Simply remove ALL headers/footers?

[RachDvn]

I've read the guides (a few times ) about the new Search & Replace feature, but sadly, I'm not grasping. I never used the header/footer feature in previous Calibre editions either, so this element is brand new for me. I also know that PDF conversions are riddled with problems.

That said, is there a Regex that can simply remove all headers and footers when doing a PDF to mobi conversion? Don't want to replace anything, just make them all disappear. Any possible way?

Thanks,
Rach

[carnivore]

If you just leave the 'replace' section blank, it will remove the matched text.

The regex that you need depends on what's in your PDF. Pulling page numbers is different than removing path information.

Since the stuff you want to get rid of is usually on one line, you can use pretty simple regexes like:

file:///.+

to match

file:///F|/rah/Author%20D.%20Writerperson%20Title%20Book.txt (1 of 105) [1/14/03 10:48:52 PM]<br>

and

file:///F|/rah/Author%20D.%20Writerperson%20Title%20Book.txt<br>

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by RachDvn

That said, is there a Regex that can simply remove all headers and footers when doing a PDF to mobi conversion? Don't want to replace anything, just make them all disappear. Any possible way?

The search & replace- feature is an abstraction of the previous header/footer removal feature. It just allows you to specify the replacement text, if you don't specify any, you delete the items.
There's no single regex that can eliminate all headers and footers during conversion. If there were, it would be hardcoded somewhere instead of having the user writing the regex.

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by Manichean

There's no single regex that can eliminate all headers and footers during conversion. .

your alternative is to use tools within PDf software that can crop pages/ remove headers. the Adobe one is very expensive but PDF-xchange is cheap* & lets you crop + also delete any unwanted pages. I do that before adding to calibre.

once again it needs manual intervention though - you have to tell the program where to crop.

I prefer the crop solution to the regex solution as it is easier to see what it is doing;
plus the less work that calibre has to do, the faster the pdf convert should be.

*pdf xchange lite is currently free for home / academic use. http://www.tracker-software.com/free_lite_home.html ,
but for cropping you need the pro version - unless you can get all of your books cropped before the free evaluation period times out !!!

[Agama]

Originally Posted by Manichean

There's no single regex that can eliminate all headers and footers during conversion. If there were, it would be hardcoded somewhere instead of having the user writing the regex.

Calibre also has a handy, (and free!), tool for PDF cropping within the command line function PDFManipulate.

See the crop option in pdfmanipulate for more details and https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=103437 for an example of using it.

[cybmole]

NB some PDF viewer crop options do not actually remove anything - I found out the hard way but trying to convert "cropped" output from pdf -x change.

all that crop does is hides the parts of the page you tell it to. when the PDF is uses as input to calibre convert it reads the whole page, including the stuff you thought you'd cropped out of existence!

so thats a point in favour of regex solutions