any idea how to revover book

[ebuecherwurm]

My daughter is (was) writing a small book using the calibre editor, running Windows 10 on a ssd.
After the last save, the file is reported corrupt... (as far as I was told, she saved the file, closed the editor and shut down windows, and the file size was far from taking any time to save)

I already tried 7zip on the epub file and there was only on html file inside - the most recent chapter, no other files except the directory structure (I am not looking at the file right now so no hint here)

I also booted from an usb stick to recover older versions of the file. I could un-delete one epub file with the correct name, but it was even more corrupt (starting with "L^@^@^@^A^T^B" and not the usual Zip indicator "PK")

don't blame her for making no backups, I never told her to do... and I will when she continues to write. right now, [edit:] I made sure the system disk won't be written to [/edit], so no more changes are written to the disk.

Are there any temporary files worth searching for? otherwise, all but one chapter is lost.

[BetterRed]

You could try something like Recuva ==>> https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva.

I suspect that whatever is preventing the system from booting is what caused your daughters epub to go south - i.e. it was the canary.

Curious : why does your daughter write (code) in XHTML. Most writers prefer to use a word processor. There are many ways to create an EPUB from a word processing format.

BR

[ebuecherwurm]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

You could try something like Recuva ==>> https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva.

Thank you, but I have no troubles to un-delete files - I just have no idea what (type of) file might help me to recover the e-book. I already have un-deleted all "*.epub" files - which was the "even more corrupt" file mentioned above.

Originally Posted by BetterRed

I suspect that whatever is preventing the system from booting is what caused your daughters epub to go south - i.e. it was the canary.

The system is bootable, everything is fine except that ebook. "the system won't boot" was bad/wrong wording - sorry. I just don't want the system to boot from the disk to prevent writing to the ssd.

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Curious : why does your daughter write (code) in XHTML. Most writers prefer to use a word processor. There are many ways to create an EPUB from a word processing format.

BR

She wanted to have a file per chapter, and still have an overview over the whole book, she wanted a preview close to an book without having the input split in pages, and she didn't like formatting that "sticks to the words like snot" after editing the text.
When she asked for a book-editor I suggested Calibre and Sigil (*).
She was quite comfortable with the editor, she specially liked to have direct speech in <q>-tags so she could try out different quote-styles affecting the whole book. I thought it a good idea, as she also learned a lot about html/xml and the separation of style and content.

(*) that said I have to ask her if she used Sigil or Calibre editor... Could be the wrong topic here.

[retiredbiker]

she didn't like formatting that "sticks to the words like snot" after editing the text

Oh, thank you for that, it made my day!

I've helped a few friends get their Word file efforts into epub format. Your phrase is perfect! I will have to rename a certain saved search set "snot-cleaner.n".

I can see using the Calibre editor or Sigil as an authoring tool for someone wanting to directly write an ebook. Personally I have used LibreOffice Writer...with care in using paragraph styles and keeping the ad-hoc formatting to nothing but the odd italics, it works pretty well. But they keep "improving" it so it's darn near as complicated as Word now. I have actually been thinking to do my next writing right in the editor.

She might look at Jutoh...it's a nearly WYSIWYG epub editor, can output all kinds of formats, and does a good job. About $40 CAD last I looked at it.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by ebuecherwurm

Thank you, but I have no troubles to un-delete files - I just have no idea what (type of) file might help me to recover the e-book. I already have un-deleted all "*.epub" files - which was the "even more corrupt" file mentioned above.

The system is bootable, everything is fine except that ebook. "the system won't boot" was bad/wrong wording - sorry. I just don't want the system to boot from the disk to prevent writing to the ssd.

EPUB files are zip archives. When they are opened both editors unpack them into subfolders within the users temp folder and repack to original location when saved. A typical epub consists of one or more .xhtml (or .html) files, a content.opf file, one or more .css files, an .jpg (cover) file, a mimetype file, and a container.xml in a META_INF folder.

Originally Posted by ebuecherwurm

She wanted to have a file per chapter, and still have an overview over the whole book, she wanted a preview close to an book without having the input split in pages, and she didn't like formatting that "sticks to the words like snot" after editing the text.

The xhtml/html files are the content chapters

Originally Posted by ebuecherwurm

When she asked for a book-editor I suggested Calibre and Sigil (*).
She was quite comfortable with the editor, she specially liked to have direct speech in <q>-tags so she could try out different quote-styles affecting the whole book. I thought it a good idea, as she also learned a lot about ... the separation of style and content.

A vital lesson no matter what the tool.

Originally Posted by ebuecherwurm

(*) that said I have to ask her if she used Sigil or Calibre editor... Could be the wrong topic here.

In this instance it's probably not relevant, but if you find out its Sigil, let us know and we'll move the thread into its forum. If she was using Sigil you should also ask if she was using Code view or Book view, the latter is unique to Sigil.

BR

[BetterRed]

@retiredbiker - I find Writer horribly complicated, I used to find its genesis equally so. The ribbon must have been designed with me in mind, for I learnt more about Word in the first month of using version 2007 than I had in the years since first using it on DOS and Xenix

BR

[ebuecherwurm]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

EPUB files are zip archives. When they are opened both editors unpack them into subfolders within the users temp folder and repack to original location when saved. A typical epub consists of one or more .xhtml (or .html) files, a content.opf file, one or more .css files, an .jpg (cover) file, a mimetype file, and a container.xml in a META_INF folder.

Obvious, but I didn't think of this. I will check for html-files (the other files are of no relevance yet).
Hopefully I can recover those files.

In this instance it's probably not relevant, but if you find out its Sigil, let us know and we'll move the thread into its forum. If she was using Sigil you should also ask if she was using Code view or Book view, the latter is unique to Sigil.

It's not Sigil, she used the side-by-side Editor (html left, preview right)

[ebuecherwurm]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

@retiredbiker - I find Writer horribly complicated, I used to find its genesis equally so. The ribbon must have been designed with me in mind, for I learnt more about Word in the first month of using version 2007 than I had in the years since first using it on DOS and Xenix

this is getting off-topic, but I have got to reply. I hate those Ribbons. To reuse your wording, the ribbon must have been designed with "driving me mad" in mind... I'm quite happy with Writer, but most stuff I do in simple Text Editors (no, not vi, that one is worse than ribbons).

[phossler]

Not arguing about the Ribbon (which everyone has an opinion about), but it is possible to easily customize and simplify the ribbon and the Quick Access Toolbar to put just the commands that you want on it. (Capture.jpg)

I've found that sometimes, it works better to just create a special tab associated with a MS Word template (dotx/dotm) (Capture1.jpg)

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by ebuecherwurm

Obvious, but I didn't think of this. I will check for html-files (the other files are of no relevance yet).
Hopefully I can recover those files.
It's not Sigil, she used the side-by-side Editor (html left, preview right)

FTR only - the layouts of both editors are similar, I think these are close to the defaults:



The only reason it may have been be relevant is that there are some long-running issues with Sigil's Book View feature. I can't recall details because I don't use Book View. The calibre editor doesn't have an equivalent feature in part because of those issues.

If you don't like vi you might like emacs

BR