Help! Important conversion question

ficbot · 04-24-2010, 10:34 AM

I wrote in the Workshop forum about the troubles I am having getting mobis generated from HTML to display correctly on various devices. I want a master file I can convert as needed and get an error-free output. I don't want to have to re-fiddle every time I get a new device, I want to be able to just send to a disk or device in Calibre (or convert if needed) and go. I have tried every trick I could think of to sanitize the HTML to no avail.

Finally, I tried converting the HTML to epub and then converting the epub to mobi (instead of using the HTML to convert to mobi). It looks like all my problems are solved. Quote marks and em-dashes are displaying fine in the resulting mobi and there are proper paragraph breaks and everything. But I am not sure what is going on behind the scenes.

If I convert all my files this way, can I use the new epub or mobi file as my master and delete the old HTML file? If so, is it better to keep the mobi or the epub? And will this process really generate a file that I can keep that will generate more reliable results in the future for conversion? I have 200 files here so I really REALLY want to just do one thing, now, to fix them up and then never have to worry about it again. I am tired of all this tweaking every time I try a new device.

kovidgoyal · 04-24-2010, 12:32 PM

There's no magic bullet that will guarantee everything across 200 files, I'm afraid.

04-24-2010, 10:34 AM	#1
ficbot Wizard Posts: 2,409 Karma: 4132096 Join Date: Sep 2008 Device: Kindle Paperwhite/iOS Kindle App	Help! Important conversion question I wrote in the Workshop forum about the troubles I am having getting mobis generated from HTML to display correctly on various devices. I want a master file I can convert as needed and get an error-free output. I don't want to have to re-fiddle every time I get a new device, I want to be able to just send to a disk or device in Calibre (or convert if needed) and go. I have tried every trick I could think of to sanitize the HTML to no avail. Finally, I tried converting the HTML to epub and then converting the epub to mobi (instead of using the HTML to convert to mobi). It looks like all my problems are solved. Quote marks and em-dashes are displaying fine in the resulting mobi and there are proper paragraph breaks and everything. But I am not sure what is going on behind the scenes. If I convert all my files this way, can I use the new epub or mobi file as my master and delete the old HTML file? If so, is it better to keep the mobi or the epub? And will this process really generate a file that I can keep that will generate more reliable results in the future for conversion? I have 200 files here so I really REALLY want to just do one thing, now, to fix them up and then never have to worry about it again. I am tired of all this tweaking every time I try a new device.

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04-24-2010, 12:32 PM	#2
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,860 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	There's no magic bullet that will guarantee everything across 200 files, I'm afraid.