I love Calibre! Great Program! I have converted many of my books to mobi format for my Kindle 2. I'm sorry if this has been asked. I did a search and paged through many pages before posting.

I know this is a long shot but I have to ask. Might there be any way to convert books to mobi format and have them support the 5-way controller of the Kindle 2? I do not miss it as much in books as I do on news made by Calibre. Using it is very nice when going through articles on mags/blogs that I get via Amazon. The news feature in Calibre is fantastic and most of them that are created are better than the same official Amazon one. If I could have the 5-way controller work on these I would be stoked.

Thanks!

Do you mean: allow the use of the 5-way for navigation? From the K2 user's guide: Navigating within a Periodical

At the bottom of a newspaper or magazine you will see options for quickly navigating within an issue. When viewing a blog, you will see similar options for navigation.

Previous Article takes you to the previous article when you move the 5-way controller to the left.

View Sections List takes you to the sections list of a newspaper or magazine when you press the 5-way.

View Articles List takes you to the articles list of a blog when you press the 5-way.

Next Article advances you to the next article when you move the 5-way controller to the right.

By default, "View Sections List" for newspapers and magazines is highlighted and when you press the 5-way, a list of the sections will appear. If you are viewing a blog, "View Articles List" is highlighted and pressing the 5-way shows a list of the blog's articles.

To navigate to a particular article within a section or blog, simply move the 5-way controller to underline the article title and press to select. To dismiss this view and return to where you were last reading in the magazine or newspaper, select "Close Articles List" located at the bottom of the screen.

This is presumably controlled by a particular structure for the MOBI (AZW) file, but I don't think this is documented anywhere.

Are the current Calibre news feeds identified as books?

I read some posts here before about people turning ebooks on Kindle into periodicals to create a folder-like structure, but the results were unreliable.

Given a deDRMed AZW file that shows this behavior, it should be easy, probably just special tags in the MOBI markup

In some books, the five-way controller advances between chapters. But I don't know how you would make an 'article list' from just one book.

Here's the thread that talks about turning books on the Kindle 1 (not 2) into newspapers, and how it's unreliable:
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30947

In some books, the five-way controller advances between chapters. This is apparently via the <mbp:section> tag, see K2 is prejudiced against "Pride and Prejudice" (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=372546&postcount=6). However, this has not been confirmed by a forum member so far as I know, see K2 v K1: Chapter-to-chapter missing from some books? (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=388134&postcount=5).

This is a "standard" MOBI tag, see Mobipocket Custom Tags (http://www.mobipocket.com/dev/article.asp?BaseFolder=prcgen&File=tagref_mobi.xml).

This is apparently via the <mbp:section> tag, see K2 is prejudiced against "Pride and Prejudice" (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=372546&postcount=6). However, this has not been confirmed by a forum member so far as I know, see K2 v K1: Chapter-to-chapter missing from some books? (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=388134&postcount=5).

This is a "standard" MOBI tag, see Mobipocket Custom Tags (http://www.mobipocket.com/dev/article.asp?BaseFolder=prcgen&File=tagref_mobi.xml).
Interesting. If it a standard mobi tag is it something that can be added to Calibre? Even mobi books I download from Feedbooks do not support this feature (though it looks like Hadrien is working on it).

It is a very nice feature. With books I can use 5-way stick to go backwards or forwards by chapter. In periodicals and blogs I can go through the articles quickly. I use it much more for periodicals and blogs than books. In the progress bar at bottom you can see little dots where the chapters or articles are. When you click to the right the progress bar fills to the next dot. It has worked for all books, periodicals, and blogs purchased through Amazon.

Thanks!

I just tried it with <mbp:section> doesn't work. So I will need a deDRMed version of a file that shows this behavior

I just looked at one such file and big surprise, they dont use documented mobi pocket tags as far as I can tell with a brief look. I lack the time to invest in reverse engineering it properly right now, so hopefully someone else will do it.

I guess <mbp:section> would have been too easy. Another theory is that it is based on OEB tours. See K2 is prejudiced against "Pride and Prejudice" (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=374472&postcount=11). This was from a month ago, though, and feedbooks has not released Kindle-optimized MOBIs yet.

the only opf elements in that file that I could find were a <guide> that contained a link to a reference_list, but the reference list was empty

Another hint, while the next and previous article links work in the deDRMed file, the View Sections does not. Hooray for Amazon and proprietary ways of doing things. And I found that record 116 in the file I have contains some sort of list of sections.

