How many mobi readers vs. kf8?

[pdurrant]

Good grief! Are the apps still KF7 only?

I take it back. It's necessary to ensure that books render nicely with mobi/KF7 as well as with azw3/KF8.

[Notjohn]

The only one on Hitch's list I have had trouble with is K4iPad, which like K1 etc doesn't seem to obey width=n%. So my colophons get blown up a bit, just as they do in the early Kindles. The same I suppose will be true for the book i'm working on now, which has a lot of (well, sixteen) mug shots floated left. I can live with it. I figure that people who use those devices are accustomed to oddly sized images.

But my books are basically Mobi 7 anyhow. And I've never used a table. (Nor have I ever gotten rapped on the knuckles by Mother Amazon for one of those KQ-Things.)

Hitch will remember Divorce Doctor, the mad Aussie who used to post on the KDP forums. One of his annoying mantras was KISS, and he was absolutely right about that. Keep it simple, though I appreciate that's not possible if you are publishing for others.

[SBT]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

Hitch will remember Divorce Doctor, the mad Aussie who used to post on the KDP forums. One of his annoying mantras was KISS, and he was absolutely right about that. Keep it simple, though I appreciate that's not possible if you are publishing for others.

I do try to keep things as simple as possible – but not simpler

My particular issue is that I try to make math e-books (I do love a challenge.) It is possible to create decent math, even inline, in EPUB2 and KF8, but math in mobi is a lost cause IMHO. But should I really refrain from trying to make kindle math books because of that?

(And yes, I know EPUB3 would be much better for math. Ref. this thread)

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Hitch

[...]

She cometh!

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Good grief! Are the apps still KF7 only?

I take it back. It's necessary to ensure that books render nicely with mobi/KF7 as well as with azw3/KF8.

The iPad app supports AZK instead of KF8 and Amazon will deliver AZK from KF8 input but does support KF7 for books in that format.

Dale

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

The iPad app supports AZK instead of KF8 and Amazon will deliver AZK from KF8 input but does support KF7 for books in that format.

Dale

Dale:

Yes, it's "azk." (Not really: that's what they give you to see what the book will look like on the device, but...whatever). HOWEVER, with all due respect, they could call it Do-Re-Mi; it still does NOT support KF8-type formatting. It's still 90% KF7, not KF8. No fonts, for one thing (ditto most of the reading apps, ditto Cloud Reader). No support for: Borders, right-margins,no top-and-left-right margins in a single class. PADDING. FLOAT.

Believe me: we do a lot of books that have things that ought to be relatively simple, and then we are stuck staring at the K4iPad version. Oh, here's a lovely example: we did some (forgive my brag for one moment, I'll be over it in 30 seconds), STUNNING pullquotes for a book. Absolutely gawjamus. Looked the bee's knees in everything (major), not counting K4iPad. In which, for reasons that elude me, the alignment of the text was completely wonk. We had to change the pullquotes, (the alignment of the text inside them, I mean), because THAT particular app simply didn't render them correctly, and the client, being an Apple person, couldn't abide.

So: don't just think that ignoring KF7, because the DEVICES are going bye-bye, is okay. I don't see Amazon deciding to up the game at Apple any time soon, due to their internecine war; and the number of books being read on phones goes up by the day. Hell, I find MYSELF doing it, at doctor's offices, etc. (Which I thought was daft, a few short years ago.)

@eschwartz:

She cometh!

LOL. Yes, I'm here. Can't very well have you running around invoking my name without appearing, now, can I? :-)

@notjohn:

Hitch will remember Divorce Doctor, the mad Aussie who used to post on the KDP forums. One of his annoying mantras was KISS, and he was absolutely right about that. Keep it simple, though I appreciate that's not possible if you are publishing for others.

It would be difficult for me to forget. Firstly, he was the reason I finally started putting a signature block on my posts--so that poor DIY'ers who were reading through the posts where he was claiming he was right about X and I was wrong, could look at both our websites, and make their OWN determination about who was daft and who probably knew what she was talking about.

Secondly, if you'll recall, he was the only person I ever actually reported to Amazon (other than the spammer posts), after he went off the deep end one week and posted some ridiculous number of posts (10 or something) about me all entitled "Hitch the Bitch," ranting about me, because someone ELSE--not I, ironically--had turned him in for his little cover scheme that was being sold on the Amazon website. He assumed that it was me, because I'd blasted him for putting up a--what did he call it? Oh, yes, an "homage cover" for "A Year in Provence," as part of his "cover design services" images he was running on Amazon. He didn't say, in the images, that it wasn't a REAL cover. (He later claimed it was a "customer image," which he was entitled to put up.) By using that cover, he'd basically implied or allowed potential customers to infer, that P Mayle was HIS client, which I absolutely knew was untrue--because he was MY client. And I certainly knew where he was getting his covers.

Anyway, I digress: my entire point was, forgetteth not readng APPS, when you think of the KF8-KF7 discussion, please. And NJ, it's unlikely that you'd get a KQN about your image choices, because you don't use that many images, really.

