Preserving Formatting through conversion?

[AJ Starr]

Originally Posted by Ham88

There may be a thread on this already but I couldn't find one, so here it is. I have downloaded a book that is only available in PDF, so far as I could find anyway. So I went and converted it to epub through calibre. The formatting is entirely messed up, for example all of the words with two l's in it have lost one of them (call is now cal), and all of the dialog between characters has just become one paragraph. So basically my question is there a way to preserve the formatting through conversion without having to go through the file manually and fix it?

I assume that since you have converted it, that this PDF is not DRM'd. One thing that I use that I've not seen anywhere on these threads is my word processor, Word Perfect, reads PDF's into it's format. I know you didn't want to go through file manipulation, but my experience has Word Perfect converting the file excellently. Though I've only done chapter by chapter pdfs. Then it shouldn't be too hard to go back through Caliber.

AJ

[MerLock]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Calibre is an excellent program, but PDF conversion is not one of its strengths. Try "Book Designer" - it converts PDFs as well as anything I've come across.

Unfortunately, however, PDF files sometimes simply cannot be converted well. A PDF files does not contain "text" - it has no paragraphs, lines, words, etc; just drawing instructions for individual letters. As such, it is extraordinarily difficult to convert.

I used BD to convert some PDF's I have and it seems to be doing a fairly good job. However, the only thing it is doing poorly is maintaining italics and bold type face. Am I missing a setting or can this just not be done?