MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Epub works fine on Reader, fails epubcheck spectacularly

DMSmillie · 01-05-2011, 06:03 AM

Browsers will often handle and display documents which contain HTML that doesn't comply with the HTML specifications, so not always an accurate indication of how compliant the HTML is, I'm afraid. And in order to pass epubcheck, the HTML in an EPUB file has to be spec compliant.

The nature of the book, with lots of links to the different "story choices" throughout the book, makes me suspect that a lot of the errors might relate to the use of empty A elements as bookmarks which aren't contained within a block level element (such as a heading, or paragraph, or div). For example:

Code:

<a name="section001"></a>
<p>Text here.</p>

If this is how your bookmarks are constructed, you can get rid of a lot of the errors by moving the bookmark name to the heading or paragraph immediately following the empty A element and getting rid of the A element (also, if you're currently using the "name" attribute, change that to an "id" attribute instead). For example:

Code:

<p id="section001">Text here.</p>

Existing links to that bookmark will still work fine.

01-05-2011, 06:03 AM	#4
DMSmillie Enquiring Mind Posts: 562 Karma: 42350 Join Date: Aug 2010 Location: London, UK Device: Kindle 3 (WiFi)	Browsers will often handle and display documents which contain HTML that doesn't comply with the HTML specifications, so not always an accurate indication of how compliant the HTML is, I'm afraid. And in order to pass epubcheck, the HTML in an EPUB file has to be spec compliant. The nature of the book, with lots of links to the different "story choices" throughout the book, makes me suspect that a lot of the errors might relate to the use of empty A elements as bookmarks which aren't contained within a block level element (such as a heading, or paragraph, or div). For example: Code: <a name="section001"></a> <p>Text here.</p> If this is how your bookmarks are constructed, you can get rid of a lot of the errors by moving the bookmark name to the heading or paragraph immediately following the empty A element and getting rid of the A element (also, if you're currently using the "name" attribute, change that to an "id" attribute instead). For example: Code: <p id="section001">Text here.</p> Existing links to that bookmark will still work fine.