convert to epub questions

[michaelbr]

Greetings everyone:
I'm not sure if this is the correct forum to post this question.

I'm new to eBook/epub, so please bear with me if I made any mistake or asked dumb questions.

I have several ebooks in pdf/lit/doc format and would like to convert to epub, I tried to use Calibre to do it, but sometimes weird char was inserted or formatting is lost. Someone told me not to use convert option but instead to open it in original format and save it in epub format. Can someone tell me what's the best program to do this? Is there any other open source alternative beside Calibre?

Any comments/suggestions is much appreciated.

Thanks
Michael

[Toxaris]

Calibre is the best way to convert lit to epub. PDF is a different story. PDF is a terrible format to create an epub from. Calibre does a so-so conversion, just like all the other programs.
For doc I think Atlantis Word Processor is the best. No open source, though.

[frabjous]

You could combine other open source tools, e.g.:

DOC: use Open Office/AbiWord to convert to HTML and Sigil or eCub to convert HTML to ePub
PDF: use AbiWord or pdftohtml/pdfreflow to convert to HTML and proceed as above

(eCub isn't open source, but it is free-as-in-beer and available for linux, which I gather you use from your avatar...)

There are some ePub export plugins for OpenOffice; you'll find two mentioned in sticky posts in this forum

Apart from calibre, I don't know of many programs that will work with lit... don't have a lot of experience with it.

[ATDrake]

You can use the Ebook-Tools Perl module to go from .lit to .epub in one step, provided you've all the prerequisites installed.

Have to be comfortable using the command-line, though.

Or you could just unpack your lit files (which are really just a kind of primitive epub) using ConvertLit and feed the results into your preferred ebook creating app.

[michaelbr]

Thanks for your reply and feedback. One additional questions: when you do a multiple step conversion, the chances of loosing formatting is bigger than with just one step? Or it all depends on the apps itself?

[st_albert]

Originally Posted by michaelbr

Thanks for your reply and feedback. One additional questions: when you do a multiple step conversion, the chances of loosing formatting is bigger than with just one step? Or it all depends on the apps itself?

It depends on the apps used and the starting format. If you start from pdf, you are almost certain to lose some formatting. Lit or Word doc, not so much. (I'm assuming you meant MS Word .doc, rather than say, Aportis doc.)

[frabjous]

Considering that epubs basically consist of (X)HTML files zipped together with their images, css files and xml metadata, I think if you use HTML as an intermediate there shouldn't be much (additional) loss, but it'll depend on how complex your documents are.

[michaelbr]

Thanks you all for your replies.

Originally Posted by st_albert

It depends on the apps used and the starting format. If you start from pdf, you are almost certain to lose some formatting. Lit or Word doc, not so much. (I'm assuming you meant MS Word .doc, rather than say, Aportis doc.)

st_albert:
yes, it's MS doc and not Aportis doc.

frabjous:
thanks, I think you're right.