0% found this document useful (0 votes)
22 views8 pages

Formatting and Conversion in Calibre

The document provides a comprehensive guide on formatting text, tables, and structural elements in Word documents for conversion to eBook formats like EPUB and AZW3. It covers inline formatting, paragraph styles, image handling, and the creation of lists, footnotes, and a Table of Contents. Additionally, it discusses the limitations and capabilities of the conversion process, ensuring that various formatting features are preserved as much as possible.

Uploaded by

coweda3167
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
0% found this document useful (0 votes)
22 views8 pages

Formatting and Conversion in Calibre

The document provides a comprehensive guide on formatting text, tables, and structural elements in Word documents for conversion to eBook formats like EPUB and AZW3. It covers inline formatting, paragraph styles, image handling, and the creation of lists, footnotes, and a Table of Contents. Additionally, it discusses the limitations and capabilities of the conversion process, ensuring that various formatting features are preserved as much as possible.

Uploaded by

coweda3167
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

32v34rw34erweclick “Convert”.

Set the output format in


the top right corner of the conversion dialog to EPUB or AZW3 and click
“OK”.
Text Formatting
Inline formatting
Here, we demonstrate various types of inline text formatting and the use
of embedded fonts.
Here is some bold, italic, bold-italic, underlined and struck out text.
Then, we have a superscript and a subscript. Now we see some red, green and
blue text. Some text with a yellow highlight. Some text in a box. Some text in
inverse video.
A paragraph with styled text: subtle emphasis followed by strong text
and intense emphasis. This paragraph uses document wide styles for
styling rather than inline text properties as demonstrated in the previous
paragraph — calibre can handle both with equal ease.
Fun with fonts
This document has embedded the Ubuntu font family. The body text is in
the Ubuntu typeface, here is some text in the Ubuntu Mono typeface, notice
how every letter has the same width, even i and m. Every embedded font
will automatically be embedded in the output ebook during conversion.
Paragraph level formatting
You can do crazy things with paragraphs, if the urge strikes you. For
instance this paragraph is right aligned and has a right border. It has also
been given a light gray background.

For the lovers of poetry amongst you, paragraphs with hanging indents, like
this often come in handy. You can use hanging indents to ensure that a
line of poetry retains its individual identity as a line even when the
screen is too narrow to display it as a single line. Not only does this
paragraph have a hanging indent, it is also has an extra top margin,
setting it apart from the preceding paragraph.
Tables
ITEM NEEDE
D
Books 1
Pens 3
Pencils 2
Highlight 2 colors
er
Scissors 1 pair
Tables in Word can vary from the extremely simple to the extremely
complex. calibre tries to do its best when converting tables. While you may
run into trouble with the occasional table, the vast majority of common cases
should be converted very well, as demonstrated in this section. Note that for
optimum results, when creating tables in Word, you should set their widths
using percentages, rather than absolute units. To the left of this paragraph is
a floating two column table with a nice green border and header row.
Now let’s look at a fancier table—one with alternating row colors and partial
borders. This table is stretched out to take 100% of the available width.
City or Point A Point B Point C Point D Point E
Town
Point A —
Point B 87 —
Point C 64 56 —
Point D 37 32 91 —
Point E 93 35 54 43 —

Next, we see a table with special formatting in various locations. Notice


how the formatting for the header row and sub header rows is preserved.

College New students Graduating Change


students
Undergraduat
e
Cedar 110 103 +7
University
Oak Institute 202 210 -8

Graduate
Cedar 24 20 +4
University
Elm College 43 53 -10

Total 998 908 90

Source: Fictitious data, for illustration purposes only


Next, we have something a little more complex, a nested table, i.e. a
table inside another table. Additionally, the inner table has some of its cells
merged. The table is displayed horizontally centered.

One Two To the left is a table


inside a table, with
Three some cells merged.

Four

We end with a fancy calendar, note how much of the original formatting
is preserved. Note that this table will only display correctly on relatively wide
screens. In general, very wide tables or tables whose cells have fixed width
requirements don’t fare well in ebooks.
December 2007

Su Mo Tu W Th
n n e ed u Fri Sat
1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10 1 1 1 1 15
1 2 3 4

1 17 1 1 2 2 22
6 8 9 0 1

2 24 2 2 2 2 29
3 5 6 7 8

3 31
0
Structural Elements
Miscellaneous structural elements you can add to your document, like
footnotes, endnotes, dropcaps and the like.
Footnotes & Endnotes
Footnotes and endnotes are automatically recognized and both are
converted to endnotes, with backlinks for maximum ease of use in ebook
devices.
Dropcaps

