Thread: FB2 creation
View Single Post
Old 09-30-2009, 07:22 PM   #16
Mneme
Serial Procrastinator
Mneme has a complete set of Star Wars action figures.Mneme has a complete set of Star Wars action figures.Mneme has a complete set of Star Wars action figures.Mneme has a complete set of Star Wars action figures.
 
Mneme's Avatar
 
Posts: 25
Karma: 356
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: in the real world
Device: Asus MyPal A636, Hanlin V5
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stephanos View Post
I second the suggestion of using Calbre. Unlike OpenOffice, it can import Epub and PDF, as the original poster specified.
I was excited about the possibility of converting my pdf files to other small-screen-friendly formats, so I gave calibre a shot at converting pdf to mobi or fb2. Unfortunately calibre is very picky with pdf files it can convert - out of 6 I tried (none were DRM), only one was converted successfully, the others failed with some error in one of the pdftohtml.pyo calls. Edit: pdf import success rate is 100% improved as of current calibre release.
I wasn't impressed with the one successful result of the pdf to fb2 conversion, either. For one thing, the resulting fb2 file didn't validate, even after I opened it in another editor and added compulsory elements, like language and genre. It appeared to have invalid tags, which did not conform to the schema. In addition, file structure detection was very poor. The file was one solid block instead of being divided into sections (chapters). Admittedly, I've only tried the GUI interface for conversion, it might be a different story with the command line.

Overall, calibre is a really impressive tool, but its fb2 conversion could be improved.

Edit: two updated versions of calibre later, fb2 conversion is still not up to scratch (IMHO), because converted files fail validation. An invalid file = unpredictable behaviour in readers.

Last edited by Mneme; 10-02-2009 at 11:14 PM.
Mneme is offline   Reply With Quote