An interesting experience converting formats

caleb72 · 12-18-2010, 11:10 PM

I recently got hold of a few freebie novels in PDF format. Nice and legal as well

.

Anyway - PDF is no good for me so I thought I'd have a go at converting it to epub.

I had many passes at it until I got something almost useful:

I used a free pdftohtml program which dumped everything into one HTML file.
I opened the HTML in VIM and then used regular expressions to move all of the headers/page numbers and forced line breaks (except for supposed end of paragraph breaks)
There were quite a few passages in italics throughout the novel and the initial conversion left a superfluous amount of tags which I used regular expressions to tidy up.
I opened up the modified HTML in Sigil and then used search and replace to force 5 spaces at the start of each paragraph as the book looks stupid without indenting
I separated a couple of obvious front pages (foreward etc..) into HTML files so that I could have forced page breaks. Luckily the novel didn't actually have chapters so I didn't have to worry about that.

So by now I had something that was formatted OK. However, I remembered that sometimes conversion from PDF joins words together here and there - particularly in sections with italics. So I copy-pasted the entired text and moved to Word thinking that I would use the Grammar/Spell checker to identify anomalies which I could then tidy up.

This is where everything became unstuck. The grammar and spelling of this author were awful.

I had come quite a long way so I did the best I could to correct some glaring mistakes - but at the end of it I wondered why I bothered. Am I ever going to read a book like this?

I'm certainly not perfect - but if I were writing a novel I'd probably at least run it through a spell checker before publishing it.

Can anyone relate to this?
Have you picked up a free novel only to find yourself staggering under the weight of poor spelling and suspect grammar?

Regards
Caleb

SeaBookGuy · 12-18-2010, 11:14 PM

I thought Kindles read PDF documents - it's Epubs that aren't possible?

caleb72 · 12-18-2010, 11:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SeaBookGuy

I thought Kindles read PDF documents - it's Epubs that aren't possible?

It does accept PDF - but it does not necessarily provide the best reading experience.

The Epub is an interim format as I use Sigil to create the ebook from HTML. Then it's just converted to Mobi format in Calibre as that conversion is usually OK.

Regards
Caleb

SeaBookGuy · 12-18-2010, 11:46 PM

Alright - I find, though less-than-optimal, reading a PDF book on my Sony is easier than all that work translating them to Epub.

caleb72 · 12-19-2010, 02:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SeaBookGuy

Alright - I find, though less-than-optimal, reading a PDF book on my Sony is easier than all that work translating them to Epub.

After my experience I may well agree with you.

Regards
Caleb

12-18-2010, 11:10 PM	#1
caleb72 Indie Advocate Posts: 2,863 Karma: 18794463 Join Date: Sep 2010 Location: Melbourne, Australia Device: Kindle	An interesting experience converting formats I recently got hold of a few freebie novels in PDF format. Nice and legal as well . Anyway - PDF is no good for me so I thought I'd have a go at converting it to epub. I had many passes at it until I got something almost useful: I used a free pdftohtml program which dumped everything into one HTML file. I opened the HTML in VIM and then used regular expressions to move all of the headers/page numbers and forced line breaks (except for supposed end of paragraph breaks) There were quite a few passages in italics throughout the novel and the initial conversion left a superfluous amount of tags which I used regular expressions to tidy up. I opened up the modified HTML in Sigil and then used search and replace to force 5 spaces at the start of each paragraph as the book looks stupid without indenting I separated a couple of obvious front pages (foreward etc..) into HTML files so that I could have forced page breaks. Luckily the novel didn't actually have chapters so I didn't have to worry about that. So by now I had something that was formatted OK. However, I remembered that sometimes conversion from PDF joins words together here and there - particularly in sections with italics. So I copy-pasted the entired text and moved to Word thinking that I would use the Grammar/Spell checker to identify anomalies which I could then tidy up. This is where everything became unstuck. The grammar and spelling of this author were awful. I had come quite a long way so I did the best I could to correct some glaring mistakes - but at the end of it I wondered why I bothered. Am I ever going to read a book like this? I'm certainly not perfect - but if I were writing a novel I'd probably at least run it through a spell checker before publishing it. Can anyone relate to this? Have you picked up a free novel only to find yourself staggering under the weight of poor spelling and suspect grammar? Regards Caleb

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12-18-2010, 11:14 PM	#2
SeaBookGuy Can one read too much? Posts: 2,029 Karma: 2487799 Join Date: Aug 2010 Location: Naples, FL Device: Kindle PW 3, Sony 350 and 650	I thought Kindles read PDF documents - it's Epubs that aren't possible?

12-18-2010, 11:46 PM	#4
SeaBookGuy Can one read too much? Posts: 2,029 Karma: 2487799 Join Date: Aug 2010 Location: Naples, FL Device: Kindle PW 3, Sony 350 and 650	Alright - I find, though less-than-optimal, reading a PDF book on my Sony is easier than all that work translating them to Epub.

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