Black Cat Weekly reboots my kobo.

ghira · 09-28-2021, 01:59 PM

The newish "Black Cat Weekly" epubs from https://bcmystery.com/ make my Kobo (Aura One, latest software) reboot.

Other stuff I've had from them has never done this that I recall. And opening epubs from elsewhere hasn't done this for years. (The version it originally came with did it a lot back in 2017 (?)).

I ran all my issues of BCW through kepubify and those versions open instantly.

Has anyone else run into problems like this?

If this keeps up I guess I'll use kepubify on all future issues. I have written to bcmmystery to tell them something seems different about these files.

DNSB · 09-28-2021, 04:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ghira

The newish "Black Cat Weekly" epubs from https://bcmystery.com/ make my Kobo (Aura One, latest software) reboot.

Two options that come to mind. You can try running epubcheck on one of the problem ebooks or you can use ScrambleEbook (calibre plugin) to allow you to attach one of the problem epubs to a message in this thread.

ghira · 09-29-2021, 01:19 AM

I didn't know about epubcheck. I'll try that. Thanks.

ghira · 09-29-2021, 02:46 AM

Well. Hmm.
Validating using EPUB version 3.2 rules.
No errors or warnings detected.
Messages: 0 fatals / 0 errors / 0 warnings / 0 infos

EPUBCheck completed

So nothing "wrong".

Number9 · 09-29-2021, 05:19 AM

I have Black Cat Weekly #1 on my Kobo Aura One, and I have no problem opening the book

davidfor · 09-29-2021, 08:52 AM

They had #3 and #4 free on their site. #3 opens, but takes a long time. #4 causes the device to reboot after a while. That makes it look like a hang and sickel is triggering rebooting. I also noticed that generating the cover image took a long time for both. That agrees with the slow opening as the RMSDK is used for both.

Looking at the code, at first, nothing jumped out at me. But, when I looked at the stylesheet in #4, it was 141113 lines or about 2.3MB in size. For #3, the stylesheet is a relatively minuscule 71473 lines and 1.1MB. I suspect that parsing these are the culprits. I am using the calibre editor to clean unused styles on #4. So far, it's been running for over 30 minutes. So, I took another copy and just deleted every thing after the 1000th line in the stylesheet. That loaded in a normal time.

ghira · 09-29-2021, 09:42 AM

Thank you to both. Very interesting. I'll pass the above information to the BCM people. #4 was the first one I noticed problems with but I often download the BCM books of the week to my Kobo and don't necessarily read them any time soon. My file for #4 is only 1 meg, however, which seems a bit odd if yours has 2.3 megs just of stylesheets.

FWIW even calibre's ebook viewer was taking an age to open #4 but I hadn't upgraded it for a while and installing the latest version fixed this. (I was on about 4.23, now 4.28)

davidfor · 09-29-2021, 09:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ghira

Thank you to both. Very interesting. I'll pass the above information to the BCM people. #4 was the first one I noticed problems with but I often download the BCM books of the week to my Kobo and don't necessarily read them any time soon. My file for #4 is only 1 meg, however, which seems a bit odd if yours has 2.3 megs just of stylesheets.

I was looking at it in the calibre editor. The 2.3MBs was the uncompressed size. Probably a better measurement is that there are 13209 styles in the stylesheet.

And the cleanup is still running.

ghira · 09-29-2021, 09:55 AM

Super. Will relay this to BCM. I don't recall ever having their stuff do this to me before since I upgraded off the software my Kobo came with so it _seems_ like something that started since this weekly magazine came along. The most recent downloads before it started seem fine.

How long should a stylesheet be? "relatively minuscule 71473 lines" still sounds like a lot to me, not that I know what goes into one.

Quoth · 09-29-2021, 10:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidfor

… But, when I looked at the stylesheet in #4, it was 141113 lines or about 2.3MB in size. For #3, the stylesheet is a relatively minuscule 71473 lines and 1.1MB. I suspect that parsing these are the culprits. I am using the calibre editor to clean unused styles on #4. So far, it's been running for over 30 minutes. So, I took another copy and just deleted every thing after the 1000th line in the stylesheet. That loaded in a normal time.

Are they using InDesign or some totally broken epub conversion tool?

That's crazy.

davidfor · 09-29-2021, 10:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ghira

Super. Will relay this to BCM. I don't recall ever having their stuff do this to me before since I upgraded off the software my Kobo came with so it _seems_ like something that started since this weekly magazine came along. The most recent downloads before it started seem fine.

It probably means that someone forgot to a step in their processing to remove the unneeded styles.

Quote:

How long should a stylesheet be? "relatively minuscule 71473 lines" still sounds like a lot to me, not that I know what goes into one.

Did I forget to put the smiley on that

It should be as long as is needed. But, I haven't seen many that are even 1000 lines long. These two are so long that I can't think of how they were even created.

ghira · 09-29-2021, 02:00 PM

Thanks all. They confirm the unused styles thing and have sent me a new version of issue 4. Will check it in a bit.

John Betancourt · 09-29-2021, 02:10 PM

Thanks to ghira for letting me know about the problem. (I'm the publisher of Black Cat Weekly and Wildside Press).

I use Jutoh to create ebooks, and I suspect there may be a bug in the version I upgraded to about a month ago that ballooned up the box styles. I don't use box styles, but I found 5800 (!) box style entries and deleted them all. My own style sheet has less than 50 paragraph styles, plus a couple of character style (like italics), so I don't know where the 5800 extra styles came from. It's really weird.

I will be keeping an eye on the style sheets in the future, so hopefully this problem is now fixed and won't occur again.

