htmldoc settings

[big_stan]

There is a Windows binary of htmldoc available, the one I downloaded was at:

http://users.tpg.com.au/naffall/htmldoc.html

The actual website (which contains the documentation and source, but no binaries) is at:

http://www.htmldoc.org/

I've been playing with it for a couple of hours, and the pdf's I've created look excellent on the reader (very readable).

So far I'm using the following settings, I'm grouping the settings as you would see them in the graphical version of HTMLDOC, everything not mentioned I left at the default:

Output Tab
-Output Options: Greyscale

Page Tab
Page Size: 5.24x6.69in
Margins (for Top/Left/Right/Bottom): 1mm

Fonts
Base Font Size: 16.0
Line Spacing: 1.0
Body Typeface: Helvetica
Heading Typeface: Helvetica
Options: Deselected Embed Fonts (this way it will used the fonts built in to the reader)

PDF
PDF Version: 1.4
Page Mode: Document
Page Layout: Single

Options
Browser Width: 800 (I actually used 600 for a bunch of the sites that I've converted but, some sites don't seem to work with anything smaller than 800).

Once you get all of the settings in there (and setup it up to convert a webpage). You can save the config file. It saves in a .book format.

Once I did that, I setup a simple batch file to convert pdf's for a couple of websites that I like to read. Of course you could just use the graphical tool (hit the generate button), but I'm probably going to be converting a bunch of sites every morning, so using the graphical tool would be a bit tedious.

You can use the following command in a batch file:

htmldoc.exe --quiet --batch YourBookNameHere.book -f Whatever.pdf

All in all I'm very impressed at the quality of the resulting PDF's. They look excellent on the Sony Reader.

[ojleblanc]

Here are the results of my having used BookDesigner and the Verdana font (size 18) with 2" margins all around to format "Wuthering Heights" for the Sony Reader.

[doctorow]

Good tutorial!

I noticed that the spacing for some letters is slightly wrong, though. For instance,

neighbo ur
remo ved
di vide
the ir
shelte red

etc.

[FangornUK]

I've been testing htmldoc for my ebook conversion needs for the Sony Reader. Most books I convert are from Gutenberg which these days tend to use a lot of CSS (and nice pretty pictures ), unfortunately htmldoc has limited support in the latest v1.9 for CSS - unless I haven't configured it properly. They still convert well but much of the formatting like centring is missing.

Apart from that it works great on all other HTML content and text based Gutenberg ebooks convert great after processed through GutenMark

I can't find v1.9 binaries so compiled it using Cygwin.

[ojleblanc]

Originally Posted by doctorow

I noticed that the spacing for some letters is slightly wrong, though. For instance,

neighbo ur
remo ved
di vide
the ir
shelte red

etc.

Yes, I noticed that too. BookDesigner is really easy, but I wonder if this is one drawback. I'll have to try other texts to see.