I think I figured it out. I am fairly certain that the following bit of code is what the K2 is looking for:

<a></a> <a></a>

It should be placed immediately before the place where you want to jump to. For example:

<a></a> <a></a> <h3>A Title</h3>

Could someone give it a shot? You might also need to label the ebook as a periodical.

I don't think the "view section list" will be possible.

Bummer...that would be fantastic if it could be done. While having it on books is not a huge deal to me it makes a huge difference on periodicals. I'm close to pulling the trigger on the Amazon Newsweek and the I prefer the Calibre version (it has more content). As crazy as it sounds the feature is hard to not have once you get used to it. I hope someone reverse engineers it. I PMed Hadrien and he has not a chance to get to it either.

See if this one works.

See if this one works.
It does not work. Thanks for trying though!

Try to convert an ePub file to Mobipocket using mobigen and see if it works.

Try to convert an ePub file to Mobipocket using mobigen and see if it works.
I have never used mobigen before. Is there any tutorials out there for newer versions of mobigen? I'm not familiar with how to use the command line in mobigen.

Thanks!

In Kindle Formatting: The Complete Guide (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=44141) Joshua Tallent says that the way to get waypoints into a Kindle ebook (using MobiPocket Creator and then uploading to Amazon's DTP) is to add a toc.ncx. This may be why Hadrian suggested converting an ePub (which has a toc.ncx) to MOBI using mobigen.

This does not tell us what gets added to the resulting MOBI for the K2 to use. When I try exploding Joshua's AZW file (which is DRM-free) using mobi2html (MobiPerl) or mobi2oeb (Calibre) I don't see anything obvious. I get a toc.ncx from mobi2oeb, but that is normal.

In Kindle Formatting: The Complete Guide (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=44141) Joshua Tallent says that the way to get waypoints into a Kindle ebook (using MobiPocket Creator and then uploading to Amazon's DTP) is to add a toc.ncx. This may be why Hadrian suggested converting an ePub (which has a toc.ncx) to MOBI using mobigen.

This does not tell us what gets added to the resulting MOBI for the K2 to use. When I try exploding Joshua's AZW file (which is DRM-free) using mobi2html (MobiPerl) or mobi2oeb (Calibre) I don't see anything obvious. I get a toc.ncx from mobi2oeb, but that is normal.

Yeah that's why I suggested converting an ePub. I'd still like to know exactly what they create with this NCX exactly, and this doesn't explain how newspapers work either.

Like I said earlier, these types of AZW files have an extra record (numbered 116 in my sample) that I believe contains this information. It seems to have a relatively simple format, so should be easy to reverse engineer

Could someone try the following file ?

No answer on this thread, but it seems to work fine according to other sources.

Yeah, that works. Very slick. Had noticed those marks in the progress track a book that I'd purchased from Amazon and wondered what they meant.:) A very handy way of moving around the book. Is it anything regular formatters of e-books can incorporate when we produce books?

Jim

I assume it's made using mobigen from an appropriate OPF?

I assume it's made using mobigen from an appropriate OPF?

mobigen with the NCX defined in the OPF. Every book on Feedbooks should have this feature in the next 24H.

mobigen with the NCX defined in the OPF. Joshua points out that the toc.ncx can't have nested items, or at least that nested items won't generate waypoints. So he generates a standard MOBI TOC and a potentially simplified toc.ncx. See post 7 of Section Skipping / Chapter Skipping on Kindle / .MOBI (http://www.mobipocket.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15271).

Unfortunately we still don't know what is required in the MOBI file so at least as far as calibre is concerned, until someone finds the time to reverse engineer that, it's a no-no.

Joshua points out that the toc.ncx can't have nested items, or at least that nested items won't generate waypoints. So he generates a standard MOBI TOC and a potentially simplified toc.ncx. See post 7 of Section Skipping / Chapter Skipping on Kindle / .MOBI (http://www.mobipocket.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15271).

That's interesting.
1) Mobipocket could do a much better job and use the playOrder to get rid of their problem with nested elements
2) I'll generate the NCX with the same elements, but not nested.

Here's an example of a Mobipocket file where the NCX isn't nested anymore: you'll get waypoints for part/sections very close from one another but I believe that it's better to have a waypoint on the part anyway.