Lastly, boys and girls, Voyage has a KF7-type-glitch, even though it's supposed to be a KF8 device: if you have an image that's larger than 50% of the width of the screen, but smaller than 100%--it's blown up to 100%. So....remember that when designing.

Hitch

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Hitch

@eschwartz:

LOL. Yes, I'm here. Can't very well have you running around invoking my name without appearing, now, can I? :-)

Yeah -- you might fade into a dark legend used to scare newbies! Even eldrHitch beings need to keep an eye on their public persona.

Just look what happened to Bel-Shamharoth.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Yeah -- you might fade into a dark legend used to scare newbies! Even eldrHitch beings need to keep an eye on their public persona.

Just look what happened to Bel-Shamharoth.

You know that's "Ms. Eater of Souls" to you, right, bub?

Hitch

[JSWolf]

I did forget about the Amazon apps. Amazon needs to update these apps to allow KF8. The more KF8 means less Mobi and less Mobi means eventually no more Mobi.

[SBT]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Good grief! Are the apps still KF7 only?

I take it back. It's necessary to ensure that books render nicely with mobi/KF7 as well as with azw3/KF8.

Please say this is just the iOS app, right? I've sideloaded on Android devices, and they do show the KF8 version

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by SBT

Please say this is just the iOS app, right? I've sideloaded on Android devices, and they do show the KF8 version

For all intents and purposes the latest iOS Kindle app (v4.9.1) is pretty much KF8 compatible, if you generate and sideload an AZK file. The app supports drop-caps and even some pseudo selectors that it isn't required to support according to the official Kindle Publishing Guidelines. (All items shown in red and the zebra-striped table where coded using pseudo selectors.)

However, the latest version requires iOS7. I.e., users of older iDevices (e.g. iPad1 and iPhone 1-3) can't install this version.

The source file is here.

[Notjohn]

Very nice. I particularly like that Summarium in red!

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

For all intents and purposes the latest iOS Kindle app (v4.9.1) is pretty much KF8 compatible, if you generate and sideload an AZK file. The app supports drop-caps and even some pseudo selectors that it isn't required to support according to the official Kindle Publishing Guidelines. (All items shown in red and the zebra-striped table where coded using pseudo selectors.)

However, the latest version requires iOS7. I.e., users of older iDevices (e.g. iPad1 and iPhone 1-3) can't install this version.

The source file is here.

Doits:

Do you have screenshots of what actually comes OUT, on the iOS app, on the sold book, please?

HItch

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Do you have screenshots of what actually comes OUT, on the iOS app, on the sold book, please?

Sorry, I can't help you with that, but the screenshots were taken with the current iOS Kindle app and I don't think that the KDP tools will mess with the layout. After all a "beautiful page layout" was one of the top selling points of the Kindle for iOS 4.9 app:

From the official Kindle for iOS 4.9 app store description:
[...]
Beautiful Page Layout
Drop caps, text, and images that automatically adapt to always look great no matter what your screen or font size. Print-like layout dynamically adjusts for any combination of screen size and font setting.
[...]

BTW, most of the (admittedly rather gimmicky) pseudo selector and CSS3 stuff in my test file doesn't even require explicit fallbacks. Non-KF8 compatible iOS apps will simply display a plainer version as you can see in the screenshots of the unaltered mobi7 version of the same file, which doesn't contain any conditional styles.

Note that even mobi7 files are automatically hyphenated.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

Sorry, I can't help you with that, but the screenshots were taken with the current iOS Kindle app and I don't think that the KDP tools will mess with the layout. After all a "beautiful page layout" was one of the top selling points of the Kindle for iOS 4.9 app:



BTW, most of the (admittedly rather gimmicky) pseudo selector and CSS3 stuff in my test file doesn't even require explicit fallbacks. Non-KF8 compatible iOS apps will simply display a plainer version as you can see in the screenshots of the unaltered mobi7 version of the same file, which doesn't contain any conditional styles.

Note that even mobi7 files are automatically hyphenated.

Well, that's nice, but that's a pretty far piece from what I'm seeing, when a client uploads a MOBI--as AZK's cannot be uploaded for sale--and what's delivered to a 4th-gen iPad in the iOS reading app.

I'm not trying to be combative here, Doits; but what's shown in the AZK isn't what's delivered for the book that's on sale. For example--you probably have an Amazon KDP test account--if you upload that book that you took the screenshots of, with the red, and download the Step-7 mobi, what's THAT look like? Or, for that matter, what's the online iOS preview look like?

Because what I see, from my clients who have books on sale, and what the AZK looks like, aren't the same. The devices still seem to be delivering far closer to KF7 than KF8. No? I mean, listen: who, more than I, would want to see bookmakers NOT have to worry about KF7? Nobody here. There's NOBODY here that would like to see KF7 go the way of the dodo than I. And let's not forget that Kindle Cloud Reader is also out there, which won't even display FONTS, folks, much less anything else.

(And to whomever it was that mentioned it: yes, K4PC is pretty KF8-ish. I don't disagree.)

Hitch