Hacks Beta Testers: Kindle Visual Guide [KindlePID]

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by daffy4u

I'll take it out. I really didn't mean to make a dig (or did I ). It was a way of explaining why the Mac section was broken into 2 parts.

It's not a problem. It is actually a true statement. I was also wondering if there needed to be a separate page for the Mac on how to run the mobiperl scripts. Since once you get it running on both platforms the commands are pretty much the same, except you would really use singlequotes on the Mac rather than double quotes to surround parameters with spaces. You can use single quotes on windows too.

If not the main difference will just be the screen captures. We don't have to do it this way, just an idea. Yea.. and a little lazyness on my part.

BOb

[daffy4u]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

It's not a problem. It is actually a true statement. I was also wondering if there needed to be a separate page for the Mac on how to run the mobiperl scripts. Since once you get it running on both platforms the commands are pretty much the same, except you would really use singlequotes on the Mac rather than double quotes to surround parameters with spaces. You can use single quotes on windows too.

If not the main difference will just be the screen captures. We don't have to do it this way, just an idea. Yea.. and a little lazyness on my part.

BOb

If you want to go to one page, just add the mobi2mobi commands and images then we can move the whole thing to Kindle Mobi2Mobi Mac page. It's up to you. You are the Mac King!

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by daffy4u

If you want to go to one page, just add the mobi2mobi commands and images then we can move the whole thing to Kindle Mobi2Mobi Mac page. It's up to you. You are the Mac King!

I think you misunderstood me. I was thinking we could have something like:

Mobi2Mobi Guide
Installing MobiPerl XP
Installing MobiPerl Vista
Installing MobiPerl Mac

But we can keep separate ones.

BOb

[daffy4u]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

I think you misunderstood me. I was thinking we could have something like:

Mobi2Mobi Guide
Installing MobiPerl XP
Installing MobiPerl Vista
Installing MobiPerl Mac

But we can keep separate ones.

BOb

I see. The Mobiperl install for Vista and XP (they are the same) are pretty easy so I don't think we need to separate them out. I like trying to keep everything to one page as much as possible. If we get a lot of responses where users are confused input, we can separate them.

For the Mac, if creating 2 parts makes things clearer then leave it as is.

[JMikeD]

Originally Posted by daffy4u

JMikeD,

I can't comment on the Mac mobiperl install because I don't have a Mac.

When trying to change the book title are you using the following command structure (which is a bit longer for Amazon .azw books)?


mobi2mobi originalFILEname.azw --outfile revisedFILEename.azw --exthtype updatedtitle --exthdata revisedBOOKname

Edit: Oops, you said "author" not "title". Ignore the above for now (you'll need it later).

I’m ignoring .azw books... the only ones from Amazon I want to change are Topaz format, which I think are quite different in format.

I use the same syntax that I’ve used with the Windows mobi2mobi.exe program:

Mobi2mobi “filetitle.prc” --outfile “other filetitle.prc“ --author “real name”

I’ve never used the exthxxx parameters. When are they appropriate?

Mike

[daffy4u]

Originally Posted by JMikeD

I’m ignoring .azw books... the only ones I want to change are Topaz format, which I think are quite different in format.

I use the same syntax that I’ve used with the Windows mobi2mobi.exe program:

Mobi2mobi “filetitle.prc” --outfile “filetitle.prc“ --author “real name”

I’ve never used the exthxxx parameters. When are they appropriate?

Mike

Topaz books are a whole other animal. It's not a mobi format, so the mobi2mobi commands won't work on it. Sorry.

Edit: I didn't finish answering your question. The exth... stuff is to make sure your book title gets changed when working with .azw books.

[JMikeD]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Did you incur errors when following the directions? What specifically didn't go smooth?

I’ll have to go back and look at the logs I captured.

You mean the .pm files that are part of mobiperl? Those are to be copied to your ebook_tools folder. The .pm files that come with mobiperl are NOT the Perl modules that need to be installed by CPAN.