Could someone try the following file ?
I tried it and it works great. I'm not following why this is a prc file and not a mobi file. Could someone clarify this for me? When I go to to download a file at Feedbooks from "Mobopocket/Kindle" it is a mobi file. Where can a prc file be downloaded? Why can it not be a mobi file?

Is there no way to use the fix you came up with with Calibre? While it nice it can be in feedbooks books it would also be very nice if books and news created by Calbre had the feature.

All books on Feedbooks now use the 5-way controller navigation.

Does this 5-way controller navigation cause any trouble for Calibre or Mobipocket (non-Kindle)?

Does this 5-way controller navigation cause any trouble for Calibre or Mobipocket (non-Kindle)?

What do you mean when you say trouble ? On non-Kindle devices, it won't change anything.

I tried it and it works great. I'm not following why this is a prc file and not a mobi file. Could someone clarify this for me?

.prc is an common file extension for a mobipocket ebook file. Why do you think it is not a "mobi" file?

BOb

Does this 5-way controller navigation cause any trouble for Calibre or Mobipocket (non-Kindle)? MOBIs from FeedBooks still work in Windows MobiPocket Reader and FBReader and Calibre's viewer.

If I use Calibre to reconvert the PRC file to MOBI with updated metadata, will I lose the waypoints?

If I use Calibre to reconvert the PRC file to MOBI with updated metadata, will I lose the waypoints?

probably

Bummer. So who is going to work on getting this supported in Calibre?

Bummer. So who is going to work on getting this supported in Calibre?

Well, it's been assigned to me in the Calibre trac.... :) I'm in the process of getting ramped back up after my absence from calibre and the e-book scene. A lot of bugs to chomp through, but this is actually interesting so I'll probably end up *ahem* "over-prioritizing" it.

Well, it's been assigned to me in the Calibre trac.... :) I'm in the process of getting ramped back up after my absence from calibre and the e-book scene. A lot of bugs to chomp through, but this is actually interesting so I'll probably end up *ahem* "over-prioritizing" it.

Well, welcome back! I'm glad to see you're otherwise well.

All books on Feedbooks now use the 5-way controller navigation.
Thanks Hadrien! It is great that this feature has been added to books at Feedbooks. The .mobi file I downloaded to test worked great.

I might be over simplifying this but if you know how to do this with an actual .mobi file instead of a .prc file can't this info be told to the Calibre team? While it is great that books on Feedbooks have this feature I'm looking very forward to it being a feature on books converted and news created with Calibre.

Thanks!

I might be over simplifying this but if you know how to do this with an actual .mobi file instead of a .prc file can't this info be told to the Calibre team? We know what to provide as input to MobiPocket's Creator or mobigen.exe to get them to create the waypoints. What we don't, exactly, know is what these programs put into the MOBI output for the Kindle to read as waypoints. Since Calibre and MobiPerl don't use MobiPocket code, we are missing one extra step. This will have to be worked out by reverse engineering the MOBI output of mobigen.exe.

Could someone try the following file ?

Kind of late here, but it does work great on my K2 :-)

20 months later... does kindlegen yet support waypoints? What must be added to the .ncx and/or .opf files, or point me to documentation. The latest I found doesn't mention waypoints.

KindleGen supports waypoints, but there are some creation/display quirks.

You need to make a valid NCX and link it properly via the OPF in the way that KindleGen likes to see it. If you have even a slight error in doing either, it'll ignore everything.

Also, there seems to be a limit on the number of NCX entries you can make (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10352)before it starts to choke on stuff, but that probably won't be a problem for you.

Here are two earlier threads which perhaps you may find useful:

Authoring Kindle eBooks with chapter markers (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=99037)
Best Practices for TOC in Mobi (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=96187)

Hope this helps, and welcome to MobileRead!

If you use Kindlegen to create a MOBI file from a suite of files including an OPF and NCX file, the resulting MOBI file will incorporate the waypoints coded in the NCX file. It's still the case that Kindle won't recognise nested waypoints, but as long as you keep a "flat" structure in the NCX file, the Kindle will recognise the waypoints, and the 5-way control on the Kindle can be used to jump to the next/previous waypoint in the book.

I'm afraid I don't know what the current situation is regarding MOBI files created using Calibre.

KindleGen supports waypoints, but there are some creation/display quirks.

You need to make a valid NCX and link it properly via the OPF in the way that KindleGen likes to see it. If you have even a slight error in doing either, it'll ignore everything.

Also, there seems to be a limit on the number of NCX entries you can make (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10352)before it starts to choke on stuff, but that probably won't be a problem for you.

