[Hitch]

Boys, Boys, Boys....

Originally Posted by Turtle91

I would think it is there for those (hundred/thousands ??) who have older devices that don't support the ncx TOC...or don't support it very well. It's about inclusion and all that.

Likely still hundreds of thousands, if one counts the DX. Indeed it is and indeed it does. As someone who still has some of those old devices, I'd like the choice, please.

I don't get annoyed when I see an HTML TOC there, I just flip to the next page. Having said that, if it is not styled very well, then it's a good indicator that the rest of the book isn't styled very well either.

In fairness, there's a lot of books that have pretty simple TOC's. You can do a lot of this and that, but...if someone persists in simply having "Chapter 1, Chapter 2...Chapter 60," there's not much you can do about that. However, if you have a client that's taken advantage of the opportunity to create a brilliant marketing tool, in clever Chapter names/titles, well, that's another thing altogether.

Originally Posted by Toxaris

AFAK there are no ePUB readers that do not honor the ncx TOC. <snip>
Also, often they are styled with no imagination. Just a dumb dump of hyperlinks.

Tox, my sweetie, indeed, as DaleDe will mention in a moment, I fear you are to be disappointed. I know I was, when I saw that the NCX was being superseded. I've always had a soft spot in my heart for the NCX; I have liked the simple elegance of it.

Originally Posted by DaleDe

In EPub 3 version the HTML TOC is back and can also be directly used by the devices that support it as a separate TOC as well. MOBI traditionally has a link to the inline TOC and devices specifically support Mobipocket version of MOBI require it as they don't generally use or support the ncx file for that format.

Correctamundo.

<snippety-doo-dah, snippety-day, my-oh-my...oops, back to the post...>

If you encounter an Inline TOC and you don't like it just click on the first chapter and you will skip the rest no matter how many pages it takes.

Dale[/QUOTE]

Or, for Kindles, use "Go To"> "Beginning." Simplicity itself.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I just delete the HTML ToC. It's not needed. It's just an annoyance.

Jon, my absolute fave curmudgeon! I knew you couldn't pass this up. It's nice to see that some things in life can be relied upon. The sun will come up; everything dies; and Wolfie will always tell you just how much he hates, hates, HATES the HTML TOC. :-)

Originally Posted by Turtle91

I also thought I read somewhere that it was a good thing to have at the front of your book so that when people previewed a sample they would have an idea of the overall structure. So not just an annoyance. My personal reading app has a great ncx toc feature so I don't use the html toc very much/at all, but it doesn't keep me awake at night if I read a book that had one.

As mentioned above, yup. It can be a great marketing tool; it can be used to show competent formatting; and some folks really like them. I'd think that the best option would be to simply give them the option--no??? If you really feel compelled to nuke the toc.html, put it at the back of the book, using a short TOC ("Start Reading") at the front. Best of all worlds.

Hitch