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I use Word2CleanHtml dot com online to strip out all the painful html that Word creates. It does a good job with OpenOffice Writer files, too, though sometimes it yields <p class="normal"> instead of just <p>. There are of course other ways to get clean html. Toxaris has a plug-in that does it, among other things. (It doesn't work for me in Word 2007, but I'm sure that's my fault.)
I am always astonished by the html created by word processors and purpose-built software like Scrivener and even by Calibre. It can all be reduced by half, if not by 90 percent. Word2Clean might have been designed for Sigil; it doesn't bother with html declarations, so it can be pasted right into a Sigil page in Code View, between the body tags. (I appreciate that some people don't care to process their books online.)
I use OpenOffice Writer to do the final tweaking for paperback. I've done twelve or thirteen books and never had a problem with the PDF it generates. I mostly use 12 point Georgia on a 1.2 line spacing, with an extra .02 inch between paragraphs. I spend a LOT of time tweaking the layout, perfecting every page. I think a print edition deserves the attention.
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