically. However if you want to keep a separation between some words always the same, put a non-broken space instead of normal space between the corresponding words.
Alt+C - sets current color to selected text (available when the "HTML Colors" window is open).
Book Reader Mode
Main features
Depending on the options chosen in "Settings" menu and on the input file type, the program either converts the input file to the BookDesigner format or keeps its initial format intact. The detailed description of the formatting options is given in the local help of menu "Settings".
If the input file is converted to the BookDesigner format, then the program provides the full paragraph justification that makes the electronic book alike to the usual paper book. Also the program performs a text structural analysis to find out chapter titles, subtitles, epigraphs and verses (the epigraphs/verses search is performed if find epigraphs/find verses box is checked in "Settings" menu). The reformatting algorithm is primarily developed for novel-style text structure. It may fall down while reformatting manual-style-like html-files (for instance, some programmer guide).
The book reformatting is performed with a copy of the input file, so the original file is always kept the same. While the current book reading is not finished or a new file is not loaded, the program keeps automatically the reformatted file in a temporal directory (newer mind if you exit the program or not). However as soon as the current book reading is finished or a new file is loaded, the current file will be deleted at the next program closing. So, if you want to keep the current book file for the future usage, save it with somewhere aside of the main Book Designer directory and its subdirectories.
If the current book was not finished before the program closing, it will be loaded at the next program session scrolled to that page where your reading was finished.
The program maintains the recent files list. In order to access this feature, right click somewhere inside the toolbar. Additionally, the navigation among the recently loaded files can be performed pressing "go back" and "go forward" buttons.
The navigation inside the loaded book is provided by the "previous position" and "next position" bottons.
The program provides the bookmark support which allows for a fast book text navigation. The bookmarks can be inserted by user at any place of the book. Also the program can create automatically the bookmarked book contents if the corresponding option is chosen (see the help of "Settings" menu).
The program has an option allowing the user to collect and to edit separated fragments of the loaded book (Citation Editor ). The separated fragments can be saved as a citation file (*.cit) which can be read by Book Designer as well as by any other program supporting html-file reading (for example, by Internet Explorer).
The program provides two text scrolling options: either the native Microsoft scroll or the Book Designer scroll (see the more detailed description of two options below). Additionally, the navigation among the pages can be performed typing a page number in the page indicator box and pressing "enter".
Many of program options can be accessed through the hot keys. In order to see the hot keys list, switch to the "Editor" mode and double-click on some icon-free place at the end of the toolbar.
Some standard commands (such as "select all","refresh", "save picture as", "encoding", etc. can be accessed from the "Reader" mode right-clicking inside the main window.
The program provides a bilingual help. The help languages can be switched between each other pressing "english/russian" button. Both the main help (this one) and specific quick helps for non-standard options are available. A specific quick help can be activated through the "help" button when an option has its own sub-window.
Supported file types and charsets
The following input file types are supported:
- text files (*.txt);
- html-files (*.html, *.htm, *.shtml);
- MS Word files (*.doc);
- Rich Text Format files (*.rtf);
-MobiPocket Reader files (*.prc);
-Palm files (*.prc, *.pdb);
- Rocket eBook (REB 1100) files(*.rb);
- Hiebook files(*.kml);
- FictionBook files(*.fb2).
- xml-files(*.xml);
- Book Designer files(*.html0);
- Book Designer Citations files(*.cit).
Warning. To work with doc, rtf, and some types of html and rb-files, MS Word 2000 or higher has to be installed on your PC.
The txt, kml, fb2 и xml input files are always converted to the BookDesigner format. Book Designer files (html0), Book Designer Citations files (cit) are newer re-formatted. The method of other files procession depends on the options chosen in "Settings" (read the local "Settings" help for details).
The program supports six types of non-Latin charsets: win-1251, koi8, cp866, iso, alt, and MacCyr. The charset of input file is detected automatically. If the charset of input file differs from the win-1251 one, it will be converted to the win-1251 charset.
Toolbar buttons
Switch to Editor mode
Open new file
Save current file
Save current file with new name
Find/Replace
Additional options:
- recent books;
- find book;
- join books;
- three BookCorrector forms (full, middle, and small);
- floating eBooks toolbar;
- Citation Editor;
- ВоокBrowser;
- FileConverter;
- print.
Load previous file from the history
Load next file from the history
Go to the previous position
Go to the next position
Insert/Edit bookmarks and links
Increase zoom
Decrease zoom
Change font settings
Change foreground/background color
Run Book Corrector
Switch between Book Designer/Microsoft scroll.
