problem with mobi from Indesign plug-in

[iain robinson]

Hi all

I am creating some test mobi files for an upcoming Indesign job we will be doing and I wanted to use the 'Export to Kindle' plug-in. I created three test documents (very simple - 3 heading levels and 3 body copy styles), using approximately the styles the proper job will use, and put them into a book. The documents have endnotes which were converted from footnotes using cross references.

The problem is when I create a mobi file if I click on an endnote marker in the text it takes me to the endnote but the endnotes don't have any numbering. If I scroll a page left or right and then back again when I get back to the first endnote I looked at, it now has its number. If I use the TOC to go back to my first page and click on the same endnote marker I get the same problem again in the endnotes. Anyone seen this before?

I'm previewing in Kindle Previewer. If I convert the file to an ePUB the endnotes work as expected every time (in ADE).

I've got some experience with ePUBs from Indesign but this is the first time I've really looked at Indesign>Kindle. What's the expert view - better to use the plug-in to export direct to mobi or better to output ePUB and then convert to mobi from that?

thanks,
Iain

[iain robinson]

Don't know if this helps but I just converted the ePUB file (which worked as expected) to mobi (just using Kindle Previewer) and it has the same problem. I did notice that it works in the Kindle Previewer if Kindle Fire is selected as the device but not for the others (Kindle, Kindle DX, Kindle for iPhone, Kindle for iPad). Any significance to this?

[iain robinson]

On further investigation only the Kindle Fire reads the new KF8 format so it sounds like Kindle Previewer is making the file as KF8. Using Kindlegen manually and watching what it does I see it says "The file format is V8".

This book is very straight-forward - is there any way I can get Kindlegen to produce files that can be opened be all Kindles? I appreciate Amazon will be offering updates to some Kindles to read the new format but there will always be plenty of people who don't update or don't have a new enough model and it seems a shame they will miss out on this title!

Or where could I download the version prior to 2.4 that presumably makes v7 files? Maybe this sort of thing (clickable endnotes) is not supported in previous versions?

thanks

[iain robinson]

Okay - last post tonight

Found Kindlegen 1.2 and made me a v6 file. Unfortunately the resulting mobi file has the same problem (for all devices). I'm obviously missing something or I need to tweak the ePUB in some way to get it to work. Any help appreciated.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by iain robinson

Okay - last post tonight

Found Kindlegen 1.2 and made me a v6 file. Unfortunately the resulting mobi file has the same problem (for all devices). I'm obviously missing something or I need to tweak the ePUB in some way to get it to work. Any help appreciated.

Probably a lot. ePub has lots of features that do not transfer to mobi. Read about MOBI in our wiki. You may or may not ever get the eBook to look the same.

Dale

[iain robinson]

Thanks Dale. It's really a very basic file (3 heading levels and 3 body copy styles). I'm happy that the files don't look exactly the same as the ePUB as long as they are semantically the same (it still has 3 distinct heading levels and 3 distinct body copy styles). I'm just trying to establish the best way to present endnotes to Kindlegen so they work on as many Kindle models as possible.

Interestingly, I made another test file using the Indesign plug-in but this time I kept the notes as footnotes in Indesign (previously I was converting them to endnotes, which is a requirement for the print version of this job) and then the mobi file produced was okay in KP (for all Kindle models). So I guess if Kindlegen (which is what powers the plug-in I believe) converts the notes to endnotes itself it's happy but not if it is presented with endnotes to begin with. Which is bad news for me!

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by iain robinson

The problem is when I create a mobi file if I click on an endnote marker in the text it takes me to the endnote but the endnotes don't have any numbering. If I scroll a page left or right and then back again when I get back to the first endnote I looked at, it now has its number. If I use the TOC to go back to my first page and click on the same endnote marker I get the same problem again in the endnotes. Anyone seen this before?

Sounds like the ID plugin is still generating code that ignores well known MOBI behavior/needs.

The anchor code for the target of the end-note link (in the html/epub source) needs to be before the element you're linking to... rather than actually being a part of the element you're trying to link to.

