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How to make XPS files for Blio

Someone asked Paul Biba over at Teleread if anyone knew how to convert to XPS from a PDF file. I figured out how to do it, and it’s actually pretty simple. (I might despise the format, app, and DRM, but if someone wants to use it I will try to find the information they need.)

If you have a PC running Vista, Win7, or WinXP with SP2, then you should already be able to make an XPS file. There should already be a printer driver on your computer that will let you "print" a document into the XPS format.

I did it from Open Office, and the same printer driver should work with everything. You’ll need to open the Print menu, and scroll down until you see something like "Microsoft XPS". Select that as your printer.

BTW, I’m pretty sure that this printer driver is installed at the same time as Blio. If you don’t see that option, then you’ll need to download it here. The usual warnings apply.

P.S. If you want to do this on OSX, sorry but I don’t have a Mac to test it on. But I can direct you to this page. It might work for you and it’s at least a step in the right direction.

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Comments


Jane October 2, 2010 um 12:43 pm

I’ll wait until Kovid adds it to Calibre


Dan Logan October 7, 2010 um 11:03 am

This winter you’ll be able to create interactive Blio books in QuarkXPress. This will give you a lot more functionality than what’s possible by converting PDF files.

Nate the great October 7, 2010 um 11:13 am

Yes, but then I’ll need to buy QuarkXPress. Like the average end user I can’t afford it.

Marco April 29, 2012 um 2:45 pm

Dan, I have a question about Quark and Blio,


the problem June 15, 2011 um 7:33 pm

the problem is that when converting a pdf to xps, you lose the text, and to the text to speech feature in blio is broken, it will not read your converted ebooks, unless theirs a way to fix this, maybe if you remove the images from the ebook, but then its just a bunch of text that that breaks the point in a ebook in the first place


TheFix June 15, 2011 um 8:37 pm

use calibre and convert to RTF format, then open in openofflice or libreoffice print to xps format, to adjust text size adjust text size before printing by selecting all the text, and raise the size from 12 it seems a bigger size is better for blio reader, this way you keep the text to speech feature when going from epub to xps format, I am using windows 7 to do this, and so you are not limited by the free google books this way, you can then use other sources. it seems that going from pdf to xps format breaks the text to speech option in xps format, but rtf to xps does not it keeps both images and text so it can read it then, again I hope this helps all the users like me who wanted to convert their own epub or mobi files to xps format for use with blio reader software


Sly January 1, 2012 um 11:51 am

Yeeeee thanx a lot it was a big help :):)


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