My download/conversion/transfer procedure

[steveriley]

Hello, all. New to the forums here. After lurking for a number of months I recently purchased a PRS-900. Shortly after setting it up I "Russified" with porkupan's hack (1.05a). Then I researched how to strip DRM so that I could have more freedom for reformatting books. I'd like to share what I've done, hope that others find this useful.


Initial mod: new fonts

The Web Pro versions of Adobe's Myriad and Minion fonts look very nice on the PRS; I installed those in the /Data/epub/FONT folder. To make an across-the-board font replacement I created this userStyle.css file in the /Data/epub folder, which redefines serif and sans-serif to use the new fonts and adds some extra space between lines of text:

@font-face {
  font-family: serif;
  font-weight: normal;
  font-style: normal;
  src: url(res:///Data/epub/FONT/AdobeWeb/MinionWebPro.ttf);
}

@font-face {
  font-family: serif;
  font-weight: bold;
  font-style: normal;
  src: url(res:///Data/epub/FONT/AdobeWeb/MinionWebPro-Bold.ttf);
}

@font-face {
  font-family: serif;
  font-weight: normal;
  font-style: italic;
  src: url(res:///Data/epub/FONT/AdobeWeb/MinionWebPro-Italic.ttf);
}

@font-face {
  font-family: sans-serif;
  font-weight: normal;
  font-style: normal;
  src: url(res:///Data/epub/FONT/AdobeWeb/MyriadWebPro.ttf);
}

@font-face {
  font-family: sans-serif;
  font-weight: bold;
  font-style: normal;
  src: url(res:///Data/epub/FONT/AdobeWeb/MyriadWebPro-Bold.ttf);
}

@font-face {
  font-family: sans-serif;
  font-weight: normal;
  font-style: italic;
  src: url(res:///Data/epub/FONT/AdobeWeb/MyriadWebPro-Italic.ttf);
}

html, body, p {
  font-family: serif;
  line-height: 133%;
}

h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
  font-family: sans-serif;
  line-height: 133%;
}

Book preparation and conversion

Calibre is a fabulous program. I don't use the Reader software at all. WinRAR is helpful for opening up EPUBs, so I've installed that and associated the epub extension to it.

Here's what I do for any EPUB book:

1. Remove the DRM
2. Open it WinRAR
3. Remove the file page-template.xpgt if it exists. If your EPUB has margins you can't eliminate, getting rid of this file will fix that.
4. Add the file to my Calibre library
5. Do an EPUB-to-EPUB conversion
   • Metadata: Remove any tags
   • Look & Feel: Set text justification to "left align"
   • Page Setup: Input profile to default, output profile to PRS-900, margins 1.0 pt all four sides
6. Transfer the converted file to my device

Here's what I do for any PRC or MOBI book:

1. Remove the DRM
2. Add the file to my Calibre library
3. Do a conversion to EPUB, with the same sub-steps as above
4. Watch the job details; if the PRC/MOBI lacks a TOC, you'll see an error; in this case, reconvert and this time select:
   • Table of Contents: Force use of auto-generated TOC

This set of steps creates consistent nicely-formatted books that look great; the Adobe web fonts are a little thicker (without being blocky) so they appear to pop off the screen. I'm very happy with the results -- especially after I figured out how useless that .xpgt file is.

[mkrndll]

Thanks for sharing it with us.

What's the advantage of installing the hacked firmware?