Quote:
Originally Posted by jhowell
A PDF sent to a Scribe is converted to Amazon's Print Replica variant of KFX format. Prior to the Scribe that format was not supported on e-ink Kindles, only Kindle apps. Perhaps the implementation is incomplete on the Scribe. It might be worth opening the same doc from a Kindle app registered to your account to see whether it works better there.
|
I doubt that it's Print Replica, which lets you search for text, select phrases and add notes to them. (why do you think it is?) I wish it was, because it would bode well for Print Replica support on Scribe.
I think it's more likely fixed layout like this book:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...w_myk_ro_title
Which has been supported on Kindles since KF8 was introduced.
If you crack this open, each page consists of an image, with a corresponding HTML page that references an image file and positions text as an overlay. (Most of the Chinese text is part of the image, not in the HTML.)
Because it does have a text layer, it looks like the publisher submitted an FXL ePub directly and Amazon converted it.
It's not completely clear to me that this is possible for KDP submission.
Kindle Create will only import PDF or a stack of image files to create a fixed layout book (Comic) and I suspect the PDF is just processed as a series of images, without a text layer. Its previewer does not seem to let you check hyperlinks at all, even for reflow able or Print Replica. And it doesn't export a file you can preview on an actual Kindle, just KPF file for submission to KDP. Once it is there, I don't see a way to be able to preview it on an actual device, just in the online viewer.
KDP also says you can use Kindle Comic Creator, which will open ePub and export MOBI, but when I tried it, the text layer disappeared. The go on to say to use Kindle Previewer to review. But if you have a FXL ePub ready to go, and don't need to define panels, you can just use Kindle Previewer to generate MOBI.
But it's irrelevant, since Kindle doesn't provide any way to interact with the text, so it might as well just be images.
So assuming this fixed layout format is the foundation for what Send To Kindle sends to the Scribe as the facsimile of the PDF, the hyperlinks are added in somehow. (I might try adding some hyperlinks to a fixed layout file to see what Scribe will do with it, since I assume it's not possible to crack open the KFX on the Scribe itself.)
I guess it
could be Print Replica, but without most of the expected functionality that goes along with that.
Either way, it's a regression. Any Send To Kindle PDFs since Scribe launched will download in this converted form to the Scribe, and without much of the functionality one gets on other Kindles, where it remains a PDF.
This is a pretty serious deficit. Of course you can side load, but then there's no way to export anything you've done.
Speaking of Export: you DO get a real PDF, but it's 'pure image' - no text or hyperlinks as you may have had in the original, no actual PDF annotation layer.
Next up: Word workflow.