conversion trouble ePub to mobi

[Papa John]

Hello all. I am new to the forum.

Quick background: Mac user; Kindle (3rd gen.) user; Calibre user. I also have Kindle for Mac to get some idea of how the Mobi's will look on the Kindle.

I have been using Apple's Pages to convert documents to ePubs, and then I import them to Calibre for conversion to Mobi files that I can upload to the Kindle. The problem has to do with line breaks. On the Kindle, the resulting Mobi files are very messy, with words breaking up at the end of lines (I don't think Kindle "does" hyphens) and continuing on the next line.

If I open the mobi file in Calibre's e-book viewer the lines run on and on, sometimes with 5 whole sentences on one lines, so that you have to scroll a long way to the right to read the whole line.

My html skills are nil, so I am hoping this is a simple fix. I have a lot of public domain documents that I would like to have on my Kindle and to share, but they are too messy at this point. Any help is appreciated.

[dwig]

Originally Posted by Papa John

... I also have Kindle for Mac to get some idea of how the Mobi's will look on the Kindle. ...

The various "Kindle 4 ..." apps are generally poor choices for previewing the appearance on a Kindle device. You should use Kindle Previewer instead:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.htm...cId=1000234621

...I have been using Apple's Pages to convert documents to ePubs...

What format are the source "documents"? The problems probably starts with Pages' conversion or in the creation of the "document" that you are feeding to Pages.

On the Kindle, the resulting Mobi files are very messy, with words breaking up at the end of lines (I don't think Kindle "does" hyphens) and continuing on the next line.

The Kindle does hyphens just fine. What it doesn't do is hyphenization, a totally different animal. The Kindle never breaks words, inserting a hyphen or not, at the end of a line. It will always move the whole word to the next line. If the lines are broken mid word, the break is created before conversion to MOBI.

I have a lot of public domain documents that I would like to have on my Kindle and to share, but they are too messy at this point.

If these are PDF format, there is absolutely no possible simple fix. Fixes may be possible, but they won't be simple to figure out and the fix for one document won't likely work with most others. Each may have to have its own method.

[Papa John]

I have Kindle Previewer but it will not open mobi files created by Calibre. What is interesting is that it will convert ePub's to mobi files, but they lack a TOC. It is also interesting that the mobis that Previewer produces from the epubs I feed it look good on the Kindle Previewer, while those I generate in Calibre from the same ePubs look lousy. Can't figure it out.

[speakingtohe]

The problem has to do with line breaks. On the Kindle, the resulting Mobi files are very messy, with words breaking up at the end of lines (I don't think Kindle "does" hyphens) and continuing on the next line.

I have converted thousands of books from epub to mobi and other than the fonts the mobi look like the epub.

Do your epubs look perfect before converting and calibre is messing them up somehow?

Helen

[ldolse]

Odds are it has something to do with Pages - when Pages' ePub support came out it was reviewed by several forum Members and deemed to do some pretty awful things with it's ePub conversions. Knowing Apple it's unlikely that it's improved any.

You might want to try going from Pages to Open Office (or MS Word) and see if either the HTML export or Open Offices' ePub export plugin works better. Calibre also supports the native OpenOffice format.

You also neglected to answer Dwig's question regarding what your original source document is, you just mention using Pages to convert from 'something'... The original source may also be important.

[cluelass]

I was having the same problem as Papa John after exporting a document from Pages to epub, and then converting to Calibre. The epub looks perfectly fine in an epub reader, but after conversion to mobi, the Kindle breaks lines in the middle of words.

Turns out there is a style command inserted by Pages that in effect tells the reader app to treat the text as pre-formatted with regard to line breaks. This command gets passed through Calibre to the mobi version, even if you "clean up" the epub by doing an epub-to-epub conversion. Kindle sees each paragraph as one long line, and since there is not enough room to put it all in one line on the Kindle display, it just breaks the line whenever it runs out of space.

Here's the solution that worked for me: When you open the epub for conversion in Calibre, go to the "Search & Replace" tab. Enter the following in one of the "Search Regular Expression" lines, with no replacement text:

[ style="white-space:pre-wrap"]

No brackets. Otherwise use exactly as written including the quote marks.

Then convert as usual. When you upload this mobi file to Kindle, you should see normal line breaks between words. Let us know if it works.

Cheers,
Kate

[Papa John]

Kate,

That fixed it! Thank you so much. I thought I might have to abandon Calibre, but I am glad I do not.

John

[SiddingtonSteve]

Papa John, I also had problems with generating TOC when using Calibre to convert (Pages-generated) ePub to mobi; however, when you select Convert one of the options is TOC generation where you can specify which HTML tag the ePub file is using for chapter heading/story title - once I had set this, TOC generation worked fine on Kindle Preview.

Regards

Steve