[AlexBell]

The background to this question is that I'm converting some print books by hand, from Word to XHTML, from XHTML to ePub, and from ePub to mobi with calibre. During the process I make sure that the XHTML and the ePub are valid.

I'm having some problems in the ePub to mobi conversion in that the layout (margins and headings and so on) is not always the same, and I don't know whether this is because of the limitations of mobi or because I've set up the conversion process incorrectly. In fact I'm not even sure what the limitations of mobi are in any detail - I know it can't flow text around images or do quotes indented on both sides, and I so far as I know it can't use external style sheets, but I'm hazy about the rest.

So far as I understand the process calibre uses is something along the lines of
- determine what input and output formats have been specified by the user
- for ePub ebooks go through the stylesheet and XHTML files and put in local styling to achieve the effects the user has tried to specify in the external stylesheet.
- write the resultant file into mobi format.

Is this what calibre does? If not, could someone explain or point me to a reference please?

There are obviously some things that even calibre can't get mobi to do - like flow text around images for example.

Is there a listing anywhere which could tell me what these limitations are - that is, what not to ask calibre to do when converting an ebook to mobi?

There is a listing of course on the Mobipocket site of what mobi can and can't do, but that's several years old, and in any event what I want to know is what calibre can and can't do when converting files into mobi format.

Or to put it another way, what styling should I avoid so as to give calibre the best chance of producing a mobi version which looks reasonably close to the original ePub version?

Regards, Alex