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iPad

How to add your own Czech books to iBooks

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With the growing number of Apple tablets in our country, the number of downloads of Apple's iBooks application for iPad also increases. iBooks is an amazing application for reading books, it has an elegant look and provides all the comfort of reading. But for our people, it has one major drawback - the absence of Czech books in the iBook Store. All you have to do is add your own books to iBooks and we will advise you how.

You can add two types of files to iBooks - PDF and ePub. If you have books in PDF format, there is practically no work ahead of you. The reader will do well with them. However, when it comes to ePub, the book is not always displayed as it should be, and if you have books in a format other than ePub, conversion will be necessary first.

For our procedure we will need two programs – Stanza and Calibre. Both programs are available for both Mac and Windows and can be downloaded for free from the following links: Stanza Caliber

Conversion of PDB and MBP book formats

The two book formats already include some key elements such as chapter divisions. The conversion will be that much easier. First, we open the given book in the Stanza program. Although this is an application intended primarily for reading itself, it will serve us as the first step of conversion. Basically, you just need to export the open book as an ePub, which you do via the menu File > Export Book As > ePub.

The created file is already ready to be read on the iPad, but you will probably encounter a few unpleasant things. One of them is large margins, when you will have one big noodle from the text. Another could be bad indentation, inappropriate font size, etc. Therefore, it is necessary to stretch the file with the Caliber application before reading it.

Conversion of text documents

If you have a book in DOC format intended for Word or Pages, first convert the book to RTF format. Rich Text Format has much less compatibility issues and can be read by Calibre. You make the transfer via the offer File> Save As and choose RTF as the format.

If you have a book in TXT, you will also have a minimum of work, because it works well with Caliber. Just pay attention to the formatting, the most appropriate text encoding is Windows Latin 2/Windows 1250.

Final conversion via Calibre.

Although Caliber runs pretty fast on Windows, you'll curse it on a Mac. The app is incredibly slow, but you have to take it as a necessary evil in order to read the book. What will at least please many is the presence of the Czech localization, which you choose at the first launch.

After running Caliber for the first time, the application will ask you to locate the library, select the language of the device. So choose the location, the Czech language and the iPad as the device. First, we set the default conversion values ​​in the program. You click on the Preferences icon and in the group Conversion Choose Common settings.

Now we will proceed according to the instructions Mark of Luton:

  • In the tab Look & Feel choose Basic font size 8,7 points (individual, can be changed according to your needs), leave the smallest line height at 120%, set the line height to 10,1 points and choose input character encoding cp1250, so that Czech characters are displayed correctly. Select the text alignment Left, but if you like the same long lines, choose Align text. Tick ​​it Remove space between paragraphs and leave the indentation size at 1,5 em. Leave all other boxes unchecked.
  • In the Page Settings tab, select as the output profile iPad and as an input profile Default Input Profile. Set all margins to zero to avoid "text noodle".
  • Confirm the changes with the apply button (top left) and also check if ePub is set as the preferred default format in the Behavior menu. You can then close Preferences.
  • Thanks to this setting, these values ​​will be preserved for you every time you convert the book

You can add a book to the library by simply dragging or via the menu Add a book. If you are picky, mark the book and choose Edit metadata. Find out the ISBN of the given book (via Google or Wikipedia) and enter the number in the appropriate field. When you then press the Get data from the server button, the application will search for all the data and complete it. You can also get a book cover. If you would like to add a cover manually, press the Browse button and manually select a downloaded cover image that you found on the Internet.

Now all you have to do is choose Convert Books. If you have set everything correctly, just confirm everything by pressing the button Ok bottom right. If your input format is a text document, check the input tab Keep the spaces.

Now it is enough to find the converted book in the library (It will be in the folder with the author's name), drag it to Books in iTunes and sync iPad. If your books are not syncing automatically, you need to select your device in the left panel, select Books in the top right, check Sync Books, and then check all the books you want to sync.

And if everything went as it should, you should have a book ready to read on your iPad, and if you converted from MBP or PDB format, the book will be divided by chapters.

He is the author of the original instructions Marek of Luton

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