John

ghira · 09-29-2021, 03:21 PM

Rebuilt versions of #3 and #4 have massively reduced styles.css and my Kobo opens them happily.

ghira · 10-02-2021, 02:10 PM

And #5 looks fine. Problem solved!

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09-28-2021, 01:59 PM	#1
ghira Zealot Posts: 147 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2016 Device: Kobo Sage, Kobo Aura One, Nook Simple Touch, Nook Glowlight,	Black Cat Weekly reboots my kobo. The newish "Black Cat Weekly" epubs from https://bcmystery.com/ make my Kobo (Aura One, latest software) reboot. Other stuff I've had from them has never done this that I recall. And opening epubs from elsewhere hasn't done this for years. (The version it originally came with did it a lot back in 2017 (?)). I ran all my issues of BCW through kepubify and those versions open instantly. Has anyone else run into problems like this? If this keeps up I guess I'll use kepubify on all future issues. I have written to bcmmystery to tell them something seems different about these files. Last edited by ghira; 09-29-2021 at 11:04 AM.

09-29-2021, 01:19 AM	#3
ghira Zealot Posts: 147 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2016 Device: Kobo Sage, Kobo Aura One, Nook Simple Touch, Nook Glowlight,	I didn't know about epubcheck. I'll try that. Thanks.

09-29-2021, 02:46 AM	#4
ghira Zealot Posts: 147 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2016 Device: Kobo Sage, Kobo Aura One, Nook Simple Touch, Nook Glowlight,	Well. Hmm. Validating using EPUB version 3.2 rules. No errors or warnings detected. Messages: 0 fatals / 0 errors / 0 warnings / 0 infos EPUBCheck completed So nothing "wrong".

09-29-2021, 05:19 AM	#5
Number9 Dude Posts: 206 Karma: 2184130 Join Date: Feb 2014 Location: Dobbstown Device: Kobo Aura One; Kobo Aura H2o; Sony Reader PRS-T3	I have Black Cat Weekly #1 on my Kobo Aura One, and I have no problem opening the book

09-29-2021, 08:52 AM	#6
davidfor Grand Sorcerer Posts: 24,905 Karma: 47303824 Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Sydney, Australia Device: Kobo:Touch,Glo, AuraH2O, GloHD,AuraONE, ClaraHD, Libra H2O; tolinoepos	They had #3 and #4 free on their site. #3 opens, but takes a long time. #4 causes the device to reboot after a while. That makes it look like a hang and sickel is triggering rebooting. I also noticed that generating the cover image took a long time for both. That agrees with the slow opening as the RMSDK is used for both. Looking at the code, at first, nothing jumped out at me. But, when I looked at the stylesheet in #4, it was 141113 lines or about 2.3MB in size. For #3, the stylesheet is a relatively minuscule 71473 lines and 1.1MB. I suspect that parsing these are the culprits. I am using the calibre editor to clean unused styles on #4. So far, it's been running for over 30 minutes. So, I took another copy and just deleted every thing after the 1000th line in the stylesheet. That loaded in a normal time.

09-29-2021, 09:42 AM	#7
ghira Zealot Posts: 147 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2016 Device: Kobo Sage, Kobo Aura One, Nook Simple Touch, Nook Glowlight,	Thank you to both. Very interesting. I'll pass the above information to the BCM people. #4 was the first one I noticed problems with but I often download the BCM books of the week to my Kobo and don't necessarily read them any time soon. My file for #4 is only 1 meg, however, which seems a bit odd if yours has 2.3 megs just of stylesheets. FWIW even calibre's ebook viewer was taking an age to open #4 but I hadn't upgraded it for a while and installing the latest version fixed this. (I was on about 4.23, now 4.28)

09-29-2021, 09:55 AM	#9
ghira Zealot Posts: 147 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2016 Device: Kobo Sage, Kobo Aura One, Nook Simple Touch, Nook Glowlight,	Super. Will relay this to BCM. I don't recall ever having their stuff do this to me before since I upgraded off the software my Kobo came with so it _seems_ like something that started since this weekly magazine came along. The most recent downloads before it started seem fine. How long should a stylesheet be? "relatively minuscule 71473 lines" still sounds like a lot to me, not that I know what goes into one.

09-29-2021, 02:00 PM	#12
ghira Zealot Posts: 147 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2016 Device: Kobo Sage, Kobo Aura One, Nook Simple Touch, Nook Glowlight,	Thanks all. They confirm the unused styles thing and have sent me a new version of issue 4. Will check it in a bit.

09-29-2021, 02:10 PM	#13
John Betancourt Junior Member Posts: 1 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2021 Device: none	Thanks to ghira for letting me know about the problem. (I'm the publisher of Black Cat Weekly and Wildside Press). I use Jutoh to create ebooks, and I suspect there may be a bug in the version I upgraded to about a month ago that ballooned up the box styles. I don't use box styles, but I found 5800 (!) box style entries and deleted them all. My own style sheet has less than 50 paragraph styles, plus a couple of character style (like italics), so I don't know where the 5800 extra styles came from. It's really weird. I will be keeping an eye on the style sheets in the future, so hopefully this problem is now fixed and won't occur again. John

09-29-2021, 03:21 PM	#14
ghira Zealot Posts: 147 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2016 Device: Kobo Sage, Kobo Aura One, Nook Simple Touch, Nook Glowlight,	Rebuilt versions of #3 and #4 have massively reduced styles.css and my Kobo opens them happily.

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10-02-2021, 02:10 PM	#15
ghira Zealot Posts: 147 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2016 Device: Kobo Sage, Kobo Aura One, Nook Simple Touch, Nook Glowlight,	And #5 looks fine. Problem solved!