Definitive END tag?

[lindsayw]

I have successfully converted all 9 of my own novels into html (because I have plenty of experience making web-pages), made a css stylesheet to create my personal preferences for layout and presentation, using strict xhtml... all good, and I'm very happy with the results in either ePub or MOBI formats.

EXCEPT: On some books (well, ok, on ONE book so far), the Reader gets to the end of Chapter #38 (the end of the book), then moves on to a previous chapter. Huh? I have triple-checked all the "Previous-Index-Next" links embedded in the chapter files and they are all perfect... there seems no reason why the Reader should get to the end of Name-38.html, then display Name-06.html as the "next" chapter!!
I am using Anthemion eCub to compile the ePub file from the source html files, then Sigil to check the visual presentation and edit the toc-ncx file, and finally Calibre to "tweak" the ePub, add ISBN details, modify the Contents.opf file to point to an inline TOC... that all works great. One possible cause of my problem is that I sometimes do NOT include the final chapter as a "NavPoint" in the toc.ncx file, since sometimes that final chapter is more like an Epilogue. There are also extra files in the book, such as "about the author", "synopsis" or others, and these are not strictly part of the story, yet I don't know how to label them as such. Access to these pages should really be only from the TOC.

Is there an industry convention that inserting something like an <a id="end" /> tag at the end of the last chapter would be recognized by ebook compilers such as eCub? I presume that this would imply also using an <a id="start" /> tag at the beginning as well... Has anyone had similar problems?

[Anke Wehner]

Originally Posted by lindsayw

There are also extra files in the book, such as "about the author", "synopsis" or others, and these are not strictly part of the story, yet I don't know how to label them as such.

In Sigil, right click on the file, go to "Add Semantics", and pick the appropriate one? I'm not sure what that really does, though.

Originally Posted by lindsayw

Access to these pages should really be only from the TOC.

May I ask why?
I rarely use the TOC in novels, so I'd tend to think quite a few people would not even realise those files are in the book if they can be accessed only through the TOC. "About the Author" pages I see usually added right after the end of the story.

[lindsayw]

Originally Posted by Anke

May I ask why?

When I'm reading a novel, I expect the end of the story to also be the end of the book. The "extra" pages need to be there in case you really want to know the extra details, but most readers just want to read the story. Ebook compilers tend to add all the extra "chapters" onto the end, so you may have 3 or 4 extra short chapter files after the story has already finished. I would prefer that those extra files are included in the content.OPF manifest, so are available from the TOC, but not regarded as part of the main block of the book – which is the STORY. I always write my own inline TOC, so I can separate the "story" TOC entries from the "extras".

I will experiment with Sigil's "Add Semantics" to see whether that may achieve something like I'm seeking. Thanks for the tip.