Routledge-Taylor&Francis on Cybook

[wmaurer]

Hello

Has anybody else experienced problems reading MobiPocket file from the Routledge-Taylor&Francis publisher on their Cybook? I bought quite a number a couple of days ago, and I believe only one works; the rest cause the Cybook to hang. I need to do a hard reset to get any further sign of life from the Cybook. I can read the files without a problem on my PC.

I'm trying to work out whether this is a fault of Routledge-Taylor&Francis / MobiPocket or of the Cybook, or a combination of both.

Here are two examples of files that cause my Cybook to hang:
http://www.mobipocket.com/en/eBooks/...sp?BookID=8451
http://www.mobipocket.com/en/eBooks/...sp?BookID=7726

Any advice appreciated.
-Wayne

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by wmaurer

Hello

Has anybody else experienced problems reading MobiPocket file from the Routledge-Taylor&Francis publisher on their Cybook? I bought quite a number a couple of days ago, and I believe only one works; the rest cause the Cybook to hang. I need to do a hard reset to get any further sign of life from the Cybook. I can read the files without a problem on my PC.

I'm trying to work out whether this is a fault of Routledge-Taylor&Francis / MobiPocket or of the Cybook, or a combination of both.

Here are two examples of files that cause my Cybook to hang:
http://www.mobipocket.com/en/eBooks/...sp?BookID=8451
http://www.mobipocket.com/en/eBooks/...sp?BookID=7726

Any advice appreciated.
-Wayne

What size are these ebooks? If they're, like, 3-5MBytes in size, that may be a good indication they've got huge pictures in them and the Cybook may well be choking at some point. Do you get them to open and page forward to a cetain point, or do they just choke almost immediately upon opening? You might want to open them up on your PC and take a look inside them.

Derek

[tompe]

I have reported a bug (but not got confirmation) from Bookeen where I generated a book using mobigen and the result hangs. The hanging seems to be related to the image I use and its size contributes to the problem.

One simple way to test this is to use my mobi2html to extract the images and then create a simple book using these images.

If you do not want to do it yourself you can send me the files and I will test this theory. Since I seem to trigger this bug a lot with my MobiPerl program I really would like for Booken to have many bug reports about it.

[wmaurer]

Thanks for the replies.

Derek, as can be seen from the MobiPocket web page, the file sizes are 284KB and 2175KB respectively. I'm not sure that the file size is a factor; I've browsed one text that is 6971KB and contains lots of images.

tompe, I do plan on playing around with your tools at some stage, but can't right now due not being able to access my own PC (I'm travelling). I'll PM you the one of the DRM'd files, so if you're willing to play with it then great. I'll submit a bug report if you think that's helpful.

Cheers
Wayne

[wmaurer]

Okay, so I can't see a way to send a file via PM, nor how to attach it by editing an existing message, so here it is, DRM'd of course.

-W

Attachment deleted by moderator

[HarryT]

I'm sorry folks, but we really cannot permit the posting of copyrighted material here, no matter how good the cause is.

I'd suggest that you exchange e-mail addresses by PM and send the file that way.

Sorry, but that's the way it has to be.

[tompe]

I got the file and I have confirmed that it was the cover jpg (600x800) that caused the hanging. So I think that there is a bug in the jpg handling for certain jpg. I have seen jpg 600x800 that works.

mobi2mobi infile.prc --outfile fixedfile.mobi --fiximagesizes

can maybe fix the problem. There was a bug in mobi2mobi so it did not work on Linux in certain cases. I had to add a sleep(1) in mobi2mobi before the call that read the file.

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by tompe

I got the file and I have confirmed that it was the cover jpg (600x800) that caused the hanging. So I think that there is a bug in the jpg handling for certain jpg. I have seen jpg 600x800 that works.

mobi2mobi infile.prc --outfile fixedfile.mobi --fiximagesizes

can maybe fix the problem. There was a bug in mobi2mobi so it did not work on Linux in certain cases. I had to add a sleep(1) in mobi2mobi before the call that read the file.

Remember, the jpeg file can't be larger than 64K. So an 800 x 600 jpeg *could* with 12-bit color depth, be large enough, especially if there's a bunch of crappy EXIF info embedded, to exceed that. Could be that the jpeg was created at High or Maximum quality. If you extract it and re-compress with Medium quality - using Photoshop or PSP - that should make the file small enough.

Derek

[tompe]

Originally Posted by delphidb96

Remember, the jpeg file can't be larger than 64K. So an 800 x 600 jpeg *could* with 12-bit color depth, be large enough, especially if there's a bunch of crappy EXIF info embedded, to exceed that. Could be that the jpeg was created at High or Maximum quality. If you extract it and re-compress with Medium quality - using Photoshop or PSP - that should make the file small enough.

Yes, I know. The image is only 53K so there is no problem with the file size. This is definitely a bug in the firmware. And actually on the Gen3 images can be bigger than 64K. Some of the Mobipocket files here has images that are too large for a Palm device. That was the reason I implemented the --fiximagesize flag a couple of weeks ago.

[wmaurer]

I'm sorry that I haven't replied to this thread for quite some time, but I've been away for personal reasons ...

Anyways, I've just tested Tommy's 'mobi2mobi --gen3imagefix' programme and it's fixed two of the Routledge files that had previously crashed my Cybook.

Kudos to Tommy for his excellent work.

Regards
Wayne