[Conversion Plugin] KFX Input

[Martinoptic]

Calibre may not be able to convert it but the From KFX plugin should be able to - the message is quite specific: For best results use either the From KFX user interface plugin or the KFX Input Plugin CLI for conversion. See the KFX Input Plugin documentation for more information.
It is likely because calibre doesn’t support fixed layout conversion. The From KFX plugin bypasses the calibre conversion stage.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Anonymous Guy

Greetings, I'd like to report a bug.

It would seem that when converting KFX comics/manga, an error occurs.
Exception('This book has a layout that is incompatible with calibre conversion. For best results use either the From KFX user interface plugin or the KFX Input Plugin CLI for conversion. See the KFX Input Plugin documentation for more information.')"

It likely has something to do with right-to-left image layouts, but not sure.

The plugin is working as intended.

The issue has to do with books that use a fixed-layout, such as comics, manga, and print replica. Calibre's conversion system is designed for books that use reflowable layout. Using it on a fixed-layout book can mess with the book's formatting. For those books it is better to use either "From KFX" or the KFX Input CLI for conversion since those avoid the calibre conversion pipeline. If you decide to ignore this advice you can select the KFX Input conversion option to "Allow conversion to complete even if errors are detected".

For image based books such as comics/manga conversion to CBZ or PDF is generally superior to EPUB as an output format since those are well supported by many reading apps. An EPUB produced from a Kindle comic/manga will contain a lot of proprietary Amazon-specific formatting internally and may not render properly in a non-Amazon reading app.

[Anonymous Guy]

Originally Posted by jhowell

The plugin is working as intended.

The issue has to do with books that use a fixed-layout, such as comics, manga, and print replica. Calibre's conversion system is designed for books that use reflowable layout. Using it on a fixed-layout book can mess with the book's formatting. For those books it is better to use either "From KFX" or the KFX Input CLI for conversion since those avoid the calibre conversion pipeline. If you decide to ignore this advice you can select the KFX Input conversion option to "Allow conversion to complete even if errors are detected".

For image based books such as comics/manga conversion to CBZ or PDF is generally superior to EPUB as an output format since those are well supported by many reading apps. An EPUB produced from a Kindle comic/manga will contain a lot of proprietary Amazon-specific formatting internally and may not render properly in a non-Amazon reading app.

Thank you for the swift reply. I do not quite understand "From KFX" or the CLI. I have never heard of them. Can you go into more detail about how to use those? And yes, I have been using that "fix."

Understood about CBZ. Though my main concern is simply being able to extact the images themselves in the order they appear.

[Anonymous Guy]

Oof. I found From KFX. You have to add it to the toolbar manually. Now it works perfectly. Thanks!

[Anonymous Guy]

Though I have another issue. I have an uncompressed KFX file. Everything looks great, except the cover. For some reason the cover is a compressed jpg instead of an uncompressed png like everything else. I'm not sure if it's due to Calibre, the plugin, or what.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Anonymous Guy

I do not quite understand "From KFX" or the CLI. I have never heard of them. Can you go into more detail about how to use those?

The documentation for those features is in the first post of this thread.

Originally Posted by Anonymous Guy

Though I have another issue. I have an uncompressed KFX file. Everything looks great, except the cover. For some reason the cover is a compressed jpg instead of an uncompressed png like everything else. I'm not sure if it's due to Calibre, the plugin, or what.

That is normal for KFX comics. The cover is a single JPEG file and so that is retained unchanged. In most cases the following pages are each composed of a grid of multiple JPEG images. The plugin combines them into a single image per page and stores it in PNG format to avoid introducing any new compression artifacts.

[Anonymous Guy]

Originally Posted by jhowell

The documentation for those features is in the first post of this thread.



That is normal for KFX comics. The cover is a single JPEG file and so that is retained unchanged. In most cases the following pages are each composed of a grid of multiple JPEG images. The plugin combines them into a single image per page and stores it in PNG format to avoid introducing any new compression artifacts.

Thanks. Guess I'll have to look into other methods of getting hi-res comics without KFX. Amazon doesn't seem to deliver them to older versions of the Android app now. The method seems to be a closely guarded secret.