My Content Creation Odyssey

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by scotty1024

Why anyone would think "XML" would make a smaller eBook format is baffling to me.

Oh, probably my relative ignorance on the topic.

I was basing my surmise on the fact that XML is essentially saved as text (or am I off there too?) and that text saves very small (the complete works of Shakespeare on a 3.5" floppy, and all that).

[igorsk]

Originally Posted by scotty1024

BBeB is handicapped in this department as it only allows sentence level compression via zlib compression in it's page layout mode. The compression dictionary is built on each string so it never gets very efficient.

Not sure where you got this from... AFAIK, each text block is compressed in full, not "per sentence". And you can have a text block lasting for a whole chapter.

[Michele]

Originally Posted by bingle

So, to continue the odyssey ;-)

I've mostly been playing with BookDesigner over the past few days. The reason for the switch is that LRF files show up with the correct author and title information, and can also preserve links. I tried converting from HTML, LIT and RTF to LRF, the examples below come mostly from a LIT file with embedded cover art, a table of contents, and lots of footnotes. In MS Reader, the footnotes show up as links, mousing over them pops up a box with the footnote text.

At first, using the Sony Librie export created texts with big blank pages, every other page. However, by forcing 26 lines per page and a page width of slightly less than the default 600, I got good-looking LRF files. I even was able to get Tables of Contents with links that jumped to chapter headings!

Bingle, I'm trying BookDesigner with a LIT file, but my Table of Contents links to the chapters are not preserved upon viewing it in my Reader. However, when I view the created file from within BD, mousing over the items in the TOC displays an empty popup with that heading. Do you have any suggestions for me?

Also, I lose all the italics from the text in the main body. I selected the option to keep original formatting, but still...

[Nightwing]

Good to see some good ideas...

Now if some one can figure out why a RTF with picture will not show the pictures... Tried even 4bit very small pictures and no luck.

Only thing that works is print to PDF using Adobe PDF using MS Word.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Nightwing

Now if some one can figure out why a RTF with picture will not show the pictures... Tried even 4bit very small pictures and no luck.

Because reader doesn't support pictures within RTFs.

[Nightwing]

Originally Posted by Slava

Because reader doesn't support pictures within RTFs.

Figure it had to be somthing simple... Thank you ! Guess for books will illustratuions its PDF or BBeB foramts...

[rmeister0]

"Why anyone would think "XML" would make a smaller eBook format is baffling to me."

Compared to PDF? Yea, that would be smaller.

[imaredr]

Has anyone put together a quick tutorial on how to create a .lrf file? I have tried, but there are so many gaps between lines and I haven't been able to create a TOC. I would like to add my cover art, but if that's not possible I can live without. Also when resizing the lrf files on the reader the gaps get even larger even within the same sentence. This frustration has really put me off of the reader and I think if I can make a clean book, I could finally learn to enjoy my newest ebook reader. Thanks.

[bingle]

Originally Posted by Michele

Bingle, I'm trying BookDesigner with a LIT file, but my Table of Contents links to the chapters are not preserved upon viewing it in my Reader. However, when I view the created file from within BD, mousing over the items in the TOC displays an empty popup with that heading. Do you have any suggestions for me?

Also, I lose all the italics from the text in the main body. I selected the option to keep original formatting, but still...

I don't have any ideas, sorry. I tried only one book with a TOC and links, and it worked fine for me.

And I've never lost formatting before.. is that when you import the file to BookDesigner, or after you create the Librie file?

[Nightwing]

Heck I would kill for a decent interface to some of these program...

BookDesigner has a lot of power but a real pain to use. And Ghtmldoc... Well easer to use word with a PDF plug in than it.

As I know now, rtf would be greate as long as you dont want illustrations in your book.

Does anyone know how to force PRIMOPDF print driver to do a small page? Cant get it to go to the size for the Reader. Switch over to the Adobe PDF Writer driver. Comes out aok...

May need to do my own...

[bingle]

Originally Posted by imaredr

Has anyone put together a quick tutorial on how to create a .lrf file? I have tried, but there are so many gaps between lines and I haven't been able to create a TOC. I would like to add my cover art, but if that's not possible I can live without. Also when resizing the lrf files on the reader the gaps get even larger even within the same sentence. This frustration has really put me off of the reader and I think if I can make a clean book, I could finally learn to enjoy my newest ebook reader. Thanks.

