Book Designer Page Problem

[Fitzwaryn]

I've been trying to use Book Designer to reformat some HTML file into Sony format. While overall it seems to work well there is one nagging problem I can't find a solution for.

It seems to be embedding page breaks of some kind in the document or setting some kind of arbitrary page length. The resulting file will have a page and a half of text then half a page of nothing then the sentence picks up on the beginning of the next page. That's repeated throughout the document.

Am I missing some setting to get rid of this problem?

[NatCh]

There's a setting, either in the main settings menu, or on one of the tabs in the Make Sony Book pop-up menu, that turns off page breaks, I don't have BD installed on this PC, and I don't remember for sure where it is. Someone will probably clarify my patchy recollection before you look for it on your own, but either way, it may address this issue for you.

[Fitzwaryn]

Originally Posted by NatCh

There's a setting, either in the main settings menu, or on one of the tabs in the Make Sony Book pop-up menu, that turns off page breaks, I don't have BD installed on this PC, and I don't remember for sure where it is. Someone will probably clarify my patchy recollection before you look for it on your own, but either way, it may address this issue for you.

Only setting like that I can find is Lines Per Page which can be set to 10-39 or on auto.

[NatCh]

Hmm. I'm remembering something that specifically referred to page breaks....

[Fitzwaryn]

Originally Posted by NatCh

Hmm. I'm remembering something that specifically referred to page breaks....

There is a check box for page breaks. That is unchecked of course.

I've also had problems with the text flow. I set a particular font size and set it to 24 lines per page which works okay for that specific font, but if I increase the font size on the Reader every line breaks as if there are hard returns on each line. So in essence you can't change the font size on the Reader at all without losing all text flow.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Fitzwaryn

There is a check box for page breaks. That is unchecked of course.

I've also had problems with the text flow. I set a particular font size and set it to 24 lines per page which works okay for that specific font, but if I increase the font size on the Reader every line breaks as if there are hard returns on each line. So in essence you can't change the font size on the Reader at all without losing all text flow.

I see your problem. You are using the Sony Libre dialog to make your LRF files. Try the Sony Reader option when making the book. That should solve your problem.

Also you never did say if you have a Libre or a Reader. If you have a Reader then you 100% do not want to generate Sony Libre LRF books. You 100% want to generate Sony Reader LRF books.

As for page breaks, go into the settings and make sure "insert page breaks" is checked so it will show you all the page breaks it automatically put in when it loaded the file. Then you can go and edit them as needed. Most page breaks BD puts in are when it finds what it thinks is a ToC entry which not always it is.

[Fitzwaryn]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I see your problem. You are using the Sony Libre dialog to make your LRF files. Try the Sony Reader option when making the book. That should solve your problem.

Also you never did say if you have a Libre or a Reader. If you have a Reader then you 100% do not want to generate Sony Libre LRF books. You 100% want to generate Sony Reader LRF books.

As for page breaks, go into the settings and make sure "insert page breaks" is checked so it will show you all the page breaks it automatically put in when it loaded the file. Then you can go and edit them as needed. Most page breaks BD puts in are when it finds what it thinks is a ToC entry which not always it is.

Okay thanks. Appears I had an older version. The one I had didn't have the Reader, only the Libre. I assumed that was the format everyone was using.

I'll try this one and see how it goes. Appreciate the help all.

[Fitzwaryn]

Thanks everyone. That's solved my problem. Amazing what running the current version will do for you. lol

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Fitzwaryn

Thanks everyone. That's solved my problem. Amazing what running the current version will do for you. lol

I am happy to help. If you need/want any more Book Designer help, I suggest ambling over to the Sony Reader forum. Lots of good help there in the various sections. Also, not all help is under a topic that would be obvious. So the best best would be to read it all and save anything you find relevant to using BD.

[NatCh]

Glad you got it solved, Fitzwaryn.

[Fitzwaryn]

Now that I have the correct version that actually outputs Reader format instead of Libre I'm prtety darned impressed with it. I've converted several hundred books so far to text and then used Word to warp it over into RTF format with an 18pt font and open lines between paragraphs but it often required using a hex editor on the txt file to get rid of line breaks and other irritating formatting. While that worked fine with fiction I hated losing the maps and images in my Military History books.

BD makes it a snap to embed the images in the book, set up the paragraph breaks, and so on.

I'm using BD for all my book reformatting now.

[NatCh]

Another helpless addict! vvv's plan for world domination through e-book creation software is proceeding apace.

[Fitzwaryn]

Originally Posted by NatCh

Another helpless addict! vvv's plan for world domination through e-book creation software is proceeding apace.

Yes quite possibly. Now that I've got it working (correct version) I'm pretty darned impressed.

One of the problems I've had has been converting lots of different formats to text then having to use a hex editor to strip out end of line carriage returns and things like that. Very often you find books that no matter which software you use to convert it from the original it leaves no clear paragraph breaks that can be isolated. The result is that once converted to rtf you have a formatting problem. I've written a few quick basic programs to do a fair job of identifying paragraph breaks but even that's touch and go much of the time.

So far BD has had about 98% success at taking the original file and producing a well formatted output file. Not to mention being able to embed images in non-fiction. It even handles conversions from pdf better than most of the dedicated pdf to text programs.

I had a lot of book files in varying formats that I pretty much gave up on; not being able to find a good workable way to convert them for the Reader. I'm going back now and using BD on them and having about an 80%-90% success rate.

It's an impressive piece of software and I've been in the computer software business for over 30 years.