Appending Chapters?

[Gene45]

I downloaded an old book in HTML format, and each chapter came as a separate file. I tried converting it to epub, and it works easily, but how can I stick all the chapters together?

[Gunnerp245]

Get the "EPUB" merge plugin.

[Ripplinger]

Many of us prefer a new page for a new chapter (provided they're not extremely short chapters of 150 lines or so). This prevents having page breaks at odd times in the middle of a chapter. Large single files are also known to slow down most ereaders.

If you open the epub in Sigil, you can easily merge pages though. I'm not sure how well the epub merge plugin will work on files within one epub... I thought it was more for combining separate epubs into one (I may be wrong about that though, I haven't played around with it yet).

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by Gene45

I downloaded an old book in HTML format, and each chapter came as a separate file. I tried converting it to epub, and it works easily, but how can I stick all the chapters together?

Place all of the html chapters in one folder, then create a TOC as outlined here. Now drag the TOC to calibre and it will grab up all of the html chapters and place them in a zip file. You can now convert that zip file to any other format that calibre supports.

[Gene45]

I tried the Doctor Ooh recommendation. It appeared to work OK but Chapter 1 of the book showed up in the Table of Contents in the converted book index, but the actual text is missing. The book actually starts in Chapter 2.

Thinking it may have missed the first line in the html file for some reason I put it in twice.
Voila! Now i have two Chapter Ones in the converted Table of Contents, and still no text for chapter one.

My actual chapter one does exist so I converted it separately and merged the one chapter book with the 17 chapter book and got all 18 in one place except that the the book cover and the Table of contents now comes at the start of chapter two...........

Can I move pages around?

[Gene45]

I browsed over this several times.

The book came as 18 separate html files which contain the text and formatting, plus matching folders, (same names) which contain only a small graphic of a swan. The swan picture shows up on the final page of each chapter.

After looking over this I realized I only had 17 folders, chapter 1 folder was missing, (maybe I lost it after downloading, I don't know).

I created new folder, named it the corresponding name for Chapter 1 and tried again. Same result. Chapter 1 is missing from the combined book.

I'm obviously missing something, but what?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Gene45

I browsed over this several times.

The book came as 18 separate html files which contain the text and formatting, plus matching folders, (same names) which contain only a small graphic of a swan. The swan picture shows up on the final page of each chapter.

After looking over this I realized I only had 17 folders, chapter 1 folder was missing, (maybe I lost it after downloading, I don't know).

I created new folder, named it the corresponding name for Chapter 1 and tried again. Same result. Chapter 1 is missing from the combined book.

I'm obviously missing something, but what?

did you enter it into the TOC List before importing?
Did you get the filename CaSe the same as the file/folder
do you have a duplicate HTML name (that is not a duplicate like the common image)?

[Gene45]

Yes it was entered into the TOC before importing.
File name and case is the same,

I did not have a duplicate name but may have a different issue.
The chapter that does not get imported was shown as " Firefox document" that would open with Firefox. All the others are listed as HTML files, that open with Jarte, which is simply wordpad with spell checker. I opened the firefox document with Jarte and saved it as HTML, which worked. That file looks like the others, but I did not do a detailed line by line comparison.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by Gene45

The chapter that does not get imported was shown as " Firefox document" that would open with Firefox. All the others are listed as HTML files, that open with Jarte, which is simply wordpad with spell checker.

The only difference is one (firefox or Jarte document) was probably *.htm and the other was *.html. Before you import the toc to calibre navigate the local copy of the book you created. Ensure the links are all local links. If needed disconnect the rj45 cable just to be sure. If after all of that you can navigate to each chapter via the toc you created then adding the TOC to calibre will fetch all chapters and convert correctly.

If after reviewing the local copy you are still having trouble you might want to investigate Sigil and ask for help in either the Sigil or ePub fourms, because it is not a calibre problem you are experiencing.

[Gene45]

Doctor Ooh,

As far as I can tell, the only difference in files is that most are html and one was htm. now all are html.
All the files and the TOC are in the same folder, under Documents.
But what is an RJ45 cable? The files were downloaded and manipulated inside the same computer with no extra cable connections, aside from the connection to the modem/router.

[PeterT]

He mean disconnect from the Internet to be sure that all of the files are local

[Gene45]

I downloaded SIGIL and tried it . Odd that Sigil would not read the epub file I had created in calibre, but would let me add each of the chapters in html format and create the epub book which calibre would read.

All good now,