[GUI Plugin] Modify ePub

[PatNY]

OK, great. On the magazine in question, I simply chose to "Insert or replace cover" even though I wasn't changing the actual cover, and that resulted in the cover not being stretched. Is the plugin doing a complete conversion as well? Or is it just modifying the html page that specifies the cover?

--Pat

[theducks]

Originally Posted by PatNY

OK, great. On the magazine in question, I simply chose to "Insert or replace cover" even though I wasn't changing the actual cover, and that resulted in the cover not being stretched. Is the plugin doing a complete conversion as well? Or is it just modifying the html page that specifies the cover?

--Pat

I think it just replaces the jacket. I say this, because this task orphans the cjb_series selectors (used in Calibre's 'Jacket') in the stylesheet (shown in Sigil 6's reports).

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by PatNY

Is the plugin doing a complete conversion as well?

No .

[PatNY]

This is great. I never knew this plugin could do this. It's like an undocumented feature. Perhaps more would use the cover options if they knew it could do this. Maybe it could be included on the list of features on the first page of this thread? Something like "Change display of cover from stretch-to-fit to preserve aspect ratio or vice versa. "

Am I the only one who is prickly about this? I really dislike covers that are resized to fit the screen display.

--Pat

[kiwidude]

@theducks - don't confuse "jacket" functionality with "cover" functionality. Removing a jacket does indeed just remove the jacket.html or similar page without touching the css.

@PatNY - most definitely the plugin does not do a whole conversion, its entire purpose in life is to avoid doing them for the negatives that can occur. However it does use parts of calibre code that also gets used by conversions - such as smarten punctuation for instance. In the case of inserting/replacing a cover it applies some similar logic to that done when doing a conversion, included in which is making sure to use the same calibre default settings for whether to use svg images and proportioning.

As for preferring stretched or non-stretched covers, there are people on both sides of the debate and it isn't really one that should be had on this thread. The plugin supports whatever setting you prefer and have specified in your calibre defaults.

[PatNY]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

As for preferring stretched or non-stretched covers, there are people on both sides of the debate and it isn't really one that should be had on this thread. The plugin supports whatever setting you prefer and have specified in your calibre defaults.

Yeah, I didn't mean to do that. But maybe lots of people (like me) don't know the plugin could do this (fix the cover display method according to what's already in your preferences) without doing a whole conversion? I always thought the cover options in this plugin were just for removing/replacing a cover. So it's just something you may want to consider adding to the list of features of this plugin so more people are aware of it.

Thanks for your help.

--Pat

[theducks]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

@theducks - don't confuse "jacket" functionality with "cover" functionality. Removing a jacket does indeed just remove the jacket.html or similar page without touching the css.

In many of my books, The Jacket is/has become, the cover.
I sometime leave the alternate cover in place, but it is not indicated as such in the Guide.
(I know you hate it when I do this ) could you mark (astirisk) on the QC settings form, for those settings that use/depend on Calibre preferences?

[kiwidude]

I would rather not asterisk the form, but I could add to both the tooltips and the help file. The help file does discuss the other option that uses calibre defaults - that being "Modify @page and body margin styles".

[theducks]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

I would rather not asterisk the form, but I could add to both the tooltips and the help file. The help file does discuss the other option that uses calibre defaults - that being "Modify @page and body margin styles".

Any marking (text of a different color) would work.
How many people read the help file (more than once )?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

@Man Eating Duck - the code Kovid has written is dependent on having the data structure used by the conversion pipeline that Modify ePub intentionally avoids using. Which means I have to rewrite what he has done basically. Given that it is listed as "experimental" currently if it ever happens then it is only going to be after it has been in calibre for a while longer as I don't want to have to continually be changing my version of it.

I do have a solution to the problem...

You convert the original ePub > ePub with font subsetting on. Then you extract the fonts from the converted ePub, put them back into the original ePub, delete the converted ePub, rename the original ePub and edit the database to remove the reference to the original ePub. I know it can be a hassle to do, but it should work.