D
rop caps are used to emphasize the leading paragraph at the start of a
section. In Word it is possible to specify how many lines of text a drop-cap
should use. Because of limitations in ebook technology, this is not possible
when converting. Instead, the converted drop cap will use font size and line
height to simulate the effect as well as possible. While not as good as the
original, the result is usually tolerable. This paragraph has a “D” dropcap set
to occupy three lines of text with a font size of 58.5 pts. Depending on the
screen width and capabilities of the device you view the book on, this
dropcap can look anything from perfect to ugly.
Links
Two kinds of links are possible, those that refer to an external website
and those that refer to locations inside the document itself. Both are
supported by calibre. For example, here is a link pointing to the calibre
download page. Then we have a link that points back to the section on
paragraph level formatting in this document.
Table of Contents
There are two approaches that calibre takes when generating a Table of
Contents. The first is if the Word document has a Table of Contents itself.
Provided that the Table of Contents uses hyperlinks, calibre will automatically
use it. The levels of the Table of Contents are identified by their left indent,
so if you want the ebook to have a multi-level Table of Contents, make sure
you create a properly indented Table of Contents in Word.
If no Table of Contents is found in the document, then a table of contents
is automatically generated from the headings in the document. A heading is
identified as something that has the Heading 1 or Heading 2, etc. style
applied to it. These headings are turned into a Table of Contents with
Heading 1 being the topmost level, Heading 2 the second level and so on.
You can see the Table of Contents created by calibre by clicking the Table
of Contents button in whatever viewer you are using to view the converted
ebook.
Demonstration of DOCX support in calibre.................................1

Text Formatting........................................................................2

Inline formatting.....................................................................................2
Fun with fonts.........................................................................................2
Paragraph level formatting.....................................................................2

Tables...................................................................................... 3

Structural Elements..................................................................5

Footnotes & Endnotes.............................................................................5


Dropcaps.................................................................................................5
Links........................................................................................................5
Table of Contents....................................................................................5

Images.....................................................................................7

Lists.........................................................................................8

Bulleted List............................................................................................8
Numbered List.........................................................................................8
Multi-level Lists.......................................................................................8
Continued Lists.......................................................................................8
Images
Images can be of three main types. Inline images are images that are
part of the normal text flow, like this image of a green dot . Inline images
do not cause breaks in the text and are usually small in size. The
next category of image is a floating image, one that “floats “ on the page
and is surrounded by text. Word supports more types of floating images than
are possible with current ebook technology, so the conversion maps floating
images to simple left and right floats, as you can see with the left and right
arrow images on the sides of this paragraph.
The final type of image is a “block” image, one that becomes a
paragraph on its own and has no text on either side. Below is a centered
green dot.
Centered images like this are useful for large pictures that
should be a focus of attention.
Generally, it is not possible to translate the exact positioning of images
from a Word document to an ebook. That is because in Word, image
positioning is specified in absolute units from the page boundaries. There is
no analogous technology in ebooks, so the conversion will usually end up
placing the image either centered or floating close to the point in the text
where it was inserted, not necessarily where it appears on the page in Word.
Lists
All types of lists are supported by the conversion, with the exception of
lists that use fancy bullets, these get converted to regular bullets.
Bulleted List
• One
• Two
Numbered List
• One, with a very long line to demonstrate that the hanging indent
for the list is working correctly
• Two
Multi-level Lists
• One
• Two
• Three
• Four with a very long line to demonstrate that the hanging
indent for the list is working correctly.
• Five
• Six
A Multi-level list with bullets:
• One
• Two
• This bullet uses an image as the bullet item
• Four
• Five
Continued Lists
• One
• Two
An interruption in our regularly scheduled listing, for this essential and
very relevant public service announcement.
• We now resume our normal programming
• Four

Common questions

Powered by AI

Image positioning usually changes during conversion from a Word document to an eBook. This occurs because Word uses absolute units for positioning, which eBook technology does not support. As a result, images are generally placed either centered or as floating images near the insertion point instead of an exact replication of the page layout .

Drop caps are limited in eBooks because the number of text lines they occupy cannot be directly replicated. Calibre simulates drop caps using font size adjustments and line height to approximate the effect, but results may vary based on the display capabilities of the eReading device .

Complex tables, such as those with fixed widths or intricate formatting, might not convert well to eBooks due to the limitations of eBook technology. The conversion typically maps such elements to simpler structures, like adjusting width settings to percentages and simplifying row or cell formatting, to optimize display across varied eBook readers .

Calibre supports two types of link translations during conversion: external website links and internal document links. It retains the functionality of these links by mapping them correctly, ensuring that both external references and internal navigational aids are preserved in the eBook format .

When calibre encounters lists with fancy bullets, such as those using images, it converts them to standard, simple bullets. This adaptation occurs due to limitations in eBook readers, which typically do not support the elaborate formatting used in some Word documents .

Embedding fonts is significant as it ensures textual consistency across different devices by including specific typefaces used in the document. This provides a uniform reading experience and enhances the visual quality of the eBook, as shown with the Ubuntu font family example . However, including multiple embedded fonts can increase the file size of the output eBook.

The application is capable of converting inline text formatting equally well as document-wide styles. This includes formatting such as bold, italic, bold-italic, underlined, struck out text, colored text, and text with highlights. Embedded fonts, such as the Ubuntu font family, are automatically included in the output eBook .

Calibre generates a Table of Contents in two ways: if the Word document already contains a Table of Contents with hyperlinks, calibre uses it directly. Otherwise, it creates a Table of Contents from document headings, identifying levels by indentations (e.g., Heading 1 for top-level).

Nested tables, or tables within tables, are supported during conversion, but they may face display issues on narrow screens. Calibre centers such tables horizontally and handles merged cells, though wide tables or those with fixed widths generally do not display well in eBooks .

During eBook conversion, calibre automatically recognizes footnotes and endnotes and converts them to endnotes for consistency and ease of navigation in eBook devices. Calibre also provides backlinks to enhance usability in the electronic format, accommodating eReaders that may have different navigational capabilities .

You might also like