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bingle · 10-04-2006, 12:20 PM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10-04-2006, 12:20 PM	#1
bingle Addict Posts: 273 Karma: 499 Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: San Francisco Device: Sony Reader	My Content Creation Odyssey Here's some interesting leads for content creation, for anyone looking into it. I haven't done a lot of in-depth exploration, just a wide survey. This might be a good starting point, though! Mostly I was converting to RTF, unless otherwise noted. HTML: I used htmltortf, which works fairly well, preserving most of the formatting and cutting out any links. As I noted elsewhere, it had problems with some "advanced" typography, like em-dashes and smart quotes. I also tried the Toolbar for Librie, which creates a BBeB file from an HTML page. It also preserved formatting, but left in hyperlinked text - as a seemingly "special" character in the Connect preview. However, on the Reader there was no way to actually follow a link :-( Does anyone know if the BBeB format allows for links in the document? LIT: I tried ConvertLIT, which has no options. It worked for a few documents, and failed for others, with very little explanation. It created fine HTML when it worked, which I could then convert to RTF. The HTML preserved footnotes, which are a must-have for me, but did so in the form of links, which were then stripped out in the RTF conversion. ABCLit was a much better experience, and allowed me to convert straight to RTF. These files work beautifully, and the program was a pleasure to use. Not enough options for RTF output, though. Even setting the default font in the options dialog didn't seem to affect the RTF output. Footnotes were also destroyed here, too. I'd really like some way of converting that did something intelligent with footnotes... PDF: This is what I'd really like to do: I have a number of PDFs that I'd like to somehow get into reflowable, resizable text on the Reader. I tried a demo of "Smart PDF Converter" and was underwhelmed. None of the RTF files I created had any contents, and creating an HTML file seemed to just make a file with the PDF pages embedded as JPGs. I also tried ScanSoft PDF Converter. This was a much different experience! It has the ability to OCR pages in the PDF to create a text Word document. The resulting document is beautiful, preserving all the text and illustrations, even tables and background colors. (Of course, the illustrations and such will be lost converting to RTF, but it might be possible to resize the text and use Printer for Librie to create a BBeB file from the Word document - making an unreable PDF readable.) In fact, it may be too much like the PDF, it would take a lot of work to prepare it for the Reader's screen. But it would certainly be possible, if anyone has a need. Unfortunately, the full version costs US$99. So... The two challenges that I'd like to solve in the future are finding a way to preserve footnotes from LIT and HTML files, and finding a way of producing a BBeB file with links intact (if that's even possible). I'll also give the Printer for Librie a try, and anything else anyone wants me to experiment with. As a note, I'm not terribly picky when it comes to document formatting, this is mostly an exploration of how to get decently-readable content on the Reader. A very low bar, in other words.