Epub to Mobi spacing issue

[jennefere]

I'm currently having an issue. I edited an Epub in Sigil and "saved as" an edited version of the epub. That way I could keep both files.

The issue I'm having is when I go into Calibre to covert the edited version into .mobi format, the generated mobi file is missing all of my spacing.

If you take a look at the error, I have the mobi view in the kindle for windows.

If you take a look at the epub-shot, you can see that the spacing is working perfectly in the epub. I don't know why it fails during the conversion.

Can someone help? At this point, I'm getting very frustrated and at this point, I feel as if I have to edit the epub in html format from Calibre, copy the edits into the old version and rebuild the epub. Is there something wrong with my stylesheet?

Can someone help me?

[JSWolf]

Try using Mobipocket Reader to load the ePub. It might be converted to ePub and might work better.

[jackie_w]

I've never owned a Kindle so I don't know much about the mobi format, but what I do know is that mobis have very limited styling capabilities. The margin-right property is one (of many) which is unsupported. So that might explain half your problem.

For margin-left, I think this is achieved by using nested <blockquote> tags, but maybe Calibre takes care of all that during the conversion epub to mobi.

One more thing is that there is an 'Ignore margins' checkbox on the Convert - MOBI output page. Try your conversion with both settings and see what difference it makes to your output mobi.

If none of this is helpful perhaps someone who knows more about mobi will drop by.

[dwig]

Originally Posted by jennefere

...Is there something wrong with my stylesheet?

Can someone help me?

Possibly.

Either there's something wrong with the stylesheet or with the code you've used in the ePub. Done correctly, you should be able to get very much the same formating in the MOBI as you are seeing in the ePub.

Where you went wrong is impossible to say without seeing both the code used for the ePub document page and the CSS stylesheet. There are a number of CSS attributes that do not have analogs in MOBI. Converters, like calibre, attempt to replace these with MOBI compliant tags, and such, but don't succeed with everything. Also, the Kindle default behaviors can be a bit different than those commonly seen in ePub readers. Leaving some attributes unstyled can lead to differences between the ePub and MOBI displays. The simple vertical spacing in your example is quite doable in MOBI.

BTW, calibre's ebook viewer is not the best choice for previewing/testing ePubs and it is a horrid choice for any other format. It's a good viewer, but it can't read anything but one format and converts others on-the-fly.

For testing ePubs on a desktop computer the best choice is Adobe Digital Editions (aka ADE). While its the best you can get for the purpose, it isn't great. For MOBI formats, the tool to use is Kindle Previewer, not Kindle for PC/Mac.

[speakingtohe]

Do you have the original file tweak set to on? If you have reimported the book and/or copied it to it's original calibre directory and an original_epub file exists it will be used for the conversion.

If that isn't the case try an epub to epub conversion first.

Helen