Conversion Epub to MOBI: Differences

[Reagal]

There's something since I use Calibre to convert Epubs to MOBI I realize is that in many books the program makes me a wrong conversion. I have come to the conclusion that the problem is the MOBI format limitation, and some styles do not let them. But maybe it's a bug in Calibre. I don't know.
Examples:

Example 1: Epub

Example 1: Converted to MOBI


Example 2: Epub

Example 2: Converted to MOBI


Example 3: Epub

Example 3: Converted to MOBI


¿Solutions?

[unboggling]

What specific problem(s) do you object to in those 3 conversion examples?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by unboggling

What specific problem(s) do you object to in those 3 conversion examples?

What I see:
1) the <HR>'s got lost
2) the Initial Cap is not inline
3) The italic quotation is now uppercase

[Reagal]

Yes. The Styles in Epubs seems lost in the conversion to MOBI. The third example, the lines around "Prólogo" is lost too.

[frostschutz]

try EPUB->EPUB conversion as well (make a backup of your file just to be on the safe side)

it may be intentional for some fancy styles to be filtered out, as you usually get those from webpages and dont want them in your ebook

not sure what to do about it tho

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by frostschutz

try EPUB->EPUB conversion as well (make a backup of your file just to be on the safe side)

it may be intentional for some fancy styles to be filtered out, as you usually get those from webpages and dont want them in your ebook

not sure what to do about it tho

No, that's not it at all. The issue is a limitation in the Mobipocket format that the K3/K4 and older Kindles use. The only way to deal with it is to upgrade to a Kindle Touch and use KF8. There is a very good possibility that the K3 may never have KF8 support given that it's not a current generation Kindle.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by theducks

What I see:
1) the <HR>'s got lost
2) the Initial Cap is not inline
3) The italic quotation is now uppercase

These may be due to the way the ePub is formatted. For example, in (1) the horizontal rules probably are not <HR>s and in (3) the italic quotation probably isn't italics (e.g. perhaps a named imbedded font). In the case of the image representing "T", MOBI can in-line an image but only with a single line of text. This might be better than what was actually produced, but not by much.

[dwig]

Originally Posted by theducks

What I see:
1) the <HR>'s got lost
2) the Initial Cap is not inline
3) The italic quotation is now uppercase

#1 - probably not <HR> in the ePub but instead likely a <DIV> with a top and bottom border which has no support in Classic MOBI.
#2 - Classic MOBI doesn't support any structure for drop caps. Such caps can be made inline, but the ePub structure that creates drop caps creates the image in a separate block from the text portion of the paragraph. Converters have no way of knowing that the image and the following text should be joined.
#3 - Again, the box is likely a <DIV> with borders for which there is no Classic MOBI support. The italic paragraph is probably also all caps in the ePub, just with a text-transform:lowercase; style which is unsupported in Classic MOBI. It would be possible for a converter to handle this (changing the actual text to lowercase) but it would be quite a challenge to code and a bigger challenge to do quality assurance testing.

Also, the lack of a right indent on the italic paragraphs in #2 & #3 are the result of the design of the MOBI renderers which don't support margins and indent only the left of <BLOCKQUOTE>s. This is intentional behavior which is/was of great advantage on the small screens where MOBI was born. The sample conversions have properly converted the indented paragraphs to <BLOCKQUOTE>s.

[unboggling]

I asked what specifically were the problems as Reagal saw them, because all the issues mentioned above are minor issues that hardly affect readability. Yes I noticed them earlier. So what? Nothing's ever perfect. None of that is annoying enough to me to adversely affect readability. To me those issues do not indicate conversion failures.

Isn't readability (as opposed to perfection of conversion) the bottom line?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by unboggling

I asked what specifically were the problems as Reagal saw them, because all the issues mentioned above are minor issues that hardly affect readability. Yes I noticed them earlier. So what? Nothing's ever perfect. None of that is annoying enough to me to adversely affect readability. To me those issues do not indicate conversion failures.

Isn't readability (as opposed to perfection of conversion) the bottom line?

I prefer to render the book as close to the layout that its print cousin had, with only reflow due to font size change.
With EPUB, this is fairly easy in most cases. All other formats lose something in translation

[AlexBell]

As JSWolf has pointed out the changes Reagal is concerned about are not due to bugs in calibre; they are because mobi is based on a pidgin secret version of HTML 4 from about 10 years ago.

In my opinion calibre does a great job of coping with mobi's deficiencies, but some of them are so severe that calibre can't make it work.

[dwig]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

...they are because mobi is based on a pidgin secret version of HTML 4 from about 10 years ago. ...

Not so "secret" ... it was based on the very public original version of Open EBook. It uses a "compiled" database structure to make it compatible with the major portable OS of the time, PalmOS. In a way, it is pretty much equivalent of the never-made-it-out-the-door ePub v1.0.

[DiapDealer]

because mobi is based on a pidgin secret version of HTML 4 from about 10 years ago.

I always thought it (classic MOBI) was more HTML 3.2-ish (inside the compiled database, of course)?

[AlexBell]

Yes, of course you're correct about HTML 3.2, DiapDealer; I've no idea why my fingers put a 4 there.

And if it's not secret, Dwig, I wonder why there are so many threads from time to time bewailing the lack of a list of what HTML mobi supports and doesn't support.

[dwig]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

..
And if it's not secret, Dwig, I wonder why there are so many threads from time to time bewailing the lack of a list of what HTML mobi supports and doesn't support.

There are so many wailing threads because they don't look for the information from the source. There is info out there:
http://www.mobipocket.com/dev/articl...TagRef_OEB.htm
and:
https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishi...A1JPUWCSD6F59O