Cover art is definitely possible. Here's a quick overview of the steps I take:

* Drag and drop supported file (mostly *.LIT files, for me) to BookDesigner window.

* Right click on author's name and set it as Book Author; do the same for title

* Cut out any unneeded text

* Open the Element Browser (Tools->Element Browser) , and look for all "title" elements. For some books, this will get text that is capitalized or bolded and fairly alone on a line, so it might catch some text that is just meant to be emphasized. Select these and change to "paragraph". You might also want to check "subtitle" elements, they sometimes have the same problem.

* Then change any remaining "title" elements to "subtitle"s. This may not be necessary, but what I've found is that "title" elements will result in every other page being blank, with only the title displayed. There's probably a better way to deal with that, but this works for me.

* Close the Element Browser, and click on the "Make Sony Librie File". This opens the dialog box with book options. If this is a LIT file with an embedded cover image, the cover image should show up here. Otherwise, you can drag-and-drop or browse for the image.

* Set the "book style" to "very simple". Unfortunately, this will give you wider margins and much more basic formatting, but it seems to be the only way to avoid an early ending for your Reader file.

* Set the "page width" to 530 or so. Otherwise you'll get lines where the last few words end up on the next line, alone.

* I leave the text size and cover size set to the default 17 and 24, respectively.

* Press "test book" and the Connect Reader should pop up in a few moments with the first few pages of your book. Look it over to make sure nothing is terribly wrong, then close Connect Reader and click "Make Book". A little while later, your book will appear in the Sony Librie directory under BookDesigner (or where ever else you saved it). Connect Reader will open again, displaying the whole book.

* At this point, I move the book to its permanent home and add it to the Library.

As you can see, this is pretty simple - I don't generally worry too much about having the perfect fonts or margins or text sizes. BookDesigner and the Element Browser do allow you to take a much more proactive role, but I'm interested mostly in quickly making readable files.

Unfortunately, to get links and TOCs working I think (although I haven't investigated much) that you have to use a style other than "very simple", which leaves you open to Premature Ending Syndrome.

Anyway, I hope this provides a usable base you can work off of to make more complex, working LRFs. Please post your improvements here! :-)

[imaredr]

@ Bingle. Thanks so much. I am sure this will help me a lot. I have had great success using BD for making mobi and imp files. I will try this out today!

[Michele]

Thanks for the info, Bingle, but the TOC links or italics are stripped from the unsecure lit file where they do exist. Maybe it's an elements problem.

Edit: Clue: I noticed that the italicized text also disappears when I convert the same text from html to rtf. In html it has an <em> enclosing it (embedded?). Maybe someone knows more about this than I do, and it may be the same reason it disappears with BD.

[Kaitou Ace]

BookDesigner is a great program, but it seems to strip all formatting from an html file when making libre documents. Links, bold, italics, underline and anything similar vanishes. Also I have a lot of problems using it on anything other then "very simple" because it almost never makes the full size book if I try to use "simple" or "advanced" modes.
I kept converting a file for a good half hour, and got varying page lengths, from 3 to 580, and most everything in between, but none were the full file. It seems something gets in the way, but I haven't been able to track down what, as multiple conversions with the same settings, keep getting different page numbers.

It's a good program, and I use it for most of my conversions, but I'd love to be able to use the settings to fit more text per page then what the default setting does.

[bingle]

Originally Posted by Kaitou Ace

BookDesigner is a great program, but it seems to strip all formatting from an html file when making libre documents. Links, bold, italics, underline and anything similar vanishes. Also I have a lot of problems using it on anything other then "very simple" because it almost never makes the full size book if I try to use "simple" or "advanced" modes.
I kept converting a file for a good half hour, and got varying page lengths, from 3 to 580, and most everything in between, but none were the full file. It seems something gets in the way, but I haven't been able to track down what, as multiple conversions with the same settings, keep getting different page numbers.

It's a good program, and I use it for most of my conversions, but I'd love to be able to use the settings to fit more text per page then what the default setting does.

Yeah, I just realized this also (after converting a ton of books... grumble). The "very simple" mode strips out all formatting, even simple things like italics and bold :-( So perhaps LRF is not the way to go after all, at least currently. I am holding out hope for either a Reader-specific extension to BookDesigner or an official set of LRF tools from Sony.

I guess for now it's back to RTFs for me...