[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by abraum

i offen convert scanned books to epub using first abbyy finereader and then using sigil or calibre editor. abbyy finereader is using css to format the text (bold, italic, ...) and not html (<b>,<i>,...).

I explained exactly this a few months ago in:

• "Regex Examples" (Post #689)

Go down to where I said:

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Back in 2020, I partially wrote about my "12-step Finereader Cleanup" (Sigil Saved Searches).

Here's the last 5 steps of my Saved Searches dealing with Finereader tables:

[...]

Like BeckyEbook said, TagMechanic is your best friend.

Step 1. In Sigil, press Tools > Saved Searches.

Step 2. Right-Click in the list and press New Group. Name the new Group "Finereader Cleanup".

Step 3. Then fill it with entries such as:

Name: Fix Bold
Find: <span style="font-weight:bold;">
Replace: <span class="bold">

Name: Fix Italics
Find: <span style="font-style:italic;">
Replace: <span class="italics">

[...]

Step 4. In your Saved Searches, you can click on the bold "Finereader Cleanup" to highlight it, then press Replace All.

This will run all those Search/Replaces on your selected files.

Now ugly Finereader HTML like:

This is <span style="font-weight:bold;">bold text</span>.

changes into the more human-readable:

This is <span class="bold">bold text</span>.

* * *

Then you can use TagMechanic to change those <span class="bold"> into <b>:

This is <b>bold text</b>.

For example, here's one mini TagMechanic tutorial I wrote in 2020:

• "Replacing All Tags Of One Kind With Another" (Post #19)