--- title: "How I convert PDFs to EPUB semi-automatically" slug: how-i-convert-pdfs-to-epub description: "A step by step guide to clean EPUBs from PDFs using Calibre, Emacs and time." date: 2021-03-15T04:12:00+01:00 type: posts draft: false tags: - E-books - Calibre - Emacs toc: true --- :source-highlighter: pygments :experimental: true :toc: :toclevels: 2 :url-calibre: https://calibre-ebook.com/ :url-calibre-convert: https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/conversion.html#pdfconversion :url-emacs: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ :url-emacs-key-notation: https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsKeyNotation :url-helicon-type: https://www.heliconbooks.com/?id=blog&postid=EPUB3Footnotes :url-epub-spec: https://www.w3.org/publishing/epub/epub-contentdocs.html :url-ap-semantics: https://www.accessiblepublishing.ca/epub-semantic-aria-roles/ :url-epub3-rendering: http://idpf.org/forum/topic-623 :url-epubcheck: https://github.com/w3c/epubcheck :url-epubcheck-footnote: {url-epubcheck}/issues/1018#issuecomment-809385963 :url-ace-app: https://daisy.github.io/ace/getting-started/ace-app/ :wp-pdf: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF :wp-epub: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB :wp-xhtml: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XHTML :wp-css: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSS :abbr-gui: pass:[GUI] Sometimes e-books come only in link:{wp-pdf}[PDF] format. Almost always PDFs are a pain to read on e-book readers. You can use link:{url-calibre}[Calibre] to automatically convert it, but link:{url-calibre-convert}[the results are okay-ish at best]. If the PDF has footnotes, forget it. Unfortunately, the type of books that most often come only as PDFs are science books and these usually have a lot of footnotes. One option is to use Calibre to convert and then fix the result, but I have found that I get better results in less time when I create a new link:{wp-epub}[EPUB], copy the PDF's content into link:{url-emacs}[Emacs], clean it up there and then copy it over to Calibre. This process is what I want to share with you here. You will need Calibre, Emacs or another editor with keyboard macros and some knowledge of link:{wp-xhtml}[XHTML] and link:{wp-css}[CSS] to follow this guide. It will take long and is boring, but the result is a clean and enjoyable book. [NOTE] I will use the link:{url-emacs-key-notation}[Emacs key notation] throughout this guide. == Create a new book in Calibre Click on menu:Add books[Add empty book]. Then fill in the metadata and select “EPUB” as format. You can add more metadata and a cover image by right-clicking the book and then selecting menu:Edit metadata[]. Open Calibre's editor by right clicking on the book and selecting menu:Edit book[]. Calibre creates EPUB 2 books by default. Convert the book to EPUB 3footnote:[EPUB 3 introduces many accessibility features, see link:{url-ap-semantics}[AccessiblePublishing: EPUB Semantics, ARIA Roles, & Metadata] for details.] by clicking menu:Tools[Upgrade book internals]. This will, among other things, convert `toc.ncx` to `nav.xhtml`. To link:{url-epub3-rendering}[support e-book readers which can't handle EPUB 3 yet], re-create `toc.ncx` as an empty file. It is filled automatically when you create the table of contents. Open `metadata.opf` and replace `` with `` (`id1` is the ID of `toc.ncx`, defined a few lines above). You start with a single XHTML file, `start.xhtml`. I always use that for the title page, the copyright notice and so on. You can force a page break to separate the title and the copyright notice with CSS: Add `style="page-break-after: always;"` to the last element of the virtual “page” or use a CSS class. To add a CSS file click menu:File[New file] and enter a filename ending with `.css`. Add the CSS file to the document by right clicking on `start.xhtml` in the file browser and selecting menu:Link stylesheets…[]. [NOTE] The built-in preview does not show page breaks. Your files should look similar to this: .`start.xhtml` [source,html] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Meine zwei Jahre in Russland

