[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by deback

I have to disagree with this. Converting (with all of my settings) has saved me tons of time by not having to manually edit things that I used to edit.

Once you get used to editing the CSS, it does get to be pretty easy. PLus, in NOT converting, you get easier code (sometimes) to edit.

By the time I'm checking the book (after running modify and convert), all the unused CSS codes have been deleted by Convert. I used to also run Polish to delete the unused CSS codes, but then I discovered that Convert automatically deleted them, so I quit using Polish.

Since the best way to edit is with the Editor after running Modify ePub, there won't be any converting and you can remove excess CSS from the editor.

I don't use Kobo. I read ebooks using ADE 2 on my laptop, which works the best for me for many reasons. I had to quit using two different Nooks because of the hassle involved, and with a laptop, I can switch between ADE and a browser or whatever. So, all the things you mentioned in the above paragraph are done automatically by Modify and Convert.

The OP does use a Kobo. That's why I mention some things the way I did. Your ways are not optimal for a Kobo or any ePub reading software that support line hight, margin, and justification settings.

I used to add an entry for the Cover in every file I did, but then I decided to quit doing that, because (1) it really wasn't important to me, and (2) it was too time-consuming when modifying/converting/editing hundreds of books.

It's important when using a Kobo Reader. But most NCX ToC does come with an entry for the cover. So it's not needed to be done for most ePub.

The Check Book feature in the editor is good enough for me. Again, it would be too time-consuming to add more things to my system. I've never heard of Calibre validator, so I might try to find more info about that.

I find that validating using Check Book and epubcheck produce ePub that do not have any issues with a Reader. I've read of many people having issues and that includes Kindle, Kobo, Sony, and others. The reason for most of the problems is due to eBooks with structural errors. So it is less time-consuming then having your eBook Reader not work properly.

This would be way too time-consuming to add to my system, due to the volume of books I work with. Removing rubbish pages in each book is not important to me (sometimes, I do remove certain pages, but not too often). I'm mainly concerned with making sure the paragraph text is justified and has side margins of 30pt and that the text is a nice font, like Charis. Also, my settings do remove all fonts and font codes automatically, and the Charis font that is embedded is automatically subset. It really depends on the book I'm working with. If I'm editing and reformatting an OpenLibrary file, then I don't include any junk pages, and I make sure that everything is perfect.

Removing the junk pages is not too time consuming. Most are obvious what they are by the filename. So you check the ones you are not sure of or think are junk pages based on thr filename and when you find a junk page, you just delete it. That's all. It's not hard and it's not really time consuming.

Again, I DISAGREE! I've had no problems with converting, and doing that has saved me hundreds of hours that I used to spend doing manual editing. Before I started using my current system, I would open each file in the editor and hit the buttons for beautify, smarten punctuation, removed unused CSS, ToC, and then check book. With my current system, I just hit check book, and once in a while, I'll have to manually edit something (usually the code for the cover image or a typo in one of the CSS codes), so the amount of time I spend now is much less than it used to be due to all the settings, extra CSS, and transform rules I've added to the conversion process.

I have to disagree with you. DON'T CONVERT! It can make editing more difficult. You don't need to beautify anything except the CSS. Most eBooks don't need the punctuation smartened. Sometimes the cover XHTML will need editing and so will the titlepage XHTML.

And there are some bugs in converting which means you will need to go into the code and find where the conversion went wrong and manually fix them. For example, a font size of small is converted to 9pt. That's smaller that a size of small and it too small to read.

And some of the things I say to remove will make the eBook much easier to deal with. Once you've removed all excess CSS, searching/replacing is very easy. It's a lot easier to do it my way than your way. And with my way, you learn more about the code which is a good thing vs. a blind conversion where you don't learn much of anything.