Plain Vanilla Stylesheet Prevents Validation

[MikeWV]

I have just one issue preventing validation of my ePub file: "non-standard stylesheet resource 'OEBPS/css/stylesheet.css' of type 'css'. A fallback must be specified."

I have a plain vanilla stylesheet created in Notepad++. I have not used any templates or proprietary software to create my XHTML files or my stylesheet. The only font specification in my stylesheet is font-family: normal;. Everything is very basic, as I wanted readers to be able to have as much control as their devices would allow.

It just doesn't make any sense to me that the idpf.org validator would take exception to my stylesheet and demand a fallback for an unspecified attribute. I get the error message above for every XHTML page in my ePub file. If the validator gave me a hint of what it wanted a fallback for it wouldn't be so frustrating.

I've attached a copy of the stylesheet as an XML file.

Thanks for your help.

[RbnJrg]

Originally Posted by MikeWV

I have just one issue preventing validation of my ePub file: "non-standard stylesheet resource 'OEBPS/css/stylesheet.css' of type 'css'. A fallback must be specified."

I have a plain vanilla stylesheet created in Notepad++. I have not used any templates or proprietary software to create my XHTML files or my stylesheet. The only font specification in my stylesheet is font-family: normal;. Everything is very basic, as I wanted readers to be able to have as much control as their devices would allow.

It just doesn't make any sense to me that the idpf.org validator would take exception to my stylesheet and demand a fallback for an unspecified attribute. I get the error message above for every XHTML page in my ePub file. If the validator gave me a hint of what it wanted a fallback for it wouldn't be so frustrating.

I've attached a copy of the stylesheet as an XML file.

Thanks for your help.

I didn't see any bad in your stylesheet; but it must be named as "stylesheet.css" and not "stylesheet.xml". Change its name in Sigil and after that link all your xhtml files with that stylesheet. Do that and I think your troubles will be over.

[mrmikel]

It is one of the advantages of Sigil is that whatever you create will be valid. It will zip up the epub in the appropriate order too.

You might give it a try, it makes epub creation much easier and you can shell out to your favorite editor by right clicking to open with.

In this case, you would have right clicked on the styles folder, create new spreadsheet and it would have been properly named. When you created your various sections, you just select them and right click to link stylesheets. Just that easy.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by MikeWV

"non-standard stylesheet resource 'OEBPS/css/stylesheet.css' of type 'css'. A fallback must be specified."

"of type 'css'"? The media-type (in the OPF file) of CSS files must be "text/css", not "css". May that be the problem?

[MikeWV]

You picked it, Jellby. I changed the media type to text/css and all the css errors went away. I figured it was probably something simple that someone with more experience would catch.

The file was indeed named stylesheet.css. I just had to change the extension so that it could be uploaded, as css is not one of the file types allowed for uploading.

Unfortunately I found one other inexplicable error that I hadn't noticed buried in all the css errors. I'll start a new thread for that one.

Thanks to all.

Scratch that other problem! That, too, was something simple. I had a space in toc.ncx where should have been none.

I downloaded and installed Sigil but didn't use it other than to see if it could open and display my book. I may try using that for my next book.