[kiwidude]

Changes in this release:

• Fix for "Rewrite CSS margins" to ensure it only processes manifest xhtml files when replacing inline styles.

[pirl8]

May I suggest a feature to help Kindle 3, Kindle4 NT, Kindle Touch and Kindle PaperWhite owners? I know that ePub is not actually handled by these devices but the new AZW3/mobi8 format handles many of ePub features. An ePub converted to mobi8 with calibre looks very similar to the original

However there's an important missing feature on kindles: hyphenation. The funny thing is that hyphens can already be handled by newer kindles. If you manually insert the ­ HTML entity between the syllables an ePub book and convert it to AZW3 they're correctly rendered on the screeen.

My question is: would it be possible to add an "add/remove hyphenation emulation support for newer kindle firmwares" feature to the "Modify ePub" plugin? I know it's an ugly solution but at the moment it's the only option to have hyphenation support to AZW3 books on kindles (and no, it won't break indexing and searching).

P.S. There's a kindle touch firmware hack by Ixtab which adds hyphenation for the older mobi format but it cannot work with mobi8/azw3.

[Needlehawk]

Hi all! I'm fairly new to Calibre and am just learning my way around epubs, so I'm trying to wrap my brain around how Calibre handles metadata. I have many old ebooks that were originally in .LIT format, as well as many ebooks by indie authors. It's obvious that a lot of them were converted by some automated package or other, and a lot of them seem to have a LOT of problems, weird editing problems, TOC problems, etc.

I'm a programmer myself, so I thought I'd see what I could do to clean some of them up before I get my new tablet. This plug-in looks like an EXCELLENT way to get a lot of it done. Nice work, kiwidude!

As part of the process of cleaning things up, do I understand correctly that changing metadata in Calibre just writes to the metadata.opf file that's found in the same folder/directory as the epub file and leaves the content.opf file alone until you save/send the epub?

If so, does the option to clean up the non dc: metadata JUST clean up the content.opf file? I'm wondering if I can clean up the original content.opf with the "remove non dc:" option, then run the "update metadata" to merge the metadata.opf and content.opf files? I don't want to lose all my series and custom column info since I'll be using CC when I get my new tablet.

in advance for answering newb questions.

[kiwidude]

@Needlehawk - no, that metadata.opf file you find in your calibre folder is nothing to do with the internal metadata manipulated by this plugin for an epub. That opf file is primarily a *backup* of the data stored in your calibre database for your book, in order to facilitate an emergency restore of your library data should the original metadata.db database become corrupted.

Inside an epub file (if you unzip it) you will find a .opf file which contains the actual metadata used by the epub readers. It is that internal .opf file that this plugin manipulates.

As for removing non DC: metadata, it is an option really only targeted at a small subset of users who are sharing/publishing their epubs externally and require all traces of application specific metadata such as from calibre or Sigil removed.

[Needlehawk]

Wow, that was fast! Thanks for the answers, but now I'm really confused. The reason that I came to the conclusion that I did, was that I looked (in Sigil) at the .opf file of several of my epubs. Without fail, the content.opf file that was in my epubs did not have the metadata changes that I had made in Calibre, (although I've since looked some more and some of them DO have those changes in the content.opf file).

