Font Weight Issue:

[Rowebo]

Hello:

I'm in my second year with a Kindle, now with the new Paperwhite (quite nice). But I've not really had time to learn the device in any detail, so I'm still rather a newb at topics like conversion with calibre or mobipocket.

If the answer to the question I'm about to ask is already here, my apologies -- I did try searches on "font" and "font weight," but didn't see much. I may not have the vocabulary in this context to search properly.

For some time, I've been trying to find a way to convert things like web-based reviews (e.g., of computer hardware reviews from sites like Anandtech or Tom's Hardware). The idea is to "take that article with me" without having to print it out. But there are lots of graphics in these things (photos, bar graphs, etc - often jpg or png, and sometimes fairly large files), and it has not proven to be a simple task.

This morning, I largely achieved that result using MS Word, saving to Html format, and then converting the file with calibre. The resulting file has suitable formatting, the graphics appear in apparently appropriate sizes and in the correct places. This is a bit more involved than would be ideal -- more steps than I'd like -- but it's easily close enough to highly useful. And it could save a fair number of trees, clutter in my various offices, and so on.

The only problem now is that the documents arrive on the Kindle in mobi or azw3 (including with embedded fonts) with a lighter, "grey" font than all other documents on the Kindle. This may well be an artifact of the original html file, but I was wondering whether there might be some way to change that behavior either before or at the point of conversion. It certainly is legible as is, but its a bit like dropping back to Kindles well before my old Kindle 3 keyboard -- the ones I wouldn't buy because of the quality of the display.

Thanks to all in advance for any ideas.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by Rowebo

The only problem now is that the documents arrive on the Kindle in mobi or azw3 (including with embedded fonts) with a lighter, "grey" font than all other documents on the Kindle. This may well be an artifact of the original html file, but I was wondering whether there might be some way to change that behavior either before or at the point of conversion.

Go to Preferences - Common Options - Look & Feel - Filter style information tab and check the colors box. Checking this box should remove should remove all color attributes during conversion.

During conversion check this box and ensure it is checked because reconverting books will use the previous settings unless told otherwise.

[Rowebo]

Thanks very much. I'll check that out from a workflow standpoint.

I say that because it occurred to me yesterday that I'd been trying too many options getting the basic conversion to work and was overlooking the obvious.

The workflow I came up with is as follows:

1. Select "print" on the web to get a clean copy;
2. Insert the result in word and then save it as an htm file from word;
3. Use Calibre to convert the htm file to mobi; and finally,
4. Transfer to the device (sideloading directly to the "documents" folder).

And therefore, the easy and obvious answer was to just select all of the text MS Word and then select black or auto from the font color options before saving as *htm.

That worked. But I can imagine that your way might work better in cases where you don't want to change everything, or that it might save a step. I'll try it.

Thanks very much for the help. Sometimes even silly questions (the solution I came to WAS rather obvious in hindsight) produce good results.

Great forum. Lots of views and a good answer very quickly. I'll be back when I get more time to dig into the Kindle and its various formats.

Thanks again.