Advice needed on parameters for cleaning up new files during epub to epub or azw/mobi

[Cbp001]

Hi,

I’ve been using calibre for many years now to clean up books and send them to my kobo ereader. I’ve always had some settings added for when I convert my books to epub after setting the metadata and cover as I want them to be.

Even when the original is an epub file I would still convert it to epub again to change things like: remove colored lettering, no locked proprietary fonts, no extra line spaces, and some other things so I can change all aspects of font and spacing etcetera of the book in my kobo.

The problem is that somewhere in the past years these settings were lost without me knowing it and it’s been so long ago I created these settings I don’t know which I used and how I put them in. Recently I noticed books with hard to read chapter names (colors) and sentences being cut off at the end of the line (some words or parts of words not on the screen).

I don’t remember what settings exactly I had under epub conversion. What are your standard conversion parameters? I think I had more settings changed than I can remember now for this post. I’d like to hear your take on it, not only how to fix for the problems listed above. Also, I wouldn’t want to break everything in the book. For instance, I’d like to have chapter names bigger than the rest of the text if the author wanted it that way.

[Sirtel]

I edit all such things in the editor, not with a conversion. The editor allows a lot more fine-tuning, and conversion doesn't always work properly (depending on how the book is coded).

The things I remove in the editor are line-height, hard-coded body font, spaces between ordinary paragraphs, body margins other than 0, body font size other than 1em, colors.

The things I change include text indent (must be always 1em for me), widows and orphans (also always 1 for me), hyphenation (must be disabled).

I also delete ads, excerpts, samples, review begging and other redundant filler material that doesn't belong in the book.

[kovidgoyal]

conversion settings are saved, you can retriieve them by reconverting a previously converted book. https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/con...for-conversion

[Cbp001]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

conversion settings are saved, you can retriieve them by reconverting a previously converted book. https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/con...for-conversion

Thanks, this would’ve been the perfect solution but for some reason I don’t get any conversion parameters when I try to reconvert an older epub. Maybe because I switched my collection from windows to Apple along the way or some other reason. Any other way I could find these old settings?

[Cbp001]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I edit all such things in the editor, not with a conversion. The editor allows a lot more fine-tuning, and conversion doesn't always work properly (depending on how the book is coded).

The things I remove in the editor are line-height, hard-coded body font, spaces between ordinary paragraphs, body margins other than 0, body font size other than 1em, colors.

The things I change include text indent (must be always 1em for me), widows and orphans (also always 1 for me), hyphenation (must be disabled).

I also delete ads, excerpts, samples, review begging and other redundant filler material that doesn't belong in the book.

Thanks! Do you have any idea what could cause the text to go on for a few letters outside of the screen on the right side? It doesn't happen everywhere but with some books it happens once or twice every few pages.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Cbp001

Thanks, this would’ve been the perfect solution but for some reason I don’t get any conversion parameters when I try to reconvert an older epub. Maybe because I switched my collection from windows to Apple along the way or some other reason. Any other way I could find these old settings?

FWIW: the way I've discovered which books, if any, have book specific conversion settings is to examine the conversion_options table in the library database (metadata.db) using the DB Browser tool.



BR

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Cbp001

Thanks! Do you have any idea what could cause the text to go on for a few letters outside of the screen? It doesn't happen everywhere but with some books it happens once or twice every few pages.

Never seen this myself, so no, not without looking at the code. My best guess is messed up/negative margins, but yeah, I'd need to see the css (or the html code if the book uses inline styles) to know for sure.

Margins are very difficult to fix with a conversion, because they can be coded in different ways and if you just blanket remove them all, that will often break useful formatting elements as well, like chapter and section margins.

[theducks]

Maybe Kiwidude could be talked into adding a 'Has saved Conversion settings; check to Quality Check Plugin.

[Cbp001]

Thanks all for helping. I managed to find a few books that did have some previously used parameters in them and with some trial and error I found settings that got rid of most margin errors in this book. Removing all margins wasn’t a solution because it made every empty line between paragraphs 4 times as big.

One last issue now is that id like to remove all text colors because everything non black is less legible. Is this something that can be done in conversion? I could use it in a batch of books. Is there’s an older topic with many of these conversion options? I couldn’t find any.

[kovidgoyal]

Look under the look & feel section of the conversion dialog int he styling tab there atre options to filter styles ncluding colors.