10-20-2011, 10:27 PM | #1 |
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controlling display size of images for mobi Fire
The book has a number of medium and small images; all should center in the horizontal dimension. The medium images are either tall or square, and will fit vertically by controlling the width of the image, to between 40 and 60% of the screen width. The small images need to be centered and display at about 10% of the screen width.
I can achieve this in epub documents converted from html using Calibre, and displayed on Adobe Digital Editions and in Sigil. In the css I specify margin-left: XX%, width:Y%. Where the left margin is (100-Y)/2 to create equal margins. But this control does not translate to the mobi document converted from epub to mobi by Kindlegen and viewed in the Kindle Previewer. The images as displayed in mobi are too large. html code validates, epub code is good, kindlegen creates file without warnings. css has some parse errors on font-family, but this is because Kindle specs are to leave this undefined. Perhaps the html underlying the mobi won't support this? Perhaps I am missing something obvious? Is there a better way to code this? Can this be achieved by coding in the html specifically for the target device, the Kindle Fire? |
10-20-2011, 10:30 PM | #2 |
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Have you tried converting the ePub to mobi using Calibre. Sometimes it works better at converting ePub.
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10-20-2011, 10:56 PM | #3 |
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Hadn't considered that. I have focused on kindlegen because that is backed by amazon to produce good results on kindle devices. And of course there is no way to test output on a Fire, they haven't been released yet. And this is for publication, not just for personal use.
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10-20-2011, 11:19 PM | #4 | |
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Quote:
It seems recently many folks have mistaken the calibre forums for a generic html help forum or a generic how-to create an ebook forum in xy or z formats. There is a whole section in the mobileread forums dedicated to answering these kinds of questions. Good luck with your pursuit. |
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10-21-2011, 02:12 AM | #5 |
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The Kindle doubles the size of small images by default. This can be over-ridden though, see Is there a "fix" or work-around for Kindle doubleing size of small graphics?.
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10-21-2011, 02:19 AM | #6 |
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The Kindle Fire will use the new KF8 format, see New Kindle format: KF8. The hisrc approach has the advantage that it works on existing Kindles, and will probably still work on the Fire. We won't know for sure until KindleGen 2 and Kindle Previewer 2 (or the actual Fire) are available.
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10-21-2011, 12:33 PM | #7 | |
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Should have asked a different question
The reason for posting in Calibre was to take advantage of the smart people here, but mainly because I wanted to see if there was a discrepancy between epub format produced by Calibre and the constraints of Mobi format. But point taken, there are other forums.
I did not find the answer to my specific problem, but found another solution. I should have asked, is there a better display format for the Kindle Fire? The answer was given by wallcraft. I bet there is much better control in that format, but have to wait until it is available to a small publisher (some publishers got it in time to roll out pubs with the Fire's release). In the meantime, can wallcraft explain "hisrc", I found mentions of it but not the basics. Quote:
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10-21-2011, 07:29 PM | #8 | |
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Quote:
Code:
<img hisrc="button_for480x640.gif" src="button_for220x300.gif" /> Code:
<img src="button_for480x640.gif" height="480" width="640" /> |
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10-22-2011, 06:20 PM | #9 | |
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May give this up and change illustrations
Quote:
Therefore, preferable to specify using percent of screen width. I have failed to find a combination of specs that provides: correct relative size AND is centered. May go ahead and re-crop illustrations, redo them when the new kindle software is available. |
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10-22-2011, 06:27 PM | #10 |
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I'd highly recommend giving Calibre a shot for the conversion as has been mentioned before. Many users have reported that Calibre is superior to Kindlegen for many formatting cases (though not all cases). Changes were made to Calibre several months back to make sure that Amazon would accept a Calibre generated mobi file as well.
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10-22-2011, 07:26 PM | #11 |
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html-->mobi vs. html-->epub-->mobi
OK, maybe it pays to listen to people who know more than I do! And take advantage of the Calibre changes that made output work in mobi.
I am evaluating two methods, html-->mobi vs. html-->epub-->mobi. In Calibre, the output to mobi is specified as to KINDLE DX (in absence of a FIRE output in Calibre). 1. html-->mobi Small images are good, crisp. Medium images: crisp, some OK in size, some too big/too deep, push caption to next page. Need to work on that. Large images: crisp, ok. new problem: several blank screens as if an extra page had been inserted. Main problem with going html-->mobi is I cannot go in and work on the metadata etc. as I can if I unzip the epub. Need to look at Sigil for these tasks. METHOD 2. html-->epub-->mobi. I fed the Calibre-generated epub back into Calibre, with input=epub, output=mobi. I opened the mobi file in the Kindle previewer. Lo! The small images display well. The medium images are a mixed bag, some ok, some too small, some too large. The large images are too small. What I will do next is to take the epub file, unzip it,and replace all the images (which have been reduced by Calibre) and insert the original input images and see if that will take care of the remaining issues. |
10-23-2011, 07:13 PM | #12 |
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success controlling display & quality of images for mobi Fire
How to produce a mobi file that has illustrations centered, correct size, good quality? Use Calibre in two stages, instead of Kindlegen.
Method 2 works. The Recipe: Specify images in the html with width/height in ppi; do not use percentage of width. This book is intended for reading on the Fire in landscape orientation, can't make it work there AND be flexible and fit on various devices. Sorry. Feed the html to Calibre, generate epub. Calibre reduces quality of images, but this can be repaired. Convert epub to zip, drag all the source images into the zip file-- Make any additions or corrections to the metadata and control files. Convert the zip file back to epub. Feed this revised epub into Calibre and generate mobi output. View in the Kindle Previewer (NOT Kindle for PC). The images seem to retain good quality using this method, they are placed where they should be, and there are no strange things happening. We'll find out if this really works when the Fire is available. Thanks again for all the advice. Even if it took a long time for me to believe what you were telling me. But then we're dealing with an amazon product...and I was trying to work to epub standards (learning on the job). Last edited by photoluminations; 10-23-2011 at 07:21 PM. Reason: report solution |
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fire, graphics, images, mobi, size |
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