Epub -> txt with italic/bold characters

[Fallingwater]

I'm converting a few epubs to txt with the intention of viewing them on a device that doesn't support any other format.

Problem is, Calibre removes all italics and bold, which makes it a lot harder to understand certain books.

I'm aware the txt format doesn't support anything other than plain text, so I've taken to converting to html instead and removing all the html tags using the search-replace feature until I'm left with a file composed only of text and the bold and italic tags. At that point I swap <i> and </i> with the slash character and <b> and </b> with two asterisks.

The net result:
"He said what?! How rude!"
Would be converted to:
"He said **what**?! How /rude/!".

This works, but the procedure to do the conversion is painfully slow, painstaking and prone to mistakes that can cause screwups in parts of the text I can't immediately see.

I'm looking for some form of automatic conversion that'll do all this from an epub without having to disassemble the html.

[theducks]

I have a feeling that you have the wrong extension set.

There is no Bold or Italics in a 'Text' file, just alpha numeric and punctuation.

What you might have is a Rich Text (RTF) document (If you see Bold in the editor, you might change the file type to RTF and see how calibre fairs)

Your second is a marked up text file (notice that it still follows the rule above, Calibre interprets the marks as it proceeds.

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by Fallingwater

I'm converting a few epubs to txt with the intention of viewing them on a device that doesn't support any other format.

Problem is, Calibre removes all italics and bold, which makes it a lot harder to understand certain books.

I'm aware the txt format doesn't support anything other than plain text, so I've taken to converting to html instead and removing all the html tags using the search-replace feature until I'm left with a file composed only of text and the bold and italic tags. At that point I swap <i> and </i> with the slash character and <b> and </b> with two asterisks.

The net result:
"He said what?! How rude!"
Would be converted to:
"He said **what**?! How /rude/!".

This works, but the procedure to do the conversion is painfully slow, painstaking and prone to mistakes that can cause screwups in parts of the text I can't immediately see.

I'm looking for some form of automatic conversion that'll do all this from an epub without having to disassemble the html.

Have you tried changing conversion options for TXT output ? Try setting Formatting to either Markdown or Textile.

Markdown is described at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown and Textile at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textile_(markup_language)

As an example I tried converting a test document from Kovid for showing off the DOCX conversion.

Converting to Markdown gave me

# Text Formatting

## Inline formatting

Here, we demonstrate various types of inline text formatting and the use of embedded fonts.

Here is some **bold, ***italic, ****bold-italic, ***underlined and struck out text. Then, we have a superscript and a subscript. Now we see some red, green and blue text. Some text with a yellow highlight. Some text in a box. Some text in inverse video.

A paragraph with styled text: *subtle emphasis *followed by **strong text **and ***intense emphasis***. This paragraph uses document wide styles for styling rather than inline text properties as demonstrated in the previous paragraph — calibre can handle both with equal ease.

and Textile

h1=. Text Formatting

h2. Inline formatting

p. Here, we demonstrate various types of inline text formatting and the use of embedded fonts.

p. Here is some [*bold, *][_italic, [*bold-italic, *]_][+underlined +]and [-struck out -] text. Then, we have a super[^script^] and a sub[~script~]. Now we see some red, green and blue text. Some text with a yellow highlight. Some text in a box. Some text in inverse video.

p. A paragraph with styled text: [_subtle emphasis _]followed by [*strong text *]and _*intense emphasis*_. This paragraph uses document wide styles for styling rather than inline text properties as demonstrated in the previous paragraph — calibre can handle both with equal ease.

So as you can see, difference in formatting do come through into plain text.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by theducks

I have a feeling that you have the wrong extension set.

The OP is not the one confused.

He has an ePub that he is converting to txt to use on a device that only handles text. He still wants some indicators in the text so he can tell bold and italics since this emphasis is often quite necessary to understand what the author is conveying.

Originally Posted by PeterT

Have you tried changing conversion options for TXT output ? Try setting Formatting to either Markdown or Textile.
...~~~...
So as you can see, difference in formatting do come through into plain text.

Excellent explanation. This should suit the OP's needs.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by DoctorOhh

The OP is not the one confused.

He has an ePub that he is converting to txt to use on a device that only handles text. He still wants some indicators in the text so he can tell bold and italics since this emphasis is often quite necessary to understand what the author is conveying.



Excellent explanation. This should suit the OP's needs.

Right you are

[Fallingwater]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Have you tried changing conversion options for TXT output ? Try setting Formatting to either Markdown or Textile.

Excellent! This is exactly what I needed. Many thanks!

[BillSmithBooks]

Another way to do this (without using Calibre) might be to convert Epub to HTML, then go into the HTML code and convert the <b>bold</b> to *bold* and <i>italic</> to _italic_ (Might also be emphasis and another code word for bold and italic).

Then go back into the regular browser, highlight all of the text, copy and paste into a txt browser editor.

Don't know if this helps but I think it would be a pretty foolproof way to do things.

[Fallingwater]

Originally Posted by BillSmithBooks

Another way to do this (without using Calibre) might be to convert Epub to HTML, then go into the HTML code and convert the <b>bold</b> to *bold* and <i>italic</> to _italic_ (Might also be emphasis and another code word for bold and italic).

Then go back into the regular browser, highlight all of the text, copy and paste into a txt browser editor.

Don't know if this helps but I think it would be a pretty foolproof way to do things.

It isn't that easy. The HTML conversion doesn't just use tags like that; it generates and refers to a style.css file, so that every change in the text is made up of one to several span tags. Stripping them out one by one feels like stripping the layers off an onion, and is not always doable either - how do you differentiate /span end-tags between the various span types? If I remove all </span> instances I have no way of knowing where the italic text ends.

I've manually converted one book like that because it was slightly clearer and I eventually got it right, but the one I wanted to convert next was essentially unfeasible.

I dunno, it might be possible to do something with regular expressions, but honestly life's too short.

[user_none]

Originally Posted by Fallingwater

It isn't that easy. The HTML conversion doesn't just use tags like that; it generates and refers to a style.css file...

HTMLZ output has an option to convert styles to tags (How to handle CSS = tag). A lot of styling will be lost using this option because only a very small subset of styles can be represented as tags. However, in this sort of situation it's not that big a deal.