[Old Thread] Create just one TOC

[medwatt]

Hello. I've searched for a solution to no avail. I have edit the book in microsoft word and created a Table of Contents and saved as epub. In Calibre, I convert to mobi and I get two TOC though the one autogenerated by Calibre is the one that gets linked to when I select Table of Contents from my kindle menu. Ok, I then uncheck the Do Not Add TOC to book or Force use of autogenerated TOC, and though it didn't produce one, I was unable to find a link to my TOC through the kindle menu.
What I want is, how can I link to a particular location in my document and make that location as the start of my TOC.
Like when using Mobipocket creator, I can simply add guide item and link to any location through a bookmark.
Thank you.

[medwatt]

Why can't anybody answer me ?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by medwatt

Why can't anybody answer me ?

Not polite MR behavior.

[medwatt]

Originally Posted by theducks

Not polite MR behavior.

Is that the best you can come up with. If you don't know don't hide under words please.

[Manichean]

Well, he's right. If someone had a helpful idea, there would be answers to your post already. Getting impatient after only a day is a little rude. I've never seen posts on here getting ignored just because. Also, if you'd looked at the thread statistics, you'd seen that you have 80 views already, so plenty of people have seen this without having a good idea.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by medwatt

Is that the best you can come up with. If you don't know don't hide under words please.

I ave an idea, but your attitude put me off

[medwatt]

Originally Posted by theducks

I ave an idea, but your attitude put me off

You thinks you're teasing me ? Better find something else to do.

[DoctorOhh]

Ignorance Alert!!! I have no experience creating mobi books.

Originally Posted by medwatt

I have edit the book in microsoft word and created a Table of Contents and saved as epub.

You didn't create a TOC in Word you created a inline page that links to other parts of the book. These are two different things. Did you look to see what the TOC looked like in the ePub? The ePub TOC is an external TOC not part of the html.

Originally Posted by medwatt

In Calibre, I convert to mobi and I get two TOC though the one autogenerated by Calibre is the one that gets linked to when I select Table of Contents from my kindle menu.

You get one TOC and a inline link page that you created. The official linked from the menu TOC is actually at the end of the mobi document.

Originally Posted by medwatt

Ok, I then uncheck the Do Not Add TOC to book or Force use of autogenerated TOC, and though it didn't produce one, I was unable to find a link to my TOC through the kindle menu.

You essentially told it not to create a link from the menu button to a TOC by disabling the creation of a TOC.

Originally Posted by medwatt

What I want is, how can I link to a particular location in my document and make that location as the start of my TOC.
Like when using Mobipocket creator, I can simply add guide item and link to any location through a bookmark.

If you can do it in Mobicreator then you might want to consider using that.

Personally (since I have no clue about creating Mobi books) I would use Sigil to edit the ePub TOC to my liking then convert that epub to Mobi and forget about my link page. I have yet to buy a book from Amazon that had a inline TOC at the beginning of the book.

Of course if I wanted to find out how to link to a TOC I created for a Mobi book I would probably ask the question in the Mobi forum where people who create Mobi books would presumably have the expertise to help you.

[DMSmillie]

Originally Posted by medwatt

Why can't anybody answer me ?

The most usual reason for a lack of answers in these forums is because no-one knows how to do what you're asking for (and it's generally regarded as rather unhelpful to post a reply that simply says "Sorry, I don't know"). Or because they're unsure, and are waiting to see if someone else who does know posts an answer. Or because the person who does know hasn't yet seen your post.

Originally Posted by Manichean

Well, he's right. If someone had a helpful idea, there would be answers to your post already. Getting impatient after only a day is a little rude. I've never seen posts on here getting ignored just because. Also, if you'd looked at the thread statistics, you'd seen that you have 80 views already, so plenty of people have seen this without having a good idea.

Exactly.

[DMSmillie]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

You didn't create a TOC in Word you created a inline page that links to other parts of the book.

That's a table of contents.
A Word table of contents is an inline page of links to other parts of the document.
An EPUB table of contents is generated by the EPUB reader from the content coded in the NCX file.
A MOBI/Kindle table of contents is an inline set of links to other parts of the book coded into the HTML content of the book, with a guide item pointer to the location of that inline set of links which the MOBI reader uses to enable the user to jump to that list of links from anywhere else in the book.
The fact that they are provided in different formats doesn't make any one format more valid than another as a table of contents. Each is appropriate to its own format, and each is a table of contents.

