Line spacing disappearing in .mobi file

[John123]

Hi All,

I hope I'm in the correct forum for this query.

I am typesetting work in InDesign. I then export an .epub file for the ebook and use Sigil to produce the ebook.

I will then use Calibre to convert the .epub to .mobi for the Kindle.

My problem arises when I view the .mobi file in Kindle for PC all the line spaces are gone?

Using ADE to view the file all the line spaces are there. It's probably something very fundamental I'm missing but can't see why.

The files I have uploaded here show this problem. There are "LINE SPACE" markers where this happens.

Another question is I can't get Sigil to produce a TOC from these files.

Thanks in advance.

John.

[Doitsu]

Looks like a Calibre bug. If you compile the ePub file with KindleGen the spaces are not ignored.

[John123]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

Looks like a Calibre bug. If you compile the ePub file with KindleGen the spaces are not ignored.

Thank you, that worked, well at least it held onto the line spaces in that very simple file. But, I feel I'm stepping back in time using a DOS prompt! Anyway, it worked so . . . brilliant.

Okay, I'll try Kindle Previewer, which seems to be more up-to-date. That also worked, with the exception of the italics, which produced a sans serif face, which I can sort of live with.

So I thought I'd try something a little more complicated. OMG! I have attached the error log file.

I'd very much appreciate it if any of you more clever folks have a look at this log file and decipher it better that I can! I did a lot of messing about in Sigil to get this looking quite good as an .epub file. But, I'm afraid, Kindle eluded me.

I can upload the original .epub file, if necessary, that produced the error file, though it's 6 megs.

Anyway, thanks once again.

John.

[Doitsu]

Some of the warnings are caused by the fact that MOBI/KF8 files do not support all ePub tags, I.e. you'll have to live with them.

The errors are most likely caused by syntax errors in the source ePub that you didn't notice because Calibre will convert source files with serious errors in them without letting you know.

You may want to check the ePub for errors by clicking the big green checkmark button in Sigil to run Flightcrew and check the file with ePubCheck Online.

You also my want to check the stylesheet for errors by selecting the Validate with W3C option in Sigil.

[John123]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

Some of the warnings are caused by the fact that MOBI/KF8 files do not support all ePub tags, I.e. you'll have to live with them.

The errors are most likely caused by syntax errors in the source ePub that you didn't notice because Calibre will convert source files with serious errors in them without letting you know.

You may want to check the ePub for errors by clicking the big green checkmark button in Sigil to run Flightcrew and check the file with ePubCheck Online.

You also my want to check the stylesheet for errors by selecting the Validate with W3C option in Sigil.

Once again, thank you. I used the Sigil Flightcrew validator, as suggested, and threw up some errors, which weren't picked up by Sigil's own HTML checks??, by editing the content.opf I was able to fix these and, voila, KindleGen worked!

I do use the online ePubCheck, but this particular file is 18 megs (they have a 10 meg max), I got mixed up with another title I'm working on. I've tried to do this locally but get the java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError and I'm simply not good enough to figure out JavaClassloaders. I'll post this as a separate question.

It did, however, throw up another puzzle and I have attached the screenshot. The validation process didn't like the external "a href" links to websites. I know they work since I checked them. Luckily, this didn't affect the Kindle book which looks much better now with lines spaces in situ.

Great! Job done

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by John123

It did, however, throw up another puzzle and I have attached the screenshot. The validation process didn't like the external "a href" links to websites.

You most likely forgot to prefix the URLs by "http://".

[John123]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

You most likely forgot to prefix the URLs by "http://".

Thanks again, sir. You are correct, I was just being lazy.