02-08-2011, 07:22 PM | #1 |
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Kindle Software Preview Release and calibre 'Fetch News' items
The just released 3.1 software Preview Release for K3 includes an improved layout for subscriptions. Navigation is a lot better now. Better late than never...
As a welcome side effect, the layout improvement applies to calibre-generated Fetch News items as well! |
02-08-2011, 07:35 PM | #2 | |
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02-08-2011, 09:37 PM | #3 | |||
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I'm not sure that it works as advertised for calibre output. Either that, or there are some bugs in the Kindle s/w. Following are excerpts from the Kindle release notes, and what happens with calibre-generated newspapers. (I don't have any Amazon subs to compare to).
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I'm doubtful that this faulty behavior has anything to do with calibre--more likely bugs in the Kindle s/w (it is after all, an early release). If anyone with knowledge of the MOBI format generated by calibre thinks otherwise, please chime in. Overall it's a minor improvement (the sections and titles display) but the behaviour of the back button is a real disappointment. |
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02-09-2011, 11:45 AM | #4 | |
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Back does now what it always has: it jumps to the page, but does not restore the cursor position. No matter how you navigate to a given page, the cursor will always be on the 'default' hyperlinked item (usually the first hyperlink on the page). Your suggestion that it should restore the cursor position if you use 'Back' to get there is quite reasonable, and if put to a vote, I'd vote for it. But you'd have to convince Amazon it is a bug, and they'd probably argue they were just being 'consistent'. This is one of a number of subtle navigational issues they could be addressing, but they seem to have other priorities. |
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02-09-2011, 12:04 PM | #5 | |
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So are we doing something different to the sub periodicals? |
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02-09-2011, 01:35 PM | #6 | |
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Look at it this way: when I click the back button on my web browser I don't go back to the top of the previous page--I go to the place on the page from whence I came. The natural and expected behaviour of BACK is to go back to where you came from, not to the top of the page you came from. I've emailed Amazon on their feedback line and I'm hoping they will address this. Last edited by nickredding; 02-09-2011 at 01:42 PM. |
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02-09-2011, 01:38 PM | #7 |
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Interesting--are you sure? Kindle docs are, after all, merely HTML files. The BACK button is (or should be) equivalent to your web browser's back button. There's no link from your current page back to where you came from--it's up to the browser (Kindle) to remember that. I don't see how the structure of the NYT subscription file could affect that.
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02-09-2011, 05:39 PM | #8 | |
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02-09-2011, 07:45 PM | #9 | |
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02-10-2011, 02:17 AM | #10 | |
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02-10-2011, 07:32 AM | #11 |
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I find the new format MUCH easier to scan and read. It works just fine with my K3 and calibre.
Frank |
02-11-2011, 03:17 PM | #12 |
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Yes, the new format might be miles better but the new behaviour of the "back" button is frustrating.
