ePub to ePub? (preserve formatting)

[DrMoze]

I have a problem with some ePub files--the soft hyphens are showing up as question marks on my 300 Reader (but look fine in the Sony Library program). I read here that converting the ePub to ePub in Calibre will solve this.

BUT: When I try this, the output file has tiny font and the lines of text overlap. I'd like to keep the original font sizes, spacing, etc. I tried checking "disable font size rescaling" in the Conversion preferences--same result.

Is there anything I should do/not do to convert ePub to ePub but leave the formatting alone? Thx.

[kovidgoyal]

calibre's conversion can't be made to leave original formatting alone. It's not designed for that. I'd suggest using something like SIgil and doing a search replace to remove the soft hyphens.

[DrMoze]

Is there something else I could do to get ePub output in legible format? The input file is fine; I used the default outputs and got tiny font with overlapping lines of text. Default output for lrf has always been good--hadn't converted to ePub before.

I'll look at SIgil too--thx!

[kovidgoyal]

increase the base font size in the conversion settings.

[DrMoze]

Dumb question--increased the base font to 14pt, which works for me. Also increased line height from default 2 pt to 18 pt. I still get overlapping lines of (larger) text. The spacing between lines is negative and the lines of text overlap each other. For example, it looks like I have about 50 lines of 14 pt text on a single page. How do I increase line spacing in the ePub output file? I looked but found no parameter for this. ("line height" was the closest, but doesn't help.)

[kovidgoyal]

depends on what exactly is causing the overlap. When resizing fonts calibre tries hard to ensure that this doesn't happen, but because of the complexity of CSS it doesn't always succeed.

If you can generate an extract or post the full file (if it's not copyrighted, we may be able to help you more)