Converting from epub to pdf results in dollarsigns - Page 2

jhowell · 09-09-2020, 09:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by paperbackebook

What I notice is that every word in the book has a seperate span tag with absolute positioning. Is this accepted as normal in the ebook world? It looks ridiculous to me.

That is a fixed-layout EPUB, which is basically an alternative to PDF. They are not well supported by e-book reading software, including calibre.

retiredbiker · 09-09-2020, 10:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by paperbackebook

What I notice is that every word in the book has a seperate span tag with absolute positioning. Is this accepted as normal in the ebook world? It looks ridiculous to me.

When I look at those positions in the span tag I see high numbers pixels. Example:
style="position:absolute;top:6113.53px;left:4640px ;letter-spacing:-1.29px;"

That's a fixed format book; Calibre has no support for those. Nasty beasties. Actually its amazing it converted at all. Editing out all that positioning is the way to go, if you can.

paperbackebook · 09-09-2020, 12:25 PM

Yeah nasty indeed

Who ever came up with this ...

I suppose editing all those positionings out will probably end up giving other issues with the layout.
Not sure though and would like to fiddle further with it but I don't have that amount of time to spend how I can remove all that stuff properly.

However I did find another method which is scriptable (although output quality will be a bit lower. Putting it here for if someone ever needs it.
- extract the epub
- with chrome headless mode and screenshot feature open the file and write to a png (on the commandline; firefox started hanging so has to be chrome)
- print all the PNGs

I think for now that's the "easiest" and most scaling workaround.

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09-09-2020, 12:25 PM	#18
paperbackebook Member Posts: 11 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2020 Device: none	Yeah nasty indeed Who ever came up with this ... I suppose editing all those positionings out will probably end up giving other issues with the layout. Not sure though and would like to fiddle further with it but I don't have that amount of time to spend how I can remove all that stuff properly. However I did find another method which is scriptable (although output quality will be a bit lower. Putting it here for if someone ever needs it. - extract the epub - with chrome headless mode and screenshot feature open the file and write to a png (on the commandline; firefox started hanging so has to be chrome) - print all the PNGs I think for now that's the "easiest" and most scaling workaround.

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