PDF->mobi "my way"

Pulp · 08-27-2008, 06:52 AM

After testing around I finally found a way to convert my pdfs.

It's a multiple step process but at last I end up with a mobi-file that satisfies my needs.

First i run the PDF through Abbyy PDF-Transformer with the layout set to "text flow" and create a rtf-file (I suppose every other tool that does a good job in pdf->rtf is fine aswell)
The rtf-file is then opened in MSWord where I do a spellcheck (doesn't take more than a few minutes per book and makes sure there are no hyphe-nations left from the original text.
I save the file as filtered html in Word

At last I run the file through a php-script that does the following:

Code:

$text = str_replace(array("<body","</body>","<p","</p>"), array("{body}<body","</body>{/body}","{p}<p","</p>{/p}"), $text);
$text = strip_tags($text, "<b><i><u><html><head><title><h1><h2><h3><h4><h5><h6>");
$text = str_replace(array("{body}","{/body}","{p}","{/p}"," n "," n."," n,"), array("<body>","</body>","<p>","</p>","n ","n.","n,"), $text);
$text = preg_replace('/>\s*</','><',$text);
$text = preg_replace('/\s\s*\s/',' ',$text);
$text = preg_replace('/([a-zA-Z\d\,])<\/p><p>/','$1 ',$text);

The html-file I end up with still has bold, italic, underline text and headings.
Paragraphs are reduced by the ones that were only created due to pagebreaks.

Importing this html-file with Mobipocket-creator gives a great result.

It definitely does take more time than a fully automated conversion, but the result is also a lot better

zelda_pinwheel · 08-27-2008, 08:34 AM

thanks very much for this explanation, pulp. it's always very helpful to see the workflow of others when you are learning.

just a question, what do you mean when you say you save the word file as "filtered" html ?

Pulp · 08-27-2008, 09:34 AM

MS Word offers the possibility to save websites as html (or what they think it is

) and a reduced version of html (they call it 'filtered') that does not use xml.

zelda_pinwheel · 08-27-2008, 09:38 AM

ha ok. i believe i have heard of this before, but it is only available in more recent versions of word. thanks for the reply.

i have seen the "html" code generated by word and it's pretty appalling. it's good that now you can make a "filtered" version which (from what i hear) is a bit less catastrophic, since not everyone wants (or knows how) to write their html code by hand. i imagine that your php script also helps a lot to clean up the code. since i have an old version of word i can't use this feature so instead i prefer to do my html by hand most of the time.

feedbooks will soon have a wysiwyg editor which will allow you to make good formatting with clean code much more easily and will be a great help especially for people who are not as comfortable with code as you.

Pulp · 08-27-2008, 11:25 AM

Don't let yourself be fooled, the filtered version is still catastrophic

This is why I run the phpscript to remove all but the necessary html-tags.
You wouldnt believe how much smaller the file is after that

Hadrien · 08-27-2008, 11:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

feedbooks will soon have a wysiwyg editor which will allow you to make good formatting with clean code much more easily and will be a great help especially for people who are not as comfortable with code as you.

Clean code and standard are 2 different things though. We already use TidyHTML when we generate a book to make sure that it is XHTML-compliant. For our WYSIWYG editor: we'll have a special "paste from word" button, to clean things up a bit if you're pasting files from Word. With both the paste from word button and TidyHTML, the output should be pretty good. We also do some processing: for example, we add non-blank spaces around punctuation to avoid ugly line breaking.

zelda_pinwheel · 08-27-2008, 11:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hadrien

Clean code and standard are 2 different things though. We already use TidyHTML when we generate a book to make sure that it is XHTML-compliant. For our WYSIWYG editor: we'll have a special "paste from word" button, to clean things up a bit if you're pasting files from Word. With both the paste from word button and TidyHTML, the output should be pretty good. We also do some processing: for example, we add non-blank spaces around punctuation to avoid ugly line breaking.

you are right, they are two different things. but i am pretty confident that you will find a way to make feedbooks code both clean *and* standard.

what do you mean by non-blank space ? non-breaking space ? & nbsp ; ?

