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Vika wrote: 21 Apr 2026, 00:16
Heh, I'm guilty of that too. Sometimes the only digital copy of a book I can find anywhere is an old mobi or pdb. So, conversion through calibre at least gets it into a modern workable file format. Even if you then have to go all flamethrower Aliens-style on the resultant book to burn out all the super useless new classes calibre likes to spawn everywhere.
I'd rather we have a crap book than no book.
I have no problems with conversions as I do agree that there should be something instead of nothing, I'd just prefer if its marked somewhere in the description or even a comment that it was converted so I know what I'm getting beforehand.
Vika wrote: 21 Apr 2026, 00:16
With you on conversions from PDF to anything else though. Convert it to PDF/E or to EPS. Those are about the only valid conversion types. Static and dynamic formats are just too fundamentally different.
I have successfully converted epubs to PDF, and its a nightmare. Strip all the data out of the epub into a word file, dump the formatting completely. Recreate in word, move images into place, rebuild tables. Dump word output into Acrobat, have it make the pdf from scratch. Its slow, tedious, takes most of a week for one book, but you can't tell it was ever an epub. Would have to do similar to convert a pdf into an epub. All existing formatting must go, back to raw data only, and have a WYSIWYG page editor make it to save some time, then add the css back by hand. Not remotely quick, but its the only actually effective way.
Problem is, convincing most people to do it that way is a losing battle, precisely because it is so much work. Why do that when you can just click one button, wait five minutes and get something borderline unreadable with no accessibility features? Sigh
I agree with this take. Everyone goes the easy route when it comes to conversions and in my opinion it poisons the well for all of us. There's no way to know what you're getting on Z Lib until its too late.
Ligia wrote: 15 Apr 2026, 01:41
You can create a Z-Alert for such files. When a file with a similar name or topic is uploaded, you'll receive an email.
how does one create a Z alert?
The burger menu on the website has a section called Z-Alert.
