MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Smashwords formatting issues with headings, TOC and images

amoroso · 05-13-2012, 10:57 AM

To learn about self publishing and Smashwords formatting I have published a free book to Smashwords, which is already available at the site and is pending review by the vetting team. Although the converted ebook doesn't have any AutoVetter errors and is validated by epubcheck without errors or warnings, it still has some formatting issues. Since I don't have any error reports to start from, and this is my first Smashwords book, I'd appreciate any help and suggestions from experienced Smashwords authors on how to fix them.

I formatted the source manuscript with OpenOffice for Linux trying to follow the Smashwords style guide as closely as possible, and saved it to Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP format. I tested the ePub file converted by Meatgrinder with a Cybook Opus ereader, Aldiko Premium for Android, Lucidor and Calibre for Linux. I tested the Mobi format with a Kindle 3 ereader, Kindle for Android, and Calibre. I also checked the book with Smashwords' web viewer.

The first major issue is that there is an unexpected page break between chapter "1. Background" and section "About Me". The section title is supposed to immediately follow the chapter title. They are on two separate consecutive paragraphs, formatted with the Heading 2 and Heading 3 styles respectively, and linked from the TOC. There are other similar instances of a chapter title followed by a section title and Meatgrinder converted them as I expected, i.e.:

n. Chapter Title
Section Title

In the above mentioned case the outcome is instead:

1. Background
[page break]
About Me

The issue is exhibited by all the ereaders and reading apps I checked the book with. What's the possible problem?

The book includes both the NCX and the linked TOC. When accessing the NCX via the appropriate functionality, the linked TOC in the text is shown by all ereaders and apps except Aldiko, which displays the NCX using a different user interface. Is this the expected behavior? The same readers render the NCX and linked TOC of other books differently.

The linked TOC works with all ereaders and apps except Lucidor and the web viewer, where clicking a linked TOC entry always leads to section "About Me" of chapter "1. Background". This may or may not be related to the above mentioned page break issue.

On both the Kindle ereader and Kindle for Android app, chapter and section headings appear formatted differently depending on whether they are accessed by browsing the book page by page, or directly going to the headings via the TOC. Headings are formatted with the expected styles (e.g. Heading 2 or 3) if accessed by browsing, and with the Normal style and a slightly different color via the TOC. I attach Kindle for Android screenshots showing section heading "Legibility" when accessed via browsing (title-via-browsing.png) and via the TOC (title-via-toc.png).

With OpenOffice I defined a DOC style for image captions based on the Normal style. The caption style uses centered italics text with indented left and right margins. I inserted the book illustrations as per the style guide, and added captions with the appropriate style immediately after the illustrations. The ereaders and apps show a bit too much blank space between images and captions. The OpenOffice screenshot image-and-caption.png shows how this looks like in the manuscript. Is there any way of making them closer? If I remove the centered paragraph separator just below the image, the image disappears.

I originally tried to add the cover inside the book so that it also appeared in the PDF version. But Meatgrinder apparently didn't recognize it. The cover appeared twice in the ePub and Mobi versions. Aldiko overlapped text to one of the cover instances and duplicated other images later in the text with similar overlapping. So I was forced to remove the cover from inside the book. I originally tried to do as explained in the Smashwords FAQ (section "Should I add the cover image inside my book?"), but I was unable to find the OpenOffice functionality equivalent to "Layout" -> "In Line With Text" when right-clicking the image and selecting "Format Picture".

The book text includes some em dashes I inserted from OpenOffice with "Insert" -> "Special characters...". They are correctly displayed by all ereaders and apps except the Opus, which renders them as question marks. I am aware of the preferred way of inserting dashes in Smashwords ebooks. I'm reasonably sure I inserted the character that way with the appropriate code, i.e. 2015. I can't be completely sure because the OpenOffice special character insertion dialog doesn't provide symbol names as Word does.

These are the major formatting issues I found so far.