Here are two earlier threads which perhaps you may find useful:

Authoring Kindle eBooks with chapter markers (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=99037)
Best Practices for TOC in Mobi (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=96187)

Hope this helps, and welcome to MobileRead!

The limit thread above seems to be the wrong one? The link points to battery indicator problems. I have 400+ chapters, but they are 1-4 pages (depending on your font size, screen size, etc.)

I must have a "slight error" such as you allude to, as I get no waypoints. I changed my id= and src= to be the same instead of different per the second link you supplied, but I could see no difference. As far as I could tell, I was doing the rest of the stuff correctly.

Is it because I'm using Kindle for PC as a test bed (my friend has a Kindle, and I'm trying to make this for him)? Does anyone know if Kindle for PC handles waypoints? I'll likely get feedback on this latest version from my friend tomorrow, but I could see no difference on K4PC.

Does someone have a book with waypoints they could share so I could see the effect on K4PC, if any?

Does someone have such a book, and also its source, that they could share?

Sadly, I cannot share my data, because of non-disclosure agreements. I could probably work up a sample of other data, though, since I wrote a Python script to generate the HTML/NCX/OPF files from other markup.

If you use Kindlegen to create a MOBI file from a suite of files including an OPF and NCX file, the resulting MOBI file will incorporate the waypoints coded in the NCX file. It's still the case that Kindle won't recognise nested waypoints, but as long as you keep a "flat" structure in the NCX file, the Kindle will recognise the waypoints, and the 5-way control on the Kindle can be used to jump to the next/previous waypoint in the book.

I'm afraid I don't know what the current situation is regarding MOBI files created using Calibre.

Thanks, Donna, I have a flat TOC, anyway.

The limit thread above seems to be the wrong one? The link points to battery indicator problems.

Oops, copy-paste didn't catch all the URL. Here's the corrected link (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=103528), sorry about that.


IDoes anyone know if Kindle for PC handles waypoints? I'll likely get feedback on this latest version from my friend tomorrow, but I could see no difference on K4PC.

That might be it. I haven't fired up K4Mac for awhile, but I seem to not recall any waypoints in its location bar, though I could be misremembering. What does show waypoints is Amazon's Kindle Previewer app (http://www.amazon.com/kindlepublishing), which simulates K2, DX, and K4iPhone.

Does someone have a book with waypoints they could share so I could see the effect on K4PC, if any?

Does someone have such a book, and also its source, that they could share?

All the ones I've hand-assembled for myself are from my Fictionwise and other purchases, so I can't exactly pass them around, sorry to say.

But if you head over to the Fifth Imperium site which hosts the contents of those freely redistributable Baen promotional CDs, on the one for Lois McMaster Bujold's Cryoburn (http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/24-CryoburnCD/CryoburnCD), if you get the ePub copy for Cordelia's Honor and convert it to Mobi using Amazon's KindleGen, it shows up with waypoints. I know this because that's how I got my own copy to read on the Kindle, and can easily flick between the chapters.

Just unzip the ePub and look at how the NCX is structured, and there's your source.

Incidentally, I'll mention that multi-level NCX work fine on the Kindle if they're done properly. People just think they don't because the Kindle only shows the top-level in the location bar as flickable points. But once you navigate to a second-level point, you can flick between the ones a that level, although they're still invisible.

B&N's Barnes & Noble Classics line's Pride and Prejudice version, which they give you a free copy of when you sign up for an account with them and also happens to be DRM-free, illustrates this perfectly, and you can take it apart to see how it's done in the source, as well as convert it to Mobi and try it out on the Kindle Previewer.

Hope this helps.

Thanks, ATDrake, for the helpful hints and new and updated links.

So I guess I can't tell the difference between kindlegen for the PC not generating waypoints, and K4PC not showing them, but after changing Cordelia's Honor's content.opf file to have only "en-us" in the <dc:language> tag (got an error the first time), then it generated successfully, and shows no waypoints on K4PC.

Will send that to my friend with a hardware kindle and see if it has waypoints there.

Hmm. OK, Kindle Previewer shows the waypoints like you suggested. However, it seems Kindle Previewer is named Kindle Previewer rather than Kindle Emulator for a reason... I can't figure out any way to do a search in Kindle Previewer.

However, my waypoints show up fine, and I can hop between chapters, so that is good! I'm at only 10% of the limits of the guy that ran into the limits of 4064 waypoints, so I'll let him push the limits.

