Annoying breaks in some pages

[swingtime]

Don't know if this is the correct section to discuss this problem (please let me know if I should take it to another section)

Upon reading ebooks I have downloaded from various sites to my kindle touch via Calibre, I've noticed that every few pages, the title, or the authors name and/or a number (not chapter) comes in at the middle of the page. Its very annoying and interrupts the flow of the page completely. Is there any way I can fix this before I download from Calibre. Its not every page but too often for comfort.

Thanks for any info on this.

GS

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by swingtime

Don't know if this is the correct section to discuss this problem (please let me know if I should take it to another section)

Upon reading ebooks I have downloaded from various sites to my kindle touch via Calibre, I've noticed that every few pages, the title, or the authors name and/or a number (not chapter) comes in at the middle of the page. Its very annoying and interrupts the flow of the page completely. Is there any way I can fix this before I download from Calibre. Its not every page but too often for comfort.

Thanks for any info on this.

GS

That's because whoever performed the conversion (perhaps it was you, using Calibre???), didn't know enough to remove the page headers from the source document, so they are still there, interrupting the flow. "Real" ebooks don't have those page headers in the actual text; they're removed by professional bookmakers. This happens most often with PDF's, and with books converted from scans of books in text.

If you are doing the pseudo-conversion, you should inquire at the Calibre forum for the best way to remove the page headers prior to converting the book to Mobi for your K-Touch. If someone else is doing it, tell them it needs to be fixed.

Hitch

[Dr. Drib]

Moved to an appropriate forum.

(The previous forum - General Discussion - is "...about e-book reading not specific to a device, software or format.")



Don
(Moderator)

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by swingtime

....ebooks I have downloaded from various sites...

that's what happens when you use illicit sites. if you actually buy your books from legal sites, the problem will go away.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by cybmole

that's what happens when you use illicit sites. if you actually buy your books from legal sites, the problem will go away.

Yes, when you actually BUY the book, you tend to get a product someone actually worked on to make it look good. (not always, but usually.)

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by swingtime

Don't know if this is the correct section to discuss this problem (please let me know if I should take it to another section)

Upon reading ebooks I have downloaded from various sites to my kindle touch via Calibre, I've noticed that every few pages, the title, or the authors name and/or a number (not chapter) comes in at the middle of the page. Its very annoying and interrupts the flow of the page completely. Is there any way I can fix this before I download from Calibre. Its not every page but too often for comfort...

Rather than making accusations having the the smell of tar and feathering, they being based on assumptions of which the accusers are certain of but which may be false, I will try and give an answer .

It looks to me that the books that you have this trouble with are likely PDFs or otherwise scanned books that have been converted for Kindle. You can test this to see if this is the effect by downloading the Kindle versions of a few books from www.archive.org most of which are scanned (and for the interest of the tar and featherers, are believed by the reputable archive.org to not be in copyright).

If this is the cause then apart from editing and rebuilding the ebook with a tool such as Sigil (for which you would have to convert the book to epub first), usually a painful job not worth the trouble unless it is a particularly wanted book and not otherwise available, I don't think there is any other answer.

[BeeTee-Ess]

Hello @swingtime...

I think @AnotherCat is correct, and those annoying headers and footers which are an inherent part of PDF files, and thus of files which have been converted from the PDF format, are not going to go away by themselves.

However, all is not lost. Kovid (the developer of Calibre) has just added a new feature to the latest release of Calibre, called Edit Book. If you have learned your way about Calibre, you can add Edit Book to one of its menus, and start cleaning up your books to suit yourself.

Enjoy!

[swingtime]

@Eschwartz & Cybmole - consider me tar and feathered! actually the few the books I have obtained this way (all of 3) were all old out of print books and unavailable to buy which I was able to find in PDF format, but hey its so much more fun to succumb to the tar & feather impulse than to be polite!

[swingtime]

@AnotherCat & BeeTee-Ess, Thank you so much for your most helpful responses, I have indeed acquired Calibre's latest release and the needed edit book function.

