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Originally Posted by imaredr
Has anyone put together a quick tutorial on how to create a .lrf file? I have tried, but there are so many gaps between lines and I haven't been able to create a TOC. I would like to add my cover art, but if that's not possible I can live without. Also when resizing the lrf files on the reader the gaps get even larger even within the same sentence. This frustration has really put me off of the reader and I think if I can make a clean book, I could finally learn to enjoy my newest ebook reader. Thanks.
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Cover art is definitely possible. Here's a quick overview of the steps I take:
* Drag and drop supported file (mostly *.LIT files, for me) to BookDesigner window.
* Right click on author's name and set it as Book Author; do the same for title
* Cut out any unneeded text
* Open the Element Browser (Tools->Element Browser) , and look for all "title" elements. For some books, this will get text that is capitalized or bolded and fairly alone on a line, so it might catch some text that is just meant to be emphasized. Select these and change to "paragraph". You might also want to check "subtitle" elements, they sometimes have the same problem.
* Then change any remaining "title" elements to "subtitle"s. This may not be necessary, but what I've found is that "title" elements will result in every other page being blank, with only the title displayed. There's probably a better way to deal with that, but this works for me.
* Close the Element Browser, and click on the "Make Sony Librie File". This opens the dialog box with book options. If this is a LIT file with an embedded cover image, the cover image should show up here. Otherwise, you can drag-and-drop or browse for the image.
* Set the "book style" to "very simple". Unfortunately, this will give you wider margins and much more basic formatting, but it seems to be the only way to avoid an early ending for your Reader file.
* Set the "page width" to 530 or so. Otherwise you'll get lines where the last few words end up on the next line, alone.
* I leave the text size and cover size set to the default 17 and 24, respectively.
* Press "test book" and the Connect Reader should pop up in a few moments with the first few pages of your book. Look it over to make sure nothing is terribly wrong, then close Connect Reader and click "Make Book". A little while later, your book will appear in the Sony Librie directory under BookDesigner (or where ever else you saved it). Connect Reader will open again, displaying the whole book.
* At this point, I move the book to its permanent home and add it to the Library.
As you can see, this is pretty simple - I don't generally worry too much about having the perfect fonts or margins or text sizes. BookDesigner and the Element Browser do allow you to take a much more proactive role, but I'm interested mostly in quickly making readable files.
Unfortunately, to get links and TOCs working I think (although I haven't investigated much) that you have to use a style other than "very simple", which leaves you open to Premature Ending Syndrome.
Anyway, I hope this provides a usable base you can work off of to make more complex, working LRFs. Please post your improvements here! :-)