Tool to easily clean and refurbish html-text before conversion

Pulp · 10-13-2008, 05:23 AM

What I was looking for was an easy way to go through the html-files I created before I formated them to mobi.
I used to use a simple text editor to go through the source and then check the result in a browser, but this is rather annoying with long documents.

While searching for a simple WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) I was very close to desperation as there are thousands of them out there, some even free - but the main problem was that they created bulky code and there was no way to force them not to.
I know that bookdesigner is a tool to do it, but I never found it to be intuitive and I had a lot of trouble editing non english books.

Even though my requirements were simple (at leasts I thought so

) it took me a lot of tries to find the perfect program:

I finaly ended up with kompoZer, an unofficial successor of Nvu.

It allows to

edit the text directly in HTML view (WYSIWYG)
also view sourcecode and graphical html-tags
find and replace text in all the views
create lists by simply marking the text and pressing a button
disable the use of CSS elements (essential!)

You can even copy and paste text from your browser.

kompoZer is fast, stable and easy to use - I hope it will help some of you the way it helps me

kacir · 10-13-2008, 06:11 AM

my favourite tool for converting html books is a commandline program demoroniser.
http://www.fourmilab.ch/webtools/demoroniser/
it processes html sources and removes all the fancy characters that Microsoft tools insert into html code. Problem is all those fancy curly quotes, non-breaking spaces, optional hyppens, em-dashes, en-dashes, ... in some html files are non standard and display on my reader as very distracting two-exotic-character-combinations. Such files are practically unreadable.

I know that quite a lot of people here are very fond of their properly formated curly braces, em-dashes, em-dashes, and other typographical sugar, but when such things display on my reader as unreadable characters I resort to demoroniser or my own scripts written in vim.

By the way, I always use nvu generated html code as a textbook example how a really well written html code is supposed to look. I also use MSWord generated html code as an oposite example.

Format C: · 10-13-2008, 09:40 AM

Amaya is also good.
And, being developed by W3C, I suppose it's strictly standard-compliant...

Pulp · 10-13-2008, 10:16 AM

Amaya is good aswell but I found it to be a bit big and slow sometimes.

10-13-2008, 05:23 AM	#1
Pulp Palm Addict Posts: 477 Karma: 1001951 Join Date: Aug 2008 Device: Cybook Gen3 [512mb, FW: 1.5]	Tool to easily clean and refurbish html-text before conversion What I was looking for was an easy way to go through the html-files I created before I formated them to mobi. I used to use a simple text editor to go through the source and then check the result in a browser, but this is rather annoying with long documents. While searching for a simple WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) I was very close to desperation as there are thousands of them out there, some even free - but the main problem was that they created bulky code and there was no way to force them not to. I know that bookdesigner is a tool to do it, but I never found it to be intuitive and I had a lot of trouble editing non english books. Even though my requirements were simple (at leasts I thought so ) it took me a lot of tries to find the perfect program: I finaly ended up with kompoZer, an unofficial successor of Nvu. It allows to edit the text directly in HTML view (WYSIWYG) also view sourcecode and graphical html-tags find and replace text in all the views create lists by simply marking the text and pressing a button disable the use of CSS elements (essential!) You can even copy and paste text from your browser. kompoZer is fast, stable and easy to use - I hope it will help some of you the way it helps me Attached Thumbnails

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10-13-2008, 06:11 AM	#2
kacir Wizard Posts: 3,462 Karma: 10484861 Join Date: May 2006 Device: PocketBook 360, before it was Sony Reader, cassiopeia A-20	my favourite tool for converting html books is a commandline program demoroniser. http://www.fourmilab.ch/webtools/demoroniser/ it processes html sources and removes all the fancy characters that Microsoft tools insert into html code. Problem is all those fancy curly quotes, non-breaking spaces, optional hyppens, em-dashes, en-dashes, ... in some html files are non standard and display on my reader as very distracting two-exotic-character-combinations. Such files are practically unreadable. I know that quite a lot of people here are very fond of their properly formated curly braces, em-dashes, em-dashes, and other typographical sugar, but when such things display on my reader as unreadable characters I resort to demoroniser or my own scripts written in vim. By the way, I always use nvu generated html code as a textbook example how a really well written html code is supposed to look. I also use MSWord generated html code as an oposite example.

10-13-2008, 09:40 AM	#3
Format C: Guru Posts: 753 Karma: 1496807 Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: The Third World Device: iLiad + PRS-505 + Kindle 3	Amaya is also good. And, being developed by W3C, I suppose it's strictly standard-compliant...

10-13-2008, 10:16 AM	#4
Pulp Palm Addict Posts: 477 Karma: 1001951 Join Date: Aug 2008 Device: Cybook Gen3 [512mb, FW: 1.5]	Amaya is good aswell but I found it to be a bit big and slow sometimes.

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