[cybmole]

i am at a complete loss

suddenly I am converting books which previously converted OK and am seeing output like this:
Butsheneverdoubteditwaslessthanthetruth.Marawouldn ’tlie.Inhermind’seye,shecouldseeit.Thelush,texture divorywallpaper,thegoldtrim,therich,plushburgundyo fthecarpet.Theluxuriouscolorsmadeaperfectbackdropf orJenise’sdarkbeauty,hercoffee-coloredskin,herthickcurlsthatsheworehangingloosedo wnherback.AndBrian—hergutclenchedasshepicturedthem together.Notjustinthehotelhallway,whereMarahadseen them.Butinthebedbeyondthatdoor.Brian’schestnuthair —thickandwavy—

it started when I as trying to reproduce a small bug in conversion from lit but seems to be spreading. I am testing now testing various books and formats, some are OK but once a book has gone "bad" no amout of retries will fix it.

I have already tried:
shut down _+ restart calibre (7.49)
shut down + restart PC
run library integrity checks - no issues found.
remove all extra CSS
turn off heuristics
set calibre viewer to show all formats so that I can directly compare source & output in same viewer.

I am about to switch off - go to bed & hope someone has an answer when I log back on in the morning

other clues: the conversion is too quick - just 1-2 seconds. the output file size looks too small - about 50% of the source files size.
i'll pick a book where I have good lit, good epub and redo the convert. the epub was 260k & looked OK - after clciking restore defaults & re-runnign convert it has shrunk to 68k & looks like
PROLOGUE
SomewhereinthenearfutureExperimentalBreedLabs,Mexi coJacobexitedthesmallshowerattachedtohiscell,atowe lwrappedaroundhiswaistashedriedthelongstrandsofhis hairwithanother.Thehotshowerhadeasedthestrainedmus clesthatcamewithdailytraining,butdidlittletoeaseth etensepremonitionthathadfilledhimforthelastdays.It throbbedinhisgut,andtightenedhischest.


OK - so Ive gone to my main preferences screen with no conversions running - clicked through and applied restore defaults to every relevent page - then redid the above test & it came out OK - phew. repeat with another book - still OK.

time to quit while I am winning - BUT could I possibly have done within my main preferences that was having such a drastic effect ? is there a bug in 7.49 that I managed to trigger ?