Dragon's Fury

tnronin · 02-26-2010, 01:20 PM

This is a book about WWIII, it has been released by the author online for all to download. I converted it from PDF format. I have not perused it yet in the final format. I liked it in pbook format.

edembowski · 02-26-2010, 01:43 PM

Generally speaking, I'd say that the conversion went well. There are always problems when converting from PDF, and this ePub does have some of them. Unfortunately, tools today only do so much. There are a few spots you'll need to edit to clean this up (if that's your goal). The things that stand out to me are the page numbers, "ê" characters, minor formatting issues and a table of contents. These things should tale an hour or so, and will make for a much better reading experience.

- Ed

tnronin · 02-26-2010, 01:50 PM

ya I noticed those. I don't quite know how to remove that stuff. I get more problems when I try to convert to .doc then epub. I need to work on it.

JSWolf · 02-26-2010, 01:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tnronin

This is a book about WWIII, it has been released by the author online for all to download. I converted it from PDF format. I have not perused it yet in the final format. I liked it in pbook format.

Have you compared the PDF to the ePub so you've removed all the errors in the conversion?

tnronin · 02-26-2010, 02:06 PM

See above

edembowski · 02-26-2010, 02:31 PM

You have a few options for editing the file. I'd say the easiest way is to use Sigil to open the ePub directly and edit there. You can also add TOC entries prety easily. There are other ways as well, such as using an editor like eCub, Adobe InDesign ($$) all the way to editing the HTML directly. Take a look in this forum, you'll find a few threads talking about the different ways of editing.

For this type of conversion, the automatic tools can't get you all the way there. I'd say start with Sigil and see how that suits you. It's free and pretty easy to use.

- Ed

tnronin · 02-26-2010, 02:36 PM

Thanks Ed.

charleski · 02-26-2010, 07:00 PM

While Calibre is useful for some purposes, I'm not a fan of its conversion system for anything other converting from another reflowable format which has already been properly edited. If you look a bit closer, there are lots of errors in the ePub, including some serious paragraphing mistakes (e.g the paragraph starting "In the mean time" in the section marked "Why Dragon's Fury?"), which are not, in this case, the fault of the PDF. It's also introduced totally spurious characters which do not appear in the text at all. I found the original PDF, and its paragraphs are all correctly tagged, so something in your conversion process messed up badly. With a little bit of effort you can certainly get something that is considerably better.

The best starting point is to export the PDF as html from Acrobat. This preserves as much information as possible. The next step is to deal with all the inline styles that are present (i.e. <SPAN style="font-size:9.9pt; font-weight:normal; color:#000000" >), so open it in a capable text editor (you can do this directly in Sigil, or use Notepad++ first) and use the replace function to change those to a named class, preferably one with a name that makes sense (e.g <SPAN class="dedication">), then define that class in the css at the top of the file. You often find that needless tags have been entered, and it's a good idea to strip those out too.

At this point you can define your class styles and decide how you want the body text to look, as well as the headings and any additional text styles. If you're working in Sigil, the next step is to check that the section and chapter headings are tagged consistently (<h1>, <h2> etc) and mark them as places to split the output file (in book view, set the cursor at the start of a chapter heading and click the 'insert chapter break' button).

Once your table of contents is correctly defined you're pretty much done. It's always a good idea to scan through the preview to check for any loose bits of text that haven't been styled correctly, then you can export an ePub to see what it looks like.

For the few times I've had to do this sort of conversion, I tend to use Word once the inline styles have be processed, as it's a bit slicker, then I use Atlantis Word Processor to output the ePub, but you can get a perfectly good result just using Sigil.

Guns4Hire · 02-28-2010, 01:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by edembowski

You have a few options for editing the file. I'd say the easiest way is to use Sigil to open the ePub directly and edit there. You can also add TOC entries prety easily. There are other ways as well, such as using an editor like eCub, Adobe InDesign ($$) all the way to editing the HTML directly. Take a look in this forum, you'll find a few threads talking about the different ways of editing.

For this type of conversion, the automatic tools can't get you all the way there. I'd say start with Sigil and see how that suits you. It's free and pretty easy to use.

- Ed

With a eBook the size of Dragons Fury (4000+ pages) Sigil is going to choke on that like Greg Norman. Ive already opened it up in Sigil and making any changes even small takes a very long time per change. 40+ seconds just to add a chapter break. Fixing a paragraph that has been broken (backspacing a sentence to reconnect it with the paragraph) takes over a minute. Its ugly lol. So I think at this point Sigil is a nogo, unless you do it in CODEVIEW which he would need to know HTML. Ive actually done a 2000+ page eBook manually (I don't know HTML either) with Sigil that was a conversion from PDF and that took forever. Basically this situation is the exact same thing only the eBook is even bigger. I wouldn't even try it and I am pretty hardheaded about bulldozing through this kind of thing so that an epub is edited and has a proper TOC. I really need to learn HTML it would make things way easier for me. But no time for that kind of thing right now.

