Puncutuation Substitution Problem

MSJim · 12-18-2011, 11:45 PM

Some, not all, of the epub books I add to Calibre, with DRM stripped via plugin, have from one to three characters where the punctuation and accented characters should be. i.e. â€œ in place of “, Ã§ in place of ç, and Ã© in place of é. The text reads fine in Adobe, while still infected with DRM, but is not right after stripping DRM.

Any ideas on why this happens? Or, better still, how to prevent it from happening?

I can do a search and replace in Sigil to correct the problem. It's not too bad when only the quotes, apostrophies, ellipses, and dashes, are affected, but it's a major pain when a book has a lot of non-english words with accent marks.

ilovejedd · 12-18-2011, 11:54 PM

Doesn't sound like it's a Calibre problem...

theducks · 12-19-2011, 12:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MSJim

Some, not all, of the epub books I add to Calibre, with DRM stripped via plugin, have from one to three characters where the punctuation and accented characters should be. i.e. â€œ in place of “, Ã§ in place of ç, and Ã© in place of é. The text reads fine in Adobe, while still infected with DRM, but is not right after stripping DRM.

Any ideas on why this happens? Or, better still, how to prevent it from happening?

I can do a search and replace in Sigil to correct the problem. It's not too bad when only the quotes, apostrophies, ellipses, and dashes, are affected, but it's a major pain when a book has a lot of non-english words with accent marks.

Sounds like a wrong codepage is declared. If the book is being converted, ther is a conversion setting to force a code page. Experiment

HarryT · 12-19-2011, 07:03 AM

Yes, this is unquestionably a code page issue.

MSJim · 12-19-2011, 01:08 PM

Thanks for the inputs.

ilovejedd:
I realize this is most probably not a Calibre problem. I just didn't know where to post my question.

theducks:
Specifying utf-8 in Calibre's Input character encoding box fixed the problem during epub > epub conversion. That's a lot easier than search & replace.

While comparing two books, one with the character problem and one without, I couldn't find any differences. Both had utf-8 specified in the opf file, and neither specified a code page in the text.

I'm still curious, but not prepared to pursue it further since I have a workable solution.

Thanks again.

drjenkins · 12-19-2011, 01:20 PM

In your calibre conversion "Look and Feel" tab select "Transliterate unicode characters to ASCII", then convert from EPUB to EPUB.

MSJim · 12-19-2011, 08:29 PM

drjenkins:
Thanks for the suggestion, but I had tried that. It didn't work. Specifying utf-8 in the Input character encoding box does the trick though.
It would be nice if I could force the utf-8 code when adding the ebook rather than during conversion although it's not really any bother since I convert all my books anyway.

MSJim · 12-20-2011, 12:01 AM

oops!
I was too hasty and unrealistically optimistic. I just found a book the "Input character encoding" trick doesn't work on. So, I'm back to search and replace - unless someone has a better suggestion.

12-18-2011, 11:45 PM	#1
MSJim Bookworm Posts: 104 Karma: 26 Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: Central Georgia, USA Device: PRS-600, Nook STR	Puncutuation Substitution Problem Some, not all, of the epub books I add to Calibre, with DRM stripped via plugin, have from one to three characters where the punctuation and accented characters should be. i.e. â€œ in place of “, Ã§ in place of ç, and Ã© in place of é. The text reads fine in Adobe, while still infected with DRM, but is not right after stripping DRM. Any ideas on why this happens? Or, better still, how to prevent it from happening? I can do a search and replace in Sigil to correct the problem. It's not too bad when only the quotes, apostrophies, ellipses, and dashes, are affected, but it's a major pain when a book has a lot of non-english words with accent marks.

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12-18-2011, 11:54 PM	#2
ilovejedd hopeless n00b Posts: 5,110 Karma: 19597086 Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: in the middle of nowhere Device: PW4, PW3, Libra H2O, iPad 10.5, iPad 11, iPad 12.9	Doesn't sound like it's a Calibre problem...

12-19-2011, 07:03 AM	#4
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383043 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	Yes, this is unquestionably a code page issue.

12-19-2011, 01:08 PM	#5
MSJim Bookworm Posts: 104 Karma: 26 Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: Central Georgia, USA Device: PRS-600, Nook STR	Thanks for the inputs. ilovejedd: I realize this is most probably not a Calibre problem. I just didn't know where to post my question. theducks: Specifying utf-8 in Calibre's Input character encoding box fixed the problem during epub > epub conversion. That's a lot easier than search & replace. While comparing two books, one with the character problem and one without, I couldn't find any differences. Both had utf-8 specified in the opf file, and neither specified a code page in the text. I'm still curious, but not prepared to pursue it further since I have a workable solution. Thanks again.

12-19-2011, 01:20 PM	#6
drjenkins Addict Posts: 250 Karma: 1702156 Join Date: Nov 2010 Device: Kindle Voyage	In your calibre conversion "Look and Feel" tab select "Transliterate unicode characters to ASCII", then convert from EPUB to EPUB.

12-19-2011, 08:29 PM	#7
MSJim Bookworm Posts: 104 Karma: 26 Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: Central Georgia, USA Device: PRS-600, Nook STR	drjenkins: Thanks for the suggestion, but I had tried that. It didn't work. Specifying utf-8 in the Input character encoding box does the trick though. It would be nice if I could force the utf-8 code when adding the ebook rather than during conversion although it's not really any bother since I convert all my books anyway.

12-20-2011, 12:01 AM	#8
MSJim Bookworm Posts: 104 Karma: 26 Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: Central Georgia, USA Device: PRS-600, Nook STR	oops! I was too hasty and unrealistically optimistic. I just found a book the "Input character encoding" trick doesn't work on. So, I'm back to search and replace - unless someone has a better suggestion.

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