If you are scanning a few pages deep in a non-default section and hit the "back" button, the cursor returns to article 1 of the first (default) section and you have to start your scan all over again. Like a previous poster I tried sending instapaper articles directly from the instapaper website (not calibre) and the "back" button remembered the location of the cursor (the same as the original behavior). So is this new behaviour of the "back" button only related to Calibre periodicals? Has anyone tried the behaviour with paid amazon subscriptions? |
02-11-2011, 06:48 PM | #13 |
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I've been looking into this and have found:
1) Instapaper files (sent from Instapaper) have a single section with the captured pages appearing as articles within that section. The BACK button does indeed return from an article to the corresponding cursor position on the Sections & Articles view. 2) If I convert the Instapaper MOBI file to HTML using ebook-convert I find the generated toc.ncx file to be devoid of any table of contents info. Specifically, this is all I got for an Instapaper file with 6 articles: Code:
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?> <ncx xmlns="http://www.daisy.org/z3986/2005/ncx/" version="2005-1" xml:lang="en"> <head> <meta content="6f4b85b8-9278-43e2-a6aa-a995e0ed3953" name="dtb:uid"/> <meta content="1" name="dtb:depth"/> <meta content="calibre (0.7.45)" name="dtb:generator"/> <meta content="0" name="dtb:totalPageCount"/> <meta content="0" name="dtb:maxPageNumber"/> </head> <docTitle> <text>Instapaper</text> </docTitle> <navMap/> </ncx> I've looked at the output from Calibre, using ebook-convert to take it from MOBI to HTML. What I've found is Calibre doesn't use H1 to identify article titles--it generates a complete toc.ncx file which references articles using ID labels. There is a strange error in the ebook conversion from MOBI to HTML for files with more than one feed (i.e. section). The references to section TOC's in toc.ncx end up looking like Code:
<navPoint class="chapter" id="ff83e450-3d2b-42e9-a233-9a8f90f9fd82" playOrder="0"> <navLabel> <text>Front Page</text> </navLabel> <content src="Daily_Caller.html#eed_0/index.html"/> </navPoint> Code:
C:\Users\Nick\Calibre Library>ebook-convert daily.mobi dailydir1 1% Converting input to HTML... InputFormatPlugin: MOBI Input running on C:\Users\Nick\Calibre Library\daily.mobi Parsing all content... Forcing Daily_Caller.html into XHTML namespace Referenced file 'feed_6/index.html' not found Referenced file 'feed_2/index.html' not found Referenced file 'feed_4/index.html' not found Referenced file 'feed_3/index.html' not found Referenced file 'feed_5/index.html' not found Referenced file 'feed_0/index.html' not found Referenced file '%20http%3a//twitter.com/Chris_Moody%20' not found Referenced file 'feed_1/index.html' not found Referenced file 'feed_10/index.html' not found Referenced file 'feed_9/index.html' not found Referenced file 'feed_8/index.html' not found Referenced file '../2011/02/10/trump-at-cpac-points-to-white-house-run/' not found 34% Running transforms on ebook... Merging user specified metadata... Detecting structure... Flattening CSS and remapping font sizes... Source base font size is 12.00000pt Cleaning up manifest... Trimming unused files from manifest... Trimming 'images/00002.jpg' from manifest Trimming 'images/00001.jpg' from manifest Trimming 'images/00003.jpg' from manifest Creating OEB Output... 67% Creating OEB Output OEB output written to C:\Users\Nick\Calibre Library\dailydir1 Output saved to C:\Users\Nick\Calibre Library\dailydir1 Any suggestions from MOBI experts would be appreciated. There is definately something wrong somewhere, and perhaps it is in Calibre after all, if only a mismatch between how the Kindle handles MOBI periodical files and how Calibre structures them. |
02-11-2011, 06:53 PM | #14 |
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MOBI files contain a compiled version of toc.ncx that ebook-convert will not convert. The toc.ncx generated by ebook-convert is from the embedded TOC in the MOBI file, which is just a flat list of normal HTML links. Presumably Instapaper doesn't generate the embedded HTML toc.
In any case that is irrelevant, as the embedded HTML toc is not used by the Kindle for periodicals. Try generating a calibre periodical for a news source with only one section to compare with the Instapaper one. |
02-11-2011, 07:44 PM | #15 |
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The Instapaper test that I was running had just one section and three articles in both the website and Calibre generated versions. BACK worked as expected in the website version but not in the Calibre generated one. I've been trying to find a way to extract and compare the two mobi's without interfering with the content. mobiunpack.py v0.23 is as close as I've got but this doesn't extract toc.ncx. Does anyone know of a tool to extract the ncx as-is? Apologies if that's an obvious question but I'm still pretty new to this.
Incidentally, much as I like the look of the new 'Sections and Articles' list, I've found that if you click on 'View Articles List' at the bottom, then you can page through and navigate off to individual articles quite happily from there and BACK does return you to the correct point. The layout isn't quite so pretty but it might make life easier depending on how you navigate round your periodicals. |
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