What am I just not getting about epub?

[brewt]

Yeah, it seemed outright stooopid to me, to have to create a real Word document to import into Indesign to get the styles in the epub to do anything at all, just to have indesign attempt to work with css and xhtml on the export - why couldn't I import the html with css to start with? bleah.

The limitations for the epub export css seem to be limited to what one can build in Word - Word styles have their own limitations that css can't break. So again, all the cool things one can do in Indesign is for naught.

I haven't even gone back to embedding images in text - my first stab was grim.

Maybe after the holidays (gad - that long?) I'll get some time to throw at this.....

-bjc

[LesleyBrown]

I did manage to include an image in the text through Object-insert anchored object or some similar, but I keep coming across references on threads on adobe that the book cover image is automatically made from whatever is the first page of the doc. That's not how it's looking for me - when I open Digitial Editions it's just a plain, grey book image. Where does one load the image in the exporting process???

And yes, it's only just sinking in about the extra work and processes that will be needed if we will have to go back to word docs, I'm not at all technically minded but I would have thought that any styles etc you introduce in indesign would supercede those in Word. Ah well...

[Alfy]

Honestly, when you're getting at that level of complexity, would it not be easier to create a PDF adapted to the size of your ebook? I know it's not the point, but it'll be faster...

[brewt]

Unfortunately, reading an elaborately-formatted pdf on the diminutive screen I get to look at (HP/IPAQ4700 - glorious as it is), is a crappy reading experience - the pdf viewer from Adobe on Pocket PC, while it "can" reflow, it relows the whole document at every page turn. Takes for-frickin-ever on a large document.

While Mobi seems ok, Isilo is really the best reading utensil on Pocket PC.

Since I got my dad the Kindle, I've had to settle for Mobi. So we could both read stuff.

Epub promises better formatting options that html3.2 (mobi), though it took me a while to see some of the features of it - css would be a good thing. (anybody figture out how to user user-dicated css's on a Sony yet?)

The viewers for epub seem to fall generally short these days (calibre excepted) and there's nothing for Pocket PC, though I'm trying to encourage uBook to take it on.

If I can wrangle epub to do things I want it to, I'd pop for a Sony. If If If - if the epub viewer is the Sony is good, and I don't have to recompensate for everything again. If one could trigger the mp3 player on the Sony, that would also be cool - have it play the musical examples in a Music History textbook, for example.

-bjc

[LesleyBrown]

So, I've been using a trial version of Indesign CS4 to see what advantages there are and it's struck me as a bit hit and miss, some of the local formatting does convert through and in other cases it doesn't. And of course, justification still flies over it's head.

Anyway, plowing on I've been putting together a proper book and all the individual chapters are exporting to epub fine, but I've just got to about 7 chapters on my Indesign 'Book' and in the resulting epub there are chunks of text missing. I'll navigate to chapter 4 and there will be a blank page and then it starts halfway through, or the last paragraph in another case. Individually these chapters are all appearing fine in epub. I've unzipped the book in case I had horrendously large files, but the largest is 32KB - still way within the 300KB chapter limit - right?

Any pointers? I'm going to start a fresh 'book' and see if it the other got corrupted somehow when I was assembling it...

[brewt]

Hmmm. Unfortunately, "push the left button instead of the right" isn't going to fix this one. We'll have to tear things apart, back to the source level.

In the original files you imported - (I'm assuming Word here), be sure that the styles don't have the [ Page Break before ] paragraph checky boxy checked where you don't want it to - not on line separator styles, or normal or bodytext styles, etc.

I've noticed that Heading Styles take on [ Page Break Before ] in the reading software, even when I've specified it to not do that in the base file. Makes me have to rethink some emphasis style ideas, away from Heading styles (H1, H2, H6, etc).

In your blank space (I'm assuming Digital Editions) can you select where the text should be? If it looks like lines and paragraphs, then something could be goofy with the coloring of your styles - the base coloring of the text and background should be [ default ] or [ none ] with additional colors layered on top of that - I don't know what something that was originally reversed and then recolored back to black-on-white would do in an epub - it might ignore parts of the recoloring....I've seen that happen in mobi.

When you were creating the original files - did you import them from html into word? Multiple <html> tags embedded into the word doc will cause the building apparatus to think it's done with a section - Save Chapter 4 as html from word and open in a text editor and a browser and poke around for weirdnesses.

When you unzipped the epub - again, open the xhtml's in a text editor and look for multiple <html> tags. Also - can you see your missing text in the xhtml file? (could be some kind of failure of ID4 to convert their styles to css).

