Help with proper dashed list formatting, desperate at this point

[luczak]

I am having the absolute hardest time trying to get my school notes working as an epub file with the proper formatting intact. I have tried a barrage of conversions to epub but to no avail, and honestly any help would be amazing.

my main problem: dashed bullet lists dont format properly and end up being on the next line or not even indented at all.

the attached .png file shows exactly how i need it to turn out, and the .pdf is the source for the text, and the .txt file is another source (just in case). Can anyone help me out?

[HarryT]

Converting PDF to anything else is rarely a good idea. I'm afraid you'll just have to edit the resulting ePub file to get it right.

[roger64]

Originally Posted by luczak

.../...

I have tried a barrage of conversions to epub but to no avail, and honestly any help would be amazing.

my main problem: dashed bullet lists dont format properly and end up being on the next line or not even indented at all.../....

Hi

You can use LibreOffice and its extension writer2xhtml (in short W2X) which exports comfortably and very precisely ordered lists in EPUB format from ODT files. It's free, opensource and multiplatform.

The dedicated tool for it in LibreOfice is called Puces et numérotation in French. I am afraid I don't know the English name. You can use levels like with any outliner. There is a special command panel menu to indent them like you wish at each level.

W2X transcribes very precisely all these values to your EPUB. The choice of bullets for the EPUB is more limited than the one offered by LibO but remains very convenient.



Here is for indent purposes

[charleski]

The problem (as usual) actually lies in the fact that the PDF wasn't created with a consistent structure. It looked ok on the page, and whoever wrote it was satisfied with that.

I opened the PDF you gave in Acrobat X and exported it as XML (I'm sure there are other PDF editors that'll do the same).

I then opened the XML file in Notepad++, selected the actual text (between <?xpacket end='r'?> and </TaggedPDF-doc> and copied it. I then opened Sigil with a blank new document, changed to Code view and pasted this text into the body (i.e. select <p>&nbsp;</p> and hit paste), then saved the ePub.

The result is attached as example.epub. It's a lot better than the examples you show, but the poor structure of the source shows up in the lack of proper hierarchy and some paragraphs that are misplaced. It didn't need much editing to produce a corrected version, attached as example-Edited.epub. It'll require a reasonable amount of work to go through all the notes and check that the lists are ordered correctly, but I did this in about a minute, so it won't be too hard.

[Edit: If you aren't using Sigil to create ePubs, now's the time to start. You do need some rudimentary knowledge of xhtml and css (no css was used here, it's all pure default styles), but it gives you far better control than anything else]

[roger64]

Hi

Still desperate?

I just applied my advice.
I started from your text file converted in odt format and I reproduced the hierarchy I saw on the PDF.
Five to ten minutes.
Here are the odt and the epub made with writer2xhtml
1. Using LibreOffice
2. Exporting as EPUB (thirty seconds?)

Edit: If you aren't using LibreOffice to create ePubs, now's the time to start. It gives you pretty fine-grained control. Once your work is done, you can check it with Sigil.

Hope it helps.