Inline footnotes - solved?

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Eh?

Clarification, please? What would be different about your pop-up TOC with levels and links than the kind that exists now?

P.S.: I'm with Diap and eschwartz on the footnotes-within-footnotes.

Hitch

Um, thanks, but I didn't say anything about footnotes-within-footnotes. I said something a while back about:

Originally Posted by eschwartz

regarding long lists of footnotes vs. one footnote per page.

But now that I'm here, I am with you about these footnotes-within-footnotes.

[user743]

With DiapDealer as in this:?

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Regardless of whether or not you'll be able to subvert the pop-up footnote functionality of the Paperwhite (which I don't think you'll be able to practically do), what do you foresee happening with your book on the rest of the devices/apps that don't support popup footnotes?

Trying to "game the system" usually causes more trouble than it's worth.

[KarlB]

Originally Posted by Kamikuza

Biggest gripe is that ampersands don't work... so any & type character gives an error in the box.

If you use "&" rather than "&", the ampersand will simply not appear in the footnotes popup, rather than causing an error message. (The ampersand will appear as normal if you select "Go To Footnotes," of course.) Not a great workaround, but better than the stupid error message.

But in general I hate this "feature." It's based on software trying to guess what is and isn't a footnote, and the problem with guessing is it results in the wrong answer some percentage of the time. I'm currently struggling to find a way to have both footnotes and internal links (as in "see section 3") in a book, and I haven't yet found the magic html that consistently prevents an internal link from appearing in the footnotes popup.

Grr.

[Kamikuza]

Pretty sure I've tried every combination of & + code I could find, and they all result in the error message - the & is the problem.

[KarlB]

Originally Posted by Kamikuza

Pretty sure I've tried every combination of & + code I could find, and they all result in the error message - the & is the problem.

My test was on a Kindle PW 1, with current firmware; I wouldn't be surprised if this behaves differently on a PW 2 and/or with other firmware versions.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by KarlB

If you use "&" rather than "&", the ampersand will simply not appear in the footnotes popup, rather than causing an error message. (The ampersand will appear as normal if you select "Go To Footnotes," of course.) Not a great workaround, but better than the stupid error message.

But in general I hate this "feature." It's based on software trying to guess what is and isn't a footnote, and the problem with guessing is it results in the wrong answer some percentage of the time. I'm currently struggling to find a way to have both footnotes and internal links (as in "see section 3") in a book, and I haven't yet found the magic html that consistently prevents an internal link from appearing in the footnotes popup.

Grr.

How are you coding your footnotes and your internal links that is causing this "footnote/pop-up" confusion?

Hitch

[KarlB]

Originally Posted by Hitch

How are you coding your footnotes and your internal links that is causing this "footnote/pop-up" confusion?

Hitch

I've tried various different methods, actually. I've been putting the "id=" anchor into a separate "<a href=>" element from the one that links from the footnote back to the body text, which is different from the code snippets you've provided in this thread. I'll have to try your method at some point.

I've also had trouble with the popup displaying more than a single footnote at a time. I've found that the Kindle code doesn't always just take all text from one "<a>" element to the next (as was reported elsewhere in this thread), and that whether or not the <a> element is empty (as in "<a href=blah blah></a>") doesn't consistently make a difference either (contrary to what has also been reported in this thread).

In fact, I've found that I can get different behavior in the popup without changing any of my footnote-linking code at all. I've "fixed" footnote popup problems, only to have them reappear when I changed parts of my html that were completely unrelated to footnote links -- changes like inserting a few additional <p></p> paragraphs of plain text into my test-book.

So one warning I'd pass along to anyone reading this thread is not to trust any "fix" you come up with. What works perfectly well in one book may magically decide not to work in another book.

I've been using the W3C html validator on my html at all stages of my testing, BTW. I generate my Kindle books by passing an OPF to KindleGen. As one might expect, I find this business a teensy bit frustrating. Because they couldn't be bothered to implement this popup feature in a rational way, Amazon is basically breaking into my house in the dead of night and inserting bugs into my previously correct and fully functional code. Thanks Amazon.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by KarlB

I've tried various different methods, actually. I've been putting the "id=" anchor into a separate "<a href=>" element from the one that links from the footnote back to the body text, which is different from the code snippets you've provided in this thread. I'll have to try your method at some point.

