best way to make EPUBs out of books that were turned into web pages

u238110 · 02-23-2015, 12:55 AM

These books have a hyperlinked table of contents, sometimes in the form of a frame off to the side; each chapter has its own separate web page. The issue is that sometimes they're formatted in special ways and I desire to remove such specialties. These specialties include elements such as centered and colored text. One thing I've done is simply copying and pasting the text into BlueGriffon HTML editor using the Paste without Formatting option, however the problem is that this also removes bolding and italicization. I've also tried to simply import the HTML files into Calibre editor, however the resulting book — although it appeared fine in Calibre — did not work.

DaleDe · 02-23-2015, 01:43 PM

If you look in the head section of the html do you see a style section? If so you can easily remove styling from your HTML by removing the entries you don't want. Otherwise you would need to edit the individual entries. You could pull the whole document into Sigil and use some search and replace techniques.

Dale

u238110 · 03-28-2015, 12:17 AM

I have no experience using HTML and I find the process of stripping away any unnecessary items to be very confusing. Do you think it's possible to learn to do it in a night? Are there any books or video tutorials anyone can recommend?

Toxaris · 03-28-2015, 04:44 AM

If you to want to do some higher level work, you will need to learn at least the basics of HTML/CSS. It will help you a lot in almost all stages. I would recommend at least to go through the tutorial on the wiki of Mobileread. That should give you some starting ground.

There is no tool for this, it will be manual labor. But, with some cleaver (RegEx) S&R you will speed up the process big time.

Notjohn · 03-30-2015, 12:03 PM

To add to what DaleDe said, there is a difference between style sheets (css) and in-line styles. If you are faced with the latter, as you seem to suggest (there being no need to fuss with the styles if you're simply replacing a style sheet), then it's basically a matter of using the Find/Replace function in Sigil to get rid of a long, involved paragraph style and to replace it with a simple <p> which will default to your basic paragraph style. Here is mine:

p {
margin-top:0.0em;
margin-bottom:0.0em;
text-indent:1.5em;
text-align:justify;
}

Which is to say: a simple, justified paragraph with a modestly indented first line and no extra space between paragraphs. You can see (and borrow, if you like) my style sheet at http://notjohnkdp.blogspot.com/

02-23-2015, 12:55 AM	#1
u238110 Connoisseur Posts: 91 Karma: 10 Join Date: Feb 2014 Location: Long Island, NY Device: Aura, N514KUBKKEP, 4.7.10.413	best way to make EPUBs out of books that were turned into web pages These books have a hyperlinked table of contents, sometimes in the form of a frame off to the side; each chapter has its own separate web page. The issue is that sometimes they're formatted in special ways and I desire to remove such specialties. These specialties include elements such as centered and colored text. One thing I've done is simply copying and pasting the text into BlueGriffon HTML editor using the Paste without Formatting option, however the problem is that this also removes bolding and italicization. I've also tried to simply import the HTML files into Calibre editor, however the resulting book — although it appeared fine in Calibre — did not work.

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02-23-2015, 01:43 PM	#2
DaleDe Grand Sorcerer Posts: 11,470 Karma: 13095790 Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Grass Valley, CA Device: EB 1150, EZ Reader, Literati, iPad 2 & Air 2, iPhone 7	If you look in the head section of the html do you see a style section? If so you can easily remove styling from your HTML by removing the entries you don't want. Otherwise you would need to edit the individual entries. You could pull the whole document into Sigil and use some search and replace techniques. Dale

03-28-2015, 12:17 AM	#3
u238110 Connoisseur Posts: 91 Karma: 10 Join Date: Feb 2014 Location: Long Island, NY Device: Aura, N514KUBKKEP, 4.7.10.413	I have no experience using HTML and I find the process of stripping away any unnecessary items to be very confusing. Do you think it's possible to learn to do it in a night? Are there any books or video tutorials anyone can recommend?

03-28-2015, 04:44 AM	#4
Toxaris Wizard Posts: 4,520 Karma: 121692313 Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: Heemskerk, NL Device: PRS-T1, Kobo Touch, Kobo Aura	If you to want to do some higher level work, you will need to learn at least the basics of HTML/CSS. It will help you a lot in almost all stages. I would recommend at least to go through the tutorial on the wiki of Mobileread. That should give you some starting ground. There is no tool for this, it will be manual labor. But, with some cleaver (RegEx) S&R you will speed up the process big time.

03-30-2015, 12:03 PM	#5
Notjohn mostly an observer Posts: 1,519 Karma: 987654 Join Date: Dec 2012 Device: Kindle	To add to what DaleDe said, there is a difference between style sheets (css) and in-line styles. If you are faced with the latter, as you seem to suggest (there being no need to fuss with the styles if you're simply replacing a style sheet), then it's basically a matter of using the Find/Replace function in Sigil to get rid of a long, involved paragraph style and to replace it with a simple <p> which will default to your basic paragraph style. Here is mine: p { margin-top:0.0em; margin-bottom:0.0em; text-indent:1.5em; text-align:justify; } Which is to say: a simple, justified paragraph with a modestly indented first line and no extra space between paragraphs. You can see (and borrow, if you like) my style sheet at http://notjohnkdp.blogspot.com/

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