S. Lott: Improving the epub format -- hacking your ebooks

import os
import codecs
from textwrap import dedent
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

ENCODING = 'utf8'

def dedent_page(filepath):
    soup = load_soup(filepath)
    code = soup.findAll('pre')
    for c in code:
        # Dedent twice to cater for 'blank' lines with spaces.
        c.string = dedent(dedent(c.text))
    save_soup(filepath, unicode(soup))

def load_soup(filepath):
    with codecs.open(filepath, encoding = ENCODING) as f:
        return BeautifulSoup(f)

def save_soup(filepath, soup):
    with codecs.open(filepath, mode = 'w', encoding = ENCODING) as f:
        f.write(unicode(soup))

if __name__ == "__main__":

    FOLDER = r'ebook\OEBPS'

    html_files = [fn for fn in os.listdir(FOLDER) if fn.endswith('.html')]
    total_files = len(html_files)
    for i, file_name in enumerate(html_files):
        print 'Processing file %s (%s/%s)' % (file_name, i + 1, total_files)
        dedent_page(os.path.join(FOLDER, file_name))