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tomsem · 08-03-2025, 05:48 PM

Having a couple of issues with this 'flavor' of KFX, e.g.:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0DJSQKJG5/

These evidently were Fixed Layout EPUBs that the publisher submitted to Kindle store, and they get converted to fixed layout KFX when downloaded to Kindles or the Kindle apps. These are sorta 'coffee table books- whose print editions would be larger than letter size pages, with 2 page spreads.

Unlike comic book format, they contain 'positioned' text in the XHTML files. On ePub platforms, you're usually able to search, and fonts are embedded so that the text remains crisp when zooming in.

On Kindle platform (at least books from this publisher) the embedded fonts are gone, hyperlinks and text search are not supported (even though Kindles will happily spend time indexing them). But they are defined in the downloaded file.

In the past, I would download AZW3 and convert to fixed layout ePub with KindleUnpack. (I can still do this using my Kindle Touch, even though it's impossible to actually read the book on it!). These do contain the positioned text and hyperlinks of the original ePub.

But with KFX, From KFX conversion to ePub (or PDF) currently mishandles the text and hyperlinks.

In the ePub, the text is put inside a <div> tag's alt= property, the positioning is lost, and can no longer be target of text search. Hyperlinks are not instantiated.

In PDF, I can see text objects with Acrobat object inspection but they are not placed over the word images they correspond to, and there are PDF links but they do not work (see attached screenshot).

So the information is in there, but is lost in translation. It would be nice if it was not, but I would rank it a low priority on your feature backlog, given this is kind of an edge case.

----

In the future I will think more about purchasing these from Kobo. I did so in this case ($1.99 today).

The ePub version has embedded fonts, so it will look better when viewed in some ePub app, and also it can be searchable (but seems this is not supported on Kobo platform).

However converting for use on Kindle platform is proving onerous. Send To Kindle does not have good support for fixed layout ePub, in this case it totally mangled it.

Calibre got to 47% and seems to be stuck there. I finally killed the job after 3 hours.

Kindle Previewer puked on it, without even producing error log.

calibre Edit reports a number of problems, but Apple Books and Thorium render it without any problems. My PocketBook InkPad C 3 has some serious problems with it, though. I added this from my Kobo Clara where it gets converted from KePub to ePub - I also tried ACSM method to download ePub, but results were the same (calibre quickly gets to 47% with conversion to AZW3 and then gets stuck; PocketBook doesn't render it correctly).

08-03-2025, 05:48 PM	#1050
tomsem Grand Sorcerer Posts: 7,192 Karma: 28000007 Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: USA Device: iPad Mini, Kindle Colorsoft, Kindle Scribe Colorsoft	Having a couple of issues with this 'flavor' of KFX, e.g.: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0DJSQKJG5/ These evidently were Fixed Layout EPUBs that the publisher submitted to Kindle store, and they get converted to fixed layout KFX when downloaded to Kindles or the Kindle apps. These are sorta 'coffee table books- whose print editions would be larger than letter size pages, with 2 page spreads. Unlike comic book format, they contain 'positioned' text in the XHTML files. On ePub platforms, you're usually able to search, and fonts are embedded so that the text remains crisp when zooming in. On Kindle platform (at least books from this publisher) the embedded fonts are gone, hyperlinks and text search are not supported (even though Kindles will happily spend time indexing them). But they are defined in the downloaded file. In the past, I would download AZW3 and convert to fixed layout ePub with KindleUnpack. (I can still do this using my Kindle Touch, even though it's impossible to actually read the book on it!). These do contain the positioned text and hyperlinks of the original ePub. But with KFX, From KFX conversion to ePub (or PDF) currently mishandles the text and hyperlinks. In the ePub, the text is put inside a <div> tag's alt= property, the positioning is lost, and can no longer be target of text search. Hyperlinks are not instantiated. In PDF, I can see text objects with Acrobat object inspection but they are not placed over the word images they correspond to, and there are PDF links but they do not work (see attached screenshot). So the information is in there, but is lost in translation. It would be nice if it was not, but I would rank it a low priority on your feature backlog, given this is kind of an edge case. ---- In the future I will think more about purchasing these from Kobo. I did so in this case ($1.99 today). The ePub version has embedded fonts, so it will look better when viewed in some ePub app, and also it can be searchable (but seems this is not supported on Kobo platform). However converting for use on Kindle platform is proving onerous. Send To Kindle does not have good support for fixed layout ePub, in this case it totally mangled it. Calibre got to 47% and seems to be stuck there. I finally killed the job after 3 hours. Kindle Previewer puked on it, without even producing error log. calibre Edit reports a number of problems, but Apple Books and Thorium render it without any problems. My PocketBook InkPad C 3 has some serious problems with it, though. I added this from my Kobo Clara where it gets converted from KePub to ePub - I also tried ACSM method to download ePub, but results were the same (calibre quickly gets to 47% with conversion to AZW3 and then gets stuck; PocketBook doesn't render it correctly). Attached Thumbnails Last edited by tomsem; 08-03-2025 at 08:40 PM.