a few noob questions

[dezq32n]

Ok this may be a long post, so I apologize;

I have just downloaded the recent build of Calibre and it is absolutely incredible, fairly straightforward and easy to use...my compliments to the dev.

1. I have written a book and wanted to give it away for free to ipad users via itunes connect, so I took my manuscript and build a valid xhtml file with some basic styling, converted it to epub and it's beautiful, except there is an area where I want the div to be centered and the text align left, right now I have a div with auto margins and the text-align=left; applied directly to the div via the external style sheet. calibre's viewer looks the way it should Epubreader for Firefox also looks fine, whereas digital editions seems to ignore margins, no big deal, but since I don't have an iPAD, I can't test, does the viewer in the iPAD respect margins in css?

can I nest a div like so:

<div class="automargins" align="center"> <----------still with L/R auto margins applied to the class
<div class="apply a text align left class to this div" or style="text-align:left">
Content which I want to be text aligned left yet centered on the page is placed here.
</div>
</div>

2. ran epubcheck on my local machine (I have seen Mr. Goyal's comments on this software as I scroogled the heck out of the forum for info prior to posting) and the error comes back as:

ERROR: 1.epub/content.opf<10>: date value '2010-06-12t18:4432.281000=00:00' is not valid, YYYY[-MM[-DD]] expected
ERROR: 1.epub/index_split_000.html<14>: attribute "border" not allowed at this point: ignored
ERROR: 1.epub/index_split_000.html<14>: required attributes missing

ok, I think I am looking at the timestamp in the file on line ten, a border rule on line 14, and a missing attribute on line 14 (I guess) but I am not sure how to rectify these or if I even have to...it's a "requirement" for itunes connect to "pass" epubcheck, though I suspect the file is perfectly fine.

NOW FOR TWO BLATANT NOOB QUESTIONS (PLEASE DON"T ROLL YOUR EYES TOO MUCH):
3. what is the comments area in the meta data for? is that for me to simply comment on the books in my calibre library for managing content or could I add a synopsis of the book there for someone who download it to their iPAD?
4. This is the question which is most likely going to have you running for the headache meds:
calibre produces a file after conversion, within it is another file which contains the front cover image, an ePUB file, and a zip file, do I include all three in my upload to itunes content server or is the ePUB completely self contained? do I zip them...sorry guys, this is all new to me and though I can write xhtml and css fairly well, this is my very first step into learning the ins and outsof ePUB format, I already handcoded a copy for the kindle.

one last comment to the creator of Calibre, I would just like to say that in all the finest traditions of open source, GNU/Linux, php, gimp, blender, (the list goes on and on) you have truly created something that really shows that open source can be equal to and, in some cases, surpass proprietary apps...WAY TO GO AND THANK YOU!

[itimpi]

Originally Posted by dezq32n

3. what is the comments area in the meta data for? is that for me to simply comment on the books in my calibre library for managing content or could I add a synopsis of the book there for someone who download it to their iPAD?

The comment field typically is used for a synopsis, but it's use is up to you. IBooks (current version at least) ignores the comment field but some readers will show it on demand.

calibre produces a file after conversion, within it is another file which contains the front cover image, an ePUB file, and a zip file, do I include all three in my upload to itunes content server or is the ePUB completely self contained? do I zip them...sorry guys, this is all new to me and though I can write xhtml and css fairly well, this is my very first step into learning the ins and outsof ePUB format, I already handcoded a copy for the kindle.

The pub is self-contained (it is actually a zip file despite the extension so you can peek inside it if you want). The zip file will be the original HTML version, while the cover.jpg file is just Calibre's copy of the cover image.

[dezq32n]

thanks itimpi much appreciated for the help, and as far as the checkepub output, any ideas? I take it from reading several threads before I posted, that in general Calibre produces a pretty clean ePUB on its own, so could I just ignore the errors?

as far as the css, I guess it's a question of trial and error, I just don't have an iPAD to test it, but I suppose that it should render similar to what I see in the EPUBreader ext in FF (?, hoping for the best)