"KEPUB" format on https://standardebooks.org/

[MGA]

Dear friends,

On the absolutely excellent website - https://standardebooks.org/ - they offer some great ebooks for free. They have a special format they call "KEPUB", and as I understand it, it is technically EPUB, just that they have done some alterations to make it work better with a KOBO device.

Nevertheless, I downloaded a collection of books in this format and I have two problems now, one very minor and one significant.

The small issue is that the covers are not displayed on the device. That does not really matter, but I just thought I mention it.

The more significant issue is that the content function does not work at all. Whenever I open it on the device, it is completely blank, as if the device does not recognize the headings as headings.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what might be wrong here?

Would be very grateful for any advice!

[Sirtel]

Don't download their kepubs. Download the epub and use kepubify or the KoboTouch Extended Driver for Calibre to convert them to kepubs.

[Aleron Ives]

That's odd. I've never had trouble with the covers displaying. Does the bug depend upon your settings somehow?

[rashkae]

I just tried 1 book as an example (Water Babies)

The book has a cover image, but no cover page in the contents the of the book. The cover image should display properly as a thumbnail, and if you have book covers on sleep screen, it should show there. But there is no where to see the cover when reading the book on device. This is the same for all their epub formats.

I had no trouble with the Table of contents. However, I notice that they are using epub3 TOC format. For the Kobo, that means you must use the kepub file, and when transferring the file to the device, you have to keep the booktitle.kepub.epub file name! If the file is renamed to remove the 'kepub' part, the Kobo will open the book with the outdated adobe reader software, and will not display epub3 TOC.

[JSWolf]

As I've said many times before, StabdardEbooks makes one hell of a mess with the code for the eBooks. They use as complicated code as they can that they don't need. The formatting of most of these eBooks is very simple. Yet they feel the need to over-complicate the code as much as possible. There is no reason at all these eBooks should not work on RMSDK on a Kobo. The reason they don't is their really poor coding.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Don't download their kepubs. Download the epub and use kepubify or the KoboTouch Extended Driver for Calibre to convert them to kepubs.

My solution is not to download anything form StandardEbooks. Their coding is very far from standard.

[svenlind]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

My solution is not to download anything form StandardEbooks. Their coding is very far from standard.

I always download their epubs and let Calibre do the conversion to kepub.
I have never cared to check their code, and have never had any troubles with their excellent books. All books I have downloaded display very well.

[Quoth]

Only download their epub, and even convert that to epub using Calibre. Convert to azw3, kepub etc as desired from your converted & fixed epub.

They seem crazier than Indesign or a house full of random flightless swiming birds when it comes to formatting.

[Thena]

Interesting. I have their kepubs and have had no issue with the covers or loading. I use Calibre and the KoboTouch Extended for my Kepub conversions. Well this makes it easier for me to organise it all in Calibre since I only downloaded the kepubs to save one step on conversion.

[John F]

This is what I see, using their kepub...

Thumbnail displays in My Books.
When reading:
There is no cover page image
Table of contents through the UI works fine

I did a direct copy of the kepub file (used Windows Explorer).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Only download their epub, and even convert that to epub using Calibre. Convert to azw3, kepub etc as desired from your converted & fixed epub.

They seem crazier than Indesign or a house full of random flightless swiming birds when it comes to formatting.

I would go with a bunch of drunk monkey's randomly typing code and never getting it quite right.

[Aleron Ives]

Originally Posted by rashkae

The book has a cover image, but no cover page in the contents the of the book.

Yes, this is consistent with my experience. The cover displays in My Books, and the cover displays when sleeping, but there is no cover page when opening the book to read it. The TOC works fine. Although I like having a cover page within the book, it doesn't bother me enough to spend time editing every book to add a cover page.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I would go with a bunch of drunk monkey's randomly typing code and never getting it quite right.

Which of the big publishers has that?

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by MGA

Dear friends,

On the absolutely excellent website - https://standardebooks.org/ - they offer some great ebooks for free. They have a special format they call "KEPUB", and as I understand it, it is technically EPUB, just that they have done some alterations to make it work better with a KOBO device.

Nevertheless, I downloaded a collection of books in this format and I have two problems now, one very minor and one significant.

The small issue is that the covers are not displayed on the device. That does not really matter, but I just thought I mention it.

The more significant issue is that the content function does not work at all. Whenever I open it on the device, it is completely blank, as if the device does not recognize the headings as headings.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what might be wrong here?

Would be very grateful for any advice!

I’ve had that book cover so many times with their “KEPUB“ files that I’ve stopped downloading from them. It’s only a small issue if you download one or two books, but I downloaded dozens specifically because of their gorgeous formatting and their book covers. People have suggested, as they suggest to you, that we should download the EPUB version instead, but I ran into issues with those as well. They were far too much work to fix, so I stopped using them as a resource beyond the ones I already downloaded.

I don’t tend to get into the code like some people on this site do. We all have our hobbies, and tinkering with ebook code is not one of mine. However, my experience with their books shows that their formatting is very far from “standard”. When I encountered problems with their books years ago, there weren’t as many great suggestions as you’re receiving here.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by rashkae

I just tried 1 book as an example (Water Babies)

The book has a cover image, but no cover page in the contents the of the book. The cover image should display properly as a thumbnail, and if you have book covers on sleep screen, it should show there. But there is no where to see the cover when reading the book on device. This is the same for all their epub formats.

The cover image is flagged as such in the .opf file. I do have an procedure for generating a cover.xhtml file with cover.jpeg linked in it. I personally find their 1400x2100 resolution cover files to be larger than I would prefer especially when most of the background graphics are pixelated and blurry.

Originally Posted by rashkae

I had no trouble with the Table of contents. However, I notice that they are using epub3 TOC format. For the Kobo, that means you must use the kepub file, and when transferring the file to the device, you have to keep the booktitle.kepub.epub file name! If the file is renamed to remove the 'kepub' part, the Kobo will open the book with the outdated adobe reader software, and will not display epub3 TOC.

For an ePub3 ebook, the .ncx file is not necessary. It may be included for ePub2 compatibility but since kepub.epub is intended to be opened by the ePub3 compatible WebKit based renderer on a Kobo ereader, adding a .ncx file is not useful. Standard Ebooks does make it clear that they consider the results of opening any ePub with the RMSDK based renderer to generate poor results, a conclusion that I disagree with.

Personally, I do add a toc.ncx using Sigil's Generate toc/guide for epub2 tool.

Overall, most of Standard Ebooks ePub format ebooks are a much better starting point than the abominations served up by Gutenberg.