Adding chapter breaks by number of pages/lines

[raptir]

I have a few PDFs that I want to convert to ePub to use with Stanza on the iPod Touch. Unfortunately, the chapter divisions are simply in the format of:

(CHAPTER NUMBER):

(CHAPTER NAME)

In the same font and size as the rest of the text. As a result, when it is converted to HTML, the chapter titles take on the same attributes as the rest of the text, and none of the filters I can think to set up will catch these chapter titles. Stanza seems to need chapter breaks, as any file that has long chapters will take a very long time to load every time. Is there any way to add a chapter break every certain number of pages or lines? Or any other way to arbitrarily break down this document so that it will load faster in Stanza? Thanks.

[kovidgoyal]

change your output profile to sony reader. calibre will automatically split the epub file into smaller chunks internally

[raptir]

That unfortunately did not seem to change anything. There's still no TOC, and opening the book in Stanza still causes it to freeze while trying to load.

[kovidgoyal]

in that case its not because of the size.

[raptir]

Well, if I cut the book down it loads fine.

EDIT: And by that I mean cut just a chunk of converted book using Signet and transfer that to my iPod. Also, when I use Stanza Desktop to convert it, which does automatically throw some chapter breaks in, it loads fine. The only problem with Stanza Desktop is that it completely mangles the formatting.

[kovidgoyal]

You can manually force chapter breaks using the various chapter/page break detection options.

[raptir]

Well, I found a decent work around. After converting it to an ePub, I extracted it and edited the HTML. I changed the chapter titles to class='chapter', and then converted the ePub again. That split it up, obviously.

I did have one other question, and I don't want to clutter up the forum with a new thread. When converting the PDF, it added in paragraph breaks at every point where there was a new line on the PDF, even if it was just due to word wrap. Is there a way to correct that without editing it manually?

EDIT: I figured out the "line unwrapping" for PDFs. I chose 0.5, since it said it was the default, and that seemed to work. Will that work in most cases? What would a value of 1 do?

[raptir]

Is there a way, using the built-in options, to add a chapter break every 20 pages or something? I've found a few books that I want to convert that do not lend themselves well to editing the class to chapter.

[kovidgoyal]

Not by 20 lines but certainly by every 2nd paragraph or whatever. Just use the page break XPath expression. You will have toread up on and understand XPath however.