ePub to Mobi conversion strips accented characters and replaces with unaccented ones

[mickblu]

Hi, I acquired a book containing Serbo-Croatian characters in epub format. Looking at it in the Calibre viewer(as an epub) all the accented characters appear correctly. Once I convert the document to mobi (using Calibre) the accented characters are only shown as the unaccented base character (e.g. ŝ becomes a plain s, Č becomes C etc.).

After reading the forums, I downloaded the 'KindleAllCodes' file as a mobi from here, uploaded it to my Kindle, and lo and behold, all the characters are displayed correctly. So I know the Kindle is capable of displaying the characters correctly. I also know the file is correctly encoded because I can see the characters in the epub.

My assumption is that somehow the conversion process is stripping the accents from the characters.

Does anyone know what I need to do to make the conversion work?

TIA,

Michael

[kovidgoyal]

Turn off the (default off) transliterate unicode characters option in the look & feel section of the conversion dialog

[mickblu]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Turn off the (default off) transliterate unicode characters option in the look & feel section of the conversion dialog

Thank you! Strangely enough I went to Preferences | Conversion | Common Options | Look and Feel and did what you suggested and then re-converted the book (having deleted the mobi first) to no avail. The end result was no different than before. I then clicked on the 'Restore defaults' button in that Preference pane and tried the process again. This time I got the ? instead of the accented character.

In desperation I navigated to the Look and Feel section of the conversion dialogue for that specific file and strangely enough, even though I had set the default in the Preferences, here they were set to the transliterate mode, so I unchecked that and voila! it worked!

Thanks you for pointing me in the right direction, but I am still puzzled by the fact that although the general preference is set one way, the individual conversion is set a different way for preferences.

Bottom line is that it worked!

[theducks]

Originally Posted by mickblu

Thank you! Strangely enough I went to Preferences | Conversion | Common Options | Look and Feel and did what you suggested and then re-converted the book (having deleted the mobi first) to no avail. The end result was no different than before. I then clicked on the 'Restore defaults' button in that Preference pane and tried the process again. This time I got the ? instead of the accented character.

In desperation I navigated to the Look and Feel section of the conversion dialogue for that specific file and strangely enough, even though I had set the default in the Preferences, here they were set to the transliterate mode, so I unchecked that and voila! it worked!

Thanks you for pointing me in the right direction, but I am still puzzled by the fact that although the general preference is set one way, the individual conversion is set a different way for preferences.

Bottom line is that it worked!

Once converted, the settings are THEN stored with the books metadata.
In the conversion Dialog, Use the Restore defaults tick/button to cause the previous usage setting to be forgotten (rereads the current Preference)

[eschwartz]

That is because the Preferences sets a default value, which can be overridden per-book record.

In the future:
Try selecting all (affected) books, clicking Edit Metadata, and checking "Remove stored conversion settings for the selected books".

[mickblu]

Originally Posted by theducks

Once converted, the settings are THEN stored with the books metadata.
In the conversion Dialog, Use the Restore defaults tick/button to cause the previous usage setting to be forgotten (rereads the current Preference)

Thank you! That makes eminent sense.

[mickblu]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

That is because the Preferences sets a default value, which can be overridden per-book record.

In the future:
Try selecting all (affected) books, clicking Edit Metadata, and checking "Remove stored conversion settings for the selected books".

That answer addressed the other half of my (unanswered) question, namely how does one ensure the settings chosen in Preferences are applied to all books. Whew... so much capability, so little known (by me!).

Thanks!

[mickblu]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Turn off the (default off) transliterate unicode characters option in the look & feel section of the conversion dialog

Thanks Kovid, not only for the very quick reply, but for a superb piece of software which does so much more than one can ever imagine!

[eschwartz]

Happy to help.