Free Book: Gwyneth Jones' Bold As Love

[garygibsonsf]

Found via futurismic.com: UK author Gwyneth Jones has posted the first in her four-volume 'Bold As Love' series online as a freely downloadable PDF. Click here.

From Amazon: "Rock and roll rules in British author Jones's Arthur C. Clarke Award–winning novel, the first of a four-book series. In the near future, the U.K. is dissolving and the government, to placate the masses, sets up a "Countercultural Think Tank," including some of the biggest names in pop music and headed by the Ozzie Osborne–like Pigsty Liver. After much publicity and a series of government-sponsored music festivals, however, the egomaniacal Pigsty murders the home secretary and takes over the government. Soon various members of his rock-star cabinet find themselves struggling to make order out of chaos and prevent an ethnic bloodbath. Though the story starts out like dark cyberpunk, it gradually modulates into something much stranger as characters find their hidden powers and take on the attributes of Arthurian fantasy. References to Jimi Hendrix and other '60s and '70s rockers abound. Jones's vision is unremittingly dark and her basic premise may strike some as a bit silly, but this novel packs considerable power."

[Sparrow]

Thanks for this .

Read the first few pages and it looks promising, my TBR pile just got a little higher .

[Dr. Drib]

Thanks for information on this PDF freebie, which I just downloaded.

If you want it in Word, do this: select, copy, and then paste the document into Word. Then set the indent to suit you - no problem.

However, it still retains those annoying PDF page numbers, but after I have my FIRST cup of coffee, I'll try to figure out how to do a "Find and Replace" on those page numbers -- perhaps someone here can clue me in on this? I can't remember how to flag all these for mass deletion. They're not footers or headers; they're at the end of a paragraph.


Don

[Richard Herley]

In Word's find-and-replace dialog, ^p will find the end of a paragraph and ^# will find any digit.

Assuming that combination doesn't occur in the text you want, and assuming the page numbering does not exceed 999:

find ^p^#^#^#
replace ^p

find ^p^#^#
replace ^p

find ^p^#
replace ^p

should strip 'em out!

[JSWolf]

I'm testing out the formerly free PDF to Word that someone linked.

[JSWolf]

End of PART ONE!

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I'm testing out the formerly free PDF to Word that someone linked.

That was me!

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by Richard Herley

In Word's find-and-replace dialog, ^p will find the end of a paragraph and ^# will find any digit.

Assuming that combination doesn't occur in the text you want, and assuming the page numbering does not exceed 999:

find ^p^#^#^#
replace ^p

find ^p^#^#
replace ^p

find ^p^#
replace ^p

should strip 'em out!

Thank you very much, Richard! I'll give that a try.


Don

[garygibsonsf]

I have a method for removing faults from pdf's converted to word files.

when it comes to getting rid of page numbers, usually the best way to fix it is this:

Find a piece of text in word that reads, say, like so -


"... and after that, the purple footed llamas

p23
never returned to Cairo."

If in Word you select and copy the section of text between 'llama' and 'never', open the find and replace box, and paste this selection into the 'find' box, Word will cleverly insert the requisite paragraph tags previously mentioned for you automatically. Then you go to the drop down box on the bottom right of the find/replace box, delete the 'p2' or 'p3' or whatever and replace it with 'p(digit)'. (Keep in mind my mac doesn't have the right key for the actual text it will insert next to the 'p' when you select 'digit' from the dropdown menu, hence I've used (digit) to represent it).

Then go to the 'replace' box, insert a single space there, search and replace, and hopefully the annoying page numbers and so forth will be gone. Keep in mind that for larger page numbers - 10 through 99, 100 through whatever, etc, will need to be replaced by 'p(digit)(digit)' and 'p(digit)(digit)(digit) respectively.

When it comes to getting rid of incorrect page returns, I use a similar method to the one above, but nails things a bit more accurately, I believe. It goes like this:

1:Search on every quote mark (") followed by a paragraph return (^p) and replace it with: + followed by a single space.
2:Then search on every full stop followed by a paragraph return and replace it with ~ followed by a single space.
3:Then search and replace every paragraph return - all of them - with a single space.
4:Then search again on every + followed by a single space, and replace them with a quote mark (") followed by a paragraph return.
5. Lastly search on every ~ followed by a single space and replace it with a full stop and paragraph return.

You can substitute other symbols similarly unlikely to turn up in your document than ~ or +. A fair bit of the time, this method works for me. Not all the time, but enough times to make this the first means I turn to. Keep in mind the author of a particular document might use a single rather than double quote when it comes to sentences.

Edit - I missed the method someone posted up for getting rid of page numbers. I see now it's pretty much the same as I suggested.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Thank you very much, Richard! I'll give that a try.


Don

I see there's no "p" in front of the numbers, only numbers. How do I isolate the numbers for a mass delete?

There's also a couple of years in the text, for example: 1768. How do I avoid accidentally deleting that?

Thanks,
Don

[JSWolf]

The program PDF to Word did not work very well.

[garygibsonsf]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

I see there's no "p" in front of the numbers, only numbers. How do I isolate the numbers for a mass delete?

There's also a couple of years in the text, for example: 1768. How do I avoid accidentally deleting that?

Thanks,
Don

There doesn't have to be a 'p' or anything else. A page number - such as 128 - is isolated, separate from chapters and surrounded by paragraph tags, in a way that a year or date wouldn't be. The kind of search we're describing here will only select and delete numbers with, say, paragraph tags before and after it. Since years and so forth won't have these - they'll be surrounded by regular text and so forth - they shouldn't be affected.

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by Richard Herley

In Word's find-and-replace dialog, ^p will find the end of a paragraph and ^# will find any digit.

Assuming that combination doesn't occur in the text you want, and assuming the page numbering does not exceed 999:

find ^p^#^#^#
replace ^p

find ^p^#^#
replace ^p

find ^p^#
replace ^p

should strip 'em out!

Do you need to end the Find string with another ^p, to avoid catching chapter headings where there could be a number followed by text?

The 'PDF to HTML' program seemed to do a reasonable job.
There were quite a few blank rectangles scattered through the text - but these were easily removed in Word using ^g in the Find & Replace to get rid of graphics.
(There were 482 image files produced by 'PDF to HTML' - all small, none appeared significant.)

[Richard Herley]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

Do you need to end the Find string with another ^p, to avoid catching chapter headings where there could be a number followed by text?

Yes, more than likely. In fact you'd be better off using EMACS for this, or any editor which supports regular expressions. But if you're not already a Unix guru, it's a pretty steep learning curve, and life's really too short for that ...

[billbirchall]

Hi Guys

I have just purchased a Sony PRS-505 and have managed successfully to download several e books both purchased and free. I have read with interest the problems you have with PDF. I have just downloaded Gwyneth's book from futurismic.com and in my e book library and in Adobe Digital Editions, it looked OK, with page numbering fine. Am I missing 'the problem'.

I have not yet, actually uploaded the book to my PRS-505, as infuriatingly, the author on the file is shown as 'Default' and I cannot seem to edit it, I am also worried that it will mess up my Author index. Any idea how I can resolve this?