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Originally Posted by bphil00
Hitch,
thanks for the info!
I'm quickly learning how nothing is clear and straightforward in the ebook world, especially when Amazon enters the picture.
For media queries, do you recommend using amazon's proprietary markup?
@media amzn-kf8 { }
@media amzn-mobi7 { } or @media amzn-mobi { }
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Yes. There's some discussion that the "not" tag may/mayn't be affecting some justification and new hyphenation (!) issues on the KFire 6" device, ONLY. Not defined, not tracked down, not definitive. But POSSIBLE, and why use it when you needn't?
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Probably a dumb question, but KF7 = Mobi7, correct?
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Yuur. Technically, it's really "mobi6," if you believe the purists, but, yes. Pre-KF8, for all its glory.
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You mention having to clean up inDesign's output styles. I thoroughly clean my document of extra paragraphs/spaces/soft returns/etc, label all styles clearly, map export tags, and remove any stray local formatting on export. Is it still necessary to relabel indesign generated styles? Will iBooks/Kobo/etc not allow these indesign generated styles or are you just suggesting that the document be as clean as possible?
Thank you so much for your help!
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No, I simply mean, keep it clean. I don't think that the INDD-generated style NAMES are particularly an issue, anywhere; I mean, I've seen some real doozies from other software (like Jutoh, for example). It's just that INDD allows/provides for so much more styling POWER than you can do in eBooks (vheight, vertical align, yadda)...that's the stuff you need to nuke. We do a lot of white-label work--so we intake other folks' INDD files, and output them without our credit line going in the book. Many of those are wildly heavily-formatted. The more formatting, the more risks you're taking, that on Device X, it won't work correctly. The more fonts, the greater (MUCH) you're taking that it will barf at the KDP. Unless you're feeling spectacularly brave, and unless you're going to give your clients a lifetime warranty, ye olden "KISS" as in Keep It Simple Stupid is the rule to live by.
Don't get me wrong--I
love a beautifully-formatted book. But with the plethora of e-readers out there that are different devices, cross-platform, on smartphones, that allow the reader to change EVERYTHING...man, it's hard to make a "formatted" book that will work flawlessly across all those oceans. Trust me, I know this. Plus, there are devices that will choke if there's a single error in a CSS sheet. So, the simpler you make it, the less onerous your troubleshooting will be. Don't repeat styles if you needn't, etc.
Hitch