programming "Go To" menu

[cyberbaffled]

This continues the issue I raised on 12-13-10, to whose participants I'm also responding to individually at this time.

Anyone know how to program the "Beginning" selection of the (pull-down) "Go To" menu? Nowhere in the filename.opf or toc.html or toc.ncx files does the reserved word "Beginning" occur. It randomly begins my book on the "Acknowledgements" page, even though in the .opf file I have a guide item <reference type="start" title="Welcome" href="filename.html#start"> and in the filename.html for the book content I have the anchor <a name="start"/>; both in response to suggestions made in this forum on 12-13-10. The "Go To" menu does include the "Welcome" item linked to the intended "start" position, but this is a redundant option, considering that the TOC enables the user to start at the "start" location. Somehow I need to program the "Beginning" selection to start at the "start" position, and nothing in either the Kindle or Mobipocket userguides explains how.

[DMSmillie]

Did you try my previous suggestion of using type="text" rather than type="start"?

[DMSmillie]

Here's an example MOBI file, created from the files in the attached ZIP file using Kindlegen. When opened in Kindle Previewer, it starts at the designated location at the beginning of chapter 1.

The relevant guide item in the OPF file is:

<reference type="text" title="Start" href="testbook.html#start"/>

[cyberbaffled]

Hi Donna. Good to hear from you again. I made that change, "start" to "text", and the file still opens in KindlePreview at my "acknowledgements" page.

[DMSmillie]

Hmmm... something slightly weird going on. If you post (attach) the OPF file, and copy and paste the HTML code around the start of the Acknowledgements page, plus the HTML code around the point where you want the book to open up at, I'll see if I can figure out what's happening, cyberbaffled.

[cyberbaffled]

Way-weird. You won't find anything beyond what's expected. Did you find my continuation of the 12-13 thread in which I mention these lines from the command line parse: "Info(prcgen): Resolving hyperlinks
Info(prcgen): Resolving start reading location
Info(prcgen): Added metadata Start reading "1748" "? In my opf file there's no "metadata" identified as "Start". What's that about? And where is line "1748" located. It's not in the (book content) filename.html file or in the (Kindlegen generated) filename.mobi file as viewed in KindlePreview, so where is it?

[DiapDealer]

Info(prcgen): Added metadata Start reading "1748" "? In my opf file there's no "metadata" identified as "Start". What's that about? And where is line "1748" located. It's not in the (book content) filename.html file or in the (Kindlegen generated) filename.mobi file as viewed in KindlePreview, so where is it?

Regarding the 1748: that is more than likely the position offset (in bytes) of the binary mobi file that Kindlegen is choosing for the start point. Which in your case is the Acknowledgments page. Not sure why it's choosing that point.

This should be in the guide of the opf:
<reference title="Start" type="text" href="filename.html#start" />

...and this should be in the html:
<a id="start" />

Note the "space" before the "/>". In the first post, you specified this: <a name="start"/>.
That may have just been a typo, but if the html document is declared as "XHTML 1.0 Strict" in the DOCTYPE declaration... that space is really important. You also want to use id="start" in the html anchor point instead of name="start".

[DMSmillie]

Originally Posted by cyberbaffled

Did you find my continuation of the 12-13 thread in which I mention these lines from the command line parse:

"Info(prcgen): Resolving hyperlinks
Info(prcgen): Resolving start reading location
Info(prcgen): Added metadata Start reading "1748" "?

In my opf file there's no "metadata" identified as "Start". What's that about? And where is line "1748" located. It's not in the (book content) filename.html file or in the (Kindlegen generated) filename.mobi file as viewed in KindlePreview, so where is it?

Yes - I thought I replied in that other thread, sorry - that's prcgen setting the "start reading" location. That's what the guide item type="text" is all about, and prcgen identifies the location to set as the "start reading" point by matching up the "href" reference in the guide item with an "id" or "name" reference in the HTML file. As DiapDealer says, the location "1748" is bytes inside the MOBI file.

The reason I suggested posting the OPF file plus HTML extracts is simply that sometimes a second pair of eyes will spot something that the first person isn't seeing because they've gone over the code so many times. Like spotting typos in a book, etc. There has to be something causing the MOBI file to open at the Acknowledgements page.

[cyberbaffled]

Good to hear from you again DiapDealer. Why is that space important? Whatever the answer, I'll return to the code and make sure it's there.