Problems with Kindle Formatting? - The Writers' Group

tm2dragon #1 · May 31st, 2015 · · ·

Quick question! See, my Kindle used to do fine for downloading Fimfiction stories to read on, but for the last few months, basic formatting hasn't been going along with the downloads to my Paperwhite. Bolds, italics, underlines, etc just don't make the transfer! This can get pretty confusing, especially in stories with lots of flashbacks and internal dialogues, when you can't easily tell when things are switching without those tools! Anyone else with this problem, and are there any fixes?

Meeester

Moderator

Meeester #2 · May 31st, 2015 · 1 · ·

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BBCode is scrubbed from epubs atm. They're being reworked in the near future.

Nyerguds

Nyerguds #3 · May 31st, 2015 · · ·

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4422700
The HTML export of fimfic is a shambles, and completely missing its style sheets. I run anything I download from here through a regex cleanup to make it even slightly resemble valid HTML.

HTML export of the chapters are missing the author's notes, too.

Viking ZX

Viking ZX #4 · May 31st, 2015 · · ·

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4422712
I'm very glad to hear that. I'd given up grabbing stories from the site to put on my kindle. Glad to hear the future will bring that back.

Smaug the Golden

Smaug the Golden #5 · May 31st, 2015 · · ·

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4422700 As a fellow kindle reader, allow me to explain. As others have said, it's bbc codes. Effectively, the only thing to make it is text and spaces. Part of why I can't read It's a Dangerous Business, the whole things Bbc code indented.

tm2dragon

tm2dragon #6 · May 31st, 2015 · · ·

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Hurray! Actually answers! ^_^ You have no idea how long this has been bugging me, and nobody I speak to online seemed to know what was happening. Had to type in "kindle fimfiction italics" just to find a place that speaks about such things (here). After I get a few more answers, I think I'll go to the intro thread and introduce myself properly!

So, until they find a fix (I'll take your word that they're working on one), is there a temporary workaround?

Viking ZX

Viking ZX #7 · May 31st, 2015 · · ·

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4422980
If you grab/download the HTML file and then convert it into Kindle using an online converter, you'll get a file that has the italics, bolds, etc. You do, however, lose all chapter markers, page dividers and indenting.

You win some, you lose some.

tm2dragon

tm2dragon #8 · May 31st, 2015 · · ·

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4422998 What kind of converter would you reccomend? I usually use calibre.

Viking ZX

Viking ZX #9 · May 31st, 2015 · · ·

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4423038
Honestly I just use an online one I found through Google here.

tm2dragon

tm2dragon #10 · May 31st, 2015 · · ·

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EEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!! ITALICS AND UNDERLINES!!!! YOU ALL ROCK!!!!!!

Nyerguds

Nyerguds #11 · May 31st, 2015 · · ·

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4422998
You can do HTML export per chapter.

but as I said... the HTML is crappy, and the style sheets and the author's notes are missing.

Nyerguds

Nyerguds #12 · May 31st, 2015 · · ·

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4422998
4423038
I use the per-chapter download, and then use this mad little thing to clean up the HTML:

<html>.*?<body>\s*<h1><a href="((http:\/\/.*?)\/(?:[^\/]*?))">(.*?)<\/a><\/h1>\s*<h2>by <a href="(.*?)">(.*?)<\/a><\/h2>\s*<hr \/>\s*<a name='(.*?)'><\/a><h3>(.*?)<\/h3>\s*(<p.*?)<\/b><\/u><\/i><\/span><\/center><\/blockquote><\/p>\s*<\/body>\s*<\/html>

Regex to be processed with the "dot matches newline" option enabled.
Replace with:

<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"/>
<title>\3 - \7 - by \5</title>
<style>
p.double { margin-top:1.5em; }
p.indented { text-indent:3.0em; }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="\1">\3</a></h1>
<h2>by <a href="\4">\5</a></h2>
<hr />
<h3><a href="\2/\6/">\7</a></h3>
\8</p></body>
</html>

As you see, this includes the basic "indented" and "double line spacing" styles, and any other missing styles can simply be added there too

There are a multitude of regex-supporting editors out there, but I use Editpad Pro.

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