Creating epub/kepub books (docx→epub/kepub via MS Word→Calibre)

[SJC-Caron]

There are several fanfics that I find my self re-reading with some frequency, so I wanted to get an off-line version of these files for my Kobo e-reader. Since existing direct-from-fanfic-websites extractors have various problems for me, I decided to extract and format the text myself (personal use only of course). As I have no programing experience I would rather do as much as possible in Microsoft Word and avoid playing around with HTML tags in the Caliber epub editor as much as possible. I have tried this once before and noticed that the embedded fonts looked noticeably different on my Kobo (fonts set to publisher default) then on my computer in both MS Word and the Calibre epub viewer.

My questions are as follows:

1) How do I force sections of text not to be user modifiable on a e-reader? eg: keep chapter headings in publisher default font (eg: a handwriting font) while letting the user select his/her font preferences for the main body of text; keep a quote center-justified while letting the user select the text justification for the rest of the text.

2) How do I ensure that chapters don't end on a blank page on e-readers?

3) I am taking full advantage of MS Word's headings, page breaks, etc. and am formatting the text in web-view mode to better reflect that epubs/kepubs are based on simplified websites in terms of their internal mechanics. Is there any non-obvious features in MS Word that I should be taking advantage of?

4) Any tips and tricks for Calibre conversion settings from docx→epub/kepub? There seams not to be as much conversation about converting from docx as there is converting from other formats to epub on this site.

5) Any other advice for this project?

TECHNICAL INFO:
Word Processor: Microsoft Word 2016 64bit
E-Book Software: Caliber 2.52 64bit (with all available Kobo plugins)
E-Reader: Kobo Aura H2O (firmware 3.19.5761 with Metazoa patches)






Unrelated PS: Check out the thread I started RE: Open/Free University/Academic & Other High Quality Presses That Provide E-Books for FREE

[BetterRed]

@SJC-Caron - Use Word's Styles, don't pad with spaces and tabs or new lines. Word is a word processor not a typewriter. I seek and destroy all superfluous tabs (they're need in bulleted/numbered lists), all double spaces, all double newlines (^p^p) etc before I save.

There are two ways to convert a DOCX to EPUB with calibre. Firstly via it's conversion process, the other by importing the DOCX into the calibre editor. The difference is that the editor will transform Word Styles into CSS entries more faithfully. It may not make much material difference if you're not using complex Styles. Give both a try.

You might also want to take a look at Toxaris' e-Book Tools - a Word add-in, as well as having its own Word to EPUB converter it has a number of other very useful features.

BR

[theducks]

Also
You can't FORCE devices to use your styles.
Some ALLOW Publishers Styles.
Some limit that to the ones they don't want absolute control
Some allow embedded fonts

Roll the dice


PDF was the EXACTLY solution back in Print days
It still is... BUT you will be hated if they need to convert to fit a smaller device

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by SJC-Caron

There are several fanfics that I find my self re-reading with some frequency, so I wanted to get an off-line version of these files for my Kobo e-reader. Since existing direct-from-fanfic-websites extractors have various problems for me, I decided to extract and format the text myself (personal use only of course). As I have no programing experience I would rather do as much as possible in Microsoft Word and avoid playing around with HTML tags in the Caliber epub editor as much as possible. I have tried this once before and noticed that the embedded fonts looked noticeably different on my Kobo (fonts set to publisher default) then on my computer in both MS Word and the Calibre epub viewer.

My questions are as follows:

1) How do I force sections of text not to be user modifiable on a e-reader? eg: keep chapter headings in publisher default font (eg: a handwriting font) while letting the user select his/her font preferences for the main body of text; keep a quote center-justified while letting the user select the text justification for the rest of the text.

What user? Didn't you say that you were converting this for your personal use only? Who are you trying to preclude from changing fonts, as, presumably, you can do what you want, and override what you want?

You can't do what you want to do, using Word. Not about the Publisher fonts and all that. You'll have to dip into HTML, and it's a bit more than a toe.

2) How do I ensure that chapters don't end on a blank page on e-readers?

What? What blank page?

3) I am taking full advantage of MS Word's headings, page breaks, etc. and am formatting the text in web-view mode to better reflect that epubs/kepubs are based on simplified websites in terms of their internal mechanics. Is there any non-obvious features in MS Word that I should be taking advantage of?

Question's too broad. Stick with headings and styles; don't use empty paragraphs to create vertical space. The Word "page-break:before" usually carries through--but not always, and even when it does, there are devices that won't honor it.

4) Any tips and tricks for Calibre conversion settings from docx→epub/kepub? There seams not to be as much conversation about converting from docx as there is converting from other formats to epub on this site.

Outside of my scope, I'm afraid. I've used Calibre for this or that, but I don't convert with it. Some of the guys here do, though. They may be able to assist you.

5) Any other advice for this project?

TECHNICAL INFO:
Word Processor: Microsoft Word 2016 64bit
E-Book Software: Caliber 2.52 64bit (with all available Kobo plugins)
E-Reader: Kobo Aura H2O (firmware 3.19.5761 with Metazoa patches)




Unrelated PS: Check out the thread I started RE: Open/Free University/Academic & Other High Quality Presses That Provide E-Books for FREE

Well, good luck.

