Anyone use Calibre to produce ebooks from HTML?

[AlexBell]

The heading says it all.

I very much prefer to work in HTML when producing ebooks, and would like to try Calibre to compare with Mobipocket Creator. But I can't for the life of me understand how it works, and have not had any success in getting information through the Calibre forum.

So if anyone here uses Calibre to convert HTML files to ebooks could you please give me an outline of how it's done? Or point me to a How To?

Regards, Alex

[pepak]

What do you want to know? I mean, the minimal conversion process is simply calling

html2lrf my_book_in_html_format.htm

and you are done. You can use any2lrf or any2epub instead of html2lrf, too.

[gwynevans]

What sort of issues are you having? I've done this before with 'normal' HTML (& CSS, for ePub, at least) with things such as:

<h1>Hayden </h1>
<h2>Chapter 1</h2>
<p><strong>Present Day</strong></p>
<p>Dilara Kenner wound her way through ...</p>
<p> ... look that said <em>you've got to be kidding me</em>, then</p>

then it's a matter of setting Calibre's "chapter detection" (and thus it's "page-break") settings. You can either do this in the GUI, or from the command-line, e.g.

html2epub --margin-right=10 --level1-toc="//h1" --level2-toc="//h2" --cover=cover_ark.jpg -t "The Ark" -a "Morrison, Boyd" The_Ark.html

[pthwaite]

From the GUI interface you can choose either epub, mobi or LRF and Calibre will convert your html to the chosen format. I've done it for a book I'd converted first to HTML and then used Calibre to "publish it" as a Mobi.

[frabjous]

I've done it, and in my experience it works better than MobiPocket creator, at least with the HTML files I've used.

[wallcraft]

The only issues I am aware of are chapter detection and multi-file HTML.

For chapter detection:

The default is to consider <h1> or <h2> tags that contain the words “chapter”,”book”,”section” or “part” as chapter titles as well as any tags that have class=”chapter”.

Or you can use whatever you like for chapter detection by overriding this, as illustrated by gwynevans. Calibre will then automatically build a TOC for you and add page breaks before each chapter.

For a multi-file HTML ebook I think it is still the case that you need a root HTML file that references the rest (e.g. a TOC file). So it may be easiest to produce the original as a single HTML file.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by frabjous

I've done it, and in my experience it works better than MobiPocket creator, at least with the HTML files I've used.

Except calibre can't add the "Guide" feature, nor can it make a Mobipocket dictionary.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

Except calibre can't add the "Guide" feature, nor can it make a Mobipocket dictionary.

The 0.6.0 beta version can add the guides for the Kindle.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by frabjous

I've done it, and in my experience it works better than MobiPocket creator, at least with the HTML files I've used.

Thanks frabjous, and all the other people who responded to my post.

I know it can be done, but I just don't know how to do it. What I really need is a tutorial like HarryT's excellent tutorial on Mobipocket Creator.

I should mention that I do not use Calibre for it's library functions. Rightly or wrongly I have no need for that; I just want to use the file conversion function.

Suppose I open Calibre, and have set the output to mobi. And I have my HTML file and it's CSS file in a directory. How do I bring my files to Calibre's attention so it will convert them to mobi?

Regards, Alex

[frabjous]

Drag the .html file into calibre's main window. It'll find all associated files, .zip them together and add them to your calibre library. (I'm pretty sure it'll just "find" your .css file if it's in the same directory as the .html file--though I've always embedded my CSS into my .html file myself rather than use a separate file, so I'm not 100% sure... but I do know it has no trouble finding images, etc.) Change the output format option on the right to .mobi, highlight the listing in your library, and click the convert button above (or right click and click the option for conversion). Then just follow the GUI. If you have any questions, ask here (or in the calibre subforum).

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by frabjous

Drag the .html file into calibre's main window. It'll find all associated files, .zip them together and add them to your calibre library. (I'm pretty sure it'll just "find" your .css file if it's in the same directory as the .html file--though I've always embedded my CSS into my .html file myself rather than use a separate file, so I'm not 100% sure... but I do know it has no trouble finding images, etc.) Change the output format option on the right to .mobi, highlight the listing in your library, and click the convert button above (or right click and click the option for conversion). Then just follow the GUI. If you have any questions, ask here (or in the calibre subforum).

Many thanks, frabjous. It worked. I think I must have been trying to convert the CSS file when I tried before.

A poster in another section has a sig which says she is well known for many things, but technological competence is not one of them. That applies to me too.

Regards, Alex