But from what Ive read Sigil 0.2.0 is supposed to be dramatically altered and should have no problem making the changes in a timely manner (supposed to be way faster) in manual mode. So my suggestion is just wait for Sigil 0.2.0 which should be coming out soon (couple weeks maybe).

Valloric · 02-28-2010, 09:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Guns4Hire

So my suggestion is just wait for Sigil 0.2.0 which should be coming out soon (couple weeks maybe).

Couple of days actually (for the first beta), if things go as expected.

Guns4Hire · 02-28-2010, 12:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Valloric

Couple of days actually (for the first beta), if things go as expected.

Very nice. I knew it was soon but didn't want to post something seeming too early in case you got pushed out farther.

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02-26-2010, 01:43 PM	#2
edembowski Zealot Posts: 138 Karma: 372 Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: New York, NY Device: Sony PRS-600, Nook Color, iPad	Generally speaking, I'd say that the conversion went well. There are always problems when converting from PDF, and this ePub does have some of them. Unfortunately, tools today only do so much. There are a few spots you'll need to edit to clean this up (if that's your goal). The things that stand out to me are the page numbers, "ê" characters, minor formatting issues and a table of contents. These things should tale an hour or so, and will make for a much better reading experience. - Ed

02-26-2010, 01:50 PM	#3
tnronin Zealot Posts: 118 Karma: 210 Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: Mid-Tennessee Device: PRS-300	ya I noticed those. I don't quite know how to remove that stuff. I get more problems when I try to convert to .doc then epub. I need to work on it.

02-26-2010, 02:06 PM	#5
tnronin Zealot Posts: 118 Karma: 210 Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: Mid-Tennessee Device: PRS-300	See above

02-26-2010, 02:31 PM	#6
edembowski Zealot Posts: 138 Karma: 372 Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: New York, NY Device: Sony PRS-600, Nook Color, iPad	You have a few options for editing the file. I'd say the easiest way is to use Sigil to open the ePub directly and edit there. You can also add TOC entries prety easily. There are other ways as well, such as using an editor like eCub, Adobe InDesign ($$) all the way to editing the HTML directly. Take a look in this forum, you'll find a few threads talking about the different ways of editing. For this type of conversion, the automatic tools can't get you all the way there. I'd say start with Sigil and see how that suits you. It's free and pretty easy to use. - Ed

02-26-2010, 02:36 PM	#7
tnronin Zealot Posts: 118 Karma: 210 Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: Mid-Tennessee Device: PRS-300	Thanks Ed.

02-26-2010, 07:00 PM	#8
charleski Wizard Posts: 1,196 Karma: 1281258 Join Date: Sep 2009 Device: PRS-505	While Calibre is useful for some purposes, I'm not a fan of its conversion system for anything other converting from another reflowable format which has already been properly edited. If you look a bit closer, there are lots of errors in the ePub, including some serious paragraphing mistakes (e.g the paragraph starting "In the mean time" in the section marked "Why Dragon's Fury?"), which are not, in this case, the fault of the PDF. It's also introduced totally spurious characters which do not appear in the text at all. I found the original PDF, and its paragraphs are all correctly tagged, so something in your conversion process messed up badly. With a little bit of effort you can certainly get something that is considerably better. The best starting point is to export the PDF as html from Acrobat. This preserves as much information as possible. The next step is to deal with all the inline styles that are present (i.e. <SPAN style="font-size:9.9pt; font-weight:normal; color:#000000" >), so open it in a capable text editor (you can do this directly in Sigil, or use Notepad++ first) and use the replace function to change those to a named class, preferably one with a name that makes sense (e.g <SPAN class="dedication">), then define that class in the css at the top of the file. You often find that needless tags have been entered, and it's a good idea to strip those out too. At this point you can define your class styles and decide how you want the body text to look, as well as the headings and any additional text styles. If you're working in Sigil, the next step is to check that the section and chapter headings are tagged consistently (<h1>, <h2> etc) and mark them as places to split the output file (in book view, set the cursor at the start of a chapter heading and click the 'insert chapter break' button). Once your table of contents is correctly defined you're pretty much done. It's always a good idea to scan through the preview to check for any loose bits of text that haven't been styled correctly, then you can export an ePub to see what it looks like. For the few times I've had to do this sort of conversion, I tend to use Word once the inline styles have be processed, as it's a bit slicker, then I use Atlantis Word Processor to output the ePub, but you can get a perfectly good result just using Sigil.