I'm not sure that I posted a method, did I? (wonders if her brain is going). if I did, it likely works. (Famous last words...)

I've also had trouble with the popup displaying more than a single footnote at a time. I've found that the Kindle code doesn't always just take all text from one "<a>" element to the next (as was reported elsewhere in this thread), and that whether or not the <a> element is empty (as in "<a href=blah blah></a>") doesn't consistently make a difference either (contrary to what has also been reported in this thread).

Not following: you DO or do NOT want the pop-up to include more than one footnote? (Honestly..I don't know what we're doing different, but I just haven't seen these problems.)

In fact, I've found that I can get different behavior in the popup without changing any of my footnote-linking code at all. I've "fixed" footnote popup problems, only to have them reappear when I changed parts of my html that were completely unrelated to footnote links -- changes like inserting a few additional <p></p> paragraphs of plain text into my test-book.

And how did that affect the behavior?

So one warning I'd pass along to anyone reading this thread is not to trust any "fix" you come up with. What works perfectly well in one book may magically decide not to work in another book.

Trust me, anyone who's been making eBooks for more than 5 minutes already knows: what worked 5 minutes ago may not work now. ;-)

I've been using the W3C html validator on my html at all stages of my testing, BTW. I generate my Kindle books by passing an OPF to KindleGen. As one might expect, I find this business a teensy bit frustrating. Because they couldn't be bothered to implement this popup feature in a rational way, Amazon is basically breaking into my house in the dead of night and inserting bugs into my previously correct and fully functional code. Thanks Amazon.

Not to disparage clean code--I never would--but I find that the relationship between code validation and what works or doesn't in ePUB and MOBI is pretty...diffuse in terms of relation, in the adjective sense. Broadly UNrelated.

I mean...I have a book in-house, that we resolved "adequately" for the client's purposes, but not for mine. It simply won't WORK. Now, it's been validated 5 ways from Sunday, but if you put two (specific) fonts in this sucker, both fonts get ripped out at the KDP. (There are 6 fonts, including all faces, in the book). Put in one or the other--works great. Put the main body font (A basic Sans serif face--SS) in by itself, great. Put the hw fonts in...kablammo, the built mobi loses ALL fonts at KDP. Stripped. Put the hw fonts in without the SS, and they work. This happens whether you embed the SS, or call it from the firmware (that's fascinating, isn't it?). There is NOTHING wrong with the coding. Not one thing. The HTML validates, the CSS validates...by every standard known, it's perfect. It simply doesn't work.

And--here it gets interesting--all our usual "solves" don't work, either. Replacing the first SS with another sans serif didn't work. cheating, and using spans around those body paragraphs that are supposed to be SS--nada. Zip, zein, zilch, nothing. (There are two characters; one speaks in sans-serif, one in serif). The span approach didn't work because--it seems--that there might be a "span limit" at KDP, too. (Who knew? Given the advent of INDD for eBooks, I find that mind-boggling, because INDD lives and dies on spans, but...I have definitive proof that adding ONE MORE SPAN to a book caused it to fail.)

Now, we've had books that had fonts stripped before; that's not as unusual as it sounds. I don't mean, don't display; I mean, ripped right out of the book. But never seen anything like this. 2500~ books in...and this one is a first.

It's unrelated to your specific issue, but my point is: not all failures to work are explicable, in terms of KDP. We put in well over 100 hours of real time, trying to troubleshoot this book, not for the client as much as just so we would KNOW. And we still do NOT know the "why." Just that it happens. And not all failures have ANYTHING to do with bad code. Or even remotely lousy code. Or...well, you get the drift. So--validation is good, and I'd never dissuade you from doing it, but that's not proof of anything other than, you don't write lousy code.

Hitch

[KarlB]

Thanks for sharing your informative tale of woe, Hitch. I too have run into some capricious bugs with regard to KDP stripping out embedded fonts, and like you I've run into multiple stone walls of ignorance, misinformation, and flat-out refusal to communicate on the part of Kindle technical support staff when I tried to report those bugs.

After a couple of decades in the software industry, I'm certainly familiar with having to deal with and work around bugs in OS's and third-party tools. But some of this Amazon/Kindle idiocy just goes beyond the pale, IMO.

