Anyone here ever seen csCF6BBF71 type style classes?
 

Hey, kids:

This is a quickie. I am pulling my hair out about a client and his book. We did his book, a fiction/memoir type thing, and provided them to the client for review. My first hint that things were going askew were somewhat typical emails "can't download the file," "can't view the file," etc. Typical, "didn't bother to read the freaking instructions" stuff.

But then, he said it was being blocked from publishing at NookPress. Said it was failing intake. :chinscratch: I put it through both our own ePUBcheck here, and did it again online at the IDPF to takea screenshot and send to him. THEN, he says it's failing at SW, too, for the "premium catalog." :smack: (That's a migraine, not a headslap, just soo's ya know.)

Finally, I email the poor guy at SW with whom I've been chatting lately. He says "well, you could HARDLY expect it to pass, could you?" NOW, I'm worried. I ask him to send it to me, and he does--and I have NO idea where the hell this file came from. It's full of classes, styles, and a stylesheet that bear NO resemblance to what we do. I don't mean, hey, it's off a little; I mean, hey, it's off a BLOODY LOT.

The CSS is a disaster. Looks like that single-line, unreadable stuff that you can see in Pages output. ("We don't need no stinking returns and indented lines!") The internal file names are all changed. The NCX shows the screwed up internal filenames coupled to the original NCX titles (chapter titles).

There's NOTHING in the OPF or NCX or anything else that makes me say, "oh! It's <insert book-making software here>." Nothing.

The only hint I have is, all the Style classes start with .cs, followed by what appear to be random jumbles of letters/numbers. The font COLOR is declared for everything, and set in pts.

Has anyone seen this, in their travels? When cleaning something up? Wolfie? You're a determined cleaner, have you seen these classes before? *Everything* starts with .cs .

The client keeps INSISTING that this is the file that he downloaded from us, firstly, and worse, our bloody credit line is on the copyright page, for all to see. And before you think I'm being a drama queen, the book is literally unreadable. Each chapter displays part of the first section, breaks off mid-sentence, and then, the remainder of the text for that XHTML file disappears. To the naked eye, some of the "chapters" have half a paragraph.

Before I go bald--anyone got a clue?

Hitch

To use yet another another fictional character reference:



Ask your client what devices/apps he used to preview the book that you sent him. Some of them change the contents of ebooks without the user noticing it.

Doits:

I've tried. I feel like I'm emailing into a black hole of pudding. I'm not trying to disrespect the client, I'm not...but damnitall, I email and get pretty much irrelevant answers back. It's like:

"So and so, how did you get this ePUB?""
"Today, the sky is blue!"
"Uh, so, when you uploaded the file at NookPress, what happened?"
"And we had PiZZA!"

I'm only exaggerating a small bit. And then I email, and it's

<....crickets....>

I don't know what the hell it IS, lately. I really don't.:ranting: I swear, I've had to vent or query or <whatever> here more in the last month than the last 6 damn years.

Hitch

no clue from in package/metadata?

DAMMIT. I just had a big long reply here, and somehow exited out of it through some damned key combo.

In short: no, nothing. It's like someone murdered my ePUB, amputated parts of it, and cleaned up afterwards. ("Next week, on CSI:ePUB...") It's a vanilla crime scene. Nary a hint in the OPF; NCX; meta--nothing. I mean...who does that? WHAT does that? And leaves NO traces?

In my longer post, I ruled out INDD; Jutoh; AWP; Smashwords (I think); I said that I think the only possible thing that I thought might be it, could be NookPress, which overrides CSS, if a client decides to "edit" an ePUB after you've given it to them. Overwrites it and completely screws with it. But all in? No, I don't think it's NP, either, but I'm going to try it with a copy of the source ePUB.

Bizarre. Simply bizarre.

Hitch

Could it be that your client uploaded the epub to a site to "check" it but the site actually is a conversion site of sorts, and he thought he did a check but did a conversion?

patrik:

With this client, anything is possible. I'm so gobsmacked by the "other" ePUB file, that I'd believe almost anything.

But even if he DID do a conversion--wherever that may have been--what happened to half the damn content? As I said, for many of the chapters, the chapter opens, the first paragraph of the chapter breaks off, and that's IT. Surely, even THIS client would have noticed that 80% of his damn book disappeared, wouldn't you think?

I've had clients that "helped" by using Calibre. I've had clients that decided "oh, it's just one edit," and "fixed" their files using the NookPress editor--and totally trashed the book. I've had some score of clients that uploaded the ePUB at KDP, and not the MOBI. Oh, and, yah, you betcha, the other way around, too.

Usually, I can figure out what the hell is going on. Hell, I practically have a degree in Screwed-up-eBook-forensics. (After all, we've done 3K+ books, and in the course of that, seen another thousand; turned down I-don't-know-how-many screwed up books.)

But this one? Just don't know WTH happened. I really don't. It's a poser. The client is either diffident, or doesn't want to admit that s/he doesn't know what happened, either, or...DANG.

Hitch

Occam's razor.... the client did something stupid and for some reason doesn't want to admit it... (maybe he asked someone else to get and check the file, and that person messed up, but says to your client that he just did what he was supposed to)

FWIW, it's interesting to hear about the industry. I always enjoy reading your posts. :)

I just don't understand why he doesn't just make up some story, ANY story, rather than letting this drag on like it has. Hey, I can have as much false pride as the next guy, but even Mr. Darcy would have put a stop to this by now.

Oh! Well, I'm glad if I'm entertaining from time to time. I feel a bit odd, lately (about my postings, I mean)...as though ALL my posts are screechy in tone. Crazy situations, crazy clients, crazy books...I've had rules about this, from the jump. No posts about clients, never badmouth someone, don't come CLOSE to dissing a client...I meant what I said (I think it was this thread--see how crazy I'm getting?) earlier...I feel like I've spewed more in the last month than I have in the previous 6 damn years. Gosh...7 years, with clients? Zoiks.

Thanks! I mean it.

Gotta go, kids, and get my beauty sleep <snort>. Must face down Uncle Sam and the Darkside of the Force (IRS) tomorrow. Gotta be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

Hitch

I hope this client has paid you! Your description of what is happening does not give me a good feeling.

By the way, one really improbably scenario. Presumably you sent him the completed file by email. Could his email client have mangled the attachment? I did see this once years ago where there was some sort of error related I think to decoding. My recollection is that it was only with the one particular email client and fixed by a reinstallation.

Just a suggestion: look up the class name csCF6BBF71 on Google. A software company named DevExpress may be associated with it.

The DevExpress query from 3 years back does come up when I queryHowever most of the hits I get on this are mainly EBay or other e-commerce sites and related to "Obsessive Sexy Lingerie", however if you follow the link and examine the source of the page, what is returned by Google in their search results doesn't seem to be in the page in question.

BobC

I have seen that type of classes before on some shop websites. So, nothing to do with books.

I get the feeling it's related to a third party editing control used in a range of tools including some used to build web pages for e-commerce sites.