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ATDrake · 05-02-2011, 04:20 PM

1) Auto-conversion does it according to presets, which you may be able to tweak to a certain extent, but tend not to provide the same degree of control over the finished product as using a dedicated tool and writing your file to meet its expectations. Mind you, "control" is relative, given how buggy KindleGen tends to be.

2) Use KindleGen. The core of it is a modified mobigen, which was the backend of Mobipocket Creator. Mind you, one of MBPC's advantages is that apparently it does a pretty decent job of PDF conversion, if you don't have a good OCR program, and can use it to get a not-too-shoddy base file to clean up less than you might otherwise have to.

3) Text editor all the way*. I used to use mainly Smultron when it was open-source and free via Souceforge (still available at their website; I might spend the $5 the developer asks for the newest version if it really does fix up the Snow Leopard bugs). Slowly switching over to BareBones' proprietary free TextWrangler.

Hope this helps.

* I'm cheap and picky about how my underlying source is formatted, which I understand are not universal traits.

05-02-2011, 04:20 PM	#2
ATDrake Wizzard Posts: 11,517 Karma: 33048258 Join Date: Mar 2010 Location: Roundworld Device: Kindle 2 International, Sony PRS-T1, BlackBerry PlayBook, Acer Iconia	1) Auto-conversion does it according to presets, which you may be able to tweak to a certain extent, but tend not to provide the same degree of control over the finished product as using a dedicated tool and writing your file to meet its expectations. Mind you, "control" is relative, given how buggy KindleGen tends to be. 2) Use KindleGen. The core of it is a modified mobigen, which was the backend of Mobipocket Creator. Mind you, one of MBPC's advantages is that apparently it does a pretty decent job of PDF conversion, if you don't have a good OCR program, and can use it to get a not-too-shoddy base file to clean up less than you might otherwise have to. 3) Text editor all the way. I used to use mainly Smultron when it was open-source and free via Souceforge (still available at their website; I might spend the $5 the developer asks for the newest version if it really does fix up the Snow Leopard bugs). Slowly switching over to BareBones' proprietary free TextWrangler. Hope this helps. I'm cheap and picky about how my underlying source is formatted, which I understand are not universal traits. Last edited by ATDrake; 05-02-2011 at 04:22 PM. Reason: Greengrocer's apostrophe.