01-11-2012, 05:50 PM | #1 | |
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Kindlegen v2 released for KF8
Amazon has released Kindlegen V2 to generate Kindle documents with the enhanced KF8 format. At the moment the KF8 features will only work on Kindle Fire, although Amazon promises future support for KF8 by other "latest generation" Kindles. I took a quick look at the output from Kindlegen V2 and I see that it produces a MOBI that is mainly the MOBI header records and HTML. Almost all of the binary index content of standard Kindle files is absent, so I'm assuming Kindle Fire will be using HTML-driven navigation for KF8 files, which is good. I'll add to this thread when I've had a chance to analyze the format and how it's interpreted on the Fire.
For anyone interested in the tools, here is the email I received from Amazon. Quote:
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01-11-2012, 09:17 PM | #2 |
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Although I haven't spent much time on it, KF8 seems to contain fully functional MOBI (with index records) + HTML5 in text records that are separated by a BOUN record from the rest. Logically it must contain all indexing info, since it is intended to work without modification on older kindles.
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01-11-2012, 09:35 PM | #3 |
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Interesting. Today was the first time I'd had a look at KF8 files (created by Kindlegen v2) and I didn't see all the usual stuff, but I'm guessing my 010 Editor template didn't line up with the new format properly. I'm not sure how KF8 files could be expected to display on older kindles because what would those devices do with all the html5 and css3? Amazon has said KF8 is only for Kindle Fire right now with support by "later generation" e-ink kindles coming in the future. Anyway, user_none sent me a script that unpacks KF8 so I'm already half way there! Unless someone else is up for it I'll plan to develop a KF8 writer.
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01-11-2012, 10:05 PM | #4 |
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You can decompile KF8 with
calibre-debug --inspect-mobi file.mobi KF8 files contain both the mobi markup and the HTML5/CSS3 in separate sets of records, separated by a BOUN record. Go ahead and work on a writer, it's on my TODO list, but I wont be able to get to it for a while. Though if I was you, I'd first work on properly decompiling KF8 files (add the code to mobi/debug.py with is what --inspect-mobi does). |
01-11-2012, 10:30 PM | #5 | |
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Quote:
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01-11-2012, 10:35 PM | #6 |
creator of calibre
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Yes, currently it just dumps the KF8 content as binary records, dumping them as text would be useful. In particular, I'm curious how it handles images and link anchors.
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01-11-2012, 10:42 PM | #7 |
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OK good, the scripts that user_none shared with me will probably give me a major head-start on this.
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01-11-2012, 10:43 PM | #8 |
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Hi,
K8 mobi files use special additional indexes (a skeleton index and a div table index for lack of better names) that can be parsed to recreate the original xhtml file structure. It also uses FDST records info to split out flow items. If you use the latest mobi_unpack.py and support code (should be identical or close to what user_none gave you) and turn on all DEBUG settings you can see almost everything. Focus on the code in mobi_k8proc.py and mobi_html.py to see how to unpack the K8 mobi and build an epub from it. If you have questions about the code, ask in the Mobi Decoder topic in the Mobi forum (or pm me directly and I can explain it and the format). Take Care, KevinH |
01-11-2012, 11:14 PM | #9 |
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KevinH - many thanks, I'm sure I'll be taking you up on that!
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