I had at one time intended to set up shop as a professional eBook formatter, but those plans are in the trash now. I'm just not temperamentally suited to having my code vandalized from afar by Amazon, to say nothing of the thousands of other bugs and flaws in the hundreds of other e-reading devices and apps out there. So perhaps there's a small bright side to all of this for you, Hitch: One less competitor in the eBook-formatter market.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by KarlB

Thanks for sharing your informative tale of woe, Hitch. I too have run into some capricious bugs with regard to KDP stripping out embedded fonts, and like you I've run into multiple stone walls of ignorance, misinformation, and flat-out refusal to communicate on the part of Kindle technical support staff when I tried to report those bugs.

After a couple of decades in the software industry, I'm certainly familiar with having to deal with and work around bugs in OS's and third-party tools. But some of this Amazon/Kindle idiocy just goes beyond the pale, IMO.

I had at one time intended to set up shop as a professional eBook formatter, but those plans are in the trash now. I'm just not temperamentally suited to having my code vandalized from afar by Amazon, to say nothing of the thousands of other bugs and flaws in the hundreds of other e-reading devices and apps out there. So perhaps there's a small bright side to all of this for you, Hitch: One less competitor in the eBook-formatter market.

Trust me:

Despite how GLAMOROUS it looks from the outside, inside, it's just not that much damn fun.

Seriously, it's a lot of work, for very, very little money, with a clientele with extremely high expectations. I know that sounds self-serving (ooooh, keep all the competitors away!), but honestly, I don't think anyone knows what it's like until they've worked in it, in a retail sense. If you're doing work for Imprints, sure. It's fine. But in a one-on-one sales/supply environment...it's a very, very tough go.

Hitch

[KarlB]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Trust me:

Despite how GLAMOROUS it looks from the outside, inside, it's just not that much damn fun.

Seriously, it's a lot of work, for very, very little money, with a clientele with extremely high expectations. I know that sounds self-serving (ooooh, keep all the competitors away!), but honestly, I don't think anyone knows what it's like until they've worked in it, in a retail sense. If you're doing work for Imprints, sure. It's fine. But in a one-on-one sales/supply environment...it's a very, very tough go.

Hitch

Ah, but then there's all the eBook-formatter groupies I've heard about. You can't deny that that's a major compensation right there, now can you?

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by KarlB

Ah, but then there's all the eBook-formatter groupies I've heard about. You can't deny that that's a major compensation right there, now can you?

Well, Wolfie is hard to resist, that's certainly true.

Hitch

[JSWolf]

The thing is, we all have our own ways of doing things and if you're doing it for someone else, you have to do it how it's wanted by someone else (within reason) even if it goes against what you feel is the right way to do it.

Me, I'm for the minimalist approach. That way if I do something incorrectly, it's not a hassle to fix it. I format for me because when the eBook is poorly formatted, the reading is not so much fun as the formatting gets in the way and is noticeable. I want to just concentrate on the words and I don't want to notice the formatting.

[Kamikuza]

Originally Posted by KarlB

My test was on a Kindle PW 1, with current firmware; I wouldn't be surprised if this behaves differently on a PW 2 and/or with other firmware versions.

Been a while since I looked at it, so I'm relying on memory... but the amphersand was responsible for "breaking" the formatting, regardless of what it's used for UNLESS Sigil had a special character for it eg. &middot;

Footnotes with a bibliography are where I first noticed it eg. "Simon & Schuster".

I do my footnotes so they'll work with or without the popoup - that the PW pops them is just a bonus...

If you're getting more than one footnote popping up, you haven't closed the loop properly...

[KarlB]

Originally Posted by Kamikuza

Footnotes with a bibliography are where I first noticed it eg. "Simon & Schuster".

That's the sort of case I was referring to--where an ampersand is supposed to appear in the text. If I used "&#38" (38 is the ascii code for an ampersand) instead of the more-common "&amp;" the error message did not appear in the popup.

Originally Posted by Kamikuza

If you're getting more than one footnote popping up, you haven't closed the loop properly...

If by "properly" you mean "in the manner that the Kindle firmware is expecting" then you're right by definition. But the html I tested was entirely correct as html, and each footnote was bracketed with "<a href=>" elements.