Thanks again,

GS

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by swingtime

@AnotherCat & BeeTee-Ess, Thank you so much for your most helpful responses, I have indeed acquired Calibre's latest release and the needed edit book function.

Glad it's worked out. With the latest release of Calibre and its lastest improvements to Edit Book, I have also now swapped to Edit Book from Sigil.

Regarding the "tar and feathering", at least one of the protagonists is just a kid barely out of teenagerhood, so is perhaps still unknowingly inclined to exhibit the self interested exuberance of the "me me me" generation; so easily just smiled tolerantly at by those of greater maturity .

[cybmole]

well I'm a tad older than that!

& just nitpicking here but AFAIk there is no legal way to acquire an e-book version of even an out-of-print copy unless you actually own it & scan it yourself. I have no moral objection to acquiring such things myself, just saying...

But the site as a whole has a somewhat inconsistent attitude to these issues - there are some very useful tools out there that cannot be named, only alluded to, [ or get banned] yet it's OK to chat about how to rip the headers/ footers or the "converted by trial version of " embedded messages from books from dodgy sources; just saying is all...

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by cybmole

well I'm a tad older than that!

& just nitpicking here but AFAIk there is no legal way to acquire an e-book version of even an out-of-print copy unless you actually own it & scan it yourself. I have no moral objection to acquiring such things myself, just saying...

But the site as a whole has a somewhat inconsistent attitude to these issues - there are some very useful tools out there that cannot be named, only alluded to, [ or get banned] yet it's OK to chat about how to rip the headers/ footers or the "converted by trial version of " embedded messages from books from dodgy sources; just saying is all...

I think AnotherCat meant me.

...

I apologize; if the book is not available as an ebook, and you own the pbook yourself, then of course you are allowed to do it, morally if not legally. I shouldn't've leapt to a conclusion.

Although if the book was available as an ebook, there's a good chance the legal copy would look much better.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by cybmole

well I'm a tad older than that!

& just nitpicking here but AFAIk there is no legal way to acquire an e-book version of even an out-of-print copy unless you actually own it & scan it yourself. I have no moral objection to acquiring such things myself, just saying...

But the site as a whole has a somewhat inconsistent attitude to these issues - there are some very useful tools out there that cannot be named, only alluded to, [ or get banned] yet it's OK to chat about how to rip the headers/ footers or the "converted by trial version of " embedded messages from books from dodgy sources; just saying is all...

It is not unlawful to remove advertising inserted by Trial Software .

The 2 issues are not mutually inclusive.

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I think AnotherCat meant me...

It now looks like I did too... But though you have now been outed I trust there are no hard feelings, as in my opinion you also post a lot of useful stuff as well.

@cybmole

It is in my view incorrect to think that "there is no legal way to acquire an e-book version of even an out-of-print copy unless you actually own it & scan it yourself" as it depends on the circumstances, including on where you are (I know you said that was an "AFAIK" so were likely leaving the question as being open rather than making a claim it was so).

First, I would not make the assumption that all "out of print" paper books are still in copyright. Of course, it may be that a particular book is, or it may be that it is not.

Furthermore, the rights of the copyright holder of works, whether in print or not, differ by country, those rights varying from very protectionist (into which group the USA would likely fall; but even so it states explicit tests for establishing "fair use" in the US Code and which do not prohibit copying for others), through the more liberal (the interpretation of the legislation by courts in my own country indicate that they think that the public has liberal rights of access to works of art, even if in copyright), to the "anything goes" where the holder has no rights at all.

In the end the real possibility of getting the permission of the rights holder of an "out of print" or any other book to copy, even for others, also exists and that even if you have to borrow someone elses book to copy.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by AnotherCat

It now looks like I did too... But though you have now been outed I trust there are no hard feelings, as in my opinion you also post a lot of useful stuff as well.

It's all right. And I was assuming you were saying that based on several posts I've made in reference to school.