Mobiperl Mobiperl - Perl tools for handling MobiPocket files

[ppxnouse]

Hello tompe,

I did create myself a small tool to download and parse/reformat books from the German Project Gutenberg. I write all content into a single HTML and create a "TOC" at the top of the page with inter page links.

When I convert this page using the Mobipocket Reader, The "TOC" works. When I use html2mobi, the links do not work. I do not want to split all into different pages if not necessary. Any other way to make a TOC with HTML2MOBI ? (I am sure it got written somewhere already - I just can not find it).

Thank you

[tompe]

Originally Posted by ppxnouse

When I convert this page using the Mobipocket Reader, The "TOC" works. When I use html2mobi, the links do not work. I do not want to split all into different pages if not necessary. Any other way to make a TOC with HTML2MOBI ? (I am sure it got written somewhere already - I just can not find it).

This should work. Could you send me a test file (email: tpe@ida.liu.se).

[kovidgoyal]

@tompe
Would you mind improving you mobi2html utility a little so I can write mobi2lrf

1) Allow passing of absolute paths to mobi2html for the .mobi file
2) Post process the generated HTML to remove mobipocket specific tags and attributes. For e.g. <mbpage-break/> -> <br style="page-break-after:always/> and so on

[tompe]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

@tompe
Would you mind improving you mobi2html utility a little so I can write mobi2lrf

1) Allow passing of absolute paths to mobi2html for the .mobi file
2) Post process the generated HTML to remove mobipocket specific tags and attributes. For e.g. <mbpage-break/> -> <br style="page-break-after:always/> and so on

Sound like reasonable things to do. I have put them on the top of the todo list so it will probably be done soon. But I just got my N810 today so I am kind of busy playing with it...

[kovidgoyal]

Thanks, 'preciate it. Enjoy your N800

[darkninja]

Check out Igor Skochinsky's blog!

At the bottom of the comments, there's a very interesting Python program.

It lets you use the same mobipocket .PRC file on multiple devices, even if it was previously locked to a specific device.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

@tompe
Would you mind improving you mobi2html utility a little so I can write mobi2lrf

1) Allow passing of absolute paths to mobi2html for the .mobi file
2) Post process the generated HTML to remove mobipocket specific tags and attributes. For e.g. <mbpage-break/> -> <br style="page-break-after:always/> and so on

There is a new version 0.0.27 (no Windows binaries for this version).

1) Fixed.

2) I removed some of the tags and the attribute you mentioned. But I did not find a list of Mobipocket specific attributes. And can't you just ignore attributes you do not recognize?

Let me know if some more changes should be done to the html file. And a test file is always good to have when fixing these kind of things.

[kovidgoyal]

Thanks.

Here's the list of custom tags
http://www.mobipocket.com/dev/articl...agref_mobi.xml
Most of them seem to be pretty useless.

Yeah I can ignore unknown tags and attributes, but at least for the few that contain useful information, it's good to convert them.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Thanks.

Here's the list of custom tags
http://www.mobipocket.com/dev/articl...agref_mobi.xml
Most of them seem to be pretty useless.

Yeah I can ignore unknown tags and attributes, but at least for the few that contain useful information, it's good to convert them.

Now I just removed them but I will try to convert them to something useful. But that probably have to be an ongoing activity. When I have an example that gets better with conversion I will add it.

[nrapallo]

Hi, tompe!

I have recently been converting .prc (mobipocket) files into .IMP format using your 'mobi2html' and my own perl script. Especially .prc with color illustrations and images.

I too have had to filter/change (I'm not complaining here) mobi specific tags, in particular:

1. My text editor opens the resulting .html as one-line (and word-wrapped). As a result, I like to replace '/div>' with '/div>\n' to get some line-breaks for visual purposes. Makes some things 'line-up' vertically to aid in error-correcting.

2. '<mbp: pagebreak' with '<p style="page-break-before:always' to avoid format-specific tags.

For personal reasons/preferences, I also change:

3. '<body' with '<body style="margin-left:2%; margin-right:2%; text-align:justify' to allow small margins and justified text. For those that do not want this, then it would be easy to change as this would appear in only one place, at the beginning of the file.

4. '<img align="baseline"' with '<img' as the eBook Publisher software I use strangely positions ALL images on the first page with the baseline keyword there.

Please note that to ensure the maximum conversion, I often leave out a leading '<' or trailing '>' as seen above. These replacements above work better by doing this.

By the way, would it be easy to incorporate my 'html2imp.pl' perl script within your 'Mobiperl' so that you can also produce .IMP format ebooks? You could call it 'mobi2imp'. Sorry, but I don't mean to lengthen your to-do list too much.

-Nick

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by nrapallo

1. My text editor opens the resulting .html as one-line (and word-wrapped).

-Nick

What text editor do you use? Sounds like a Windows (CRLF) vs *nix (LF) EOL char issue.
______
Dennis

[tompe]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

What text editor do you use? Sounds like a Windows (CRLF) vs *nix (LF) EOL char issue.

No, the HTML file is actually just one line. When you generate the HTML from a tree there is no natural places to put end of line so therefore I had not added any newlines. But now I added the suggestion to place a newline after /div>.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by nrapallo

By the way, would it be easy to incorporate my 'html2imp.pl' perl script within your 'Mobiperl' so that you can also produce .IMP format ebooks? You could call it 'mobi2imp'. Sorry, but I don't mean to lengthen your to-do list too much.

Probably. If you give me the script I will look at it.

[tompe]

Verson 0.0.28 is available at

http://www.ida.liu.se/~tompe/mobiperl/

No Windows binaries for this version. I will do a binary version when more important things have changed or when somebody need the Window binaries.

Changes in 0.0.28:

• Fixed the substituion of mbppagebreak that was done wrongly
• Added a newline after /dev> in mobi2html
• Fixed bug in MobiFile pointed out by Gary Tsang. The cover offset was set to 0 when no cover was available and that made the Kindle reader crash.
  
• Fixed html2mobi so that file name is used as title in generated toc if no title tag is available.

Changes in 0.0.27:

• mobi2html now works with the mobi file specified with a full path
  
• MobiPocket specific html removed in mobi2html. --mobihtml to keep it.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by tompe

Verson 0.0.28 is available at

http://www.ida.liu.se/~tompe/mobiperl/

No Windows binaries for this version. I will do a binary version when more important things have changed or when somebody need the Window binaries.

Changes in 0.0.28:

• Fixed the substituion of mbppagebreak that was done wrongly
• Added a newline after /dev> in mobi2html
• Fixed bug in MobiFile pointed out by Gary Tsang. The cover offset was set to 0 when no cover was available and that made the Kindle reader crash.
  
• Fixed html2mobi so that file name is used as title in generated toc if no title tag is available.

Changes in 0.0.27:

• mobi2html now works with the mobi file specified with a full path
  
• MobiPocket specific html removed in mobi2html. --mobihtml to keep it.

Yes, I do need a new Windows binary. I do use html2mobi. So please come up with a new Windows edition for those of us using Windows. It isn't fair that Windows users get stuck with 2 versions behind.