Emma Goldman

Meine zwei Jahre in Russland

1. Auflage
München, Januar 2020

Die englische Originalausgabe erschien 1921 und 1925 in den USA aufgrund eines Versehens in zwei Teilen unter den Titeln My Disillusionment in Russia und My Further Disillusionment in Russia.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .`style.css` [source,css] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .pagebreak { page-break-after: always; } .center { text-align: center; } -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I added the IDs “title” and “copyright” to add semantic links to them later. === Some styling advice Please refrain from using CSS too much. Most people have configured their e-book readers the way they like, with the right font, font-size, margins and so on. If you override their settings, they will be annoyed. I usually only style the title page and headlines. Do not use `` or `` tags to emphasize, do not use `font-style: italic` or `font-style: bold`. Use `` for emphasis and `` for importance so screen readers will be able to pronounce the text differently. Make your books as accessible as possible. Using the right tags and not just `
` and `` for everything is a good start, using `epub:type` and/or `role` as well as `aria-label` or `aria-labelledby` is even better. Read more at link:{url-ap-semantics}[AccessiblePublishing: EPUB Semantics, ARIA Roles, & Metadata]. == Add text to the book Add a new `.xhtml` file in Calibre and write in the heading of the first chapter. Then switch to Emacs and copy the first paragraph from the PDF into a `text-mode` buffer. The emphasis will not be copied over, so you'll have to re-add it. We ignore (but keep) the footnote numbers for now. Repeat with the rest of the paragraphs of the chapter, leaving 2 blank lines between each paragraph. The paragraphs will be broken and likely be full of hyphens at the end of the lines. .elisp function to add HTML tags easily [source,elisp] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (defun my/html-surround-with-tag (beg end) "Surround region with HTML tag." (interactive "*r") (if (region-active-p) (let ((tag (completing-read "Tag: " '("blockquote" "em" "strong")))) (insert (concat "<" tag ">" (delete-and-extract-region beg end) ""))) (message "No active region"))) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Make sure that `auto-fill-mode` is disabled. Position the cursor at the start of the buffer and press kbd:[] to start recording a macro. Press kbd:[] kbd:[] kbd:[SPC] (space bar) and then kbd:[] to stop recording. If there is a hyphen at the end of the current line, press kbd:[] 2 times. Press kbd:[] to call the macro and repeat until you are at the end of the paragraph. Move the cursor to the first line of the next paragraph and repeat… Now you should have a text file with 1 paragraph per line. We need to wrap all lines in `

` tags, except block quotes and sub-headlines. Either use another macro (`

` kbd:[] `

` kbd:[] kbd:[] kbd:[]) or this elisp function: [source,elisp] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (defun my/html-paragraphify-buffer () "Wrap every line not beginning with < or a newline in

tags." (interactive) (goto-char (point-min)) (while (re-search-forward "^\\([^< ].+\\)$" nil t) (replace-match "

\\1

"))) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Once you are done, copy the result into Calibre. == Add footnotes Use the method from above to copy the footnotes into the now empty Emacs buffer and clean them up until you have 1 paragraph per line. Footnotes need to be hyperlink-able, so we can't just wrap them in plain `

` tags, they need IDs. I like to use `

  • […]
    • ` if the footnote numbers are increasing throughout the book or `
  • […]
    • ` if they start with 1 in each chapter. We are going to use a macro with a counter to generate consecutively numbered IDs. First, set the counter to 1 with kbd:[C-x] kbd:[C-k] kbd:[C-c] `1`. Then, record this macro: `
  • ` kbd:[] `
    • ` kbd:[] kbd:[] kbd:[] [TIP] Use kbd:[M-x] `describe-key` (mapped to kbd:[C-h] kbd:[k] by default) to find out what a key combination does. Call the macro until every footnote is wrapped and copy them to the end of the chapter or the end of the book in Calibre. Wrap them in `
      […]
    ` [NOTE] If the notes appear at the bottom of each page, they are called “footnotes” (`epub:type="footnote"`). If they appear at the end of each chapter or the end of the book, they are called “endnotes”. (`epub:type="endnote"`). Some e-book readers display footnotes on the same page where the link to them is even if you put all footnotes at the end of the chapter / book. === Add references to footnotes The footnotes are probably superscript numbers in the PDF but normal numbers in the EPUB right now. I found that the footnote-numbers are usually preceded by a space and followed by a space or `<`. I use the find & replace function in Calibre in Regex-mode to convert them to hyperlinks. Find: `` ([0-9]{1,3})([ <])`` (note the leading space) + Replace: `\1\2` Press kbd:[] to search through the text and kbd:[C-r] to replace. == Finishing touches Click menu:Tools[Table of Contents > Edit table of Contents], remove the existing entry and click btn:[Generate ToC from major headings] or btn:[Generate ToC from all headings]. Click menu:Tools[Set semantics] and set the location of the title page, copyright page, beginning of text and so on. Select menu:Tools[Check book] and fix the errors. Use link:{url-epubcheck}[EPUBCheck] (command-line) and/or link:{url-ace-app}[The Ace App] ({abbr-gui}) for more thorough checks. You're done! Enjoy your cleanly formatted book. 😊 == Updates * [2021-03-21] Added ``epub:type``s to examples. See link:{url-helicon-type}[Helicon Books: Footnotes in EPUB3], link:{url-epub-spec}#sec-epub-type-attribute[the EPUB specification] and link:{url-ap-semantics}[AccessiblePublishing: EPUB Semantics, ARIA Roles, & Metadata] for more information. * [2021-03-25] Clarified difference between footnotes and endnotes, replaced `