epub to Mobi utterly ruins formatting, help?

darearkin · 01-23-2012, 04:27 AM

Pretty much the title. I have a title on epub, and wish to toss it to Mobi- but the formatting basically falls off a cliff.

Lines break in the middle as if someone'd run through hitting return at random, lines wrap partially then get broken, and any hint of an indent or spacing is utterly removed.

This is after running the thing through Calibre.

So is there a special trick/program I'm supposed to use, or are some of my books just utterly unreadable?

(And yes. Formatting like this hurts the BRAIN to read.)

darearkin · 01-23-2012, 04:31 AM

Nevermind. It turns out the Epub file was hard formatted to a certain page size. (No idea why anyone in their right mind would need to do that for an EBOOK, but hey.) and there's no way to correct it. x.x

mr ploppy · 01-23-2012, 06:58 AM

There's always a way. What ebook is it?

emellaich · 01-23-2012, 11:24 PM

It depends on how much time you want to spend. You might be able to do something in Sigil. Another trick that I know would work would be to convert it to RTF and open it in word. You can use Word's find/replace function to look for special characters and remove line breaks.

You don't say how it was hard formatted. Another choice is to unzip the epub, and edit in notepad++. Find all of the <br> that fit a certain format and remove them.

And there are other ways. It just depends on how adventurous you feel.

darearkin · 01-24-2012, 06:02 AM

As much as I like the book, I think removing all the line breaks might just be too much work. x.x I'll just try and find a better copy.

HarryT · 01-24-2012, 11:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by darearkin

As much as I like the book, I think removing all the line breaks might just be too much work. x.x I'll just try and find a better copy.

Is it a book that's in the public domain? If it's a commercial eBook, I'd complain to the publisher.

JeremyR · 01-25-2012, 04:52 AM

Sometimes just deleting the css file in the epub works if there is a formatting problem (just load the epub in sigil, pick the css file on the left and delete it.

There were some books in the library here that had that problem, only epub versions available

DiapDealer · 01-25-2012, 09:34 AM

It's probably a Fixed Layout ePub like Apple's Fixed Layout or B&N's Digital Replica Plus (DRP) ePubs.

Those, and KF8's ability to render pre-paginated content will probably cause the various existing format-shifting programs to barf on (or butcher) those particular "specialized" formats until more of them can be analyzed and taken into account.

01-23-2012, 04:27 AM	#1
darearkin Member Posts: 11 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2012 Device: Kindle	epub to Mobi utterly ruins formatting, help? Pretty much the title. I have a title on epub, and wish to toss it to Mobi- but the formatting basically falls off a cliff. Lines break in the middle as if someone'd run through hitting return at random, lines wrap partially then get broken, and any hint of an indent or spacing is utterly removed. This is after running the thing through Calibre. So is there a special trick/program I'm supposed to use, or are some of my books just utterly unreadable? (And yes. Formatting like this hurts the BRAIN to read.)

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01-23-2012, 04:31 AM	#2
darearkin Member Posts: 11 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2012 Device: Kindle	Nevermind. It turns out the Epub file was hard formatted to a certain page size. (No idea why anyone in their right mind would need to do that for an EBOOK, but hey.) and there's no way to correct it. x.x

01-23-2012, 06:58 AM	#3
mr ploppy Feral Underclass Posts: 3,622 Karma: 26821535 Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: Yorkshire, tha noz Device: 2nd hand paperback	There's always a way. What ebook is it?

01-23-2012, 11:24 PM	#4
emellaich Wizard Posts: 1,101 Karma: 4388403 Join Date: Oct 2007 Device: Palm>Ebookman>IPaq>Axim>Cybook>Kndl2>IPAD>Kndl3SO>Voyager>Oasis	It depends on how much time you want to spend. You might be able to do something in Sigil. Another trick that I know would work would be to convert it to RTF and open it in word. You can use Word's find/replace function to look for special characters and remove line breaks. You don't say how it was hard formatted. Another choice is to unzip the epub, and edit in notepad++. Find all of the <br> that fit a certain format and remove them. And there are other ways. It just depends on how adventurous you feel.

01-24-2012, 06:02 AM	#5
darearkin Member Posts: 11 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2012 Device: Kindle	As much as I like the book, I think removing all the line breaks might just be too much work. x.x I'll just try and find a better copy.

01-25-2012, 04:52 AM	#7
JeremyR Guru Posts: 973 Karma: 2458402 Join Date: Aug 2010 Location: St. Louis Device: Kindle Keyboard, Nook HD+	Sometimes just deleting the css file in the epub works if there is a formatting problem (just load the epub in sigil, pick the css file on the left and delete it. There were some books in the library here that had that problem, only epub versions available

01-25-2012, 09:34 AM	#8
DiapDealer Grand Sorcerer Posts: 27,549 Karma: 193191846 Join Date: Jan 2010 Device: Nexus 7, Kindle Fire HD	It's probably a Fixed Layout ePub like Apple's Fixed Layout or B&N's Digital Replica Plus (DRP) ePubs. Those, and KF8's ability to render pre-paginated content will probably cause the various existing format-shifting programs to barf on (or butcher) those particular "specialized" formats until more of them can be analyzed and taken into account.

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