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Old 02-07-2011, 05:22 PM   #4
delphin
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Posts: 434
Karma: 346901
Join Date: Dec 2010
Device: SONY PRS-650
Quote:
Originally Posted by Forestfall View Post
Thanks delphin. Darn, I hoped there was a simple solution. Seems to be a lot of work to fix the hard paragraph breaks.

Your solution doesn't look like it will solve the issue I have with the splicing/doubling of sentences either.

Here's an example from the book I'm reading . . .
Sorry not to answer right away but this was a puzzler, so I had to let it percolate a little a little at the subconscious level before the probable answer popped up.

I believe that the issue is that the original material had been captured a page or screen at a time from reader software configured for single line overlap.

Some electronic reader devices offer this option in a misguided attempt to make folks who are not comfortable with the sudden page changes more comfortable.

The idea was to leave ONE LINE OF TEXT (or sometimes more) from the previous page at the top of the new page whenever you do a page change to give continuity.

Before DRM was broken, some folks undoubtedly figured work arounds involving text screen capture scripts, which could conceivably leave these kinds of duplications.

Now here's the fun part - Why wouldn't your friend notice the duplications???

Answer, because if she was reading the original MOBI or PDFs with the same page breaks, then the duplications are almost unnoticeable.

Thats the key. By default EPUBs have no fixed page-breaks and do text re-flow as the font size changes, but If you can get text to NOT RE-FLOW, and KEEP the PAGE BREAKS IN THE SAME PLACES, then all those text duplications will magically BECOME ALMOST UNNOTICEABLE (they will still be there, but be less noticeable, because the only duplication will be the LAST line of text on one page, repeated as the FIRST line on the next page).

If the PDF's you created won't work, see if your friend can forward the actual PDF's she used and then disable reflow on your PRS-650 by using the 'original' or 'margin cut' page mode on your Sony with the "small" font option (open the ZOOM font - page formatting menu with the magnifying glass button, and pick the "small" font).

The problem is that for material like this, standard EPUB is basically hopeless, because it's a format that does not have hard-page-breaks by default, and if you don't remove those duplicate lines, the only way the material is going to remain readable is in a FIXED PAGE BREAK FORMAT LIKE PDF.

Even then, the Sony PRS-650 will TRY to helpfully "reflow" the text if you use a font bigger than "small", which unfortunatly can not be done without changing the page breaks and causing trouble.

The reason I suggested that you may have to get your friends PDF, is that if you converted in the sequence you mentioned, then your PDF's are probably also broken.

The reason is that if you convert from Mobi to EPUB then later do another conversion to PDF, by default Calibre will use the broken EPUB (with the reflowed page breaks) as the basis for its conversion to PDF, most likely giving PDF's with different page-breaks.

If you don't want to bother your friend, and still have the original MOBI files, try forcing a direct MOBI -> PDF conversion by overriding the source option at the top of the Calibre conversion screen.

Maybe this is common in some MOBI to EPUB conversions, and if there is some tool or option to fix it and someone can pop in here and let us know that would be great, but in the mean time, to make the material at least minimally readable, probably the easiest thing is to get the EXACT PDF's your friend used, disable re-flow by using the "SMALL" font on your reader, and if all works out, just ignore that duplicate line of text at the top of each page.

Last edited by delphin; 02-07-2011 at 05:34 PM. Reason: ro
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