Epubcheck 3

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Dillinquent

Hmm... OK. Just out of interest, When Sigil removes the itunes thing, is that because it is a known nuisance or does Sigil remove anything that is not manifested?

Sigil doesn't remove the "itunes thing" anymore if it's already present. It ignores it (well, actually it pretends it's in the 'Misc' folder for the duration of the edit, but it's still safe and sound in its proper place after saving the ePub). You just can't currently use Sigil to add or edit the itunes monstrosity.

EDIT: My sincere apologies. I mistakenly assumed the Apple file being discussed was the plist ... com ... xml ... hoobie-whatie necessary for embedded fonts to work in iBooks. I neither know nor care what an iTunesMetadata.plist file is for -- or know what Sigil might do with one when it's encountered.

[Dillinquent]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Sigil doesn't remove the "itunes thing" anymore if it's already present. It ignores it (well, actually it pretends it's in the 'Misc' folder for the duration of the edit, but it's still safe and sound in its proper place after saving the ePub). You just can't currently use Sigil to add or edit the itunes monstrosity.

EDIT: My sincere apologies. I mistakenly assumed the Apple file being discussed was the plist ... com ... xml ... hoobie-whatie necessary for embedded fonts to work in iBooks. I neither know nor care what an iTunesMetadata.plist file is for -- or know what Sigil might do with one when it's encountered.

Thankyou Diap. Helpful as ever...

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Dillinquent

Thankyou Diap. Helpful as ever...

You know me. I can't resist offering assistance to those who ask nicely for it.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

You know me. I can't resist offering assistance to those who ask nicely for it.

Diap:

Speaking of ever-helpful, the good folks at Apple have the kindness to "help" their customers by inserting a file, the iTunesMetadata.plist, which is embedded into the ePUB whenever a book is sideloaded to iBooks via iTunes. Now, here's the fun part: if you try to then upload a book to iBooks (iTunes Producer/Transport) with that file embedded in it, it will fail intake.

I actually have no bloody idea what this file does, but if I've had one client call me in a swivet because "the file [you] gave me is BAD and fails some kind of check," because they sideloaded it to iBooks first and then sent it on to Apple, I've had 50 or 100. This file has been an issue for the last few years--in fact, I first posted about it here on MR--but it's unrelated to the xml.options file needed for font embedding.

Hitch

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Sigil doesn't remove the "itunes thing" anymore if it's already present. It ignores it (well, actually it pretends it's in the 'Misc' folder for the duration of the edit, but it's still safe and sound in its proper place after saving the ePub). You just can't currently use Sigil to add or edit the itunes monstrosity.

Oooooh!! Awesome! It's really cool the nuggets you pick up around here.

I was contemplating writing a VB code to automatically insert the "itunes thing" (not the plist thing) into an epub...but now that isn't necessary!

I have a "default.epub" file that has all the standard stuff...cover page, styles.css, modified .opf (for series name/index) and now the itunes thing. I open this file in Sigil with a shortcut, and "SaveAs" then continue my work....saves a bunch of time.

Thanks Diap!

[MacCruiskeen]

Originally Posted by Hitch

But...can anyone else identify a distributor that is really using ePUBcheck3? I mean, an actual retailer?

I work in academia and I know that Bibliovault, the distribution service run by UCP, does.

We use iPads as part of our file testing process, and I make local copies of the files from our servers so that the copies we send out don't get .plist infected.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by MacCruiskeen

I work in academia and I know that Bibliovault, the distribution service run by UCP, does.

We use iPads as part of our file testing process, and I make local copies of the files from our servers so that the copies we send out don't get .plist infected.

Well, we, unfortunately, primarily send out files to our clients. No matter how many times we tell them "don't view this file on your iPad/iPhone and then send it to iBooks," they do. We inevitably send out two copies of the same ePUB for almost every client that is planning to sell at iBooks.

I'm always happy when I'm working with distributors. Easy-peasy, just FTP and go. ;-)

Hitch