[ale] [OT] how do I convert this web based book to pdf or doc

[Ron Frazier (ALE)]

Hi James,

I appreciate the resources you and others mentioned.  I guess I'll have to learn a bit more about it if I face this type of problem again.  Perhaps I was in too much of a hurry to print it and didn't take enough time learning about these tools.  If this thing had been available in print, I would have just bought it.  In the case of things like O'Reilly books, I would just buy the book if I needed it, or perhaps buy the book and get the ebook.  It's still a mystery why I couldn't even read the CHM file until I had imported it into Calibre.

When I can afford a tablet the size of a textbook and the weight of an ipad, that allows me to highlight, notate, dog ear, and flag pages in the ebook file, then maybe I wouldn't print it  But, even so, it's still handy to have paper print outs of certain pages / sections for reference while you're reading the ebook.

Sincerely,

Ron


James Sumners <james.sumners at gmail.com> wrote:

>What you linked to isn't really an "ebook". Yeah, it's digital content
>and they call it a "book," but eBooks have very specific formats.
>Those formats _are_ just HTML/XHTML, but the files are organized
>according to a standard. This website does not follow that standard at
>all. The links I gave you should have made the process easier. 1)
>Convert the CHM to HTML, 2) convert the HTML to PDF, and 3) print the
>PDF. I believe you could have converted directly to PDF with the first
>tool; but I've never used it.
>
>As for people making eBooks easier to print -- good luck. The standard
>isn't designed for such, and it's a copyright violation. DRM free
>eBooks (e.g. all O'Reilly eBooks) are only DRM free so that you can
>use them on any _electronic_ device you wish to read it on. They're
>not DRM free so that you can print them.
>
>That being said, using the second tool I linked to, Pandoc, you could
>probably have made it even easier to print. Use Pandoc to convert the
>HTML to LaTeX, which should strip out the circular links, and then
>render the LaTeX to PDF.
>
>On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Ron Frazier (ALE)
><atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com> wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Just thought I'd post an update.  My main objective was to be able to
>download and print the ebook.  They provide it in a CHM format, but I
>could never read it for some reason.  I installed Calibre, then
>imported the chm file and then saved it back out.  Now, for some
>reason, I'm able to read it natively in Windows.  I printed it from
>there, which was somewhat of a nightmare.  I had to go to each major
>topic page in the table of contents then print it.  Fortunately, the
>print screen has an option to also print all linked documents one level
>down in the hierarchy.  So, by printing each main topic, I was also
>able to get almost all the sub topics.  Of course, each page also
>linked to the previous and next topic, as well as things like the
>company home page, etc., so I had a lot of redundant content that I
>threw into the recycle bin.  But, over a period of a few hours, I got
>it printed.  I took it to office max and had it bound.  It turned out
>to be 5 volumes each about 3/4" !
> th!
>>  ick printed on my laser printer single sided.  Now I have to set
>about learning the topic that's documented in the book, which relates
>to a specialized currency trading platform.  There was no way I was
>going to try to read all that on my computer monitor.
>>
>> Maybe later, I'll get around to finishing converting this to PDF,
>RTF, or EPub, but I couldn't figure that out with a cursory review of
>the Calibre menus.  If any of you are thinking of publishing an ebook,
>PLEASE PLEASE make it printable in one simple procedure.  I still have
>to go through and hand number the pages and correlate that to the table
>of contents.  I'm glad this info was provided to me free on the website
>by the software maker, but it has not been free in either time or
>supplies to get it into printed form.
>>
>> Thanks for the help and suggestions.
>>
>> Sincerely,
>>
>> Ron


--

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Ron Frazier
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