Hitch

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by SJC-Caron

There are several fanfics that I find my self re-reading with some frequency, so I wanted to get an off-line version of these files for my Kobo e-reader. Since existing direct-from-fanfic-websites extractors have various problems for me, I decided to extract and format the text myself (personal use only of course).

I assume that means FanFicFare is out.

As I have no programing experience I would rather do as much as possible in Microsoft Word and avoid playing around with HTML tags in the Caliber epub editor as much as possible. I have tried this once before and noticed that the embedded fonts looked noticeably different on my Kobo (fonts set to publisher default) then on my computer in both MS Word and the Calibre epub viewer.

My questions are as follows:

1) How do I force sections of text not to be user modifiable on a e-reader? eg: keep chapter headings in publisher default font (eg: a handwriting font) while letting the user select his/her font preferences for the main body of text; keep a quote center-justified while letting the user select the text justification for the rest of the text.

As you are talking about a Kobo device and kepubs, for the fonts, if you are selecting the "Publisher Defaults" option and the fonts are not displayed properly, then either they are not defined correctly in the CSS and HTML, or they are named incorrectly in the file. Or of course, you forgot to embed the font file.

For the justification, you can't. The setting overrides all the justification in the book. After all, how is the device supposed to know which is to be overridden and which isn't.

2) How do I ensure that chapters don't end on a blank page on e-readers?

Make sure there is nothing between the end of the text and the next chapter. When cleaning up books, I find a lot of them have paragraphs at the end with a single non-breaking space or a series of br tags.

5) Any other advice for this project?

Give in and learn some HTML. In the long run, it will be easier.

[SJC-Caron]

@Hitch RE your response to my first question: I tend to spend a few days/weeks reading using a serif font (usually the built-in Georgia font) and then change to a sans-serif front (usually a side-loaded Helvetica) for a few days/weeks before changing back again.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by SJC-Caron

@Hitch RE your response to my first question: I tend to spend a few days/weeks reading using a serif font (usually the built-in Georgia font) and then change to a sans-serif front (usually a side-loaded Helvetica) for a few days/weeks before changing back again.

Yeah, I guess I can understand that, but why would you want to control yourself? You're going to know how to change or not change the fonts, right? Why do you want to prevent yourself from changing them?

I'm not being snarky, I'm asking. Me, I want all the choices I can get. :-)

Hitch

[GeoffR]

I don't know anything about MS Word, but I can probably help with what the final ePub needs to look like.

Originally Posted by SJC-Caron

1) How do I force sections of text not to be user modifiable on a e-reader? eg: keep chapter headings in publisher default font (eg: a handwriting font) while letting the user select his/her font preferences for the main body of text; keep a quote center-justified while letting the user select the text justification for the rest of the text.

With the KePub reader it is not possible to do what you want for font styles, unless you patch the firmware. The patch to look at is called `Un-Force user font-family in KePubs`. You might also want to look at `Un-Force user text-align in div,p tags in KePubs`, and perhaps `KePub full justification default`.

With the ePub reader (or patched KePub reader) the easiest way to prevent the font and alignment used for headings, subheadings, etc.from changing is just to make sure they are marked up with appropriate heading tags, <h1>, <h2>, etc. The problem is that some publishers (or some conversion software) mark headings with <p> or <div> tags instead of <h1>, <h2>, etc.

Edit: Also, for the ePub reader if you want to explicitly reference a font that has been sideloaded to the device (other than the generic serif, sans-serif, etc.) then you need to specify it with @font-face in a similay way to what you would an embedded font, but using the paths "res:///fonts/normal/Fontname", "res:///fonts/italic/Fontname", "res:///fonts/bold/Fontname", "res:///fonts/bolditalic/Fontname", where Fontname is the name of the font rather than its filename. It is probably simpler just to use an embedded font for decorative things like headings etc., and only sideload fonts that you would actually select as reading fonts.

(There is a lot more to this subject, if you want to get into more detail. There are complications because the !important modifier has a different meaning to the KePub reader than it does to the ePub reader. But in general as long as the publisher uses appropriate tags when making the ePub, i.e. <h*> for headings, subheadings, etc. and <p> for paragraphs, then things will usually work as expected.)

2) How do I ensure that chapters don't end on a blank page on e-readers?

I have noticed ePubs from a number of publishers have lines of non-breaking spaces at the end of chapters. These can cause a blank page following the chapter, depending on how far from the bottom of the page the text ends, and I think the only way to fix it is to go through the ePub and delete all the offending lines. E.g. here is an example of a chapter ending from an ePub published by Baen:

<p class="calibre1">[...] And I can forget that you ever came."</p>
<p class="calibre1">&nbsp;</p>
</body>
</html>

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Yeah, I guess I can understand that, but why would you want to control yourself? You're going to know how to change or not change the fonts, right? Why do you want to prevent yourself from changing them?

