[alanjay]

Thanks for all the feedback - I think I might not have fully explained things screenplays have a curious format and having spent some of yesterday playing with Calibre I have learnt a bit more and have a reasonable set of instructions to get some - but not all the way to what I need.

I'm stuck creating a good set of CSS that fakes the style of a screenplay.

I have found a combination of Acrobat Reader / Celtx (http://www.celtx.com/) a free script editing tool and Calibre

So here is my workflow:

1) Open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat v10
2) Select All in PDF - COPY text in Adobe Acrobat 10 - Command + A then Command + C (Apple A / Apple C)
3) Paste all text into Celtx FILM format - Command + V ( Apple V) - Quit Adobe Acrobat Reader
4) Save as Celtx and then EXPORT as HTML (you will work on HTML) - need to change extension to HTML defaults to TXT. Quit Celtx.
5) Load HTML into Calibre - Edit Meta Data with title and author information
6) Convert to MOBI using suitable CSS additions!

Celtx very nicely formats its HTML output with the following CSS tags:
<p class="sceneheading">

Heading - full width left justified - all caps

1 EXT PEGASUS HOUSE - DAY 1

<p class="action">

paragraph left justified full width normal space between paragraphs:

Pilatis House is an impressive Georgian pile lapped by
extensive grounds. From the rear, nicely framed by
ancient oaks, we see peacocks on the lawn, hear the
trickle of water, sense the peace and the solitude.

Off-screen, over a further selection of exterior shots,
we hear a snatch of dialogue. Malcolm Parkinson, the
Director of Pilatis House, is a Yorkshireman. Bonnie, his
wife, comes from London. She has a mddle class accent.

<p class="character">

the name of the character in capitals - and centered on the page:

PARKINSON

There is a line space before a character name but no line space after the character name.

<p class="dialog">

The dialog fills just 50% of the line ie it is indented both left and right by 25% (?)

Have you got it, Bonnie?

There is a line space after dialog ONLY if it moves from dialog to another character or action (ie)

Its in the lumber yard!
Have you got it, Bonnie?

<p class="parenthetical">

This is an item in parenthesis followed by a line break / space ie

<p class="parenthetical">(even fainter) OK.</p>

is displayed as:

(even fainter)

OK.

<p class="transition">

right aligned all caps


Now I think if I can come up with the correct combination of CSS to fit each of the nice classes that celtx is kind enough to provide I should be able to retain something that looks like a script but is text based and easy to read.

My first attempts at doing the CSS sort of work but are not entirely correct so I suspect I need more knowledge of how to achieve my goals in the CSS code.

Thanks again for all the feedback it has been really useful to hear your thoughts.

ALan

So an example page from a PDF might look like:




Thanks again for your help.

Alan