MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - epubcheck errors regarding NCX

Dusk · 05-30-2011, 11:46 PM

AlexBell wrote about me:

"with no knowledge of HTML"

It's a bad idea to make assumptions. ☻

I know basic HTML, just not at this high a level, and not in reference to ePub. (These codes are specific to ePub, aren't they?) I agree that it would be ideal for me to know ePub code, but I'll likely learn it the same way I learned HTML: by having things go wrong with my files, with the result that I dig into the code to try to figure out what the problem is.

So thank you all for your ePub 101 lessons; I really appreciate it.

Anyway, I and Smashwords put our heads together, and we identified the problem, with the help of some of your posts above. See, I didn't know that "toc.ncx" was ePub-talk for the table of contents that e-readers use for navigation (for example, in the sidebar of Adobe Digital Editions) - that was the information I was seeking above, in my garbled fashion. To me, "TOC" meant that list of links that the e-book designer puts at the top of the file. (Or that page in between the dedication page and the epigraph page, unless the epigraph page is replaced by a second bastard title page. Threads like this make me miss the old days, when I knew the lingo.) Hence my confusion when you guys kept saying, "There's a problem with your TOC."

The exact problem - it turned out - was that recent changes to Smashwords's converter, Meatgrinder, accidentally eliminated its ability to automatically identify chapters and create a TOC for them (in the ePub sense), in cases where there isn't a linked table of contents (in the HTML sense) within the file (just as you guys guessed; man, you're good). Smashwords is working now on correcting the problem, but since it's no sweat for me to create a linked table of contents, I did so in my DOC file, and my converted e-book passed epubcheck.

Thank you! It's been really nice knowing that there are folks here who've been willing to help me out.

05-30-2011, 11:46 PM	#14
Dusk Member Posts: 11 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2010 Device: None	AlexBell wrote about me: "with no knowledge of HTML" It's a bad idea to make assumptions. ☻ I know basic HTML, just not at this high a level, and not in reference to ePub. (These codes are specific to ePub, aren't they?) I agree that it would be ideal for me to know ePub code, but I'll likely learn it the same way I learned HTML: by having things go wrong with my files, with the result that I dig into the code to try to figure out what the problem is. So thank you all for your ePub 101 lessons; I really appreciate it. Anyway, I and Smashwords put our heads together, and we identified the problem, with the help of some of your posts above. See, I didn't know that "toc.ncx" was ePub-talk for the table of contents that e-readers use for navigation (for example, in the sidebar of Adobe Digital Editions) - that was the information I was seeking above, in my garbled fashion. To me, "TOC" meant that list of links that the e-book designer puts at the top of the file. (Or that page in between the dedication page and the epigraph page, unless the epigraph page is replaced by a second bastard title page. Threads like this make me miss the old days, when I knew the lingo.) Hence my confusion when you guys kept saying, "There's a problem with your TOC." The exact problem - it turned out - was that recent changes to Smashwords's converter, Meatgrinder, accidentally eliminated its ability to automatically identify chapters and create a TOC for them (in the ePub sense), in cases where there isn't a linked table of contents (in the HTML sense) within the file (just as you guys guessed; man, you're good). Smashwords is working now on correcting the problem, but since it's no sweat for me to create a linked table of contents, I did so in my DOC file, and my converted e-book passed epubcheck. Thank you! It's been really nice knowing that there are folks here who've been willing to help me out.