I was thinking of the Palm libraries, i.e., PDB.pm, etc.

What command line are you using? (I haven't done this part of the tutorial yet.)

I’ve been using the same one as on my XP machine:

Mobi2mobi “filetitle.prc” --outfile “other filetitle.prc“ --title “real title”

[JMikeD]

Originally Posted by daffy4u

Topaz books are a whole other animal. It's not a mobi format, so the mobi2mobi commands won't work on it. Sorry.

Yup. I looked at them with a hex editor, and they were way different.

Mike

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by JMikeD

I’m ignoring .azw books... the only ones I want to change are Topaz format, which I think are quite different in format.

I use the same syntax that I’ve used with the Windows mobi2mobi.exe program:

Mobi2mobi “filetitle.prc” --outfile “other filetitle.prc“ --author “real name”

I’ve never used the exthxxx parameters. When are they appropriate?

Mike

Does mobi2mobi.exe work on the Windows PC with a topaz ebook? Since these are not mobipocket books I wouldn't expect that it would work.

BOb

[JMikeD]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Does mobi2mobi.exe work on the Windows PC with a topaz ebook? Since these are not mobipocket books I wouldn't expect that it would work.

BOb

Nope.


Mike

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by JMikeD

I was thinking of the Palm libraries, i.e., PDB.pm, etc.

CPAN installs the modules from the repo you specify. Why would you have downloaded them seperately? That said, there is a way to point CPAN to local file repos... I just didn't see a need since CPAN gets the most recent version right from the repository.

Originally Posted by JMikeD

I’ve been using the same one as on my XP machine:

Mobi2mobi “filetitle.prc” --outfile “other filetitle.prc“ --title “real title”

If you are using the same command with the same file as you are on windows and it doesn't work I'm at a loss. One thing you may want to try is to use single quotes. Double quotes on darwin cause shell replacements to happen, while single quotes pass the string in as is.

If you are getting the error you mentioned on a Topaz file... that is probably because it is not a mobipocket books and mobiperl works on mobi books not topaz.

If that is not the case then perhaps tompe can offer help since he is the author of these scripts.

BOb

[JMikeD]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

If you are getting the error you mentioned on a Topaz file... that is probably because it is not a mobipocket books and mobiperl works on mobi books not topaz.

Nope, I have not tried it on a Topaz file... I was commenting that I had not tried any .azw files because the only ones I needed to change were the Topaz files, which I discovered quite some time ago were a different format.

Mike

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by JMikeD

Nope, I have not tried it on a Topaz file... I was commenting that I had not tried any .azw files because the only ones I needed to change were the Topaz files, which I discovered quite some time ago were a different format.

Mike

I misread your message since it said you ONLY want to change Topaz files.

Gotcha. So, I would say try it with single quotes. If that doesn't work...

This error you reported:

Setting extended header data: author - Mister
substr outside of string at /Users/miked/ebook_tools/MobiPerl/MobiHeader.pm line 726.

Looks to me like your string is to long... But this is certainly occuring in the mobiperl script and I don't think it is an install issue. The script is running.

If using single quotes or shorting your author string doesn't work I woudl suggest you ping tompe and see what he thinks.

Thanks for reporting back.

BOb

[JMikeD]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

unning.

If using single quotes or shorting your author string doesn't work I woudl suggest you ping tompe and see what he thinks.

Thanks for reporting back.

BOb

It seems as though going to single quotes has fixed the problem, at least for changing .prc files generated by MobiCreator. I’m going to try more variations tomorrow.

The single-quote requirement was probably predictable, since the OS X kernel is BSD Unix.

I wonder if there is a built-in way to compile the script into an executable like the mobi2mobi.exe on Windows. It would help the Mac owners who are not as persistent as I am.

Mike

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by JMikeD

I wonder if there is a built-in way to compile the script into an executable like the mobi2mobi.exe on Windows. It would help the Mac owners who are not as persistent as I am.

I'm sure there is a way to make it an application. But, I am no where there yet in my learning of the Mac.

BOb