regex for character replacement, em-dash questions

cybmole · 10-18-2010, 02:21 AM

I'm hoping to learn how to fix up various small annoyances in conversions via regex & have some related questions.

1. em-dash, en-dash - to mess with these, how do I type the characters into the regex i.e. is there a way to generate an emdash or endash with the keyboard ?

2. find + replace syntax: I see lots of helpful examples for removing stuff with regex but what is the generic construction of a find / replace all command

3. as a specific, I could fix up one book if I could replace all "?" with em dash, EXCEPT for those ? which are followed by a close speech quote. this would take 3 passes in word: 1. change all ?" to , say, QMQM". 2 change all "?" to em dash. 3 change all QMQM back to ?"

PS following a link to here https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Special_characters
I read that em-dash, en-dash are NOT supported on Kindle, but it does not say what would be displayed if one was included in a .mobi file - I assume that the .mobi spec does support them ?

Manichean · 10-18-2010, 04:20 AM

I don't think Calibre can do search & replace on book contents at all. As for regex construction, those follow the same rules in other programs as they do in Calibre (though caveats may apply, e.g. Notepad++ doesn't allow regex matching across linebreaks). Go read a tutorial, if you need to learn regexes.

cybmole · 10-18-2010, 05:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Manichean

I don't think Calibre can do search & replace on book contents at all.

OK - I'll stick with converting & editing via notepad++ ,word etc.

just wanted to be sure I was not missing any simpler route.

I thought there might be an option to use a character conversion table so that,say, all instances of en-dash ( not supported on Kindle) can be replaced with a character that is supported. Maybe that already happens ?

jackie_w · 10-18-2010, 03:09 PM

If you can see m-dash/n-dash, curly quotes etc in your source file and you want ordinary dashes and quotes in the converted file, then a simple check of the box 'Transliterate unicode chars to ASCII' on the Convert - Look&Feel page should be enough.

However, if the source has already 'lost' the special chars to ?'s then I'm afraid you're stuck with using an editor and guesswork on your source.

10-18-2010, 02:21 AM	#1
cybmole Wizard Posts: 3,720 Karma: 1759970 Join Date: Sep 2010 Device: none	regex for character replacement, em-dash questions I'm hoping to learn how to fix up various small annoyances in conversions via regex & have some related questions. 1. em-dash, en-dash - to mess with these, how do I type the characters into the regex i.e. is there a way to generate an emdash or endash with the keyboard ? 2. find + replace syntax: I see lots of helpful examples for removing stuff with regex but what is the generic construction of a find / replace all command 3. as a specific, I could fix up one book if I could replace all "?" with em dash, EXCEPT for those ? which are followed by a close speech quote. this would take 3 passes in word: 1. change all ?" to , say, QMQM". 2 change all "?" to em dash. 3 change all QMQM back to ?" PS following a link to here https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Special_characters I read that em-dash, en-dash are NOT supported on Kindle, but it does not say what would be displayed if one was included in a .mobi file - I assume that the .mobi spec does support them ? Last edited by cybmole; 10-18-2010 at 02:29 AM.

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10-18-2010, 04:20 AM	#2
Manichean Wizard Posts: 3,130 Karma: 91256 Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Germany Device: Cybook Gen3	I don't think Calibre can do search & replace on book contents at all. As for regex construction, those follow the same rules in other programs as they do in Calibre (though caveats may apply, e.g. Notepad++ doesn't allow regex matching across linebreaks). Go read a tutorial, if you need to learn regexes.

10-18-2010, 03:09 PM	#4
jackie_w Grand Sorcerer Posts: 6,248 Karma: 16539642 Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: UK Device: ClaraHD, Forma, Libra2, Clara2E, LibraCol, PBTouchHD3	If you can see m-dash/n-dash, curly quotes etc in your source file and you want ordinary dashes and quotes in the converted file, then a simple check of the box 'Transliterate unicode chars to ASCII' on the Convert - Look&Feel page should be enough. However, if the source has already 'lost' the special chars to ?'s then I'm afraid you're stuck with using an editor and guesswork on your source.

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