Full screen covers on Nexus 10

[dutchie1]

I have a Nexus 10, Calibre (with about 1500 books), Calibre Companion and Moon+ Reader Pro. I think the best combination to handle and read my Ebooks.
One "problem" though: I would like to see the covers of the books full screen on my Nexus, however, some are OK and others show a smaller picture. I thought it had something to do with the cover resolution, but that is not the case. I compared resolutions of book covers that do fit the screen with ones that did not and there is no pattern.
Anybody with bright ideas?
Thanks!

[kovidgoyal]

The way a cover fills the screen depends on how the cover is coded. If you do an epub to epub conversion in calibre, the resulting epub file will have a cover that always fills the screen (unless you use the preserve aspect ratio setting under epub output in the conversion dialog).

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by dutchie1

I have a Nexus 10, Calibre (with about 1500 books), Calibre Companion and Moon+ Reader Pro. I think the best combination to handle and read my Ebooks.

This is the combination I use too.

Originally Posted by dutchie1

One "problem" though: I would like to see the covers of the books full screen on my Nexus

Even if you follow Kovid's advice covers may not go full screen in Moon+, at least that is my experience. If you put Moon+ in publishers preview mode the image goes full screen as expected. But in normal reading mode the image seems to rely on image size. At least I haven't been able to find a setting that allows the SVG wrapped JPGs to go full screen as I would expect. These covers do go full screen in Play Books and Aldiko readers.

I believe the bottom line is that Moon+ developer has to address this problem.

[dutchie1]

Thanks guys for your input.
My Ebooks were originally in MOBI for my Kindle 3. When I got the Nexus 10 and chose the combination Calibre, CC and M+RP I converted the books to EPUB.
I followed Kovid's advice and did an EPUB/EPUB conversion on 10 books and none of them changed to full screen (I left "Preserve cover aspect ratio" unchecked). I thought it might be due to M+RP and approached Seany at M+RP and he answered:

"hi, I'll update the book information dialog (or edit book information dialog) in next version which you can click the thumbnail cover to show it in full screen mode directly".

I don't know whether that will work and whether I will have to do something extra in Calibre before the books hits CC, since the info in CC is basically a reflection of what happened in Calibre.
Sometimes when you hit the title of a book with a small cover in CC, you see a quick glimpse of a full-size cover, but it immediately goes back to the small one.
Re Aldiko: it probably does not work in combination with Calibre and CC? Also I read some negative comments about their latest version.
Thanks guys!

[dutchie1]

Walt, you mentioned that the cover shows in full in Aldiko. I could not find out how to do that, so I contacted Aldiko. This is their answer:

"This is actually controlled by the publisher of the file. You can try to use the software called Calibre for computer to see if you can edit the first page of the book."

Since you say that it shows in Aldiko, you obviously have succeeded. How?
Thanks.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by dutchie1

Since you say that it shows in Aldiko, you obviously have succeeded. How?

By following Kovid's advice above.

[dutchie1]

I have not yet been able to get a full picture in Aldiko. So far it shows a blank. But in CC it is still hit or miss, even after EPUB to EPUB.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by dutchie1

I have not yet been able to get a full picture in Aldiko. So far it shows a blank.

I don't use Aldiko, I use Moon+ and don't mine my covers not being full screen.

Originally Posted by dutchie1

But in CC it is still hit or miss, even after EPUB to EPUB.

Since CC has no provision for ever showing covers full screen I don't know what your referring to. If you have a question about CC start another thread with the issue you are having in that app.

[dutchie1]

Sorry about the confusion. The books (converted from MOBI to EPUB and then to EPUB again as per Kovid) show all in CC. I hit the book in CC. I press read. I have the choice between M+RP and Aldiko. If I choose M+RP I have either the full picture or a smaller one, if I hit Aldiko I have a blank. Maybe I am doing something wrong somewhere, but I have no clue. M+RP will update the book information dialog and Aldiko said go to Calibre. It is not the end of the world, but when I start a book (like with a hardcover one) I like to see a colorful cover. If it is not possible all the time because of the coding of the cover, as expert Kovid mentioned, so be it. I thought there might be people out there having the same (unimportant) "problem", with an easy answer.
Thanks anyway for trying to help me out.

[jackie_w]

@dutchie1,

I'm wondering how you have configured the calibre conversion settings for cover when you convert to epub? On the Prefs - Common Options - EPUB Output page I have the following settings:
No SVG cover: UNCHECKED
Preserve cover aspect ratio: UNCHECKED

My android reading app of choice - Mantano Premium - does show the epub's page 1 cover completely edge-to-edge with the above settings, no matter what the actual width x height shape of the cover.

