[AlPe]

Hi,

I would like to share a piece of information that might help those who are producing EPUB 3 eBooks and might want to take "advantage" of kindlegen 2.8 to create MOBI/KF8 files from them.

Short
If you want to convert an EPUB 3 file using kindlegen, in the nav landmarks of your navigation document you MUST specify ONLY one element with epub:type "toc", "cover" and "bodymatter". If you specify other elements (e.g., an item with epub:type "frontmatter"), kindlegen 2.8 FAILS to create the cover/TOC/beginning shortcuts in the output MOBI/KF8 file. If you want to keep those extra bits, you are forced to revert to kindlegen 2.7.

Long
I have a perfectly legal EPUB 3 file with the navigation document both as XHTML (toc.xhtml) and NCX (toc.ncx, for backward compatibility).

The former contains the following landmarks:

        <nav class="indice" epub:type="landmarks">
            <h1 class="indice">Scelte rapide</h1>
            <ol class="indice">
                <li class="indice"><a class="indice" epub:type="cover" href="copertina.xhtml">Copertina</a></li>
                <li class="indice"><a class="indice" epub:type="frontmatter colophon" href="colophon.xhtml">Colophon</a></li>
                <li class="indice"><a class="indice" epub:type="toc" href="indice.xhtml">Indice</a></li>
                <li class="indice"><a class="indice" epub:type="frontmatter foreword" href="presentazione.xhtml">Presentazione</a></li>
                <li class="indice"><a class="indice" epub:type="frontmatter" href="p001.xhtml">Inizio del romanzo</a></li>
            </ol>
        </nav>

Now, I want the "opening point" of the eBook to be the last element, p001.xhtml.

Tried to convert the EPUB 3 file with the above code with kindlegen 2.8, and it issues the following warning:

Warning(prcgen):W14023: Failed to add the guide item to the book :  frontmatter

and, more importantly, it does not create the cover/TOC/beginning shortcuts (without outputting the corresponding warning), even if the OPF file has:

<guide>
    <reference type="cover" title="Copertina" href="Text/copertina.xhtml" />
    <reference type="toc" title="Indice" href="Text/indice.xhtml" />
    <reference type="text" title="Inizio" href="Text/presentazione.xhtml" />
</guide>

To "fix" the problem, one has to revert to kindlegen 2.7 (as I did) or "remove" the unrecognized elements from the nav landmarks:

        <nav class="indice" epub:type="landmarks">
            <h1 class="indice">Scelte rapide</h1>
            <ol class="indice">
                <li class="indice"><a class="indice" epub:type="cover" href="copertina.xhtml">Copertina</a></li>
                <li class="indice"><a class="indice" epub:type="toc" href="indice.xhtml">Indice</a></li>
                <li class="indice"><a class="indice" epub:type="frontmatter" href="p001.xhtml">Inizio del romanzo</a></li>
            </ol>
        </nav>

We are good, right? Uhm, no, because the Kindle Publishing Guidelines do not mention the fact that the ONLY recognized epub:type's are "toc", "cover" and "bodymatter". Hence, I am also forced to change (inconsistently with the semantics) the epub:type of the last item to "bodymatter".

        <nav class="indice" epub:type="landmarks">
            <h1 class="indice">Scelte rapide</h1>
            <ol class="indice">
                <li class="indice"><a class="indice" epub:type="cover" href="copertina.xhtml">Copertina</a></li>
                <li class="indice"><a class="indice" epub:type="toc" href="indice.xhtml">Indice</a></li>
                <li class="indice"><a class="indice" epub:type="bodymatter" href="p001.xhtml">Inizio del romanzo</a></li>
            </ol>
        </nav>

Now, of course, kindlegen succeeds in creating the MOBI/KF8 with cover/TOC/beginning shortcuts.


Summary
From the discussion above, it seems to me that:
1) if nav landmarks are present, the <guide> is ignored;
2) there is a bug in kindlegen 2.8, because if it cannot parse a nav landmark element, it fails to create the cover/TOC/begininning shortcuts;
3) the Kindle Publishing Guidelines do not state explicitly that the only recognized epub:type's are "cover", "toc", and "bodymatter";
4) in any case, Amazon forces you to open your book at "bodymatter", even if you want to open your book at (say) "preface" or "introduction" or whatever --- In other words, IMHO, they restrict the option for "opening point" to "beginning of text", which is not very desirable.