Calibre Conversion Removes Original Paragraph Styles

mjdz · 06-14-2018, 10:06 PM

When I convert an E-Book to the ePUB format from some other format (Mobi or AZW3, for example), Calibre creates a completely brand new set of paragraph styles, and it also adds a set of Calibre style classes. All of the original paragraph styles are removed from the converted E-Book.

Often, there are so many new Calibre paragraph style codes (Calibre2 through Calibre30, for example), that editing the new ePUB book is nearly impossible for me. I can't figure out which Calibre styles are for Heading1, Heading2, the Table of Contents, and the body text.

Also, I don't understand why there must be Calibre style classes as well as Calibre paragraph styles.

Question: Is there any way to make Calibre just accept the original paragraph style names, leaving those names alone while converting a book to ePUB? This would make life so much easier.

Thanks for your help.

DoctorOhh · 06-15-2018, 02:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mjdz

Question: Is there any way to make Calibre just accept the original paragraph style names, leaving those names alone while converting a book to ePUB?

I may be wrong, but to the best of my understanding the answer to your question is no.

DNSB · 06-15-2018, 04:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mjdz

When I convert an E-Book to the ePUB format from some other format (Mobi or AZW3, for example), Calibre creates a completely brand new set of paragraph styles, and it also adds a set of Calibre style classes. All of the original paragraph styles are removed from the converted E-Book.

Question: Is there any way to make Calibre just accept the original paragraph style names, leaving those names alone while converting a book to ePUB? This would make life so much easier.

For AZW3 format, you can try the KindleUnpack plugin for calibre.

jackie_w · 06-15-2018, 06:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mjdz

Question: Is there any way to make Calibre just accept the original paragraph style names, leaving those names alone while converting a book to ePUB? This would make life so much easier.

It all depends on the styles contained in your source book.

Someone feel free to contradict me if I've got any of the following wrong.

A mobi does not contain any style class names so a mobi->epub conversion has no choice other than create new class names for the epub, usually "calibren" plus "bold" and "italic" as span classes.

Calibre always assigns a class to 'bare' tags, e.g. <body> or <h2> will end up as <body class="calibren"> and <h2 class="calibren"> after conversion.

Calibre always flattens CSS so it will not retain styling like p+p {text-indent:1em} or h2>p{...}. They will be converted to new calibren classes.

And also ... I think if calibre finds, say, 5 style class names, all with the same style content, 4 of the class names will be removed during conversion and the first class name used for all of them.

Other than the above my experience is that these days calibre does a reasonable job of trying to retain style class names. For example, see the attached image of a Before vs. After analysis of tag/class combos after an epub->epub conversion of a random book in my library.

DNSB · 06-16-2018, 02:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jackie_w

And also ... I think if calibre finds, say, 5 style class names, all with the same style content, 4 of the class names will be removed during conversion and the first class name used for all of them.

Other than the above my experience is that these days calibre does a reasonable job of trying to retain style class names. For example, see the attached image of a Before vs. After analysis of tag/class combos after an epub->epub conversion of a random book in my library.

As near as I've been able to tell, calibre will happily create multiple near identical classes. A bit of renaming and deleting unused classes cleans that up with relatively little effort. Ditto for the <div> tags that calibre is overly fond of.

06-14-2018, 10:06 PM	#1
mjdz Junior Member Posts: 2 Karma: 2010 Join Date: Jun 2016 Location: Philadelphia, PA Device: Samsung Tablet, Windows PC	Calibre Conversion Removes Original Paragraph Styles When I convert an E-Book to the ePUB format from some other format (Mobi or AZW3, for example), Calibre creates a completely brand new set of paragraph styles, and it also adds a set of Calibre style classes. All of the original paragraph styles are removed from the converted E-Book. Often, there are so many new Calibre paragraph style codes (Calibre2 through Calibre30, for example), that editing the new ePUB book is nearly impossible for me. I can't figure out which Calibre styles are for Heading1, Heading2, the Table of Contents, and the body text. Also, I don't understand why there must be Calibre style classes as well as Calibre paragraph styles. Question: Is there any way to make Calibre just accept the original paragraph style names, leaving those names alone while converting a book to ePUB? This would make life so much easier. Thanks for your help.

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