For example, I just pulled up a book in Sigil that I put into a series. Here is the metadata info (minus title and author) in the content.opf file (no series info that I can find):

Spoiler:

<opf:metadata xmlns:opf="http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf" xmlns:calibre="http://calibre.kovidgoyal.net/2009/metadata" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
        <dc:language>en</dc:language>
        <dc:creator opf:role="aut">author name</dc:creator>
        <opf:meta content="2011-11-14T15:51:39.194957+00:00" name="calibre:timestamp"/>
        <dc:title>Title</dc:title>
        <dc:identifier id="uuid_id" opf:scheme="uuid">2940012076793</dc:identifier>
        <meta xmlns="" content="book" name="BNContentKind"/>
    </opf:metadata>

Here's what is in the metadata.opf file (minus title and author):

Spoiler:

<metadata xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:opf="http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf">
        <dc:identifier opf:scheme="calibre" id="calibre_id">1645</dc:identifier>
        <dc:identifier opf:scheme="uuid" id="uuid_id">7962babc-3eac-4f72-935a-5173e07a7aab</dc:identifier>
        <dc:title>Title</dc:title>
        <dc:creator opf:file-as="author" opf:role="aut">author</dc:creator>
        <dc:contributor opf:file-as="calibre" opf:role="bkp">calibre (0.9.10) [http://calibre-ebook.com]</dc:contributor>
        <dc:date>2012-07-31T05:00:00+00:00</dc:date>
        <dc:description>&lt;p class="description"&gt;THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING SENSATION Addictive, thrilling, exhilarating... You won't be able to put it down. Ash Rashid is a former homicide detective who can't stand the thought of handling another death investigation. That's until his niece's body is found in the property of one of the city's wealthiest citizens. The coroner calls it an overdose, but the case doesn't add up. Against orders, Ash launches an investigation to find his niece's murderer. But the longer he searches, the darker the case gets - and if he doesn't solve it fast, his niece won't be the only family member he has to bury... Discover for yourself the US crime novel that became a word of mouth phenomenon. The Abbey is the beginning of a major new series, featuring one of the most fascinating detectives in the history of crime fiction.&lt;/p&gt;</dc:description>
        <dc:publisher>Little, Brown Book Group Limited</dc:publisher>
        <dc:identifier opf:scheme="AMAZON">B004M18ZRS</dc:identifier>
        <dc:identifier opf:scheme="GOOGLE">hsRQtQAACAAJ</dc:identifier>
        <dc:identifier opf:scheme="ISBN">0751549118</dc:identifier>
        <dc:language>eng</dc:language>
        <meta content="{&quot;author&quot;: &quot;&quot;}" name="calibre:author_link_map"/>
        <meta content="Ash Rashid" name="calibre:series"/>
        <meta content="1" name="calibre:series_index"/>
        <meta content="8" name="calibre:rating"/>
        <meta content="2012-10-07T05:23:18+00:00" name="calibre:timestamp"/>
        <meta content="Title" name="calibre:title_sort"/>
        <meta name="calibre:user_metadata:#read" content="{&quot;is_category&quot;: false, &quot;#extra#&quot;: null, &quot;kind&quot;: &quot;field&quot;, &quot;is_custom&quot;: true, &quot;is_csp&quot;: false, &quot;colnum&quot;: 1, &quot;column&quot;: &quot;value&quot;, &quot;rec_index&quot;: 22, &quot;search_terms&quot;: [&quot;#read&quot;], &quot;link_column&quot;: &quot;value&quot;, &quot;is_multiple2&quot;: {}, &quot;is_multiple&quot;: null, &quot;datatype&quot;: &quot;bool&quot;, &quot;#value#&quot;: true, &quot;category_sort&quot;: &quot;value&quot;, &quot;table&quot;: &quot;custom_column_1&quot;, &quot;is_editable&quot;: true, &quot;label&quot;: &quot;read&quot;, &quot;display&quot;: {}, &quot;name&quot;: &quot;Read&quot;}"/>
    </metadata>

Since the series info was only in the metadata.opf file, I assumed that Calibre only changes the .opf file in the EPUB itself when I send/backup the file. Is this not true?

I do realize that the non dc: metadata is not a huge piece of the clean up I want to do. I'm just trying to fully understand the process so I don't do something stupid with my files.

Just out of curiosity, what does the "update metadata" option do? I thought that it probably merged the metadata.opf files and content.opf files. Is that not true?