In other words... in your book:

<a id="backlink_1"></a><p>Text that needs a note. <a href="endnotes.xhtml#endnote_1">[1]</a></p>

The target needs to be:

<a id="endnote_1"></a><p><a href="chapter1.xhtml#backlink_1">[1]</a> Text of end note</p>

I'm guessing InDesign is producing something like (source):

<p>Text that needs a note <a id="backlink_1" href="endnotes.xhtml#endnote_1">[1]</a>.</p>

and the target :

<p><a id="endnote_1" href="chapter1.xhtml#backlink_1">[1]</a> Text of end note</p>

[iain robinson]

Thanks DiapDealer. There are no back links - I hadn't got that far yet (wasn't sure if Kindles did that automatically or not). Here's my code, taken from an ePUB of the file;

<div class="story">
<p id="toc_marker-1" class="A-head"><span class="Bold">THE EMPEROR’S FAVOURITE (1)</span></p>

<p class="Main-text-no-indent"><span class="Italic">The Emperor’s Favourite</span> is one of four anonymous early seventeenth-century manuscript plays.<a href="#Anchor-1"><span class="superscript">1</span></a> The play was given the name used here by T. H. Howard-Hill when he published an article on the Arbury Hall dramas.<a href="#Anchor-2"><span class="superscript">2</span></a> The play, blah blah

SNIPSNIPSNIPSNIPSNIPSNIP!

<p class="B-head">Notes</p>
	<ol>
		<li class="Endnotes"><a id="Anchor-1"/> Hereafter references to the manuscript will blah blah.</li>
		<li class="Endnotes"><a id="Anchor-2"/> T. H. Howard-Hill, ‘Another Warwickshire Playwright: John Newdigate of Arbury’.</li>
SNIPSNIPSNIPSNIPSNIPSNIP!

Does that seem likely to be problematic?

[DiapDealer]

So the numbers for the end-notes are actually being generated by an ordered list (<ol>) element? That seems to over-complicate things unnecessarily, but yes... that code falls right into the classic "not gonna work well in a MOBI" trap. The <li> tag is responsible for creating the numbers for your end-notes and the anchor tag follows that <li> tag. That just won't work when you jump right to that anchor-point via a link. The anchor must precede everything that you're attempting to link to. In this case, that includes the <li> tag (and it still might not work even then since the <li> tag is a child of the <ol> tag; I'm not exactly sure).

I'll be honest... I don't know what the best approach would be to solve your particular issue without just ripping out the ordered list entirely (which I highly recommend if that's at all an option).

EDIT: And no... back links aren't really 100% necessary for most eink Kindle devices themselves (back button), but I can't vouch for the Kindle apps (Android/iOS... etc.)

[iain robinson]

Thanks again for your input. The endnotes have to be a numbered list within Indesign but if I export the file to an ePUB first (rather than using the Kindle plug-in to go straight to mobi) I can tell ID not to export the list using <li> tags. We can perhaps programmatically tweak the html in the ePUB to be a better input for Kindlegen.

I'm not at work now so I can't play with it but I now have an avenue of enquiry! Thanks.

[iain robinson]

DiapDealer - sorry about the delay in coming back to this.

I tried adding the tag before the note (in the ePUB) but the resulting mobi had the same problem. So I bit the bullet and took out the ordered list altogether and replaced it with manually added numbering. That, of course, worked as expected. It didn't take too long - I used Textwrangler/GREP to do it. I could certainly do that on a live job, now I know it necessary. Just a pity it is!

Thanks for your help.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by iain robinson

DiapDealer - sorry about the delay in coming back to this.

I tried adding the tag before the note (in the ePUB) but the resulting mobi had the same problem. So I bit the bullet and took out the ordered list altogether and replaced it with manually added numbering. That, of course, worked as expected. It didn't take too long - I used Textwrangler/GREP to do it. I could certainly do that on a live job, now I know it necessary. Just a pity it is!

Thanks for your help.

Yeah, I suspected the anchor would need to be completely in front of the entire <ol> structure -- which would then completely defeat the desired functionality -- to get around that MOBI constraint.

As annoying as it probably is... this should really be considered a bug in the ID MOBI plugin. This particular behavior/limitation (whatever) of the MOBI format has been around since the beginning. Adobe needs to take that into consideration at some point and stop producing MOBIs that don't take that behavior into consideration. Turning endnotes into an ordered list with anchors inside the structure that's responsible for generating those numbers is a recipe for MOBI link disaster. If enough users report the issue, maybe the next version will fix it.

Glad you got it worked out for your immediate needs, though.

[iain robinson]

I'll find out where to file a bug complaint. Have a good weekend!

[sidmagee]

When I export a .mobi file from InDesign using the Kindle plug-in, it drops the spaces between paragraphs, and the entire book ends up single-spaced. Any ideas how to fix that? The plug-in doesn't seem to offer any formatting options.
thanks

[iain robinson]

You could export to ePUB from Indesign first and tweak your CSS file using an adjacent selector to put space before or after a paragraph when it is preceded by another paragraph. For example;

p + p {
margin-bottom:3em;
}

or

p.your-para-class + p.another-para-class {
margin-bottom:3em;
}

Then convert your ePUB to Mobi using Kindlegen (or Kindle Previewer). In the resulting mobi the space between the paras will be preserved.