[crutledge]

I have followed this thread with great interest. I, too, build MOBI/PRC and then use Calibre and Mobi2Imp. This seems to work well enough that no one had told me of major problems.

I have to disagraee on the use of Book Designer. Within its obvious limitations and errors, it is still the easiest ebook editor that I have found. The way you apply it makes all the difference.

Since I work mostly with Gutenberg, I'll use it as an example.

I download, if there, the complete book.hrm files. This also downloads any images. I also download the book.txt in US ASCII. Using Gutentext, a book.html is created. Although I have regex expressions to clear BD of the ash and trash from the book.htm e.g. page numbers, etc., this is less work. The book.html is then dropped into BD. I open the book.htm in the browser and vertically tile with browser on the left and BD on the right. From this point on, the procedure is the same for any html file.

The first thing to do is to get rid of all empty paragraphs in the BD file using the Element rowser/pagagraph/delete.Then, by going down the browser file page by page, any thing that needs special formatting is identified. By using COPY in the browser and FIND in BD, I can quickly go the the text that needs formatting. By using COPY, FIND and the ELEMENT BROWSER, it is possible to move quickly through the BD file. For anything that BD cannot handle, I place comments in the BD file before and after the text that needs formatting, e.g.:

//Blockquote
.....
//End Blockquote

By the time I get to the end of the file, BD is cleaned up and ready to make the TOC and insert images for a LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS and ENDNOTES. Go to BD SAVE AS and save the book.htm into a BOOK folder which also contain a blank Mobipocket book.opf file. Change the name of the book to book.htm (IAW HarryT's excellent suggestion) and I'm ready for the HTML Editor (EditPadPro).

The comments placed in the BD file showup in the HTML FILE as paragraphs, e.g.:

<DIV align=justify>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;//Blockquote</DIV>

I use a regex to find and replace these paragraphs.

Find:
<DIV align=justify>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;//(.+)</DIV>
Replace:
<!--\1-->

The final output is:
<!--Blockquote--> or <!--Use <small> in signature block-->

If I think an element needs white space before or after I use BD Empty Paragraph (CTL E <DIV>&nbsp; &nbsp; </DIV>) and replace these with line breaks (<br/>) in the HTML editor.

I save the edited file and open it in the browser. Everything will be shown except the MOBI specific tags. It is very easy to move back and forth between the browser and the HTML EDITOR to make any adjustments.

Once satisfied, I double click on the book.opf file, fill out the data and build the prc book. Rename book.prc back the the book name and check things out in Mobipocket Reader. When satisfied, drop the prc file into calibre to create the LRF and EPUB books and use Mobi2Imp to create both flavors if IMP. I'm then ready to post. You can also drop the book.htm file into calibre.

Book Designer has taken out 90% of the effort I used to expend using only HTML files. The true key to all of this is a good HTML editor (e.g. EditPadPro) to accompany BD. If you haven't used BD or not enough to become familiar with it, see the fine tutorials by HarryT, Particia, and others.

I think it's apparent that I like BD. "BD Rocks"