Hadrien · 08-27-2008, 12:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

what do you mean by non-blank space ? non-breaking space ? & nbsp ; ?

Yeah & nbsp; are part of what we automatically add.

08-27-2008, 06:52 AM	#1
Pulp Palm Addict Posts: 477 Karma: 1001951 Join Date: Aug 2008 Device: Cybook Gen3 [512mb, FW: 1.5]	PDF->mobi "my way" After testing around I finally found a way to convert my pdfs. It's a multiple step process but at last I end up with a mobi-file that satisfies my needs. First i run the PDF through Abbyy PDF-Transformer with the layout set to "text flow" and create a rtf-file (I suppose every other tool that does a good job in pdf->rtf is fine aswell) The rtf-file is then opened in MSWord where I do a spellcheck (doesn't take more than a few minutes per book and makes sure there are no hyphe-nations left from the original text. I save the file as filtered html in Word At last I run the file through a php-script that does the following: Code: $text = str_replace(array("<body","</body>","<p","</p>"), array("{body}<body","</body>{/body}","{p}<p","</p>{/p}"), $text); $text = strip_tags($text, "<b><i><u><html><head><title><h1><h2><h3><h4><h5><h6>"); $text = str_replace(array("{body}","{/body}","{p}","{/p}"," n "," n."," n,"), array("<body>","</body>","<p>","</p>","n ","n.","n,"), $text); $text = preg_replace('/>\s</','><',$text); $text = preg_replace('/\s\s\s/',' ',$text); $text = preg_replace('/([a-zA-Z\d\,])<\/p><p>/','$1 ',$text); The html-file I end up with still has bold, italic, underline text and headings. Paragraphs are reduced by the ones that were only created due to pagebreaks. Importing this html-file with Mobipocket-creator gives a great result. It definitely does take more time than a fully automated conversion, but the result is also a lot better

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08-27-2008, 08:34 AM	#2
zelda_pinwheel zeldinha zippy zeldissima Posts: 27,827 Karma: 921169 Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Paris, France Device: eb1150 & is that a nook in her pocket, or she just happy to see you?	thanks very much for this explanation, pulp. it's always very helpful to see the workflow of others when you are learning. just a question, what do you mean when you say you save the word file as "filtered" html ?

08-27-2008, 09:34 AM	#3
Pulp Palm Addict Posts: 477 Karma: 1001951 Join Date: Aug 2008 Device: Cybook Gen3 [512mb, FW: 1.5]	MS Word offers the possibility to save websites as html (or what they think it is ) and a reduced version of html (they call it 'filtered') that does not use xml.

08-27-2008, 09:38 AM	#4
zelda_pinwheel zeldinha zippy zeldissima Posts: 27,827 Karma: 921169 Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Paris, France Device: eb1150 & is that a nook in her pocket, or she just happy to see you?	ha ok. i believe i have heard of this before, but it is only available in more recent versions of word. thanks for the reply. i have seen the "html" code generated by word and it's pretty appalling. it's good that now you can make a "filtered" version which (from what i hear) is a bit less catastrophic, since not everyone wants (or knows how) to write their html code by hand. i imagine that your php script also helps a lot to clean up the code. since i have an old version of word i can't use this feature so instead i prefer to do my html by hand most of the time. feedbooks will soon have a wysiwyg editor which will allow you to make good formatting with clean code much more easily and will be a great help especially for people who are not as comfortable with code as you.

08-27-2008, 11:25 AM	#5
Pulp Palm Addict Posts: 477 Karma: 1001951 Join Date: Aug 2008 Device: Cybook Gen3 [512mb, FW: 1.5]	Don't let yourself be fooled, the filtered version is still catastrophic This is why I run the phpscript to remove all but the necessary html-tags. You wouldnt believe how much smaller the file is after that