Opening the same epub in Moon+ has grey filler bars top/bottom or left/right. How big these are depends on the actual shape of the cover image. My android device is a 5" phone so what looks small to me may look huge on a 10" device

The difference between Moon+ and Mantano is not altogether surprising as those who choose Mantano over Moon+ often do so because Mantano has more faithful support for internal epub styling code. Moon+ has more customising features - 'you pays your money and takes your choice'.

[dutchie1]

Jackie, I had "No SVG cover" checked, since I was told that this would force Calibre to look for the JPG-file. I just tried converting a few books with smaller covers unchecked, but no result. I discovered that resolution has no impact on cover size, only when I do have full covers, the higher resolution gives a sharper image on my Nexus 10. Sometimes when I open a converted book (from MOBI to EPUB and again to EPUB, as per Kovid) you see a quick glimpse of a complete cover, but then it goes immediately back to a smaller size (the smaller sizes differ in size as well). I am in the process of converting all my 1500 books from MOBI to EPUB/EPUB, but as mentioned before it is hit and miss regarding full cover or a smaller one. I have no filler bars with a smaller cover, but I do get text underneath the picture from the next page of the book.
As mentioned before it is not the end of the world, but these "mysteries" intrigue me and being a stubborn Dutchman living in cowboy country Montana, I want to find a solution!

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by dutchie1

Jackie, I had "No SVG cover" checked, since I was told that this would force Calibre to look for the JPG-file. I just tried converting a few books with smaller covers unchecked, but no result. I discovered that resolution has no impact on cover size, only when I do have full covers, the higher resolution gives a sharper image on my Nexus 10.

I have all of my epubs converted the same as jackie_w outlined below. If you want your covers to go edge to edge this is the first step. As long as you have these two unchecked when you convert to epub the book will be set up for the cover to display full screen.

If it does not display full screen contact the App developer of the reader and ask them to respect the SVG wrapper for covers.

Originally Posted by jackie_w

I'm wondering how you have configured the calibre conversion settings for cover when you convert to epub? On the Prefs - Common Options - EPUB Output page I have the following settings:
No SVG cover: UNCHECKED
Preserve cover aspect ratio: UNCHECKED

Additionally if the items outlined are unchecked when you convert to epub converting again is not required.

[jackie_w]

@dutchie1,

Well if you're up for a bit of sleuthing it's time to start poking around in the innards, to see what's actually going on

If you've correctly changed the cover to SVG-style, the internal html code for the cover page should look something similar to this:

Spoiler:

<head>
  <meta name="calibre:cover" content="true"/>
  <title>Cover</title>
  <style type="text/css" title="override_css">
  @page {
      padding: 0;
      margin: 0;
      }
  body {
      text-align: center;
      padding: 0;
      margin: 0;
  }
  </style>
</head>
<body>
  <div>
    <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" 
             xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" version="1.1" 
             width="100%" height="100%" 
             viewBox="0 0 765 1181" 
             preserveAspectRatio="none">
      <image width="765" height="1181" xlink:href="../images/cover.jpg"/>
    </svg>
  </div>
</body>
</html>

where the red numbers are the actual pixel width and height values of the cover jpg stored in your calibre library.

So the first step is to open one of your misbehaving epubs in the calibre Editor (highlight book in library and press T). Calibre's cover files are (usually) called titlepage.xhtml and will (usually) be the first item in the Text list (left-hand panel) with a little brown cover icon next to it. Double-click it and the html code for the cover will appear in the Code View panel.

How does yours compare to the sample code above?

[dutchie1]

Jackie, I took one of the "misbehaving" ones, unchecked the NO SVG COVER and PRESERVE COVER bits and did an EPUB (original) to EPUB conversion. Did not make any difference.
Below the procedure indicated by you for the book in question. Mind you that it looks like you are much more literate in "computer science" than I am. Do hope the abacadabra below makes some sense to you. Thanks a lot!

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"/>
<meta name="calibre:cover" content="true"/>
<title>Cover</title>
<style type="text/css" title="override_css">
@page {padding: 0pt; margin:0pt}
body { text-align: center; padding:0pt; margin: 0pt; }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div>
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" version="1.1" width="100%" height="100%" viewBox="0 0 575 882" preserveAspectRatio="none">
<image width="575" height="882" xlink:href="cover.jpeg"/>
</svg>
</div>
</body>
</html

[theducks]

That SVG code says the cover is width="575" height="882"
and the preserveAspectRatio="none" says it will be allowed to stretch out of shape to fill the viewing area.