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Old 06-14-2023, 08:41 PM   #1
Ken_Moorhead
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Join Date: Jun 2023
Device: Apple Books
Apple Book and .plists

Hello;

I have this working, but I am curious why it works and why it is needed.

I have an epub2 I made, and works fine in all the apps/devices I have so far tried.

But Apple Books gave me some fits; just a few!
  • If I dragged the book to (Apple) Books on my Mac it worked.
  • If I synced my iPhone and iPad with that same Mac it worked.
  • If I emailed it to either device the formatting fell to pieces in the Books app and all svg wrapped images failed to load.

But...
  • If I exported it from Books on my Mac and emailed the resulting ePub it worked in the Books app as expected.

That was a desperation move since emailing it worked for all other apps. So I used Calibre to explore what difference was. Lo and behold I found this:
  • iTunesMetadata.plist
  • iTunesMetadata-original.plist

Neither file seems to have any rending instructions in it. Indeed, the seem to contain hashes of some sort and a bit of meta-data. But without them the epubs lose all formatting except the base font -- they look a mess.

Can anyone explain to me why?

Does it have anything to do with com.apple.ibooks.display-options.xml being in place?

All in all, it's easy enough to fix, but it is really annoying and a bit obscure. So, any insight would be appreciated.

TIA;
Ken
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