And as long as you've got the epub unziped, does opening the chapters in a browser give you a different result? And does the css work?

As far as the justification problem goes, that's a function of Adobe Digital Editions - they ignore the the <justify> tag so they can put their page numbers where they want them - in the middle of the "page" on the right. If it was fully justified, your text would run into it all the time, instead of just some of the time. Adobe needs to move (or remove) their page numbers to get Justify to be workable in DE.

I'm beginning to think that the "300k limit" is more a neccesitated function of the reading software, and not the base book. Has to do with how much of the book will be repaginated at hyperlinks and page turns, etc. I've built some test epubs with truly large base (1-2 megs) xhtmls in the output that seem to work ok - unless I've just delusioned myself again. The splits that come out of Calibre don't seem to wall themselves up at 300K - I guess I don't understand it very well.

Also: did you try font embedding? If you did that with a font that won't embed, it might not know what to do when it hits that point - might make it blank.

-bjc

[mtravellerh]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Does FBReader not support ePub? The website says OEB format... is that ePub?

If not I'm surprised it is not on their roadmap.

BOb

FBReader does indeed support epub, though not very well

[LesleyBrown]

Hi Brewt - thanks for the pointers. The trouble is that this book already exists as a printed book and all the corrections have been taken in in Indesign - so I'm hoping very much that I won't have to take it all the way back to Word.

Yup - only reading in Digital Editions thus far and I'm able to navigate to where the missing text should be on the lefthand navigation pane (I started a fresh 'book' and have now encountered this same problem further on chapter-wise). It's just an empty, blank page. When I've got it unzipped it seems to have some bulk but opening in a browser again it's blank.

I have had a true type font fail to embed previously, and there was a substitute put in its place. I found it as an open type version and that has worked no problem - is that a general rule of thumb - open types will work better?

[brewt]

I've been planning to throw some time at Indesign after the holidays - I'll try a big-honking font embedding test then (I've got fontfolio8 and fontfolio11 to try). I've had spotty hits and misses so far with font embedding - sometimes open types work better than truetypes, sometimes not. I think it has to do with the licensing embedded in the individual fonts, and I just haven't worked out the specifics of how it works.

Having Microsoft's font Properties Extension http://www.microsoft.com/typography/...roperty21.mspx helps discern things - until you hit a type 1 font. Doesn't offer so much info on those. (Are you using a Mac or aPC - I've forgotten).

I've run across some weird output formatting in Calibre, too - carriage returns and style changes that are not in the source, etc. I haven't been able to replicate it yet, so I'm not sure what I'm looking at.

Maybe the real questions are about 2-fold problems:
1) Problems specific to the epub reading software
2) Problems specific to the epub generation software.

I'm finding that problematic epubs behave very differently in different reading softwares. I can't get fpreader to run at all on my computer anymore, the reader for opera won't open anything I can throw at it, calibre's won't open output from indesign, and DE is just plain weird - chapter headings need to be really short, or the TOC doesn't work right, for example.

For being a "standard", the implementations (of both generation and reading softwares) seem to be catering to specific developer's stances, and universality is still a ways away.

Reminds me of Java.

-bjc

P.S., oh, uh, things to try:

I've found that editing in Indesign is hit-or-miss in the output. Seems that the source all pretty much needs to be perfected before importing into ID4 - you should be able to copy and paste your bad chapter back into word, and then re-export it as text, html, and doc's to see if anything shows up as weird. Tweak in Word, Then reimport from the word doc back into ID4.

Hope that helps.

[LesleyBrown]

Just in case anyone else out there has encountered the same problem as me (missing chunks/chapters when exporting a book from indesign to epub) I've found a real life human being at adobe technical support and hope they'll be helpful. On an adobe forum I came across a guy who said he'd been told to remove certain plugins (no mention of which) which solved the problem but Tech support guy had never encountered it himself.

[sladwig]

Brewt-
I am attempting to "evolve" from FrameMaker to Adobe InDesign --> epub and I'm just not enjoying this. You cannot anchor a graphic. I spent 3 days last week trying to make figures stay close to their text. Coolness is one thing, useful documentation is another. I'm a technical writer and I like pictures, pictures, pictures to get stuff through to users. Alas.

Does Adobe tell us much about this? I haven't seen it, only a blog or two from their InDesign expert. If I do find any helpful documentation I will let you know. But you are not alone!

Susan