Two text scrolling options are available: either the native Microsoft scroll or the Book Designer scroll. The Microsoft scroll is somewhere faster however it always shows several lines from the previous page in the new one after the scrolling. The Book Designer scroll is free of this drawback that is more comfortable for the reading. However because the Book Designer performs the current page text analysis before the scrolling, it is a little bit slower than the Microsoft scroll. Two options can be switched between each other pressing the scroll button. When the Book Designer scroll is active, this icon is shown, while for the Microsoft scroll the icon is changed by .
Auto scroll.
Show "Settings" menu.
Show book file information.
Show Book Designer main help.
Create Rocket eBook/REB 1100 (rb) file.
Create MS Reader file (lit).
Create MobiPocket Reader (prc), Palm Reader (pdb) or simple prc-file (TinyReader, CSpotRun, iSilo, etc).
Create Hiebook (kml) file.
Create Fiction Book (fb2) file.
Create GEB1150/2150, REB1200 (imp) file (only Latin-based languages support).
Create Book Image (imp, kml). Provides MultiLangual support for GEB1150/2150, REB1200, and Hiebook.
Create Franklin eBookMan file (prc).
Run Book Browser
Run File Convertor
Book Editor Mode
Main features
When you press , the program goes to the editor mode. Book Editor is a Dynamic HTML (DHTML) editor which allows one to edit the html file source without viewing its html tags. Book Editor has two types of HTML editing tools: for conventional users and for advanced users as well. The conventional user procedure is very simple: just select a text fragment to be edited, press the needed button, and you will see immediately the results of corrections. At the same time, an advanced user familiar with an HTML editing can access any html fragment of the book through html fragment editor that allows to make direct changes of HTML file of the book.
Additionally to the text editing features, Book Editor provides a possibility to insert as many pictures as you wish at any place of the book . The existed pictures can be easily edited. Click on a picture, and you will be able to move it at any place. Double click on a picture, and you will get a full access to its parameters such as: picture size, location, border thickness, etc.
Because Book Editor is an editor of html files, it can be used not only for electronic books editing but also for fast designing of web pages. To make this last feature more user-friendly, Book Editor has a possibility to insert control elements to web pages.
Toolbar buttons
Switch to Reader mode
Open new empty file
Save current file
Save current file with new name
Find/Replace
Run SpellCheck
Undo (sometimes it is necessary to press twice)
Redo (sometimes it is necessary to press twice)
Go to the previous position
Go to the next position
Insert/Edit bookmarks and links
Insert/Edit pictures
Insert control elements
Insert/remove non-broken space
If a text of some paragraph is fully justified, word separations are chosen automatically. However if you want to keep a separation between some words always the same, you have to insert the non-broken space between these words. To do it put the cursor between the corresponding words and press .
If you want to replace all non-broken spaces by the usual spaces inside some text fragment, select a desired fragment and press .
Change font settings
If you want to change the font for the whole book, select nothing in the main Book Designer window and press .
If you want to change the font for a text fragment only, select it in the main Book Designer window and press .
Change foreground/background color
If you want to change the color for the whole book, select nothing in the main Book Designer window and press .
If you want to change the color for a text fragment only, select it in the main Book Designer window and press .
Run Book Corrector
Justify left the selected text
Justify center the selected text
Justify right the selected text
Justify full the selected text. Full text justification provides both left and right text justification that makes a text looking like in paper books.
Set left margin for the selected text. Left-click increases the margins, right-click decreases the margins.
Set right margin for the selected text. Left-click increases the margins, right-click decreases the margins.
Convert selected text to upper case
Convert selected text to lower case
Make the super script from the selected text. The reverse operation is performed by pressing the button again
Make the sub script from the selected text. The reverse operation is performed by pressing the button again
Convert selected text to bold. The reverse operation is performed by pressing the button again.
Convert selected text to italic. The reverse operation is performed by pressing the button again.
Underline selected text to bold. The reverse operation is performed by pressing the button again.
Remove all formatting tags from the selected text.
Run HTML Fragment Editor
Additional programs included into BookDesigner 4.0 distribution
Book Browser
BookBrowser is a conventional Internet navigator with some features simplifying the internet book search. BookBrowser includes a wide list of internet libraries and search engines. Executable file - BookBrowser.exe.
File Convertor
1. Automatic file re-naming to the form convenient for the future usage (author_title)
2. Text extracting from html, doc and rtf files.
3. Automatic charset decoding.
4. Preliminary file editing.
Executable file - FileConvertor.exe.
Rb Disintegrator
A small program for rb-file processing. It extracts all the files (html, pictures, fonts, etc.) from an rb-file, decompresses them and provides their preview. Html, picture and font files preview is supported, other file types are previewed as text ones. Contrary to the known rbburst program, RbDisintegrator works not only with book files, but also with the system ones. Executable file - RbDisintegrator.exe.
Send your comments and bug reports to
bookdesigner@the-ebook.org