Valid ePub, but not valid enough for iBooks

[charleski]

Originally Posted by MichaelGray

Hello all
Just had this from Apple support:

[I]All characters in the URIs must be valid. Non-alphanumeric characters must be properly encoded. For example, a space should be encoded as '%20'. The problem most often surfaces in URIs in the NCX files.

1960 called, they want their teleprinters back.

[Jellby]

"id"s in XHTML should not start with a number, that might be an additional problem with the NCX.

[Valloric]

Originally Posted by Jellby

"id"s in XHTML should not start with a number, that might be an additional problem with the NCX.

That is most likely the problem. The latest version of epubcheck catches this error in the OPF. I'm guessing MichaelGray is using an older version, or epubcheck doesn't perform the same check for NCX files.

[eBookNoir]

Originally Posted by st_albert

When I've gotten this via epubcheck, it means I've not specified one or more of:

author
title
publisher

in the metadata. (i.e. within content.opf in the epub archive) I've no clue if this is your problem, just thought I'd post it as it wasn't obvious to me from the error message, just what was lacking.

HTH

Actually it passes epub check perfectly, it's when i hit deliver on itunes producer that i get the error, which makes no sense. I have all of those in there from ID and from tweaking the metadata. Thanks for the suggestion though, if anyone else knows why, it'd be great. The one area apple is lacking in is help or service with itunes producer, they need to step it up.

[eBookNoir]

Originally Posted by MichaelGray

Hello all
Just had this from Apple support:

All characters in the URIs must be valid. Non-alphanumeric characters must be properly encoded. For example, a space should be encoded as '%20'. The problem most often surfaces in URIs in the NCX files.

For more information, refer to Metadata, File Formats and Cataloging in the iBookstore FAQS. Thanks!

The ref to the FAQ's is quite handy as well (within iTunes connect) - it seems to have been expanded, last time I looked there were only two questions (both about using iBooks rather than making things for it!)

Will investigate further and post any progress.

@eBookNoir I'm sure you've thought of this, but I think I've had that error with missing out a closing tag in the TOC or in the HTML files. If the latter, you could try validating each file at http://validator.w3.org (or with the developer toolbar in Firefox) to pinpoint the error. Hope that helps...

Michael

validated the xhtml files - came up with all passing, but the cover one had this error - No Character encoding declared at document level - might be the culprit, now I need to fix and see if that works. that site won't validate toc.ncx files, may have to look at that on its own/. Thanks.

[MichaelGray]

Just to come back on my problem file – problem solved: not the numbers at the beginning of the TOC id's, but the spaces in the paths. It was spaces not in the XHTML file names, but in the name of the folder containing them. Changed those to %20 in the NCX file and it worked. Thanks for your help, everyone - much appreciated.

[sueneu]

My client is uploading my epub file to the ibookstore, and has been getting the "ERROR ITMS-9000." I'm cringing as my epub that passed the threepress epub check causes my clients grief.

No luck finding the Metadata, File Formats and Cataloging in the iBookstore FAQs.
I did find an article about which characters are allowed in URIs, including "%encoding"

http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3986.txt. There's an appendix that gives a hierarchy of reserved and unreserved characters.

Susan

[ldespain]

I worked on my ePub file in Sigil and now my customer is having trouble uploading it with iTunes Producer. This is the error message that he got:

1 package(s) were not uploaded because they had problems:
/Users/jeffgoforth/Music/iTunes Producer/Playlists/1424316545.itmsp - Error Messages:
Apple's web service operation was not successful
Unable to authenticate the package: 1424316545.itmsp
ERROR ITMS-4000: "Line 88 column 92: bad character content for element at XPath /package/book/assets/asset[1]/data_file/file_name"

This went through the ePub validator with no problems. Any ideas?

[st_albert]

Are you uploading a file already seen by iTunes? If so, maybe you should try the unaltered epub file (i.e. before it was assimilated into iTunes).

Gotta say this is among the most unrevealing error messages I have seen in a long time!

[charleski]

What is the first asset listed on the asset tab of iTunes Producer? Info from the other thread on Apple's crappy validation system suggests there'll be something in that file that doesn't match their requirements (probably completely unrelated to the file name).

[ldespain]

I think I figured my problem out. I had multiple image files in the ePub package that had spaces in their names. Sigil understood this in the HTML coding by adding %20 but the file names still had spaces in the images folder. When I renamed them without spaces: like title_page.jpg the file uploaded successfully. Sigil was even smart enough to know to change the image name in the HTML for me so I didn't have to change them myself. Such a simple solution, really, but absolutely NO indication in the error messages that that was the problem. What a relief!

[Valloric]

Originally Posted by ldespain

I think I figured my problem out. I had multiple image files in the ePub package that had spaces in their names. Sigil understood this in the HTML coding by adding %20 but the file names still had spaces in the images folder. When I renamed them without spaces: like title_page.jpg the file uploaded successfully. Sigil was even smart enough to know to change the image name in the HTML for me so I didn't have to change them myself. Such a simple solution, really, but absolutely NO indication in the error messages that that was the problem. What a relief!

Apple is really being silly here. As long as a space is percent-encoded in the URI's, an RS should be able to handle it just fine. That's why we have percent-encoding. Not to mention that this is exactly what the spec says should be done in these instances, since spaces in filenames are allowed.

[sueneu]

Michael,
I've checked the characters in my URIs, even files without any spaces or non-alphanumeric characters are "unmanifested" even though they are listed in my content.opf file between <manifest></manifest>tags.

Here's the error message:
ERROR ITMS-9000: "Unmanifested file found : tofu_quilt.epub:/__MACOSX/OEBPS/._Acknowledgements.xhtml" at Book (MZItmspBookPackage)
ERROR ITMS-9000: "Wrong namespace in tofu_quilt.epub:/__MACOSX/OEBPS/._Acknowledgements.xhtml : null - expecting http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" at Book (MZItmspBookPackage)

I double-checked, the namespace is at the top of the xhtml file.

I can't figure out why iTunes Producer is finding a "__MACOSX/" "._ " before all the filenames.

Any ideas?

Thanks! Susan

[charleski]

Whatever tool you're using to produce your epub is zipping up the resource forks as well.

[sueneu]

charleski,
Thanks! Now I understand the strange filepaths.
I switched to Sigil, and the file uploaded just fine. Many thanks to Valloric.
Susan