Slight issue with alighment of title on mobi and epub conversion

[Josieb1]

Hi

I am creating a couple of ebooks for a freind who's an author (she's self publishing) using Calibre. I have taken the word doc and saved as web page, filtered using Firefox, then convereted in Calibre to mobi and epub.

I have two slight issues that I have no idea how to solve.

The title of the book is split over two lines. For the mobi the two lines are on two pages, and on the epub the first line is left alighned and the second line is centred (on the HTML both lines are centred).

Has anyone any ideas on how I can fix this? I don't understand code at all so used the basic conversion settings within Calibre.

Thanks very much

[Jeff L]

You may be using Word's Heading styles (Heading 1, Heading 2, etc...) for your title. Calibre has a setting to split pages at Headings (in the conversion window, look under Structure Detection).

Before you disable this setting, you should try instead to avoid using multiple Headings on your title page. Some of the professional editors may come along and tell you that Headings are for structure not formatting. Yes, I know, but there you go.

[JSWolf]

The thing to do is convert just to ePub, load that into Sigil. Fix it up so it looks just how you want it to (after you've removed all the Word garbage) and then convert to Mobi. Clean ePub makes a better source then most Word output.

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by Jeff L

You may be using Word's Heading styles (Heading 1, Heading 2, etc...) for your title. Calibre has a setting to split pages at Headings (in the conversion window, look under Structure Detection).

Before you disable this setting, you should try instead to avoid using multiple Headings on your title page. Some of the professional editors may come along and tell you that Headings are for structure not formatting. Yes, I know, but there you go.

Thanks Jeff, I'll try the setting. Its not my document so I'm limited in the changes I can make

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The thing to do is convert just to ePub, load that into Sigil. Fix it up so it looks just how you want it to (after you've removed all the Word garbage) and then convert to Mobi. Clean ePub makes a better source then most Word output.

I would love to do this but I don't know how to use Sigil so I'm limited to just what I can do in Calibre.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Josieb1

I would love to do this but I don't know how to use Sigil so I'm limited to just what I can do in Calibre.

You will need to learn what to do. You cannot allow your friend to sell eBooks created from Word that could possibly be broken.

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You will need to learn what to do. You cannot allow your friend to sell eBooks created from Word that could possibly be broken.

I appreciative the help but learning Sigil is not a five minute job and certainly not something I can even start right now. What my friend decides to do with the ebooks I've created is up to them but they are perfect apart from the title issue.

[kovidgoyal]

@JSWolf: If you cant help, kindly dont post.

@Josieb1: As Jeff told you, use the option under structure detection, it will prevent calibre from inserting page breaks before heading elements.

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

@JSWolf: If you cant help, kindly dont post.

@Josieb1: As Jeff told you, use the option under structure detection, it will prevent calibre from inserting page breaks before heading elements.

Thank you Kovid (and Jeff for the earlier suggestion) my friend is getting someone else to look at it who is more familiar with creating ebooks as I really only do them for myself.

I will try the option under structure detection just to see if that works. Another idea I had was to create the title as a jpeg and insert that, something I know a lot of independent publishers do.

I appreciate all your help, thank you.

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by Jeff L

You may be using Word's Heading styles (Heading 1, Heading 2, etc...) for your title. Calibre has a setting to split pages at Headings (in the conversion window, look under Structure Detection).

Before you disable this setting, you should try instead to avoid using multiple Headings on your title page. Some of the professional editors may come along and tell you that Headings are for structure not formatting. Yes, I know, but there you go.

Jeff, not sure if you'll see this but how do i disable this setting? There isn't any setting for it just a place to add expressions.

[Jeff L]

You have several options.

You can delete the entire entry in Structure Detection or selectively add or subtract from it. That is, remove "h1" or add "h3" and so on. That is, leave in the headings you want to break on (like chapter headings) and remove the ones where no break should occur.


The problem appears to be multiple uses of a given heading on the title page. Something like this perhaps:

<h1>First line of title</h1>

<h1>Second line of title</h1>

You could change this to:

<h1>First line of title <br/>

Second line of title</h1>

In the second example, "<br/>" is a line break. In this case, there is only one heading instead of two, so the page break should occur only once.



If you remove the *entire* entry in Structure Detection, then you must control the page breaks yourself. Usually, this is done with a style and code at the point where the page break is to occur.

So in the <style> section of the html that you got from saving as a "web page, filtered" file, you can add something like this:

.pagebreak {

page-break-before: always;

}

Then at the point where you want the page break (e.g. before each chapter), add this code:

<div class="pagebreak"> </div>

You can also just reformat the title page in Word without using headings. Just recreate the same font size and text-alignment using regular paragraph styles.


Your idea of using a graphic for the title page is also fine. Just remember to set margins and text-alignment. Size the graphic to a useful size (a little below 600 px height perhaps) and then set height and/or width to 100% or something appropriate as different ereader devices have different dimensions.

[Josieb1]

Thanks so much Jeff, off to have a play.