I think the idea is for the font used for main body text to be changable, but for other special-purpose fonts to remain fixed.

Here is an example: the publisher has embedded a handwriting font. When I select "Publisher Default" Georgia is used for the main body text, and the handwriting font used for journal entries:

Publisher Default

But when I select "Amasis" on the device there are two things that can happen, depending on how the publisher has structured the ePub:

Only the main body text changes to Amasis (Good, IMO)

Both body and journal text change to Amasis (Bad, IMO)

(Edit: There is a third possibility, the worst one, which is that neither font changes.)

[SJC-Caron]

@GeoffR: you are correct in what I want to do re: being able to change the font for the bulk of the epub and keep fixed special purpose fonts (front type, not size).

[SJC-Caron]

Anyone care to expand on the use of the !important tag in epubs/kepubs? Thanks.

Also thanks for pointing-out the e-book tools Word plug-in. Everything works but the generate epub button (could this be due to a 32/64-bit software conflict?).

[SJC-Caron]

When I tried to convert a docx document to epub & kepub today in Calibre some weird things happened (when viewed via the Caliber ebook viewer):

1) Sub-headings that I wanted to be within a chapter had a page-break applied to them despite this not being the case in Word.

2) Some fonts appear in their italic form where in Word the font was in its regular mode.

3) With some fonts the space before an bolded or italicised word disappeared so I had two words stuck together.

4) With some fonts bolded and italicised words appear in their regular form.


I have looked at the outputted epub files in the Calibre epub editor, and was able to figure-out how to fix issue 1, but am at a loss for the other issues at this point. I tried applying the bold tags to words what should of been bolded but weren't, but those tags didn't take. And I did not see anything that would allow me to correct the wrongly italicised fonts.

Any advice that can be provided will be appreciated.

[Notjohn]

My advice would be to use Sigil.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by SJC-Caron

When I tried to convert a docx document to epub & kepub today in Calibre some weird things happened (when viewed via the Caliber ebook viewer):

1) Sub-headings that I wanted to be within a chapter had a page-break applied to them despite this not being the case in Word.

I suspect that that is to do with your settings in Calibre. I am afraid that I'm not a Calibre user, and certainly not an expert, but you seem to be trying to run before you can walk.

2) Some fonts appear in their italic form where in Word the font was in its regular mode.

Are you SURE that you correctly embedded all the fonts that the book requires?

3) With some fonts the space before an bolded or italicised word disappeared so I had two words stuck together.

Oh, man...hey guys? Anyone remember this? I could swear that quite a while back--5 years or so?--something caused this, and it was discussed here. The result of an automatic sequence, like regex. And, secondly, are you sure that the BOLD and ITALIC were done correctly by ePUB Tools, before you started?

4) With some fonts bolded and italicised words appear in their regular form.

How many fonts do you have going? If you used a Mac computer, (or, this can also happen with Windows, but I see it a lot with Mac users), you could have accidentally put spans into the file, e.g.:

<span class="ooops">this is italics.</span>

With the class having the FONT Times New Roman Italic (or whatever) specified. That's all well and good until--ooopsy--you make an ePUB and don't have Times New Roman Italic in the Fonts sub-directory. Is that possible?

I have looked at the outputted epub files in the Calibre epub editor, and was able to figure-out how to fix issue 1, but am at a loss for the other issues at this point. I tried applying the bold tags to words what should of been bolded but weren't, but those tags didn't take. And I did not see anything that would allow me to correct the wrongly italicised fonts.

Any advice that can be provided will be appreciated.

What do you mean, they didn't "take?" Is the bold face of the selected font family embedded? For example, if your body/heading font is, say, Times New Roman, you have to install TNR Regular, plus TNR Italic, plus TNR Bold. Is that in the ePUB?

In fact, open the editor and tell us what fonts ARE in there, that would likely help.

Hitch

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by SJC-Caron

When I tried to convert a docx document to epub & kepub today in Calibre some weird things happened (when viewed via the Caliber ebook viewer):

1) Sub-headings that I wanted to be within a chapter had a page-break applied to them despite this not being the case in Word.

2) Some fonts appear in their italic form where in Word the font was in its regular mode.

3) With some fonts the space before an bolded or italicised word disappeared so I had two words stuck together.

4) With some fonts bolded and italicised words appear in their regular form.


I have looked at the outputted epub files in the Calibre epub editor, and was able to figure-out how to fix issue 1, but am at a loss for the other issues at this point. I tried applying the bold tags to words what should of been bolded but weren't, but those tags didn't take. And I did not see anything that would allow me to correct the wrongly italicised fonts.

Any advice that can be provided will be appreciated.

I suggest you repost this in the Calibre Conversion subforum, after reading the relevant section of the manual if you've not already done so == >> Convert Microsoft Word documents and studying the Demo.docx file you'll find there

Oh, read the sticky at Calibre|Conversion about how to ask questions about solving conversion problems before you post.

Added - thanks for the Karma - but same deal, if you have problems with ePUB-Tools raise them in its thread in Workshop, no point in telling me about them in a Karma message

BR