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Old 05-22-2010, 10:23 PM   #1
ghostgrass
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How do I fix bad formatting?

I have an epub of a book that someone must have formatted wrong. The line breaks are all in the wrong places. For example it will look like:

"One final week and she would leave middle school
behind

forever and start anew as a high school freshman,
mingling

with kids from two other junior highs."



Another problem is there are no quotation marks when people speak.

Great, I looked hypnotized in my picture, Kendra

groaned.
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Old 05-22-2010, 10:40 PM   #2
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Use Sigil. It also has a sub forum if you need help.
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Old 05-22-2010, 10:52 PM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ghostgrass View Post
I have an epub of a book that someone must have formatted wrong. The line breaks are all in the wrong places. For example it will look like:

"One final week and she would leave middle school
behind

forever and start anew as a high school freshman,
mingling

with kids from two other junior highs."



Another problem is there are no quotation marks when people speak.

Great, I looked hypnotized in my picture, Kendra

groaned.
Those are hard returns that were in some source, like copy and Paste from a PDF that wont make it through Calibre convert.
Sigil and a lot of tedious work will put them back.
Having the original, unblemished image will help get Paragraphs correct. Otherwise removing the hard return when not at a line end is a close second.

If yo have a TXT file, Notepad++ (windows) has a tool that "unwraps a marked block. Still a lot of work.
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Old 05-22-2010, 11:19 PM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ghostgrass View Post
I have an epub of a book that someone must have formatted wrong. The line breaks are all in the wrong places. For example it will look like:

"One final week and she would leave middle school
behind

forever and start anew as a high school freshman,
mingling

with kids from two other junior highs."



Another problem is there are no quotation marks when people speak.

Great, I looked hypnotized in my picture, Kendra

groaned.
Where is it you obtained that poorly formatted eBook?
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Old 05-22-2010, 11:22 PM   #5
santiagodraco
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Wow

Hmm, I guess it's not a good idea to post questions about formatting problems or questions... not with the ebook police floating around.
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Old 05-22-2010, 11:53 PM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by santiagodraco View Post
Hmm, I guess it's not a good idea to post questions about formatting problems or questions... not with the ebook police floating around.
What police? Some of us would like to know the source so that we do not waste our money purchasing a poorly formatted book.
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Old 05-23-2010, 01:11 AM   #7
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This poorly formatted book was one that someone sent me so I don't know the source. I actually own the Kindle version, but wanted to read it with iBooks instead because I like that reader better. Is there a way to just drag my kindle books into iTunes and sync to iBooks? Or is there DRM that gets in the way of that?
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Old 05-23-2010, 01:21 AM   #8
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iBooks require books to be in ePub format,which is not the format used by the Kindle.

You basically have two choices:
- use the kindle app on the iPad instead of iBooks so that they can be used "as is".
- Remove the DRM from the Kindle books (google for methods of doing this) and then convert them to ePub format using Calibre.
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Old 05-23-2010, 11:15 AM   #9
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The only thing that worries me about converting a well formatted book with calibre is I might mess up the images. For example I had a PDF book that had full page maps at the front. After converting them with calibre, all the rectangular maps were made square.

I have it set to convert for iPad, so I don't know why that happened.
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Old 05-23-2010, 12:09 PM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ghostgrass View Post
The only thing that worries me about converting a well formatted book with calibre is I might mess up the images. For example I had a PDF book that had full page maps at the front. After converting them with calibre, all the rectangular maps were made square.
PDF is one of the more difficult formats to convert. MOBI files will come out much better when converting to EPUB. MOBI to EPUB should look pretty much identical.
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Old 05-23-2010, 12:12 PM   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ghostgrass View Post
This poorly formatted book was one that someone sent me so I don't know the source. I actually own the Kindle version, but wanted to read it with iBooks instead because I like that reader better. Is there a way to just drag my kindle books into iTunes and sync to iBooks? Or is there DRM that gets in the way of that?
Since you own the Kindle version, just get the Kindle app for the iPad and you can use that to download it and read it. No need then to have to strip the DRM and then convert to ePub.
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Old 05-24-2010, 12:30 PM   #12
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True, I could. But I'd like to put it in iBooks for 2 reasons:

1. I like to have my entire collection in one place. It's like some songs only working on Windows Media and some only working on iTunes - that would drive me nuts.

2. I like the landscape mode that iBooks uses where it splits the view into two columns. (except that kindle reader has a Night Time mode, which I do like)
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Old 05-24-2010, 02:18 PM   #13
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Hi Ghostgrass.

I've run into the same kind of badly formatted files.The replies are right on target. You need to either:
(1) hand-edit the file using something like Sigil
- very-very time consuming
- you should have (or will acquire) a basic understanding of HTML codes.

(2) search for a better source version and try converting to your preferred format with Calibre.
- There are a lot of different versions floating around, so this is quite possible.

Of possible help is GrannyFix, a collection of 1-trick ponies (reg-ex) to clean up badly formatted text-files. As I run into new problems, I write another function, so it's a work in progress. View your text/pdf (?) file on your screen, right-click-copy the text and paste it into the text-box then pick & choose.

If you are lucky, there is an extra blank line inbetween the paragraphs in addition to the internal hard-returns at each line.

Also, Stingo wrote a macro for MS-WORD that is highly regarded.

Good Luck.
RocketGranny

Last edited by rocketgranny; 05-25-2010 at 12:33 PM.
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