Question Marks

[goose61282]

I'm using sigil to import an html document and convert to epub for my prs-505. When I view the resulting epub in calibre it looks fine. However, on the reader there are question marks randomly placed throughout the book. Even in the middle of words. Am I doing something wrong here?

[Valloric]

Originally Posted by goose61282

I'm using sigil to import an html document and convert to epub for my prs-505. When I view the resulting epub in calibre it looks fine. However, on the reader there are question marks randomly placed throughout the book. Even in the middle of words. Am I doing something wrong here?

What do you mean by randomly? Are some characters replaced with questions marks, or are the question marks just inserted between them?

The former would be a problem with Adobe Digital Editions (a version of which is on the Reader) not having the required fonts to display these characters. For instance, characters like "šđžćč" will be displayed as "?????" in ADE if you didn't include the fonts for these characters in your epub. Both Calibre and Sigil perform font substitution from other fonts on the computer if the current font can't display some of these characters.

If it's the latter, then I think it's because your original file has soft hyphens. I believe ADE doesn't handle those. So just remove these soft hyphens from your file and the question marks will go away.

[goose61282]

By randomly I mean they are being placed in between the characters, not replacing them. So where the document says "castle" the reader shows "cas?tle". If there is a hyphen of any type in there I can't see it to edit it in any program on my pc.

Sorry, if I'm being dense. Tonight, I'll try to create the epub in calibre and edit it with Sigil and see if that works.

[Valloric]

Originally Posted by goose61282

if there is a hyphen of any type in there I can't see it to edit it in any program on my pc.

You would have to look at the HTML source code, not the rendered text. Look for something like "& s h y ;"* or "& # 8 2 0 9;"*. Basically anything "strange" that exists between those two characters. But you have to look in the HTML.

*Without the spaces, I've added those so it can display on the forum.

[goose61282]

I finally figured out how to find these things. I found an option in MSWord for show optional hyphens and there they were. Then I did a find an replace. Maybe that will help someone later.

Thanks for your help.