rtf conversion

[martingUSA]

Hello All,
I am new to this forum and have a question on putting rtf files on my Sony 505 using Calibre.

I am creating rtf files with MS Word.

When converting them using Calibre they show up different on my reader than I had them showing in Ms Word.

For example:

The titles and Author I had centered in MSWord separated with empty lines.

In Sony Reader it is not centered and there are no empty lines in between.

Why do the empty lines disappear and how do I need to set up the rtf file in MSWord so they show up in the reader?

[martingUSA]

was my question that dumb, that nobody answered

[zelda_pinwheel]

i don't think your question was too dumb, but i know a lot of people are on holiday this week in the US, perhaps they haven't seen it yet. give it a bit more time.

also, perhaps take a look around the Format Conversion forum and the calibre forum, perhaps there is a tutorial which could help you, or someone else may have posted on the same topic.

[RCR]

Originally Posted by martingUSA

Hello All,
I am new to this forum and have a question on putting rtf files on my Sony 505 using Calibre.

I am creating rtf files with MS Word.

When converting them using Calibre they show up different on my reader than I had them showing in Ms Word.

I convert most of my ebooks to rtf when I can. But why are you going an extra step to convert them using Calibre (to lrf?)?

You can put rtf files straight onto the Sony and it will show them just fine. The advantage of keeping your ebook in rtf is you can always port it back to your computer and edit it - correct typos, change font style or font size. And you can even read the ebook on your computer if you want, without any special reading software except WORD.

[FizzyWater]

I don't know about the centering issue, but I found that my extra line spacing "disappeared" when converting sometimes, too. I "fixed" it by changing the empty lines' from having paragraph returns (^p) to line endings (^l). It wasn't necessary to replace all paragraph returns, just the ones where I wanted a blank line.

HTH.

Edited: What I did was search & replace: ^p^p with ^p^l

[ProDigit]

Originally Posted by RCR

I convert most of my ebooks to rtf when I can. But why are you going an extra step to convert them using Calibre (to lrf?)?

You can put rtf files straight onto the Sony and it will show them just fine. The advantage of keeping your ebook in rtf is you can always port it back to your computer and edit it - correct typos, change font style or font size. And you can even read the ebook on your computer if you want, without any special reading software except WORD.

the reader can't read rtf files straight, just tested,they don't appear in the list.
If you add them via calibre or Sony library they get converted in the process to I suppose .lrf.

[FizzyWater]

Originally Posted by ProDigit

the reader can't read rtf files straight, just tested,they don't appear in the list.
If you add them via calibre or Sony library they get converted in the process to I suppose .lrf.

I have read RTFs on my Sony 505. I even used Sony Library to put them on the Reader. If I remember correctly, you may have to have Word installed...wait, that might be to change DOC to RTF when moving to the Reader.

[itimpi]

Originally Posted by FizzyWater

I have read RTFs on my Sony 505. I even used Sony Library to put them on the Reader.

I found that if I loaded rtf files to my PRS500 via Sony Library they worked OK, but if I simply copied them to a SD card in rtf format then they did not. I assumed that the Sony Library software is doing some sort of conversion when loading books although I could be wrong and the problem was elsewhere.

[martingUSA]

Originally Posted by FizzyWater

I don't know about the centering issue, but I found that my extra line spacing "disappeared" when converting sometimes, too. I "fixed" it by changing the empty lines' from having paragraph returns (^p) to line endings (^l). It wasn't necessary to replace all paragraph returns, just the ones where I wanted a blank line.

HTH.

Edited: What I did was search & replace: ^p^p with ^p^l

Thank you for that trick, are there any other search "keys" like that?
Where can I find them?
Can be very useful for my conversions.


Also, I did not know I can put rtf directly on the reader using Calibre.
I converted about 60 rtf books using Calibre to lrf before I put them on the reader. I'll try to put my rtf directly on there tonight.

thank you all

[ProDigit]

also I am interested in those things.. Would be nice to find a page somewhere with all those names. good for macro's

[FizzyWater]

I don't remember which web page(s) I collected these from, but when searching in Word, either in the "Find" box or in VBA (macros), you have the following "shortcut" keys:

^m                         page break
^b ^12 if using wildcards  section break (can't use in "Replace" box)
^n                         section break
^t                         tab
^+                         em dash
^=                         en dash
^g                         any graphic
^?                         any character
^#                         any digit
^$                         any letter
^w                         white space (can't use in "Replace" box)
^^                         caret character
^p ^13 if using wildcards  paragraph return
^l                         line feed

I have written Word macros (with a whole lot more anguish than Excel, that's for sure!), but only for my own occasional use. I can copy what I have here, and you can play with them or tweak them to your personal specifications.

It's embarrassing to admit, but I convert each book I touch to three formats (well, four, if you count RTF): eBookwise, Mobipocket, and Sony LRF. I own devices that read those, and don't want to have to remember - "oops, gotta grab the Sony to read that book!"

The first macro - Ebook Cleanup Word Macro - is used on a basic document in Word. It doesn't clean up multiple line-feeds, like the kind you get in Gutenburg texts. I usually start with an html file that I've either copy-and-pasted into Word, or one I've opened in Word. To avoid certain Word formatting issues that cause macro errors, I usually save the raw file to RTF, close it, then reopen it before running the macro.

For the true programmers here, I'm probably blaspheming. But I haven't coded HTML since it was 3.2. It's too time-consuming and painful for me to relearn now. So this is just easier for me. I can add book covers and back cover "blurbs" at the beginning of every book and just make it look the way I like. So take anything here with a grain of salt. It's only helpful if it works for you!

For the first pass, I start out with replacing any line-feeds with paragraph returns. I seem to have fewer errors in my eBookwise files that way. I try to strip out extra spaces before the paragraph returns, to avoid those odd "blank pages" that really contain one "space" character right before a page break.

It also gives you the option to delete double paragraph returns with singles (for when the books come with an actually page return to create blank space between the paragraphs), and to add a space after each em-dash (which, if not already there, helps cut down on too much white-space at the end of a line because of no hyphenation). Then there's a handful of fixes to try to avoid odd em-dash spacing (like "But-- ").

It also calls a "clear formatting" (from the Find and Replace logic) subroutine between each search which I found highly recommended on the word.mvps.org website.

After I've added covers/blurbs and cleaned up the book the way I like and saved the file as RTF, I run the second macro - Quick Mobi Cleanup Macro - to put those line-feed characters back in where I want blank rows. I found that when I used Mobipocket Creator on my initial RTFs I had 1) too much white-space between paragraphs (my paragraph format has some spacing built into the beginning and end) and 2) my intention blank rows disappeared!

So this changes the paragraph format to having no padding and changes those double paragraphs to paragraph & line feed. It also tries to find things like page break & paragraph, and changes those extra paragraph returns to line feeds, too.

It also tells you to manually correct any section breaks & paragraph returns, because the section break shortcut code (^b) can't be used in the "Replace" function in Word (even though it CAN be in "Find" - what's up with that?!)

I save the file again, with "Mobi" at the end of the filename. It's that second RTF file I import into Mobipocket Creator.

Then, because Mobipocket Creator makes a new HTML file, with associated pictures in a separate file, I zip those up and import them to Calibre to make my Sony LRFs. (Whew!)

Finally, I've attached a third file with some macro "snippets" I was playing with or found hints about online. I'm not even sure what they do. But who knows, they might be useful to you.

HTH

[ProDigit]

you forgot:

^r hard return?