Technology Struggle ~ Trying to get Essays into Cybook format

[andavane]

Greetings:
I've spent about 3 hours trying to get a good presentation of some of George Orwell's essays into a good form to read on my Cybook Gen3:
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwe...9e/part47.html

I downloaded the text from Gutenberg, then pasted it into OpenOffice and saved as html. It read on the reader, but all sentences were "bitty". After fiddling around I feel confused.

I'm sure there are good tools for achieving my ends on this forum, but I probably can't find them for looking.

Looking forward to learning a bit of the know-how, or to having a pointer to the area I should be looking at.

Regards

John

[cassidym]

Hi andavane and welcome to the Forum. My geek superiors will no doubt log on and answer your question.

[slayda]

Originally Posted by andavane

Greetings:
I've spent about 3 hours trying to get a good presentation of some of George Orwell's essays into a good form to read on my Cybook Gen3:
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwe...9e/part47.html

I downloaded the text from Gutenberg, then pasted it into OpenOffice and saved as html. It read on the reader, but all sentences were "bitty". After fiddling around I feel confused.

I'm sure there are good tools for achieving my ends on this forum, but I probably can't find them for looking.

Looking forward to learning a bit of the know-how, or to having a pointer to the area I should be looking at.

Regards

John

Not sure what you mean by "bitty" but if you mean the text was too small, you should be able to modify the font size in Open Office. For the Gen3, I personally would ssve as .DOC from Open Office and then use Mobipocket Creator (free DL from Mobipocket - for your Windows PC). Mobipocket Creator will accept the .DOC file and create a .PRC file which your Gen3 can read. Also your Gen3 should be able to show a PRC file in about a dozen font sizes. Check the manual on how to do this.

[pdurrant]

The problem with text from Project Gutenberg is that it is split up into lines, and massaging it back into whole paragraph can be tricky.

I'd suggest that you take the HTML instead, and import it directly into Mobipocket Reader or Mobipocket Creator to make a Mobipocket Format eBook. That will work a lot better on the CyBook than an HTML file.

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwe.../complete.html

seems to be a clean copy.

(NB George Orwell's works are out of copyright in Australia and Canada, but not in the US or most of the rest of the world)

Originally Posted by andavane

Greetings:
I've spent about 3 hours trying to get a good presentation of some of George Orwell's essays into a good form to read on my Cybook Gen3:
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwe...9e/part47.html

I downloaded the text from Gutenberg, then pasted it into OpenOffice and saved as html. It read on the reader, but all sentences were "bitty". After fiddling around I feel confused.

I'm sure there are good tools for achieving my ends on this forum, but I probably can't find them for looking.

Looking forward to learning a bit of the know-how, or to having a pointer to the area I should be looking at.

Regards

John

[mtravellerh]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

The problem with text from Project Gutenberg is that it is split up into lines, and massaging it back into whole paragraph can be tricky.

Good one, Paul!

[andavane]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

The problem with text from Project Gutenberg is that it is split up into lines, and massaging it back into whole paragraph can be tricky.

Indeed, this is what I mean by 'bitty'... a bumpy read and a rough ride can result in lexical indigestion :

I'd suggest that you take the HTML instead, and import it directly into Mobipocket Reader or Mobipocket Creator to make a Mobipocket Format eBook. That will work a lot better on the CyBook than an HTML file.

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwe.../complete.html

seems to be a clean copy.

Yes... the copy is very fine... great to be able, on the PC, to click on an essay, and have it take you 'right there'. It would be wonderful to have this function on the Bookeen. In fact yesterday, I spent a frustrating 2 hours trying to get this effect on the Cybook. This may be due to the newness of it all and the sharp learning curve, for me at least.

I'll have another go today: do I just have to drag all the unzipped files into a separate folder on the Cybook? I'm not entirely clear how to proceed.

Thanks very much for your help.

Regards

John

(NB George Orwell's works are out of copyright in Australia and Canada, but not in the US or most of the rest of the world)

Thanks, I'm in the UK so all seems to be clear this end.

[andavane]

A PS:
I unzipped the orwellessays file into a separate folder, then dragged the entire folder onto the Cybook.

Splat What a mess

The bits are all over the place.

I'm doubtless doing something very dumb here...

A little guidance on how to get the volume into the Cybook nicely indexed so I can just click on each story would be wonderful.

PC is mainly Ubuntu by the way.

Regards

John

[Patricia]

Also, check out out own Book Upload section. RWood has already converted Orwell's Fifty Essays here:
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11625.

But, if it's just the hard line breaks that are bothering you, the Stingo's macro should sort them out very quickly. (Search our forums for it.)

[andavane]

Originally Posted by Patricia

Also, check out out own Book Upload section. RWood has already converted Orwell's Fifty Essays here:
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11625.
.....

Excellent! Thanks, Patricia; all hunky dory and working fine; good of RWood to make the essays available in this format.

Regards,

John