Calibre and FORMATTING how to stop it altering my formatting? - Page 3

MBatchellor · 07-21-2010, 11:36 PM

when you increase the font size, the text enlarges and wraps where it belongs so two lines of dialogue becomes four but the dialogue stays where it belongs.

kovidgoyal · 07-21-2010, 11:41 PM

You want to format dialogue, there are examples of doing it and peotry in the demo here:

http://calibre-ebook.com/user_manual...ormatting-demo

MBatchellor · 07-21-2010, 11:59 PM

Downloaded several screenplays from B&N and they view with proper margins, etc. so I know it can be done. I'm just not tech savvy enough to do it myself.

DoctorOhh · 07-22-2010, 12:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MBatchellor

Downloaded several screenplays from B&N and they view with proper margins, etc. so I know it can be done. I'm just not tech savvy enough to do it myself.

Check out the demo epub that Kovid points to. Open it in Sigil it is really very basic.

Adoby · 07-22-2010, 03:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MBatchellor

Downloaded several screenplays from B&N and they view with proper margins, etc. so I know it can be done. I'm just not tech savvy enough to do it myself.

I suspect that B&N (or whoever) don't use plain text-files as input when they create the ebooks. Use a format that allow you to explicitly format the text.

XHTML/epub is a good candidate. Perhaps using Sigil as suggested above.

You can then convert to lrf or whatever.

Agama · 07-22-2010, 07:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nerys

grr alas my unit does not support epub and from what I understand the epub firmware is seriously bad news for the prs-500

Guess I will have to stick with txt for the funky formatted stuff.

It might be worth trying the epub firmware update as you can then use markdown on your plain text input file to achieve your required formatting. Calibre is fully markdown compliant and if you want to fine tune the output then you can amend the generated stylesheet.css file. I use markdown with .txt files to generate epubs for a Sony PRS-300 and calibre does a great job for me. You do need to spend a bit of time marking-down your input document but it's well worth the effort. (A text editor with good support for regular expressions is useful here.)

paulzag · 07-22-2010, 09:04 AM

I work with screenplays all the time and in the end most people stick to PDF or Final Draft if they're going to read them on a device.

Screenplay formating is non-trivial. I used a very fancy MS Word template in the 1990's and it still didn't deliver 100% US industry standard layout.

Now if you just want to read a screenplay in close enough format, I'm happy to help work it out. Like Kovid said, text optimized formats are not designed to keep arbitrary whitespace.

If you point me to a free download of a script you are trying (that works as you want) I'll have a crack at it.

Agama · 07-23-2010, 02:35 AM

I don't have a script, it's a manual editing process which takes about 30-60 minutes per book, irrespective of the number of pages. For complex fixed layouts you are better off with PDF than EPUB although arbitrary white space can be preserved in text files by using markdown. Sounds like you need a reader with an A5/A4 screen size and full PDF capability built in. (Maybe the manufacturers have these in the pipeline.) My PRS-300 renders PDFs very well but it's a bit slow and viewing a whole page at a time makes the text almost too small to read.

07-21-2010, 11:36 PM	#31
MBatchellor Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jul 2010 Device: Nook	Font size when you increase the font size, the text enlarges and wraps where it belongs so two lines of dialogue becomes four but the dialogue stays where it belongs.

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07-21-2010, 11:41 PM	#32
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,859 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	You want to format dialogue, there are examples of doing it and peotry in the demo here: http://calibre-ebook.com/user_manual...ormatting-demo

07-21-2010, 11:59 PM	#33
MBatchellor Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jul 2010 Device: Nook	Downloaded several screenplays from B&N and they view with proper margins, etc. so I know it can be done. I'm just not tech savvy enough to do it myself.

07-22-2010, 09:04 AM	#37
paulzag Junior Member Posts: 5 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jul 2010 Device: eMachines eM250, iPhone	I work with screenplays all the time and in the end most people stick to PDF or Final Draft if they're going to read them on a device. Screenplay formating is non-trivial. I used a very fancy MS Word template in the 1990's and it still didn't deliver 100% US industry standard layout. Now if you just want to read a screenplay in close enough format, I'm happy to help work it out. Like Kovid said, text optimized formats are not designed to keep arbitrary whitespace. If you point me to a free download of a script you are trying (that works as you want) I'll have a crack at it.

07-23-2010, 02:35 AM	#38
Agama Guru Posts: 776 Karma: 2751519 Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: UK Device: PW2, Nexus7	I don't have a script, it's a manual editing process which takes about 30-60 minutes per book, irrespective of the number of pages. For complex fixed layouts you are better off with PDF than EPUB although arbitrary white space can be preserved in text files by using markdown. Sounds like you need a reader with an A5/A4 screen size and full PDF capability built in. (Maybe the manufacturers have these in the pipeline.) My PRS-300 renders PDFs very well but it's a bit slow and viewing a whole page at a time makes the text almost too small to read.

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