05-13-2012, 10:57 AM	#1
amoroso Groupie Posts: 185 Karma: 1004070 Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Italy Device: Kindle for Android, Google Play Books	Smashwords formatting issues with headings, TOC and images To learn about self publishing and Smashwords formatting I have published a free book to Smashwords, which is already available at the site and is pending review by the vetting team. Although the converted ebook doesn't have any AutoVetter errors and is validated by epubcheck without errors or warnings, it still has some formatting issues. Since I don't have any error reports to start from, and this is my first Smashwords book, I'd appreciate any help and suggestions from experienced Smashwords authors on how to fix them. I formatted the source manuscript with OpenOffice for Linux trying to follow the Smashwords style guide as closely as possible, and saved it to Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP format. I tested the ePub file converted by Meatgrinder with a Cybook Opus ereader, Aldiko Premium for Android, Lucidor and Calibre for Linux. I tested the Mobi format with a Kindle 3 ereader, Kindle for Android, and Calibre. I also checked the book with Smashwords' web viewer. The first major issue is that there is an unexpected page break between chapter "1. Background" and section "About Me". The section title is supposed to immediately follow the chapter title. They are on two separate consecutive paragraphs, formatted with the Heading 2 and Heading 3 styles respectively, and linked from the TOC. There are other similar instances of a chapter title followed by a section title and Meatgrinder converted them as I expected, i.e.: n. Chapter Title Section Title In the above mentioned case the outcome is instead: 1. Background [page break] About Me The issue is exhibited by all the ereaders and reading apps I checked the book with. What's the possible problem? The book includes both the NCX and the linked TOC. When accessing the NCX via the appropriate functionality, the linked TOC in the text is shown by all ereaders and apps except Aldiko, which displays the NCX using a different user interface. Is this the expected behavior? The same readers render the NCX and linked TOC of other books differently. The linked TOC works with all ereaders and apps except Lucidor and the web viewer, where clicking a linked TOC entry always leads to section "About Me" of chapter "1. Background". This may or may not be related to the above mentioned page break issue. On both the Kindle ereader and Kindle for Android app, chapter and section headings appear formatted differently depending on whether they are accessed by browsing the book page by page, or directly going to the headings via the TOC. Headings are formatted with the expected styles (e.g. Heading 2 or 3) if accessed by browsing, and with the Normal style and a slightly different color via the TOC. I attach Kindle for Android screenshots showing section heading "Legibility" when accessed via browsing (title-via-browsing.png) and via the TOC (title-via-toc.png). With OpenOffice I defined a DOC style for image captions based on the Normal style. The caption style uses centered italics text with indented left and right margins. I inserted the book illustrations as per the style guide, and added captions with the appropriate style immediately after the illustrations. The ereaders and apps show a bit too much blank space between images and captions. The OpenOffice screenshot image-and-caption.png shows how this looks like in the manuscript. Is there any way of making them closer? If I remove the centered paragraph separator just below the image, the image disappears. I originally tried to add the cover inside the book so that it also appeared in the PDF version. But Meatgrinder apparently didn't recognize it. The cover appeared twice in the ePub and Mobi versions. Aldiko overlapped text to one of the cover instances and duplicated other images later in the text with similar overlapping. So I was forced to remove the cover from inside the book. I originally tried to do as explained in the Smashwords FAQ (section "Should I add the cover image inside my book?"), but I was unable to find the OpenOffice functionality equivalent to "Layout" -> "In Line With Text" when right-clicking the image and selecting "Format Picture". The book text includes some em dashes I inserted from OpenOffice with "Insert" -> "Special characters...". They are correctly displayed by all ereaders and apps except the Opus, which renders them as question marks. I am aware of the preferred way of inserting dashes in Smashwords ebooks. I'm reasonably sure I inserted the character that way with the appropriate code, i.e. 2015. I can't be completely sure because the OpenOffice special character insertion dialog doesn't provide symbol names as Word does. These are the major formatting issues I found so far. Last edited by amoroso; 05-13-2012 at 12:30 PM.