Quote:
Originally Posted by johnc.eire
I create my own epubs. Have done since I first found out that they are just slightly specialised zip files. For the Sony, there was a restriction of about 260K on the size of 'sections' of text, making it necessary to split a book into several bits, then join them together in the 'content.opf' file. My understanding was that the Sony was so short of memory that it could only make 260K's-worth available at any one time. Don't know whether that is right or not, but as explanations go, it suited me.
The Kobo comes equipped with far more memory, so I ran an experiment with an existing book, joining all five of the original the 'parts' into a single part and rebuilding the epub.
This works fine on the kobo... up to a point. It appears that page turning progressively slows down as you go through the book. Turning a page at the start of the book is practically instantaneous, but towards the end (415 pages in the case in question) moving to the next page can take up to 10 seconds.
Can anyone advise on a recommended max. size for sections of an epub? And any other ideas, etc would be more than welcome.
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AFAIR, the recommended maximum size for epub2 was 300K chapter files prior to compression so ~100K compressed. For an old Sony ereader, exceeding those sizes made the epub unusable.
Personally, I split the files at the "natural spots" -- chapter breaks, end of dedication, epigraph, etc., copyright, publisher info, etc. This makes page breaks between chapters automatic (the way I prefer it) and allows a cleaner ToC. Happily, it often results in an ebook that responds faster.
I've merged the files within an ebook that has "unnatural" file splitting into a single file and then resplit them to get the file structure I want.
BTW, the record holder for an epub around here was a purchase by my wife. A "boxed set" in a single epub file with all 5 books in 3 files. Once the file had been restructured, opening and navigating was much faster -- opening and parsing a 100Kbyte file compared to opening and parsing a 1.2MB file.