Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
It's in the opf file.
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Thank you for the help. The "meta" value was indeed missing.
I want to say this about ePub: I have never encountered a file format so pedantically fussy about needless detail, while at the same time being so inept at providing clear definitions of those details.
ePub is more finicky than HTML, more finicky than CSS, more finicky than video conversion software (look at the encoding options of Handbrake), more finicky than audio software.
Conversely, ePub files are far more fragile than any of these, far more difficult to edit, far more easily damaged. That's insane.
Face it, books are just text (novels, that is, not comics, magazines, textbooks). One simple HTML file could provide all the features of ePub- reflow-able text, styled text, @font face, etc.- in a simple format any WYSYWIG editor can output.
More, it can do tables easily and embed images easily. Table of Contents? Named anchors. Allows for "arbitrary" linking, just like the toc.ncx.
Metadata in the <head>, a folder for images and a stylesheet (if you don't want the css in the <head>) and the damn thing's done. Zip it, change the extension, and go.
Simple. Easy. Robust.
ePub's morass of bizarre and Byzantine requirements to implement the simplest and most basic of information- text- is insane. For example, requiring multiple files and folders and mandating that one specific file be first in the zip archive.
I've been encoding DVD's for my iPhone. It's harder to add a cover image to ePub than it is to include 5.1 stereo and regular stereo audio tracks, subtitles, chapter markers, metadata, and a cover image in the m4v. This bespeaks an ineptness bordering on the legendary. It's appalling.