[salasnet]

I am completely stumped on how to preserve smart quotes when creating an ePub book in Calibre from a source file. No matter if I use TXT, or HTML, ePub generation in Calibre does not preserve smart quotes and they render as garbage characters in both the built in ePub viewer and my Sony Reader.

Example:
I have a TXT source file which has smart quotes and smart single quotes. This TXT source file was used to generate an LRF ebook with Calibre some time ago. The LRF file has smart quotes which display as intended in my Sony Reader.

If I convert this LRF file to ePub, the smart quotes and single quotes are preserved in the resulting ePub file.

However, if I use my original TXT source file that the LRF was created from to generate the ePub, then all smart quotes are rendered as garbage characters (a black diamond with a question mark in it, I think it is).

I have tried converting my original source file to every encoding possible before generating the ePub, I have created an HTML file from the TXT source file, etc. etc. etc. No combination works.

It is not just smart quotes and single quotes... all non-standard ANSI characters also do not get converted. i.e. letters with accents on them, etc.

I have tried this with a number of my original source files that generated perfect LRF files, and new source files which I am trying to create new books with. New creation of ePub from source files = no smart quotes / Conversion of ePub from existing LRF = no problems

Any suggestions or information would be much appreciated.