I note that even after seeing waypoints on Kindle Previewer, I still find nothing like them in K4PC, so I guess it is just a missing feature. K4PC does have search, though, of some sort.

But that sort of lessens the benefit of Kindle as a cross-platform viewer tool, if each of the tools has a different subset of Kindle features. I can understand that on different platforms, some features may have to be implemented differently, due to different hardware controls/controllers, but it seems that the features should all be there :( Oh well, maybe someday. Another friend tells me that search isn't implemented in K4Blackberry... I'll have to ask him about waypoints... but if K4PC doesn't do them, it seems unlikely that a search-free K4BB will.

Incidentally, I'll mention that multi-level NCX work fine on the Kindle if they're done properly. People just think they don't because the Kindle only shows the top-level in the location bar as flickable points. But once you navigate to a second-level point, you can flick between the ones a that level, although they're still invisible.

That's interesting, and useful to know. I thought I had tested a nested NCX file and verified that the Kindle didn't pick up on the nested waypoints, but it was a while ago now, and perhaps I missed something. Thanks for the heads up on that.

[QUOTE=DMSmillie;1268661
I'm afraid I don't know what the current situation is regarding MOBI files created using Calibre.[/QUOTE]

If you convert your book to Mobi using Calibre, it will make the way points. Unfortunately, it messes with the paragraph indentations so that any paragraph that begins with an italicized word or one in bold print will have an indentation that's different from all the other paragraphs.

I submitted a request for a bug fix a year ago, but I guess it doesn't have any kind of priority.

Jim

Unfortunately, it messes with the paragraph indentations so that any paragraph that begins with an italicized word or one in bold print will have an indentation that's different from all the other paragraphs.

I submitted a request for a bug fix a year ago, but I guess it doesn't have any kind of priority.

More likely it was just overlooked, sometimes a gentle reminder is required. I just looked at this bug, the Mobi you attached to that bug not is defining indents in a best practice way, it's using non-breaking spaces instead of the text-indent style.

There is an option under Heuristics called 'Replace Entity Indents with CSS Indents'. That function will correct docs with formatting such as your example in the next release.

I also explained the root cause of the problem in the original bug, it's possible that mobi output may be modified so that this gets fixed without any special options.

I'd appreciate your elaborating on your second paragraph. Where would I find the "replace entity indents with CSS indents" indicator? I see nothing in Calibre that allows me to do that.

I do appreciate your following up on my request for a bug fix. Perhaps, since you speak his language, Kovid will follow-up.

Jim

On the conversion dialog window, there's an option in the menu on the left - "heuristic processing". If you select that, you'll see there are a series of options that can be selected or deselected, and one of them is "replace entity indents with CSS indents". Attached JPG shows the relevant dialog.

Thanks for your help. I had a slightly older version of Calibre (0.7.34) which did not have the Heuristics option. If you deselect everything but the "replace entity indents with CSS indents" it doesn't solve the indentation problem. But if you keep all the options selected, it does.

Also thanks to Idolse for the information.

Jim

However, it's clearly not a panacea. Using the heuristic setting, it turned one book into all italics, and using it on another, none of the italics were indented. Not sure the results are worth it, frankly.

Jim

As I said before - I had to modify the fix indents option to cover your doc's formatting - I hadn't come across that specific type of formatting before. Calibre next release will cover your case.

I didn't see any issues around italics when I tested the changes - they were indented and preserved.

It's just the formatting provided by Book Designer. There must be thousands of books in Mobileread's library with the same formatting. When I tried applying the "replace entity indents with CSS indents" on Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, it didn't work. Only when I kept all the heuristic options checked did it do that. I then found out that it messed with the chapter headings and I had to go back and uncheck a couple of options and that seemed to have solved that problem. If Calibre's next version will just take care of the indent problem and leave the rest of the text as-is, I'll be happy indeed.

Jim

Ok, understood now - I didn't test with all the heuristic options enabled, just fix indents. I'll give that a shot and see which one trashed the italics.

Messing with Chapter headings is by design if you check that option - read up about heuristics here:
http://www.calibre-ebook.com/user_manual/conversion.html#heuristic-processing

If I feel secure enough about the ident problem after Calibre's next release, I'll redo Moby, just for you, and post it. :) Using the heuristic settings, I wasn't able to get a good copy of the DH Lawrence book I posted a bit ago, so I've just decided to leave it alone.

Jim