Originally Posted by dwanthny

You get one TOC and a inline link page that you created.

You get two inline tables of contents - one is the original one in its original position, the other is created by Calibre and placed at the end of the book. Calibre inserts a pointer in the MOBI file to the Calibre-generated inline table of contents.

Originally Posted by dwanthny

You essentially told it not to create a link from the menu button to a TOC by disabling the creation of a TOC.

medwatt is looking for a way of getting Calibre to create a pointer in the resulting MOBI file to their original inline TOC, rather than generating an additional inline TOC and creating a pointer to that.

Originally Posted by dwanthny

If you can do it in Mobicreator then you might want to consider using that.

You then have a MOBI file which doesn't include an NCX file (unless you manually create the NCX file, do a partial build of the MOBI file, manually edit the OPF file to insert a link to the NCX file, then do a final build of the MOBI file).

Originally Posted by dwanthny

I have yet to buy a book from Amazon that had a inline TOC at the beginning of the book.

Few novels have an inline TOC, simply because a list of "Chapter One", "Chapter Two", etc, is of little practical use to anyone, nor does it provide an overview of the content of the book. Most non-fiction MOBI/Kindle books have an inline TOC since it is useful to have one (and an inline TOC is the only kind of TOC the user will be presented with, in a MOBI reader), and most of those are at the beginning of the book (in the same place you'd expect to find such a TOC in a paper book), since the TOC is then included in the free sample, and provides prospective purchasers with a good overview of the book's content.

Originally Posted by dwanthny

Of course if I wanted to find out how to link to a TOC I created for a Mobi book I would probably ask the question in the Mobi forum where people who create Mobi books would presumably have the expertise to help you.

Since medwatt is asking if there's any way, and how, to get Calibre to create a pointer to an existing inline TOC rather than only inserting a pointer to a Calibre-generated inline TOC, when using Calibre to convert an ebook to MOBI format, asking the question in the Calibre Conversion forum seems appropriate to me.

[DMSmillie]

Originally Posted by medwatt

Hello. I've searched for a solution to no avail. I have edit the book in microsoft word and created a Table of Contents and saved as epub. In Calibre, I convert to mobi and I get two TOC though the one autogenerated by Calibre is the one that gets linked to when I select Table of Contents from my kindle menu. Ok, I then uncheck the Do Not Add TOC to book or Force use of autogenerated TOC, and though it didn't produce one, I was unable to find a link to my TOC through the kindle menu.
What I want is, how can I link to a particular location in my document and make that location as the start of my TOC.
Like when using Mobipocket creator, I can simply add guide item and link to any location through a bookmark.
Thank you.

I don't know of any way to do what you want, medwatt, without doing some manual editing of the XML/XHTML files used to create the EPUB and MOBI files. I was hoping someone might come up with a suggestion that didn't involve that, but it looks like it isn't currently possible.

One possible route might be:

1. Create a bookmark at the start of your inline TOC (could do that in Word before creating the EPUB version).
2. Use Calibre's "tweak epub" facility to open up the EPUB and edit the OPF file (using a plain text editor), and add a Guide item of type "toc" to point to that bookmark. E.g.:
   

   <guide>
   <reference type="toc" title="Table of Contents" href="filename.html#bookmark"/>
   </guide>

3. Save and reform the EPUB file.
4. Convert to MOBI format.

I haven't tested this, so I don't know what issues it might throw up, but it might be worth trying.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by DMSmillie

Since medwatt is asking if there's any way, and how, to get Calibre to create a pointer to an existing inline TOC rather than only inserting a pointer to a Calibre-generated inline TOC, when using Calibre to convert an ebook to MOBI format, asking the question in the Calibre Conversion forum seems appropriate to me.

Thanks for all the great information.

I see the only point I had on target was my first statement. I'm glad someone popped around that had a clue.

[DMSmillie]

You are a wretch, dwanthny!

[medwatt]

<guide>
<reference type="toc" title="Table of Contents" href="filename.html#bookmark"/>
</guide>

Thanks DMSmillie. I used it and it worked just perfectly. The only thing I had to so was to just uncheck " Do not add a TOC to . . . " in the mobi output menu. Finally.
Thank you very much.

[DMSmillie]

That's excellent! Thanks for letting us know it worked, medwatt.