How can I remove these strange ? marks in my books?

Beerman · 06-26-2011, 07:35 PM

I'm using iBooks on an iPad 2 and have a number of books by different authors, all in epub format (no DRM). I use Calibre to copy the books to my iPad and have noticed that almost every page in every book has some ? symbols, mostly where apostrophe's go but in other places as well.
I've tried converting to other formats but it makes no difference. Some of the free domain books have this but not nearly as much as the paid for books. I have no problem on my wife's Kindle with these same books.
What's up with this?
Thanks for any suggestions you have to get rid of these bothersome symbols.

theducks · 06-26-2011, 08:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Beerman

I'm using iBooks on an iPad 2 and have a number of books by different authors, all in epub format (no DRM). I use Calibre to copy the books to my iPad and have noticed that almost every page in every book has some ? symbols, mostly where apostrophe's go but in other places as well.
I've tried converting to other formats but it makes no difference. Some of the free domain books have this but not nearly as much as the paid for books. I have no problem on my wife's Kindle with these same books.
What's up with this?
Thanks for any suggestions you have to get rid of these bothersome symbols.

By declaring the correct code page for conversion

Tip; try CP1252

Those are symbols that do not appear in the default code page on your system (and the document did not properly declare encoding)

Beerman · 06-26-2011, 08:41 PM

Thanks. Had to figure out how to do that but a search of these forums and the Help function in Calbre pointed it out. It looks like it worked on 1 book 100% but a second book has only marginally gotten better.

ldolse · 06-26-2011, 09:10 PM

It's probably because the second book isn't cp1252, there are many potential encodings. Also some books, depending on the source, have gone through multiple levels of munging by people who didn't understand encodings, and now have multiple encodings in the same file - in those cases they can only be fixed by hand using search and replace in a text editor.

06-26-2011, 07:35 PM	#1
Beerman Member Posts: 24 Karma: 1286 Join Date: Jun 2011 Device: Ipad 2	How can I remove these strange ? marks in my books? I'm using iBooks on an iPad 2 and have a number of books by different authors, all in epub format (no DRM). I use Calibre to copy the books to my iPad and have noticed that almost every page in every book has some ? symbols, mostly where apostrophe's go but in other places as well. I've tried converting to other formats but it makes no difference. Some of the free domain books have this but not nearly as much as the paid for books. I have no problem on my wife's Kindle with these same books. What's up with this? Thanks for any suggestions you have to get rid of these bothersome symbols. Attached Thumbnails

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06-26-2011, 08:41 PM	#3
Beerman Member Posts: 24 Karma: 1286 Join Date: Jun 2011 Device: Ipad 2	Thanks. Had to figure out how to do that but a search of these forums and the Help function in Calbre pointed it out. It looks like it worked on 1 book 100% but a second book has only marginally gotten better.

06-26-2011, 09:10 PM	#4
ldolse Wizard Posts: 1,337 Karma: 123455 Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Malaysia Device: PRS-650, iPhone	It's probably because the second book isn't cp1252, there are many potential encodings. Also some books, depending on the source, have gone through multiple levels of munging by people who didn't understand encodings, and now have multiple encodings in the same file - in those cases they can only be fixed by hand using search and replace in a text editor.

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