How can I change body text from bold to normal?

[Michaelus]

I have a stack of books (about 50) that I converted from LRF to epub using calibre, only trouble is all are in bold - title, headings, body text, everything.

If there is a simple fix, can someone please explain it (very simply, I am a rank beginner with all this), or do I have to remake all the files?

[ldolse]

After you convert to epub you need to edit it by hand, which is easily done. Then you need to use either Sigil or a text editor to fix the file. If you use a text editor you need need to unzip the epub file into it's various pieces with any unzip program.

Calibre generally moves all the formatting to CSS when it does the conversion, so it should be trivial to find the setting in there and fix it. If you unzipped it then you need to recompress all the files together afterward and give it the exact same name/location as the original epub Calibre created.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Michaelus

I have a stack of books (about 50) that I converted from LRF to epub using calibre, only trouble is all are in bold - title, headings, body text, everything.

If there is a simple fix, can someone please explain it (very simply, I am a rank beginner with all this), or do I have to remake all the files?

Welcome

Something sounds wrong.
Were they bold when LRF?

Sigil may allow simple fixes if it can be fixed with a Stylesheet change.

Some LRF folk may step forward with conversion setting suggestions

[Michaelus]

Originally Posted by theducks

Something sounds wrong.
Were they bold when LRF?

Sigil may allow simple fixes if it can be fixed with a Stylesheet change.

Some LRF folk may step forward with conversion setting suggestions

Yes, they were bold to start with.

I have tried editing by hand and managed one book in an hour or so - but there are more than 40 in total

[Michaelus]

Originally Posted by ldolse

Calibre generally moves all the formatting to CSS when it does the conversion, so it should be trivial to find the setting in there and fix it. If you unzipped it then you need to recompress all the files together afterward and give it the exact same name/location as the original epub Calibre created.

Here is the CSS from the unzipped conversion.

@namespace h "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml";
.body {
display: block;
font-size: 1em;
margin-bottom: 0;
margin-left: 10pt;
margin-right: 5pt;
margin-top: 0;
page-break-before: always;
text-align: justify
}
.bs {
border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
border-style: solid;
border-width: 0;
color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
display: block;
font-size: 1.29167em;
font-weight: bold;
margin-bottom: 0;
margin-left: 0;
margin-right: 0;
margin-top: 0;
text-align: center;
text-indent: 0
}
.bs1 {
border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
border-style: solid;
border-width: 0;
color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
display: block;
font-size: 1em;
font-weight: bold;
margin-bottom: 0;
margin-left: 0;
margin-right: 0;
margin-top: 0;
text-align: center;
text-indent: 0
}
.bs2 {
border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
border-style: solid;
border-width: 0;
color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
display: block;
font-size: 0.83333em;
font-weight: bold;
margin-bottom: 0;
margin-left: 0;
margin-right: 0;
margin-top: 0;
text-align: justify;
text-indent: 8pt
}
.bs3 {
border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
border-style: solid;
border-width: 0;
color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
display: block;
font-size: 0.625em;
font-weight: bold;
margin-bottom: 0;
margin-left: 0;
margin-right: 0;
margin-top: 0;
text-align: center;
text-indent: 0
}
.calibre {
display: block;
margin-bottom: 1em;
margin-left: 0;
margin-right: 0;
margin-top: 1em
}
.calibre1 {
font-style: italic
}
.ts {
font-weight: bold
}
.ts1 {
font-size: 1em
}

Do you know what changes I would need to make?

[user_none]

Delete all of the font-weight: bold; entries.

[Michaelus]

Originally Posted by user_none

Delete all of the font-weight: bold; entries.

Have just tried that - Deleted all font-weight: bold; entries, rezipped everything and tried to open it in calibre, but got an error message, that it was not a zip file.

That's true - I use winrar, not winzip.

But I believe there is a right and wrong way to pack the files, and I'm not sure how to do that.

Maybe if I packed them the right way I would get a better outcome?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Michaelus

Have just tried that - Deleted all font-weight: bold; entries, rezipped everything and tried to open it in calibre, but got an error message, that it was not a zip file.

That's true - I use winrar, not winzip.

But I believe there is a right and wrong way to pack the files, and I'm not sure how to do that.

Maybe if I packed them the right way I would get a better outcome?

Use Sigil to edit the CSS, It takes care of the packing

[ldolse]

Sigil might be easiest for you, but the main problem is you used rar and not zip. Use zip and you should be ok.

Also make sure to compress the group of files and not the outer directory that the unzipping programs often create.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by Michaelus

Have just tried that - Deleted all font-weight: bold; entries, rezipped everything and tried to open it in calibre, but got an error message, that it was not a zip file.

Use tweak-epub to open the book, select the CSS file and edit it with something like Notepad++.

[speakingtohe]

Lots of times I just convert to rtf, open file, select all, hit bold two or three times, save, convert rtf to epub and everything is normal.

I don't mind bold, but all italics or all centered text, one wonders what they were thinking.

Generally you don't lose anything valuable format wise as it is not great to start out with.

Helen

PS if you have 50 files do a mass convert and open 10 or so at a time. Will take about a minute a file when you have done a couple.

[Michaelus]

Thanks everyone for your advice and helpful suggestions.
For, after a few false starts and I bit of trial and error, I eventually worked out what needed to be done, and how to do it.
All the best,
Michael

[quinta@ebf.cz]

Topic is quite old... However:

Instead of editing converted epub, you can filter css rules during conversion. In order to get rid of bold format:
- run command line conversion with parameter: --filter-css font-weight
- or in user interface use conversion option: Look & feel -> Styling -> Filter style information -> Other CSS properites: font-weight

Filter will remove bold emphasize from paragraph format (but not bold format applied inline - which probably most of time will be desirable behaviour).

[ShellShock]

Holy thread from the dead, Batman!