Repeated Conversion

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

@Kay Hemlock Brown - see post #3, it addresses your substantive issue.

BR

For the third and the final time.

BR

[Kay Hemlock Brown]

Originally Posted by theducks

OK New conversions use Preferences: <conversion section>

These are the DEFAULTS for first time (per book) conversion.
( you can click the button near the bottom of the conversion dialog, to cause it to forget previous settings)

EPUB Merge (PI) would be a possibility to merge books (your sections) into a whole

Well, that totally worked! I should have known that it was something to do with defaults <smacks forehead> so obvious, in retrospect. Honestly, I really wanted to change my defaults, because obviously, they are then ones I use all the time, for any pieces I write!

Thank you duckies; I guess it is an art to detect exactly what a newbie wants. Or even an oldbie, who has been using the system clumsily for five years...

[Kay Hemlock Brown]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

When you save and close the DOCX in Word, you can do the conversion using the settings you've set in Preferences as explained by theducks.
BR

Well, I will try this; these are large files, and I'm reluctant to open Word in a chain of applications, though I'm sure nothing can hurt either Word or Calibre!

That's all that was preventing me from pursuing this line of solution. I wasn't really complaining about the number of versions of the piece that were floating around, though they are certainly annoying. If editing them from within Calibre obviates the need for deleting earlier versions (and, incidentally merging them), then this method is really worth a try. Unfortunately---and I do not understand this---Smashwords uses the ".doc" file, while Calibre uses the ".docx" file, which means I have to edit the latter, and convert to .doc when I'm finished, so it isn't quite as simple as I would like it.

I apologize for appearing to neglect your advice.

K

[BetterRed]

@Kay - I open DOCXs in Word from within calibre most days of the week, and I've been doing so ever since Kovid released the DOCX Input module in calibre version 2.something. I often have more than one DOCX open, books as big as, and including, Tolstoi's War and Peace.

Calibre supports .DOCX because it's predecessor .DOC, which was never supported natively in calibre, was a proprietary mess. DOCX is an implementation of the ISO Office Open XML standard, which is also supported by other applications such as Libre Office Writer, Abbyy Fine Reader etc.

I am surprised to hear Smashwords only supports .DOC, what have they been doing in the years since 2007! You might want to check that. Good Lord, I just looked them up on WikiP - they didn't even exist in 2007

BR

[Kay Hemlock Brown]

@BetterRed:

OK, let me get this straight; Suppose I import a word document, xyz.docx, into Calibre, convert xyz.docx into xyz.epub from within Calibre, and subsequently find mistakes in xyz. If I were to edit xyz.docx from within Calibre (I wonder whether, once I finish, I will have to save it so some temporary memory alias for where the xyz.docx lives in the Calibreverse...) and then convert it once again, from inside Calibre, it will directly update my existing xyz.epub, without creating redundant files?

I will re-read your initial post, now that I have straightened out the concepts in my head, to see whether I have misunderstood your solution.

Kay

[Kay Hemlock Brown]

Oh gosh; I posted a "Quick Reply", which shows up as a blank post. I'm going to do this the long way; if you get to copies of essentially the message that comes next, I apologize.

Kay

[Kay Hemlock Brown]

@BetterRed
OK, let me get this straight.

I might be adducing (if that's the word I want) more from your post than you intended.

Suppose I import into Calibre a book called xyz.docx. Then I convert it, from inside Calibre, into xyz.epub. But I notice mistakes in xyz.epub. So I edit xyz.docx from inside Calibre, after which Word will allow me to save the corrected file to the default location (probably someplace in a Temp folder under Windows), after which I exit Word, back into Calibre, convert the new xyz.docx, and the new xyz.epub will overwrite the old one. Is this right, or am I barking up the wrong tree?

Kay

[deback]

Convert the first version of your book in Calibre. Then, continue to edit that version using Calibre's Edit Book, rather than continuing to edit the same book in Word. This way, you will have only one version of your book.

You can add an icon to your main menu called Open Containing Folder (for the book you're working on). You can do this by hitting CTRL-P to open Preferences (from the main screen in Calibre). Under Interface, open Toolbars and Menus, and choose Main Menu. Follow the instructions from there to include the Open Containing Folder to your Main Menu. Then you can quickly access the current version of your book in Calibre.

You can use Google to search for CSS Tutorial. Learning CSS is easy and will be very helpful to you to include your styles in the stylesheet.css file.

[theducks]

IF you use the open containing folder ('O') method to change, the file name name must be EXACT what it was or sad things will happen.

BUT
Open the MDE and drop the 'update' version into the Formats. That takes care of any name differences (Any dropped format REPLACES the format of the same type)

Any conversion settings that were used for a conversion, are stored with the books data in Calibre (allow overriding Preferences: defaults)

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Kay Hemlock Brown

@BetterRed
OK, let me get this straight.

I might be adducing (if that's the word I want) more from your post than you intended.

Suppose I import into Calibre a book called xyz.docx. Then I convert it, from inside Calibre, into xyz.epub. But I notice mistakes in xyz.epub. So I edit xyz.docx from inside Calibre, after which Word will allow me to save the corrected file to the default location (probably someplace in a Temp folder under Windows), after which I exit Word, back into Calibre, convert the new xyz.docx, and the new xyz.epub will overwrite the old one. Is this right, or am I barking up the wrong tree?

Kay

You're over thinking it, lets try some pictures. N.B. I use keyboard shortcuts to do most things.

First we add the DOCX to the library - note that the title and author are extracted from the DOCX properties (Info).



Now you can Convert it by pressing 'C,


I use the View specific format option, its standard shortcut is Alt+V, as you can see we have two formats: DOCX and EPUB


To open the DOCX in Word, with the DOCX selected, I press Enter


I make my changes in Word and then Save and Close - for me that's Ctrl+S, Ctrl+W - NB I have customised Word a lot and I have add ons, so I'm not sure if they are the standard shortcuts.

Then I switch back to calibre and press 'C' again.

BR