[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by DVC

Lot's of answers, but they all make my point.

First, .doc is not supported so that route is closed.

Anything that makes .doc & .docx files will save as .rtf instead. RTFs are often much larger files than .doc, but the formatting is all there. Supporting .doc may require licensing agreements with Microsoft, which are beyond the scope of most open-source projects. Or it might just involve an extra bit of code to convert .doc files to .rtf internally... in which case, since it is an open source project, anyone who's interested is welcome to write the code for that.

Second, converting to HTML will destroy a book's format. The result will be as bad as a web-page. I know, I've used Word to make HTMLs.

Word docs saved as HTML make lousy webpages, but often good ebooks. Ebooks work best as markup-based documents, like HTML and PDB (which I'm not recommending you deal with) not layout-based documents like PDF and word processor documents.

LIT? What the hell is that?

LIT is Microsoft's ebook format, one of the earliest commercial ebook types, and has some of the better complex formatting options. That you have no idea what it is indicates you're new to ebooks in general.

I don't know where you live, but there is only one universal document standard and that is PDF.

No, there's not. If there's a universal doc standard, it's txt.
PDF is new, rapidly-changing, and contains so many kinds of content that it's almost impossible to give anyone advice on how to work with PDFs. It's a very useful format--I love PDFs--but because it's got so many options about what can go in it, it's not always easy to get content out of it in a useful format.

However, you could bypass Calibre altogether by taking your RTFs and formatting them for the size of screen the ebooks will be read on. I make a lot of 6"-screen sized PDFs for my own reading. That way, I get exact control of the layout, the images, the fonts and so on.

Since the rules of decoding PDF are decades old, why would anyone design a conversion program that accepted PDF as the "last" choice? In reality, PDF is the only input format needed for making eBooks.

PDF *EN*coding is more than 15 years old, and has only been common for about the last 7 years. (Not "decades." Really. PDF was created in 1993.) *DE*coding is younger, and changes every couple of years with new editions of Acrobat, as PDFs gain more abilities. I've been working professionally with PDFs for 10 years, and it's changed a *lot* in that time. I still miss features from Acrobat 4.0, but I wouldn't want to go back to them & lose some of the options now available to PDFs.

Why list RTF if it can't convert an RTF with pictures. Telling me there may be pix format that is not supported only means RTF is not really fully supported. RTF means RTF as it comes from any software that produces it. Since almost every RTF document includes pix -- a conversion program has be able to deal with all pix. What's so radical about JPEGs?

PDB can only support .png images. If a converter didn't support moving images from RTF to PDB because they were JPGs, that doesn't mean RTF conversion isn't supported.

That said, ePub can support several image types. However, the formatting of the images in the RTF file may affect how (or whether) they convert to another filetype--inline images may convert, but images in frames may not. Images that are links instead of embedded may not import. Images of a type not displayable by the reader (browser, mobile device, e-ink screen, whatever) may be present in the file, but not viewable.

Getting a document to convert correctly involves knowing all the filetypes in the book, and how they intereract.

You are, of course, welcome to code your own ePub files by hand; they're HTML in a zip file, with a metadata file that basically tells the reader "this is an ePub file." That Calibre tries to assemble all the relevant data from all sorts of initial formatting is amazing.

And, since EPUB is designed for BOOKS -- the comments that one cannot expect to convert BOOKS kind of defeats the purpose of a CONVERTER TO EPUB. Now, were there a way to interactively edit the EPUB output so one could fix conversion problems -- it would be acceptable given the likelihood of conversion errors. But, there isn't. The Debug feature is a joke -- a folder full of .jpegs.)

There is a way to edit the ePub output. Change the .epub extension to .zip, unzip the folder, and edit away in your HTML editor of choice.

Sorry, to be so negative, but Caliber simply doesn't make eBooks than can be sold. So, I'm not sure why it was written. Converting LIT to EPUB. Why?

I don't make ebooks to sell them; I make them to read. If you're making ebooks to sell, it's a bit ridiculous to complain that a free, open-source program isn't making them the way you want them.

If you want to make sale-able ebooks with complex formatting, you may want to use a program like Bookdesigner that gives more precise control. Calibre can give a lot of control, but it's through extra lines of coding; Bookdesigner has a GUI for its editing. However, it's not simple & quick to learn.

Or you can learn to hand-code ePub files. I'm told that once the basics are learned, it can go fairly quickly. For myself, I make a lot of 3.46"x4.57" PDFs, because I'm comfortable tinkering with formatting in Word, and haven't figured out HTML/CSS editing yet.